So who's still playing Iona?

Back on the topic of Iona, I played at an event this weekend with Iona and Krueger2. I went 2 and 1, although my first game was only lost due to extremely poor play on my part. I practiced several times with iona over the last week and played her once in the event, she definitely still feels very strong, and the extra control range from the well is insane on feat turn. if you plop her in the middle of the board you can feat on almost your entire army sideline to sideline. Plus, I have found that ambushing bloodweavers are extremely good. That may not surprise anybody but me, however, I have always underestimated how good ambushing is.

Game 1 Anarchy: Iona dropped into Rask minions (a bunch of beasts + all solo / characters in his army except WE&SJ). I got first turn, put pressure on him by running as far as possible. He feats defensively and I subsequently back up to disallow him from doing any real damage (I toe the zones). He then plays cagey to leverage his extended threat ranges. On my turn 3 I almost kill Lug with Ravagers and kill Dahlia with the Storm Raptor (with vision from mist speaker to ignore stealth). This allows me to score 3 and go up 3 to 1. My opponent decides he needs to assassinate me as he is behind on attrition and I have still yet to feat. He ends up killing me to the box after getting Brine onto Iona from 18 inches away. The crazy part was that he had to use all 3 of Brine's initial attacks to kill the storma raptor, which then allowed him to overtake an inch to attack Iona who was behind a wall. With primal he only needs a boosted 10 to hit, which he naturally does, and then he proceeds to 1 shot Iona after boosting damage.

In retrospect, I randomly got enamored with being behind the wall, instead of measuring the threat range of Brine. If I move 1 inch back, he can't attack me and it's essentially GG. Live and learn on that one!

Game 2 I played K2 against Zaal1 Skorne on Recon2. My opponent seemed like he may have been new to the game, and I played a pretty standard K2 game where I push up the field going 1st, feat turn 2 to push him back / slow him down, and score 4 on my next turn. From there I score a scenario victory on the next turn.

Game 3 I played K2 against Omodamos infernals on Bunkers. He ran a bunch of heavies and some cultists / solos (essentially). I went first and pushed up the board. There was some really unfortunate 3d terrain, as well as a burning forest that made my movement very awkward on T1. Turn 2 I made a huge mistake by placing one of my sentry stones within ambush range of a unit of cultists (specifically the weapon attachments which have 2 inch reach). That cost me one of my Sentry stones. I used TK to turn as many of his beasts around as possible to attempt to limit his feat turn. On his turn 2 he charges everything he can, killing megalith, messing up a woldwarden, and killing a few manikins and a gallows grove. On my turn 3 I figure my best shot is to assassinate him, as without my sentry stone on the right flank I don't have a great way to kill his large cultist unit. The ironic part is that I have 2 wyrds within aim and shoot range of Omodamos if I can get rid of the heavies engaging them. I clear them with the feat, but make an order of operations mistake and end up allowing a crab jack to countercharge me. This takes a really high percentage assassination and makes it much more difficult. In the end I port a woldwarden onto his caster and finish him off to the box (it is only this close because I forgot to use earth's power before porting him in, ughhh).

I think I rushed my assassination run a bit as I was tired in the 3rd round, but had I given it a bit more thought I think it would have been effectively a sure thing (2x aiming purgation wyrds, krueger shooting, and a woldwarden in melee should put any caster into the dust).

Overall, the event was a ton of fun and it was great practice in with Iona and Krueger. I think my biggest takeaway from using Iona was that I felt uncomfortable dropping her into opposing list pairs where they had any appreciable shooting. For example, against infernals I really wanted to play iona, but I wasn't sure how she would perform into all the shooting from his Zaateroth list. I think that is where Baldur1 is a more natural pair for K2, he can perform similarly, but you don't feel as bad about fighting guns with B1. I have another event next weekend where I may try Baldur instead of Iona to get a compare and contrast. Thanks for reading!