Welsh masters: what a way to re-learn the game…

Day 1 would consist of 4 games, my first game I was drawn up against Dom Leedham who was using minions. Unfortunately I never got to see what lists he was using as he woke up feeling ill and wasn’t around at the start of the day. I believe he did arrive later and took part in later rounds but it meant my first round was a bye. At least it counted as a win and meant I was free from the fear of going 0-7 for the final standings. 

Round 2 paired me against Matt Oakley, a former winner of the event and here he was playing Circle, Bradigus and Wurmwood (I think). He dropped Bradigus Bones into my Kraye Storm division playing Invasion. 

His list was;

Bradigus
Megalith
2x Wold guardians
4x Wold watchers
3x Blackclad Stoneshapers
Blackclad wayfarer
Chuck Dogwood
Death archon
Sentry stone and manikins
2x Shifting stones
Swamp gobbers

The table had a decent scattering of terrain but the most relevant piece was a building halfway up the table that lay between the central rectangular zone and the lefthand (from my perspective) circular zone.
The game came down to clock, which has never been my friend but lack of practice exacerbated an existent problem and I lost. My consolation was that I was up on the attrition war and whilst behind on control points (I had 3 to his 6) had turned a corner there as I now had complete control of one zone and easy contesting the others with control of the centre zone mine for the taking. Highlights of the game for me was my opponent forgetting that I could shoot down his objective in my turn 2 turn, which led to me taking out a shifting stone from each unit as well as the blackclad wayfarer on turn 2. The stormsmith grenadiers also had a moment to impress when they shot down the sentry stone (firefly was within 5”). 

Round 3, I was up against Tom Wiggins with Crucible guard, he had Lukas and Locke. He dropped Lukas and I took Kraye again. His list was in prima materia;

Lukas
Liberator
3x Vindicators
Alyce Marc
2x ascendent mentalist
2x trancers
2x mechanics
Death Archon
Prospero
 Suppressor
Max failed experiments

The scenario was split decision and Tom won the roll-off. He chose to go first and pick of table sides. The table didn’t have one side particularly favourable over the other and the scenery ultimately didn’t play a huge part in what happened during the game. 
Short story, I lost on clock again. This time it was a much tougher grind and I managed to kill 104pts of his list and was only a single control point behind (5-6). I had preserved more of my list and still had a defender and the reliant after destroying all of his heavies. Highlights went to the storm towers who exceeded expectations by killing his transcendent mentalists a trancer and did good damage to his jacks, ensuring my jacks survived his attention. Iron fleshed failed experiments are bleeping horrible by the way. 

Round 4, Anthony Shaw playing Cygnar. He had Stryker1 and Caine3. He dropped Stryker1 and I decided it was about time I played something else so put down Caine2.

His list was Gravediggers.

Stryker1
Hurricane
Minuteman
Maxwell Finn
Anson Hitch
2x Trencher master gunners
Ragman
2x Trench Busters
Patrol dog
2x trencher cannon crews
2x Express teams (one with Captain Karli) 
Min Trencher commandos with officer and 3 scattergunners
Trencher mechanics
Lady Aiyana & Holt with Murdoch

This game was the first reminder of how I can easily go on tilt. I basically fed my army to him and was heavily attrition’d into the ground. Caine had an amusing but futile attempt at taking down the hurricane by using his feat and pistoleer but it was not to be. (My dice weren’t kind on top of things but this was on me.)

End of day one and I felt a bit down due to my performance but was very happy to have played some games. 

Day 2 will be covered in the next post. 

Following up I’ve been doing a lot of reflection about my games, the lists and what I’d like to play next. With any luck I will go more events this year and I’d quite like to try out more casters because whilst I’ve a core set of casters that I like and want to make work (Kraye in particular) I could really do with playing a more varied and forgiving casters. 

That said I have spent a lot of time looking at the lists I took and thinking about the games and whether any changes would have given different results. Overall I am the weakest link and only practice and better understanding of what the lists needs to do and focus on will result in more wins. That said I do have tweaks I’d like to try out. 


The Kraye list:

I love the idea behind it and it didn’t do badly, the first couple of games where I was more relaxed, although I was down on clock and eventually lost because of clock I was doing well on attrition and holding on to scenario. It has trouble into high armour and being outnumbered. The Maelok and Karchev games were reminders that other factions can swamp me with stuff I just can’t deal with quickly enough. There are ways to use the list better, during the weekend I tried to keep things simple and first turn always put countermeasures on a firefly and admonition on Thunderhead. This wasn’t a bad choice and it was a good choice in my games against Circle and Khador but I might have been better served putting countermeasures on the grenadiers and admonition on a firefly. Since the firefly tends to get thrown up the field for ionisation it dies the next round without fail. Admonition wouldn’t let it survive in most cases but it would force my opponent to devote more resources to it and maybe mess up their battle line.

I’ve been thinking a lot about tweaks and changes to the list. One was dropping the charger and stormsmith stormcallers to put a cyclone in the list. I’ve always loved the cyclone so this isn’t a good change but it offer something valuable options that weren’t there before. As a heavy the cyclone is more accurate in melee and hits just a tiny bit harder, the guns aren’t as reliable but with more shots you can still make the same sort of contribution at range. Covering fire is still a great board control tool and Kraye makes it so that the cyclone can be miles from the template. The few extra boxes and armour over the charger aren’t much but it can be significant and the pair of open fists remains one of Kraye’s cutest and most impressive control tricks against high armour spam. Double handed throws just aren’t common enough. 

Another avenue of thought was to change themes to heavy metal and get Caine0 into the list with Ace. Fire for effect on Thunderhead improves the ranged output considerably and makes it more likely that I can cripple or even destroy an enemy heavy at range with my guns. Caine and Ace don’t quite make up for the loss in the stormsmith guns but they are boostable shots with better control due to thunderbolt.

Probably the most sensible change to improve the list’s versatility and table presence is to drop the charger and stormsmith grenadiers and get a unit of stormblades with CA. Also drop Reinholdt for either Squire or Sylys. This gives the list a decent infantry unit that hits hard and can charge a decently long way once you factor in Kraye’s feat and desperate pace from the Captain.


The Caine2 list:

This list has fewer changes that I’ve considered seriously, largely in part because I just didn’t play it as much. I want better damage output so the main focus has been on getting a solo like Ragman or Gorman into the list. The former is a simple swap for the Arcane tempest rifleman and is likely where I’ll start. Ragman is quite happy to sit behind stormwall and hand out death field but if I swapped stormwall for a hurricane and switched to Reinholdt I could get just about any solo I could want for this role. Hurricane might be a better colossal for Caine2 because the guns are a little more focused on damage output and it lets me deploy a little more freely because of the arc node. No strong feelings there though, primarly need is getting more damage out of the list so that I’m less reliant on good dice. 

If anyone reading this has anything they’d like to add, please do. 

My basic idea with them was try and get one round of shooting, maybe 2 depending on who went first and then feat to get everything in on an alpha. During the event I sort of achieved this in some games. I ended up going second in most games but repo’ 5” meant that heavies like the defenders could walk shoot and still be on the 20” line from my side of the board. Most of the time defenders didn’t need focus when shooting. The target was either easy to hit or low enough armour I wouldn’t need to boost. The defenders typically focused on solos, archons and maybe softening up a heavy. I did suffer from trying to get more work from ranged than I should have though.

Against warmachine the defenders hit as hard as ironclads for the first three 3 swings as cortex damage makes them deceptive for damage output. They hit as hard as an ironclad as long as there’s cortex boxes and make it harder for enemy warjacks to retaliate even if I can’t kill them them in one round. Just so long as I wipe out their cortex. This came into play in the crucible guard game and I should have leveraged it in the game against Khador. The list has the threat range to get the alpha but I tended to use the threat more than actually taking advantage of it. The reliant managed to prove it’s worth due to accumulator making it self-sufficient and cavalry rules delivering the crit effect from the hammer in two games. (A welcome thing for denying tough.) 

The storm towers proved quite good support here as well, disruption came into play a few times and the fireflies meant they did some damage as well. Also were great for picking off support models. 

Kraye is focus starved and this was an issue in some of my games but he can feed the defenders a focus, Thunderhead 2 and have Arlan top-up the reliant and still have enough to cast horsepower if I really need it feat turn. That gives 2 fully loaded heavies and the defenders (due to a free charge) will have enough to swing their hammers 3 times to knock out a cortex.

The list has the mobility to redeploy quickly but I wasn’t very good at making use of this. Going second a lot I don’t think helped me but as I said before, I feel that I’m the weak link more than the list.

The captain without a unit to desperate pace was a bit of a headscratcher for me.  Assuming he's one of your req options, I'd swap him for Keller if you can, a Savio with Force Barrier just seems rude.  I also wonder if switching the Defenders for more Reliants to get more accumulator focus might be an option?  Doing the swap with the charger and stormcallers would get you a fourth one with two points left over if I'm doing the math right, which is a squad of field mechaniks to weld hammers back on, or a battle priest on a stormtower if you find the need for a shield guard.  I do think swapping for Sylys or Squire would do some good too, while the Radcliffe Carbine is a decent gun, extra focus is gravy, and while the Squire lets your battlegroup range further, Sylys might enable a cheeky Lock The Target at a key point...