Journeyman League - Conclusion

The final week of the Journeyman League might have been last week but this week we had an announcement for the winners and a prize ceremony of sorts. Despite having held either first or second place consistently throughout the league several people came in at the last minute with loads of hobby points to claim the top spots, bumping me down to 5th place. Despite this there was a clear division of almost double the points between my position at 5th and the person in 6th, and there wasn't a huge divide between the top 5. This meant that the EO decided to award the top 5 players with prizes. The player in first got their choice of Journeyman Warcaster/Lesser Warlock and the next four players (including me) got one of the special edition Cephalix Gobber Mind-Drudges. I got mine painted up last night:

The League has been great fun and it's been a great way to meet new people who share a love of your hobby. It's also an interesting way to learn the game and develop your skills. If you aren't part of a regular gaming group and you get a chance to join a Journeyman League, regardless of whether you just picked up a battlebox for the first time or if you're a veteran Tournanent player, I highly recommend it!

The League might be over but the group is now moving on to other things, including a Journeyman League Tournament at the end of next month, and there's talks of a heap of other things to come, and I'll be sure to keep you all posted!

-M

Journeyman League - Week 9

This week was the final game of the Journeyman League, and I tried a variation on the previous week's list attempt. The final week was with no restriction on lists at 35 points. I went for 

eFeora +6

Vanquisher -8

Templar -8

Min Choir -2

Vassal -2

Max TFG with UA -8

Reclaimer -2

Wrack - 1

Min Cleansers -5

Nicia Tear of Vengence -3

Allegiant -2

This list contained a few things (Templar, Reclaimer, Nicia) that I hadn't tried before but wanted to give a shot to. My opponent was one of the many Legion players in the League and one of the better overall players. He fielded eLylyth with a Ravagore, two Nephalim Bolt Throwers, a Naga Nightstalker along with a Deathstalker, Shepherd, two Foresaken, a Succubus and Fyanna the Lash. My opponent was the other member of the league who was painting huge numbers of models in a short time and so he was putting out a few things, like Fyanna, who he was really just trying out, as he'd painted them up. 

I won the roll for first turn and decided I'd go first. We were playing the Incoming scenario from the 2014 Steamroller packet, and I deployed my battlegroup opposite the opposing zone, and my infantry on the other side of the table. My opponent set up his battlegroup opposite my own near his friendly zone, with the Ravagore and Naga more towards my infantry, where they could do the most damage. The Deathstalker set up shop opposite the infantry to ping away at them from the start of the game.

I started with Feora, casting Escort on herself and Ignite on the TFG, using a focus from a wrack. Each of my jacks ran up the field and then received Passage from the choir. The monk and Nicia both ran up into position up the board and then the infantry followed suit, the cleansers being out of range and the TFG vulnerable to the Deathstalker's sniper regardless of shield wall. The Legion turn started with a bolt thrower perforating Nicia, who'd moved up too far, and the Deathstalker missing his shot at the TFG, nullifying his deadly shooting for this turn. The rest of the turn involved the majority of the army running up to get further up the field and the Foresaken starting to fill up on Fury. 

I started my second turn by having both Jacks advance up, with the Templar shifting forwards alongside the Vanquisher, who took two (thanks to the Vassal) shots that set a bolt thrower and the Ravagore on fire thanks to scatters that did little damage. Continuing the scatter joy the cleansers used their combined ranged AOE to hit the Deathstalker, with the blast damage being enough to kill him, ending the sniper threat to the TFG who took advantage and shield walled and Iron Zeal'd and moved solidly into my zone. The Choir sang Passage again and Feora moved up into Escort range with the Vanquisher. 

Lylyth started the turn by feating to give all models an extra shot and Snipe (+4 range to shooting) and proceeded to kill the choir and vassal blocking Feora, hitting Feora a couple of times herself, but with her camped focus and the benefit of Escort she was a high enough ARM that she only took a few boxes of damage. A Bolt Thrower activated and shot at Feora, pushing her back a couple of inches and dealing another couple of boxes of damage. The second Bolt Thrower managed to push her out of range to benefit from the armour buff from escort but rolled poorly for damage, meaning that Feora sat on around 6 boxes. My opponent then activated the Ravagore and moved up, before remembering that Feora was immune to fire and he wouldn't be able to get the job done, which he beat himself up about a bit before shooting at the TFG instead. Between the Ravagore and the Naga (both of whom had been out of range for the feat) they only managed to kill a couple of TFG but did clear a LOS to the Reclaimer who got sniped and killed before he could achieve anything. He then moved up Fyanna the Lash, who advanced into melee with the Templar, doing a pair of Beat Back attacks to move the jack away from his caster, but only doing minor damage to the heavy. 

On my turn I allocated one focus to the Vanquisher and four to the Templar (bonded thanks to eFeora), activating them first. The Vanquisher moved into melee with Fyanna, avoiding blocking up the Templar, and squished her with a boosted attack roll. The Templar, now freed up, activated and charged Lylyth, who'd exposed herself running the assassination last turn. I was able to connect thanks to the speed bump from Escort and the distance from reach, and boosted to hit on the charge attack. I missed. I bought and boosted a second attack with the flail, connecting and doing dice +5 damage to her, taking most of her boxes and setting her on fire (thanks to the bond again), but failing to kill. I knew I was dead next turn so I moved up with Feora but, measuring my control range, I found I was just out to hit with her flamethrower and consigned myself to die, camping her remaining one focus. In a blaze of glory moment I killed a Foresaken and a shepherd with the Allegiant and TFG respectively. 

As soon as the Legion turn started my opponent asked to measure my control range to see if his three burning models were within Feora's caustic presence. All of them were and I realised, to my horror, that I could have feated last turn to gain 3 additional focus, enough to fire step the extra distance to reach Lylyth with the flamethrower and have enough left to boost to hit and for damage! He rolled no significant fire damage on his beasts but rolled 4 damage for Lylyth, forcing her to use her last Fury to transfer, meaning my feat probably would have won me the game, had I been smart enough to think of it at the time! Lylyth moved up and took a couple of shots at Feora, but couldn't quite finish her, requiring a bolt thrower to finish the job, a small consolation! 

In addition to forgetting to feat I realised the next day that I hadn't included my +2 to hit on my charge attack with the Templar from Battle, making me kick myself again for not being focused enough in the game. However to be honest it was only poor dice rolls that had allowed me to survive Lylyth's feat turn at all to get anything done!

Overall this was an educational game that brought home how important it is in this game to (when not playing timed) take your time and consider your options to make the most of your own abilities. While I lost I was close and I can see how I could (perhaps even should) have won the game so I feel like it's helped me improve. Couple that with the fact this game was much more competitive than my last game against this opponent (the first Legion game in Week 3), which he even commented on himself, made me feel I'd come along as a player, which is nice in itself!

Next week we'll be finding out the overall winner and I'll post a summary of my league experience. Stay tuned, wargamers!

-M

Journeyman League - Week 8

So, after the game I wrote about in my last post I managed to squeeze an extra game in against 'Hall of Legends' Jayke Hall and his Talion Charter. The game was very long and gruelling and both of us rolled so poorly that it took a long time to do much of anything after the obligatory turn 2 death of all the sea dogs. The game ended with his Alt caster, Captain Shae, going for the assassination as I was holding the flag and had more models than him. He failed to shoot Feora to death despite knocking her down and she retaliated, taking him down to a few boxes, he then weathered a combined melee charge from 5 TFG and finally died to fire in his own turn. It was a long game and I won't bore you with all the details. 

This week, however I got my regular game in as well, using a new list as the final two weeks would be 35 points. Following the effectiveness of the Bastion/Senechal combo from the tournament, I decided to include them in my list; which ended up looking like this:

eFeora +6

Vanquisher 'Pyre of Idolatry' -8

Dervish -4

Repenter -4

Min Choir -2

Vassal -2

Max Bastions -8

Bastion Senechal -3

Daughters of the Flame -5

Min Clensers -5

It was a different approach that I wanted to try out and I was looking forward to seeing how it would play. I should note that the EO decided that one of the jacks from our starting battlegroup should be named and bonded to that caster, and would have the benefit rolled, and this could be used throughout the event! My Vanquisher earned the title 'Pyre of Idolatory' and rolled the awesome 'dominator' ability netting it +2 to hit and damage rolls while in Feora's control range!

My opponent was the Legion player I'd faced in the first week, who was using a very cool alternate caster - epic Abysylonia! The list was very beast focused, and included a Ravagore, Shredder and Raek from his starter battlegroup augmented by a Carnivean and an Angelius, making for a very intimidating line up. Added to this were a Forsaken and a Shepherd to help with Fury management, and a maximum unit of the Spawning Vessel to throw out even more gribbly monsters. 

The game started, as usual with everything on both sides of the board running up, with the main casualties being three Daughters of the flame to shooting who promptly failed their command check, setting a troubling precedent for their usefulness, and the Clensers threw down a cloud in front of the Carnivean who had been out of range for the AOE which scattered backwards. 

On turn two Abby flew up and feated, turning her Beasts into powerhouses that could charge for free, which they promptly did, killing the Vanquisher and Dervish in short order before tying up my Cleansers with a Rabid Shredder. The Ravagore took a shot at the Bastions but only managed to hit one, but rolled so high I opted to kill him rather than spread out the damage. This left an annoying cloud in front of the Senechal. 

The Cleansers failed to harm the Shredder on the flank and the Daughters ran past the pot (not wanting to kill any and give away Corpse tokens). The main action was a charge from my Bastions, having to spread themselves thin in order to get all of the beasts into melee and stop them from rushing forward to kill my caster. This left me on the back foot and back peddling. The charge attacks were impressive and there was plenty of damage to go around, but with only one attack on each beast it was nowhere near enough to kill any of them, and I feated to put fire on Abby which did no damage at any point in the game. 

On his turn the fully loaded Shredder failed to Frenzy and so had to take a single unboosted attack that achieved little against the Cleansers. The beasts attacked the Bastions but only the Angelius did enough damage with it's Armour Piercing attack to outright kill one of them. The vessel attendants turned around and started to pummel the Duaghters causing them to fail their Casualties check again(!) and gained enough corpse tokens (after one of the attendants chucked her sister in the pot) to throw out a Stinger which charged the nearest Bastion, just clipping the melee of the Senechal, who hit with a Defensive Strike to take out all but a couple of Circles, massively reducing it's ability to harm anything. 

On my turn the Bastions continued to spread out, trying to corral the beasts that were all up in my face, but with little effect. The Clensers were similarly useless attacking the Shredder and I ended my turn. 

The Angelius finished off another Bastion, which freed the Carbivean up to make a charge on Feora, who I'd thought was safe behind the Repenter. The big beast had trouble hitting her high DEF and by the end of the round he was maxed out on Fury and Feora had 5 boxes left. The Forsaken activated and bombed the Cleansers, neatly polishing them off, and the Sheppard moved up to where the Beasts were locked in with my remaining Bastions. 

I started my turn by moving the Repenter out of Feora's way, accepting the free strike from the Carni, which failed to cripple anything, and took a shot at Abby, hoping to soften her up, but failed to wound. The bastions squished the Shepherd who was blocking me and took a couple of swings at the many beasts, but achieved little. Feora activated and Cast Fire Step to dodge out of combat and move up, taking the opportunity to charge Abby, who was now exposed and on 1 Fury, hoping for a desperate assassination as my only real chance to win. I took multiple attacks and boosts but ended with her on fire with only a few boxes left, but still camping that one Fury, guaranteeing her survival for next turn and sealing my fate.

He activated, hoping to use a spell to slam Feora into melee with a heavy but it was unnecessary as the damage from the spell itself was enough to polish her off, winning him the game. 

It was a fun game and showcased, if nothing else, how devastating eAbysylonia can be, especially under her feat! I could have done a few things much better, but I was happy to have at least taken the assassination run and done some nice damage as a last hurrah!

Thanks for reading!

-M