Intercessor Kreoss +5
-Vanquisher -8
-Reckoner -8
Avatar of Menoth -11
Min Choir -2
Vassal of Menoth -2
Gorman di Wulfe -2
Max Vengers -11
Daughters of the Flame -5
Dartan Vilmon -3
Paladin -2
The list is very low on models but hits pretty hard, especially on the charge. The daughters are in the list since they're fast enough to keep up and with Holy Ward hit DEF 17 which makes them a surprisingly good jam unit. The Vengers are really cranked up by Kreoss since he grants them Divine Inspiration for free (additional die on all melee attack and damage rolls dropping the lowest). The Avatar is a great melee jack with some of the best focus efficiency and gaze helps to herd the enemy army. The Vanquisher provides a degree of crowd control alongside Gorman (who can also drop smoke near Kreoss early game too). Like in a few of my lists the Paladins are purely to lock up zones and contest flags and generally help me to not lose the game.
My opponent was playing a list he'd not really used before either, and so we agreed to play untimed to help us get to grips with the ins and outs before playing more competitively. He was fielding Constance Blaize with Gallant, a max unit of Precursor Knights and UA, a max unit of Boomhowlers with Jonas, Aiyana and Holt, a unit of Trencher Commandos, Lord Runewood, Maxwell Finn, a journeyman, squire, Anastasia Di Bray and epic Eiryss. Lots of bodies on the table on his side and most of them with sneaky abilities to overcome armour too.
We were playing Incursion and I won the roll for the start of the game and decided to take the first turn, sacrificing the better board edge to be able to safely get all of my upkeeps out. This meant I ended up with a large forest right in front of the centre of my deployment zone. On the other side of the board were a couple of walls to provide some shelter for my opponent's army.
I got my upkeeps out, Holy Ward on the Daughters and Ignite on the Vengers and Warpath on Kreoss. My army advanced quickly across the board to contest the flags. Following this the Cygnar army also moved up, spreading his masses of infantry out to avoid getting hit by AOEs. The flag on the side with the majority of his infantry disappeared.
In my second turn I moved the Daughters into contest the remaining flank flag. I was lured into charging a couple of Boomhowlers with my Vengers, killing them but exposing myself to retaliation in the following turn. My jacks advanced up and took some pot shots at the enemy to little effect. Avatar moved up and used Gaze to lock a large chuck of the army into moving towards him.
On the Cygnaran turn Aiyana and Holt, two Precursors and the Boomhowlers made light work of the Vengers. Five other Precursors made a charge into the Avatar (using the Mini feat) but after the first attack doing a couple of boxes I Enliven'd him backwards to avoid taking further damage, and left them clumped together. The Trencher commandos threw point blank grenades at the Daughters to kill enough to force a command check, which they failed. Gallant charged the Avatar and did a reasonable amount of damage, crippling movement and the Shield. Finally Constance threw up her feat to offer some more defence.
On my turn the Avatar and the Reckoner scrapped Gallant between them while the Vanquisher and Gorman killed three of the Precursors and left two knocked down, corroded and on fire. I chose to use an ancilliary attack to take another shot at the Precursors, killing the standard bearer, and hurting the UA. The following turn the fire finished off the UA and the other two knights. Constance nuked Dartan and the remaining precursors used their magical maces to kill the other paladin. The Boomhowlers charged the Vanquisher but barely hurt it and the commandos finished off the daughters. Anastasia moved on to the field to my side.
With little shielding Kreoss, who'd been hanging back all game, he ran around the forest that was in front of my deployment zone, getting close to Constance. The Avatar moved up and used Gaze to lock her in place. The Reckoner charged a group of 4 commandos and killed 2, failing the to hit roll on the other two. The Vanquisher had lost cortex last turn and so took out a single Boomhowler of the 5 engaging him. Gorman moved up and stuck black oil on Boomhowler and one of his buddies, also contesting the flag, since the Cygnarans had scored a point last turn. In the following turn Eiryss shot my buffs off Kreoss and he then took a couple of pot shots from the commandos that mostly missed, and the two engaging the Reckoner failed to damage it. Maxwell Finn used his gun to finish off the last few boxes on the Avatar, freeing Constance to run away behind a wall. The Boomhowlers continued to smack at the Vanquisher, taking some more boxes off it. Anastasia then used espionage to make the Boomhowlers, remaining precursors, and commandos able to advance and attack a second time, putting more hurt on the Vanquisher, killing all but one Choirister, and having three commandos put some anatomical precision damage on Kreoss.
I started my turn by feating, placing Holy Ward on Kreoss, and putting ignite on the Reckoner. I then charged Kreoss into the Junior hoping to get Eiryss in my reach, but had to move over 2 large wreck markers (the Avatar and Gallant) and so didn't quite make the range, but did crush the junior with the charge attack. I then pulled a focus off the wrack to put me at Def 16 ARM 25. The Vanquisher then took a weak swing at a Boomhowler. Cygnar then started the turn by having Eiryss aim and shoot at Kreoss. He came up an 8, but since I had my toe in the Avatar's wreck marker Kreoss was at DEF 20 vs Shooting, and so this missed by 1, leaving my Holy Ward and full stack on Kreoss. The three commandos then charged, using anatomical precision to get a couple of points on my caster, then ran a Precursor into B2B with Kreoss to get the Flank bonus for the charge with Constance Blaize. She charged in and thwacked at the Intercessor with lots of boosting but left him on a single box. Then Anastasia activated, placed espionage out and one of the Commandos connected for an anatomical precision assassination.
Looking back at the game retrospectively it's clear that there were several issues for me from this game. The first is how bad a match up this game was for my list, which is designed to crack armour and not wipe out infantry swarms. Secondly I made some very simple errors throughout the game, especially over committing the Vengers and losing them early game, as well as forgetting both Dartan's Commander ability that would have saved my Daughters and Kreoss' Imperisable Conviction ability that would have really helped Kreoss survive the last round.
The other major issue I noticed with the list is that it doesn't have a conveinient method of disposing of enemy solos, and that let Eiryss and Anastasia run roughshod over my caster in the late turns. Considering this I'm thinking of swapping out Dartan and the Paladin for Nicia and an Allegiant, or just swapping Dartan and Nicia at least.
Hopefully in my next game I'll be more aggressive with Kreoss, less careless with the Vengers and more able to deal with annoyances. I felt that Kreoss himself was very impressive, being able to camp and dish out focus to his jacks made him versatile and survivable, especially late game. I want to try out this build another time to see if it might be worth swapping out a jack for another unit. What I'd ideally like would be to play it against an armour list where it could play the way it wants to.
Hopefully I'll have that for you next time!
-M
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