List One:
The Harbinger of Menoth +5
-Heirophant -2
-Reckoner -8
-Devout -5
Minimum Choir -2
Wracks -1
Vassal of Menoth -2
Maximum Exemplar Errants with UA -10
Rhupert Carvolo -2
Covenant of Menoth -2
Minimum Holy Zealots with UA -6
Maximum Exemplar Bastions -8
Dartan Vilmon -3
Paladin of the Order of the Wall -2
Anastasia Di Bray -2
Objective: Fuel Cache
List Two:
pSeverius +6
-Heirophant -2
-Blessings of Vengence -7
-Reckoner -8
-Templar -8
Vessel of Judgement -9
Vassal Mechanic -1
Vassal of Menoth -2
Wrack -1
eEiryss -3
Gorman Di Wulfe -2
Saxon Orrik -2
Max Choir of Menoth -3
Max Temple Flameguard with UA -8
Objective - Bunker
I was ready to go and pretty happy with both of my lists. The tournament was a 4 round, 14 man Steamroller using Timed Turns. So without further ado I'll start with a run-down of the games:
Round One
My first round opponent was Ben, one of the more experienced players in the Meta and one who's given me plenty of tough games. I was a little down-hearted as I'd hoped to get an easier game in early in order to get the ball rolling but it couldn't be helped. To make matters worse he was playing his favourite faction, Retribution, one I've never played against. He had one infantry heavy and one Jack heavy list and so after some internal debate I plumped for Sevvy to start me off. He picked his Kaelyssa Tier 4 Force Wall list. This consisted of Kaelyssa, 6 Manticores, an Artificer, a unit of battle mages and 6 or 7 NQ 54 variant Arcanists. This was an imposing looking list with a bunch of heavies and Shenanigans. The first round was Fire Support and Ben won the roll to go first, opting to choose the board edge. I deployed with the majority of my army on my right flank, with only the Vessel on my left near my flag. Ben deployed his mass of warjacks in a line, centrally with the Arcanists scattered between them to dole out focus. I took the first turn and, thanks to the Kaelyssa Tier couldn't run so I just put out Defender's ward on the TFG and strolled forward.
Ben's turn mainly consisted of Arcanists giving focus to the Manticores who then ran forwards, taking a big mass of board.
On my turn I continued to shuffle up the board, trying to gain a bit more board space. Sevvy moved into the nearby trench and put up EoM as I'd forgotten to cast it in the first turn. The Vessel moved up on the hill and boosted a shot on the Manticore directly across from it, rolling 6 on the Admonisher, catching another Manticore and battle Mage, doing a point to the Jack and killing the Mage. More importantly though, the Admonisher caught Kaelyssa and so I boosted and did a bunch of damage (this was in part because Ben had had a bit of a maths fail and thought he was ARM 10 with power field for some reason)
On Ben's turn he upkept the phantom hunter he'd put on Kaelyssa turn one and used this to shoot Gorman with her rifle, needing all three shots to hit, using the rest of the focus to heal and then feated. Two of the Manticores moved up and wrecked my objective, while the other four advanced and put covering fire templates all over my half of the board.
I was hoping to get another Admonisher this turn and so I moved up base to base with the two Manticores with my Vessel and used its push miracle, but it didn't push far enough to get the Mantacore over the flag and secure the shot cleanly. I then ran my Reckoner right towards his caster and had my Vassal ancilliary attack at her, but I wasn't able to spike the dice. My battle group continued to advance up the board slowly, while the TFG and Orrik moved around on the flank, avoiding the covering fire templates, going into Iron Zeal and Shield Wall.
Ben started his turn focusing on the Reckoner. The Artificer charged in and missed its charge attack, but hit the second, using the beat back to nudge him towards the nearer Manticore and free up the Manticore at the flag. The two Manticores on my left both charged the Vessel and wrecked it, and meanwhile another Manticore killed off the Reckoner after being fed a ton of focus by the Arcanists. The Mages tried to pull a couple of the TFG but failed to hit their high DEF. The other three Manticores then put Covering fire templates all over me. Kaelyssa then moved up to the flag, taking a couple of pot shots at the Vassal and dominated for 2 control points.
I knew this game was going really poorly for me. I'd thrown away a heavy and lost the Vessel and accomplished very little apart from putting some damage on Kaelyssa, but that gave me an opening I could take and so I jumped on it, hoping I could net a Hail Mary win. I allocated one to Blessings and upkept the Eye of Menoth, dropping Defender's Ward. I then had the Templar plod 4" forward to get out of Blessing's way and then had the Jack run clear across the board. I then had the Heirophant use Harmonious Exhaultation and then activated Severius. He took one of a wrack and then cast Ashes to Ashes through Blessings onto the Artificer. It hit and I rolled the bounces, getting enough to catch Kaelyssa. The Artificer survived and the Jacks took minimal damage. I boosted the damage on Kaelyssa and the dice came up 5, 5, 6 killing her and netting me an assassination win (we also worked out after the game, once he realised his earlier maths error, that this dice roll would have been high enough to kill her even factoring in the additional boxes he would have had from this.)
Because the majority of Ben's list was Battlegroup I also netted a large number of Army points as well, despite having only killed three or four models all game. Still, I was out of the first round with a win.
Round Two
Moving into the second round I was put up against another of the top players in the meta, Andy, who was playing with his Circle. This round was Incursion. I decided to drop Sevvy again and Andy dropped Bradigus. His list was tier 4, and included two Wold Guardians, 6 Wold Watchers, two units of Sentry Stones and three units of Shifting Stones. I lost the die roll again, but again my opponent chose table edge instead of first turn. I took pictures for each round on this game too, but I'm sure Andy wouldn't mind me saying that this game was a long, drawn-out slugging match that wasn't especially exciting. So instead of giving you a lengthy blow-by-blow I'll just do a quick run-down. We both had very high ARM lists and both had a lot of trouble cracking the opponent's armour. We both advanced up and met in the middle around the flags and then had a long slapping match with no one getting much of a foothold. My Vessel couldn't shift the Wold Watcher contesting the flag on my left, but he couldn't crack the Vessel's high ARM. My TFG with Defenders ward sat quite happily on the flag on my right, and despite doing full unit CMAs, rolled really poorly against the Wold Watcher engaging them, who was also failing to kill them back. In the centre my two heavies locked up several other Watchers for the majority of the game. On one of my turns I managed to get a few points onto Bradigus when he was low on Fury, leaving him on 7 boxes. Brad used his feat turn and heavies to clear out my heavies, despite Brad himself failing to kill the damaged Reckoner. This let him claim the centre flag, forcing me into an uncomfortable assassination that required a bushwhacked shield push on a heavy and a move into some shifting stones. I just managed to make range on Brad, but he was camping 3 and I needed all of my immolations to hit, but the first missed, costing me the run. Dice down sounded with Brad left on one box and him up two control points, leaving me on one to one. If I wanted to place I now had to win my next 2 games...
Round Three
For round three I was paired up with one of the local Cygnar players who was playing Hayley2 and Lord General Stryker. I had a sinking feeling that I'd be seeing Hayley2. And I was right. I decided this was a good matchup to play Harbinger into, though, especially since the scenario was Destruction and I knew I could control the zone pretty well. His list consisted of Hayley, Squire, a Centurion and Thorn; as well as a Journeyman Warcaster, Anastasia Di Bray, eEiryss, Gorman Di Wulfe, eAlexia, Nyss Hunters, Gun mages with UA and Aiyanna and Holt.
I won the roll to go first and deployed centrally with my Zealots on one flank and the Bastions on the other. There was a forest directly in front of my deployment where the Errants nestled in. The Cygnar deployed with the Gun Mages and eAlexia on one flank and the Nyss Hunters and Aiyanna and Holt on the other side with the rest of the army central. As I had the first turn I did the typical Crusaders Call, feat, charge to get the majority of his army into my control area, and then ran everything else up towards the zone.
Slightly hamstrung by my feat he moved Gornan up along with the Centurion and then ended his turn. I then took the 'free' turn to lock out the zone, moving my Zealots (who mini feated) and the Errants to form a wall of bodies around my opponent's side of the zone, with the slower second wave of the Imperishable Wall Paladins and Bastions continued plodding up the field, giving me a strong position on scenario.
On the first proper Cygnar turn Hayley had Thorn advance up and then arced a time bomb into the zealots, killing a bunch of them and opening up a window for a gun mage to shoot Anastasia. He then feated, catching the majority of my force, but missing my support and the Bastions. The gun mages took shots at the Errants but I suffered a bunch of Martyrdom damage to keep them in the game. Aiyanna enchanted the Nyss bows so they could do a CRA into Dartan, but I Martyr'd that too.
I then had my 'turn' with Hayley dictating my order of activation. The net result was that the Reckoner sacrificed movement to shoot at the objective (twice with Ancillary) Harby neglected action to move up into the zone, and the zealots and Errants reorganised themselves to lock the zone back out again. I stupidly positioned my Heirophant and Rhupert in a way I couldn't advance and spell ward Harbinger, so I ran it up, aiming to get in B2B with Harby for next round. I then had the Bastions, from outside the feat charge the Objective, destroying it with one model. This secured me 3 control points.
Cygnar started their turn by having Thorn run up and arc a telekinesis into Harby to shift her up and into the zone. He then moved eEiryss up and took the shot at Harbinger. I said I wanted to Shield Guard the shot however there had been some confusion in my turn. Because of the long spear on the Devout I hadn't been able to get the models B2B and obviously hadn't made it clear enough when positioning that he had acted on the assumption that the gap was there. We called over a judge since it was an important call. The judge ruled in favour of my opponent because his actions had been made based on the assumption that my spacing was accurate and I should have been more clear. When we restarted the clock he looked back down at the table and realised that he had forgotten to allocate to the Centurion, which had been his primary assassination vector and so decided that he wouldn't be able to win and forfeited the game, shaking my hand. The judge was still stood by the table and pointed out that he still had a number of very reasonable vectors to kill Harby. We played out a single large CRA into her and he killed her instantly thanks to the damage on her because of the Martyrdom in previous turns. However despite him having the game in the bag I had the win with maximum points for winning by forfeiture. This set me on 2 to 1 and in the running to place depending on my last game and the final round...
Round Four
My final round I was paired against Luke, one of my semi-regular opponents who's been playing mainly with Cryx recently. This round was Close Quarters. One of his lists was had a Kraken and I didn't want to put my Harby list against that and so decided to round out the tournament with Severius again. Luke dropped the non-Kraken list, with eGaspy that consisted of a Nightwretch, Deathjack, Tartarus, a warwitch, Gorman DiWulfe, the Withershadow Combine, a max unit of Bane Knights, a max unit of Bane Thralls with UA, and a minimum unit of Bile Thralls with a Skarlock. I lost the die roll again and Luke opted for the first turn, leaving me to choose the clearer table edge. I deployed my Vessel on my extreme right flank, nearer my own flag. Luke deployed with one of the big bane units on each flank and everything else central. I deployed my TFG and Orrik on the left flank and my Battlegroup in the centre of the board.
Luke took his first turn, marching his force forwards and then had Gaspy pop out some clouds around the nearby forest to block out LOS to the majority of his army.
I then moved up my forces, running the TFG with Iron Zeal, and having the Vessel advance around the Obstruction in front of it to come around to my flag.
Luke continued to run up the board, taking a huge amount of real estate, putting the pressure on. Following this he had Gaspy move up and excarnate one of the TFG to get a bile thrall up in the front of the flameguard. It then moved up and purged all over them, killing the majority of the unit, netting a bunch of souls for Gaspy.
On my turn I realised that his board position was dangerous for me and I was going to have a hard time dealing with all of the mass of models. I decided that my best shot was an assassination. So I started the wheels in motion. The Vessel moved up and used its eruption of faith miracle to push some bane Knights out of its way and then took a shot at one of the Knights near the forest, admonishing to clear it out. I then moved eEiryss up and tried to take the shot on Gaspy but I was just a bit short. The Reckoner moved across to take a shot but couldn't get far enough to get a line on him. Orrik however did move up and tag Gaspy with a shot for a couple of points (he wasn't camping anything but did have a bunch of souls for next turn) I then ran Blessings of Vengence up into the forest to get LOS on him and started to cast Immolations. My first spell missed despite boosting, meaning I lost the bonus from Blessings' bond. I threw out a few more zaps but it wasn't enough and left him on a handful of boxes. I ended the turn by having Gorman black oil Deathjack to reduce his potential threat. Then I ran my choir and remaining TFG to block lanes to Severius. I realised that I'd forgotten to feat too...
Vengence triggered to allow Luke to move his bane Knights up into Blessings and towards the Vessel doing a couple of points of damage to the Jack. The Bane Knights charged into the Reckoner, wrecking the heavy. Gaspy moved up and excarnated another bile thrall before teleporting back to the flag. The bile purged and killed the models in front of Sevvy. Deathjack moved into melee with Blessings but couldn't attack thanks to black oil. Luke's Gorman threw black oil onto the arc node but it failed to hit. The deviation was small enough to catch it but also caught Deathjack, re-oiling him. The clock ran out before he could do more than a single attack on the Vessel with the Knights, however.
I knew I should have lost a lot more this turn and that this was a lucky second chance to get the assassination, but it wouldn't be easy. I started by having the Vessel push away the Knights engaging him. I then took a shot at the knight engaging the Blessings in the forest but even with the boost it missed and hit Blessings instead. I then advanced my Templar up to reach one of the Knights in the forest, killing it and then using beat back to move up to get the other knight with its shield. Thanks to his sinister soul collection Gaspy was on a pretty decent stack this turn, but Luke hadn't moved any of his models to engage Eiryss and so she was free to move up and across to get range and LOS so hit him with a bolt to rip off the focus. I then activated Blessings of Vengence and had it move around, taking two free strikes, one from Deathjack and one from the remaining Knight in the forest. The Deathjack missed its attack thanks to Black Oil. The knight connected but only did a few points of damage. This gave me the chance I needed and so I kept arcing double boosted Immolations into Gaspy until he was dead.
This was another game like my first. An opponent forcing me into a very bad position and me snatching victory from the jaws of defeat through assassination. Regardless, it put me on 3 to 1, and therefore in the running to place in the tournament overall. I knew I was likely vying for 3rd place and was keen to see what the final standings were. To be honest, though, I'd accomplished two of my goals, I'd gone 3 to 1, even if I might not have deserved the second win and I hadn't embarrassed myself. My play hadn't been great overall, but I'd taken the opportunities that had presented themselves to me and definitely got a bit lucky too. I was hopeful. We gathered for the final results. Nick from Solid Ground Studios (http://solidgroundstudios.co.uk) was in 3rd Place, I had managed to get second place and the tournament was won by Andy who'd beaten me in round two. I was over the moon with the result! I had a really good day, though I was really starting to feel the pressure towards the end. My opponents were all great players who made every game a real challenge and it was really fun to play each of them!
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-M
