Sunday 26 April 2015

Tourney Tales - April Assault

Hey everyone, welcome to Tourney Tales! Due to other commitments it's been a while since I last had chance to go to one of my LGS' local tournaments but I have managed to get in for this one. My hopes going into the tournament were, in order: to place in the top 3, to go 3 and 1 and not to make a fool out of myself. Obviously I'd love to win the whole thing but given the calibre of several of the other players I'm not sure that's likely. The lists that I was planning to use were the Harbinger list I've been practicing with, paired up with the pSeverius list I had a couple of games with recently:

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!


Thanks for reading! Don't forget for regular updates and more: like Mitsuharu on Minis on Facebook!

-M

Monday 13 April 2015

Mitsuharu on Bat Reps - Grand Scrutator Severius vs. Vladimir Tzepesci, the Dark Prince & Hoarluk Doomshaper, Shaman of the Gnarls

Hi guys, welcome back to the latest battle report. This week I actually managed to get two games in with my new pSeverius list that I wrote about in my CitTM article last week. For those who didn't read it or need a reminder the list comprised of:

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 looking forward to giving it a nice test on the table. The first game I managed to play was against Mark and his Khador who I've played several times before. He was also trying out a new list, this time using pVlad. His list included Behemoth, a Spriggan, an Iron Fang Kovnik, a Koldun Lord, Kovnik Joe, a max unit of Assault Kommandos with a Flamethrower attachment, the Great Bears, a max unit of Winter Guard, and Aiyanna and Holt with Koldun Kapitan Valachev. We rolled off for scenario and got Fire Support from the 2015 scenario packet. I won the roll to go first and pre-deployed my Vessel left of centre and the battlegroup to the centre, with the TFG off to my right flank. Mark deployed his jacks and Vlad around the centre, while his units took up each flank. 


On my first turn I put a focus on each of my jacks and then had Sevvy place Eye of Menoth on himself and Defender's ward on the TFG, who also got pathfinder from Orrik. After which everything ran up to varying degrees, since I was concerned about his threat ranges. Eiryss ran into the forest and Gorman advanced to throw out smoke. Sevvy and his Heirophant moved up behind the wall, annoyingly still inside the kill box. 


On the other side of the board things went quite similarly. Behemoth received one from Vlad and then everything ran up, with the Koldun Power Boosting the Spriggan allowing it to run, ending behind the objective. 


On my turn it was time to start killing things. The Templar moved up and away, freeing the Vessel to move up and zap the Winter Guard, killing two. The Blessings of Vengence ran over towards the winter guard too, allowing Sevvy to move up, out of the kill box and then arc an Ashes to Ashes onto the Winter Guard, killing another handful, though one passed his tough check. The TFG got pathfinder from Orrik, and then advanced up with shield wall and iron zeal to make them DEF 15 and ARM 23 with Set Defence. The Reckoner advanced up to take a shot at the Spriggan, damaging the paintwork but little else. Eiryss moved over to shoot the Spriggan but rolled a 2 after I stupidly said 'anything but double ones'. Gorman moved up and threw out smoke again. 


Mark was prepared to retaliate. He advanced Vlad up to just behind the Behemoth and cast Signs and Portents to improve his rolls. The Assault Kommandos advanced through the difficult terrain and shot at the TFG but failed to hit most of them, with only one hit, taking no damage but getting tagged with a flare. Following that the Great Bears charged in with Backswing but only managed to kill one Flameguard. The Spriggan moved up and used its targeting to hit Eiryss, robbing her of Stealth and then killed her with his second shot. The Kovnik then tried to charge the Objective but was just too short. Aiyanna and Holt moved up, the elf was too far to nail Kiss on the Vessel and Holt pinged a couple of shots of it. The Winter guard got an additional attack die from Joe and then moved up with most of them taking shots at Sevvy, but the first one missed despite having 4 dice, drop the lowest, the rest of them only doing a couple of points of damage between them. 


On my turn I realised that Vlad had moved up to get out of Kill Box and was camping nothing. I allocated one each to the Reckoner and BoV, and upkept EoM but let DW drop. The Vessel moved up and fired its zap at the Winter Guard and managed to kill 3 of them. The Reckoner then advanced up and boosted a shot into Vlad to get the flare on him. This shot was dice damage but I only rolled a 3. I'd been hoping for more and now I wasn't too sure on my ability to finish him this turn. But then I remembered my Vassal, who had to move around my poorly placed choir and used Ancilliary attack to get another shot, thanks to Flare I was able to hit again and rolled a much bigger load of damage. BoV then ran across the board to get Vlad into his LoS, allowing Sevvy to arc a boosted Immolation into him, finishing him off, netting me an early assassination win. 


This was a short game and as we discussed after the game Vlad's positioning could have been better to block me out a bit more. I rolled quite low on my Ashes to Ashes and Admonisher bounces but it was still awesome blowing up his winter guard. The TFG with Defender's Ward demonstrated how indestructible they can be when everything lines up for them. 

Since the game had ended quite early in the night our (brand new) PG Dave asked me if I wanted to have a game against his Trolls. I agreed, congratulating him on the future win. He was playing a pDoomy list which was (shockingly) a tier 4 Runes of War list made up of pDoomshaper, Mulg, an Earthborn, a Mauler and an Axer, a max unit of Krielstones with UA and 4 units of Runeshapers with Jannisa. Dave won the roll to go first on Incursion and took the first turn. He deployed two units of Runeshapers on each flank, with the stones and battlegroup central. I deployed with most of my army off to my left flank, with the Vessel and the Reckoner on the right flank, Sevvy and support left of central and the TFG on the far left with Orrik. 


Dave went first and ran his Runeshapers up the board followed up by the battlegroup and the stones, with Doomshaper and the Trolls throwing out some defensive animi, and Doomshaper putting Banishing Ward onto one of the Runeshapers. Jannisa threw out a wall in front of the battlegroup. 


On my turn I moved up a bit (Spoiler Alert: not nearly far enough!) the Vessel moved up, trying to get in range of the Runeshapers but was too far away. The TFG turtled up into Shield Wall and shuffled up the board. Orrik ran up the board. The jacks ran up to get some more board. Just like last game Sevvy put out DW on the TFG and EoM on himself again. Gorman advanced up and popped smoke. Eiryss, not wanting to waste her a second time, ran across and back. 


Dave then ran his Runeshapers up, with one unit camping on the flag and the other screening them, setting him up to score next turn since I hadn't moved up far enough to properly contest the flags. The battlegroup and Doomshaper advanced further up, behind a wall Jannisa threw out, putting out the defensive animi again. Finally Doomshaper feated. 


On my turn I needed to clear the Runeshapers off the flags. I upkept both my spells and put one on each of my heavies. The Vessel stood still to aim and then shot the nearest Runeshaper, arcing to 3 others, forcing a passed tough on the initially hit model, but killing the other three that got hit. BoV moved up, across the wall to line up for an Ashes to Ashes. Sevvy arced into the Troll on the flag, killing two, and he then moved towards the Vessel to keep the Reckoner in EoM. Eiryss aimed and shot Banishing Ward off the Runeshapers. The Reckoner then advanced to the side and shot the Runeshaper on the flag, who passed a tough check, but I used an ancilliary to clear him off finally. The Templar advanced into the maximum reach range on one of the Runeshapers and killed it, before using Beat Back to back away. The TFG moved up, with three clumping into the nearest Runeshaper, with the rest moving up and using Iron Zeal. The three on the Runeshaper did a bunch of damage but didn't finish it off this turn, but did set it on fire. Gorman threw black oil onto another of the Runeshapers. 


On the following turn the Runeshaper on fire died. The remaining regular Runeshaper on my left flank advanced up to throw a rock at the TFG, but with all their buffs it missed and the blast wasn't enough to hurt them. Doomshaper moved up and put Transmutation on himself and then advanced to get Sevvy into his Control area and then purified, clearing off his own buff. This left Doomy exposed, but he then moved up his battlegroup to hide him, with the Earthborn getting onto the flag, putting out his Defensive buffs again, and having Jannisa drop a wall. The Runeshapers on my right flank moved back up into the flag, then chucked rocks to kill my choir near the Reckoner. The blinded Runeshaper stumbled away from Gorman, presumably trying to get the black oil off himself only to walk into the Mauler who hefted him back at Gorman, killing them both. Dave ended the turn, scoring two points. 


On my turn, and with the scenario pressure high, I allocated one to the Reckoner and a full three to the Templar. Sevvy, with a little help from the Heirophant got my upkeeps back out on himself and the TFG, and moved slightly off to the side. The Vessel stood still to aim and shot the Runeshaper in the forest, with the Admonisher allowing it to kill both models on that flag. The Reckoner then ran over to control the flag on my right. The TFG advanced up to the left flag, planning to attack in groups of three, but the first group killed the Runeshaper. The Mauler was also contesting the flag and so I charged in with the Templar, getting lucky with the dice and one-rounded it, using the Beat Back to move slightly further away. I ended the turn and gained 2 points, while Dave secured his third. 

 
Dave went into some serious consideration at the start of his turn, measuring Doomshaper's control area multiple times to check if the Earthborn would be in charge range of Sevvy. He decided he wasn't but had another plan to get at him. Mulg activated first, charging the Templar to get out of the Earthborn's way, trashing my heavy, but not moving in to contest the flag, despite being able to goad. The Earthborn then activated and charged a choir member thanks to rush, goading from the kill into Sevvy and, thanks to fortune, smushed him into the dirt securing Dave the win. 


I thought this game went better than I expected it to and I ended with 3 control points to 4 (the Reckoner was on the right flag so would be inert when Sevvy died) which was ok, but as Dave pointed out he would have moved his stone up to contest my left flag and I would have had a hard time clearing his trolls out thanks to self-sacrifice on the stone, but I did have a high volume of attacks from the TFG and so I might have managed to close it out, but we'll never know. I held back way too much in this game and should've been contesting the flags much earlier. I let Dave lock me out of Scenario and then failed to take opportunity to come back in and contest when I did have the chance. 

Both of these games were great fun and I feel like they helped put the list through its paces. I'm excited to get it on the table at the tournament, but I should have another practice game battle report next week first. 

Don't forget to like Mitsuharu on Minis on Facebook for updates and more!

-M

Wednesday 8 April 2015

Cogs in the TheoryMachine - April Alt List

Hi guys, welcome back to CitTM! This week I didn't manage to get a game in thanks to the Easter Weekend and my LGS being closed. Instead I've been theory crafting a new list. With the April tournament up in a couple of weeks I've been thinking about my list options. Obviously I want to play Harbinger and I've been practicing the list for a while now. I was initially planning to use this alongside my eFeora list I used in the last tournament. Instead though I wanted to use a new list that would shore up some of the weaknesses of the Harbinger list. The issue that I've found in a couple of my recent games with Harbinger is dealing with heavy armour. My Harbinger list attritions really well vs infantry between the feat, cataclysm and the weaponmaster jam she can eat through a dudespam pretty easily. When facing a colossal or multiple heavies, though, she stumbles cracking that armour. Instead I wrote up an alternative list skewed towards hitting hard but that can also deal with troops if needed. 

What I ended up with is:

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 

The idea for this list is pretty straight-forward smash-mouth aggression. The Templar, Reckoner and VoJ can smash high ARM especially with Eye of Menoth and Gorman can make that worse with black oil and rust bombs as appropriate. As well as that, though, Ashes to Ashes and Admonisher can still blow through infantry, which BoV will help with.

The TFG with Defender's Ward become a horrible tar pit to deal with potentially being DEF 17 ARM 23 and no knockdown with minifeat. Orrik is in the list to help them get to the fight through any difficult terrain and then to hunt solos afterwards. Eyriss is in the list to take out any pesky upkeep spells that might otherwise be a pain in the ass for the list. 

The support package is pretty full on, with a max choir for my three jacks, as well as a Vassal and a Mechanic to support the jacks fully. The main job for the mechanic, though, will be to repair the self-inflicted damage on the Vessel. To help with the focus management (8 doesn't stretch too far with two hungry jacks and an awesome spell list) I've got Wracks and a Heirophant to take some of the heat off. 

Since the list wants to play an aggressive in-your-face style game I'm currently thinking Bunker might be the best objective for the list since Impervious Flesh makes it hard to kill at range, forcing the opponent to close in with me. But Fuel Cache is in the running too as the jacks having free charges could make all the difference in a game!

I'll be sure to let you know how my first game with it goes next week! Like the facebook page for updates as I go!

-M