Saeryn +5
-Angelius -9
-Angelius -9
-Scythean -9
-Scythean -9
-Raek -4
-Shredder -2
Foresaken -2
Foresaken -2
Deathstalker -2
Deathstalker -2
Spell Martyr -1
Spell Martyr -1
Maximum Spawning Vessel -3
Objective - Fuel Cashe
My opponent this week was a new Convergence of Cyriss player! CoC is a faction I don't have much experience against and is actually a pretty shitty match up for Saeryn. I was concerned about taking down an Axiom and his army wasn't providing any corpse tokens for the pot either. Worst of all because of the many guns he'd be able to work around my feat pretty well. I was considering that eLylyth might have been the better drop vs Cyriss robots but I needed the practice with Saeryn and so decided to just go for it with her and see what happened. The list he'd decided to run was Forge Master Syntherion and a whole bunch of Jacks in tier. The battlegroup was Prime Axiom (of course), a Cipher, a Corollary, Monitor, Diffuser, Modulator and a Galvaniser. The rest of the list was a set each of Elimination and Reflex servitors a pair of Dispersion Optifex and an Optifex Directive unit. So the list had 3 heavy Vectors, a Colossal and 3 light Vectors for a lot of meat (or metal) on the board!
The scenario we rolled this game was two fronts and I won the roll for the start of the game, choosing to go first. The Prime Axiom set up, predeployed, in the centre of the table. I then deployed with Saeryn and the Scytheans Central, with the Angels off to one flank along with the Spawning Vessel. The Convergence then set up with all the Vectors across the front line. The Deathstalkers then AD'd to my right, followed by the Optifex solos and Servitors who went dotted to the Convergence flanks.
I took the first turn, running up everything, putting Banishing Ward on Saeryn and Respawn on one of the Scytheans. Tenacity then went on one Angel and Saeryn.
On Convergence turn one Syntherion put out all of his fancy robot upkeep spells, putting Hotshot on the Axiom, Reconstruct on the Galvaniser and Synergy on himself. Everything then ran up the board, inducting focus across the board to get the job done.
On my turn the Deathstalkers managed to kill a single Servitor between them thanks to the terrible dice that plagued both sides of this whole game. The Scytheans moved up, the Respawned one taking the lead with the other just behind it to avoid towing. The Angels moved to behind the forest on my flank, trying to remove line of sight to them from the guns. Saeryn then moved up and arced a Hellfire through a Spell Martyr that had run up at the Directive unit, hoping to hurt them and hopefully cause a panic for them. Again the poor dice struck and she missed. She then feated to offer some protection for my beasts. The Shredder then hopped up to Saeryn and gave her tenacity.
On the Convergence turn almost all of the jacks, especially the Axiom, shot all their guns into the lead Scythean, managing to kill it once despite also suffering from poor dice (missing a flared Scythean with an aiming Axiom), triggering Respawn, but leaving the reborn Scythean with two circles left unable to finish it off. Thanks to some more shoddy dice only one of the Deathstalkers was killed by the shooty jacks. Syntherion advanced behind the Axiom, hoping for a bit of protection in the rear of the army, and arced a Magnetic Hold onto the lead Angel.
I pointed out that, as this was a kill box scenario, moving behind the Axiom had given up two control points to me. I debated between committing to the Axiom and going for the control points. In the end I decided to try for both. I started by healing the one damaged aspect on the Scythean, having it charge and do serious damage to the Axiom. The other Scythean also joined in adding on a bunch more damage. By the time the smoke cleared the Axiom was left with 5 boxes. The Raek then charged the Objective, but failed to destroy it, leaving it on 5 boxes also. Saeryn then activated and threw a hellfire at the objective to finish it off, but failed to break its armour even with the boost. Damn dice. She then moved across and put Banishing Ward on the Angel, getting rid of the Magnetic Hold on it, freeing it up to charge the Axiom, but it was just short, meaning it couldn't manage it. The other Angel then moved up to repulse the Galvanizer and Servitor out of the zone, but could only position to get the Servitor. Meaning instead of ending the turn on 4 control points I managed to not score any extra. Luckily the Angel redeemed itself by shooting the Axiom and rolling high enough to scrap it.
On the Convergence turn Syntherion moved into the wreck marker of the dead Axiom, getting cover and moving out of Kill Box before feating. The Vectors, with weapon platform and induction juggling managed to stretch the focus out to finish off the horribly injured Scythean, total his brother and take out the Angel in the Zone, massively reducing my board presence and leaving me exposed across the board. A bunch of junk models then advanced up and blocked landing zones for the Angel to Syntherion.
On my turn I had to go for the long shot assassination on the stupidly survivable Convergence caster. The Raek activated and leapt into melee with the CoC caster, taking a few swipes but failing to harm him. Saeryn then moved up and cast Blight Bringer on the Raek, clearing the zone for Angel to fly in. The Angel was engaged at that point by a light Vector and I decided to take the free strike. It hit and did exactly enough damage to exactly the right column to cripple the Mind of the heavy, forcing me to boost to have any chance of hitting. I did and the armour pierce hit, but rolled very low on the boosted damage, only wounding him. I then couldn't finish him off with the remaining attack.
Saeryn was exposed and low on both fury and beasts and, though it took a couple of turns he managed to finish her off with a pair of heavy Vectors in a Synergy chain, losing me the game to an assassination.
My opponent played a pretty tight game thoughout despite making some unfortunate mistakes such as forgetting to create Servitors with the Axiom on any of its turns or messing up on the induction order of activation. Looking back on the game, though, there were definitely a couple of things I could have done better.
First, and probably most importantly, I didn't need to charge with the Angel who came up short. I demonstrated with the other Angel that taking shots with both of them boosted were all I needed to take out the Axiom, and I could have moved them into better positions to repulse the zone and score my third point. Even without destroying the objective that turn it would have been relatively easy to clear my zone a second time with the repulses since there weren't enough convergence models to jam that zone effectively. The objective was damaged enough that it could've been destroyed in that next turn fairly trivially. Once the Scytheans had damaged the Axiom enough I should have changed my tack back to securing the upper hand with scenario from there. That was stupid and forced me into a position where I was forced into a long shot assassination instead of playing to Saeryn's strengths and pushing for scenario. I know that's what this list is designed for and demonstrates why I need practice with this caster and list to make sure that I play it better in future.
Secondly when it came to the assassination I realised much later that I could've significantly improved my chances if I'd used a headbutt with the Raek to knock Syntherion down. Then the Angel would hit automatically and the damaged mind wouldn't matter. My charging Angel would hit his armour pierce charge, could buy and boost a second and then buy an unboosted third all of which would auto hit. The spells I could've cast would've been much more likely to hit too! I need to start remembering the special attacks and power attacks and not just sticking to charging and regular attacks. I have a suite of sweet options and those tools are there for just those sorts of situations!
Even though I lost this game and my opponent definitely outplayed me even with a few mistakes, I feel I played a pretty decent, if clearly flawed game, I just need to tighten it up a bit! Regardless it was valuable as a learning experience to further drive my development! Look out for more from me and Saeryn!
As always thanks for reading, and don't forget to check out the Facebook page and 'like' for regular post updates, photos and more at www.facebook.com/Mitsuharuonminis
-M
