Tourney Tales - 2015 JML mini tournament

Welcome back everyone. This week my local Press Ganger, Dave, decided to run a mini-tournament to cap off the Journeyman League that had been running recently (check the archive for more of my experiences in that). The format was 2 35 point lists, one with one of your journeyman casters and one with your starter battlegroup, not necessarily in the same list. We also had some pretty fancy seasonal boards to play on too. The tournament was broken down into two 'pods' of 4 players. Basically the winners of the two games from the pod would face each other and so would the losers, deciding the rankings that way. My JML score got me into the top pod of players! So the two lists I decided to run were:

List One

eVayl +6

Machinations of Shadow - Tier 4

-Seraph -7

-Scythean -8

-Angelius -8

-Angelius -8

Shepherd -1

Max Spawning Vessel -3

Max Legionnaires -6

Objective - Arcane Wonder

List Two

Saeryn +5

-Scythean -9

-Scythean -9

-Angelius -9

Max Spawning Vessel -3

Foresaken -2

Foresaken -2

Spell Martyr -1

Spell Martyr -1

Deathstalker -2

Deathstalker -2

Objective - Fuel Cashe

Game One

My first game was against Alan, one of the other Legion players in the JML. His two lists were a pThagrosh and an eAbby list. I decided to go ahead with the Saeryn list since there was a lot of Melee in his two lists. He'd seen my Saeryn list and realised his Melee heavy Abby list would be pretty badly hamstrung by the feat and so decided to throw down pThagrosh. The list included a Scythean, Seraph, Shredder and a Raek along with two shepherds, two Deathstalkers and a max unit of Warspears with UA. This list had plenty of shooting to overcome my feat but not enough to be too overwhelming. The first round scenario was Outflank. I got the first turn and started by running everything up the board, swapping my Scytheans around to deny prey from the ogrun. Saeryn put out Banishing ward on herself and Respawn on a Scythean.

Alan then followed suit by having his army run up, mainly heading towards the zone on my right to fill that up. Thagrosh threw out Draconic on the ogrun to boost up their hitting power. Thagrosh hid behind an obstruction for some added cover. 

On my turn I had my Scytheans advance into each zone and then had my Angelius charge the Seraph but it was half an inch out. Then I had Saeryn advance up and feat, catching all of my beasts to give them a little safety and then burned out a martyr to put Breath Stealer onto the opposing Scythean. 

With my Angelius exposed Alan had almost all of his army shoot to try and take it down. Most of the force aimed and took pot shots, doing a ton of damage but, even with the entire force, he didn't quite manage to clear it, leaving it on 3 boxes with nothing left that could shoot, much to Alan's frustration. The Raek on the other flank shuffled to actually get toe in on the zone to contest. 

On my turn I had the Scythean on my left charge the Raek and slaughter it, gaining control of the zone. Saeryn healed up the aspects on the Angel who then charged and polished off the two Ogrun in the zone with an armour pierce and an extra attack, securing that control too. The Deathstalkers took some shots on the Warspears but had trouble with their high ARM. The Foresaken each gobbled up a helping of Fury. Then I ended the turn up to two control points. 

Alan took the exposed Scythean as an invitation and charged it with his own. After some pretty decent rolls he managed to destroy it but it respawned to get out of the way. The Warspears charged to get into the zone more and managed to roll high on an assault into one of the Deathstalkers, splattering it. The Seraph rolled low again on its strafe and didn't get much in. Thagrosh feated back the Raek who advanced into the pot and then put tenacity onto the Scythean in the zone. 

On my turn I had my freshly respawned Scythean advance into Alans but apparently his was better trained than mine and rolled super low on damage and couldn't really get the job done. The other Scythean made up for it, though and killed a couple of Warspears, the Foresaken using its fury to tear apart another one. The last one (the UA) was frustratingly hard to clear and the spawned animused charging harrier didn't polish it off and neither did the blightbringer that clipped it. My damage rolls really letting me down his turn. In a last ditch Saeryn moved up stupidly and used some of her last fury to flick a knife at him, cranking the to hit in Melee and finally killed him, leaving me with 4 control points and no transfer targets. 

Alan started his turn by having his Deathstalkers advance up and take shots. They both hit her high DEF and put a few points on her. The Seraph reared up, getting ready to polish her off just as dice down was called. I was literally seconds away from a loss but I was saved by the bell and won the game with 5 control points!

Game One: First Tiebreaker Win

Game Two

With my win in game one I was paired with the winner of the other round one game which was, of course, Nick whose beautiful terrain we were battling over, who'd managed to win his game against Ben's Skorne two tables down. As it was D&C1 we were both locked into our other lists. This left me with Machinations of Shadow. Nick had played his Goreshade list on the other table and so that left me to deal with his evil, evil pDenny list. It included a Skarlock, a Slayer and a Deathripper in the battlegroup along with a Machine Wraith, a max unit of Nyss Hunters, the Devils Shadow, Rockbottom, Dougal and Wrong Eye and Snapjaw. I played against this list several times in the league and it destroyed me very well whenever I played into it so this was the list I'd been dreading. 

The scenario for round two was Destruction and, despite my +1 I lost the roll to go first. Nick chose sides, picking the more defensive terrain, giving me first turn. I started the game by running everyone up the board to claim some real estate, putting Admonition and Refuge on the two angels respectively as well as Occultation on the Legionnaires. The Seraph and Scythean advanced up to near the zone in the nearby forest. The Legionnaires and Spawning Vessel plodded up the centre of the board. 

Nick followed suit by having his Nyss run out, spreading themselves across the front line followed up by everything else. Denny herself advanced up with the Devil's Shadow to hide behind the nearby wall. Wrong Eye and his pet advanced up to the nearby hill and Submerged themselves to avoid any shooting malarkey. 

On my turn the Seraph advanced up and killed the front two Devil's Shadow with its gun and the Scythean shuffled further into the forest. The Legionnaires ran to gum up the zone a little followed by the pot. The Angels just shuffled around on my flank pulling in a little while Vayl snuck up behind the obstruction to get cover. 

On Nick's turn he had Denny move out of her wall and into the open so he could feat, managing to catch the majority of my models (only Vayl and the Vessel avoided it) he then proceeded to have his shooting take out a couple of my legionnaires (bringing back the two dead Devils Shadow) and spot remove one of my Angels, putting some serious hurt on the other one what he was at it. The Machine wraith ran into the zone to be incorporeal and contest like a pain. 

Under Denny's feat my army was pretty bad but I saw an opportunity on Denny since she was actually exposed. I had my Legionnaires and pot shuffle around to expose a lane and then spawned a harrier to be Vayl's channeler. Vayl moved up to exactly 10" away and pinged it in the back. Then she feated and threw a free obliteration at Dougal, hoping to clip Denny in the Blast. The AOE is smaller than I thought and so missed her, simply splattering Dougal. I bought another one on a Nyss and hit, killing two Nyss and getting boosted blast damage on Denny. Unfortunately my dice weren't amazing and I only did a little damage. The Seraph advanced up Strafed into her with two shots, actually managing to hit with one despite the reduced RAT, but the damage roll wasn't great and she was left with 12 boxes. My surviving Angel pulled back and the Scythean shuffled deeper into the forest to end my turn. 

My assassination run hadn't been very successful but luckily I hadn't exposed myself too much and I'd used my other feat spells to put Occultation on the Pot, Admonition on Vayl to give her a smidge  more protection and Refuge on the Scythean. So on Nick's turn he took the safe route and moved a bunch of stuff into the zone, including both of his jacks, locking out the scenario until he could wipe out the rest of my army. He also managed to slaughter a bunch of legionnaires along the way too. Denny hopped back behind the wall. 

On my turn I had the remaining legionnaires clear out a path for the Harrier I spawned to move up and be another node for Vayl at the end of the turn. The Scythean charged up and destroyed the objective and killing a devils shadow before refuging back. That scored the first control point of the game. The Angel then flew over to the other flank settling near Vayl. The Consul herself through out her oraculus and got channeler to boost an Oblit into Denny. I boosted the hit and managed to get exactly enough to hit her even behind the wall. My clock ended but I was able to take the damage roll. I couldn't boost since I was sat on nothing now and my clock was over. The dice came out too low to polish her off. 

With Vayl camping nothing Nick started his final plan. Snapjaw charged up and killed a legionnaire to free up the arc to allow Denny to double boost a Scourge into her. The damage roll came up big and left me on 3 boxes and knocked down. The Nyss were next to move up and put Vayl down with a big CMA. Again, though, Dave called dice down seconds before my loss and, since I'd taken out the Objective last turn I was up by one control point and won the game. 

Game Two: First Tiebreaker Win

Post-Games 

These were two really close games that I managed to get a win despite being on the very precipice of stupid losses. I felt like I played fairly solid games up until the ends of both games but luckily I managed to luck my way into wins. Regardless this made me the overall winner of the tournament, deserving or not! I was completely wiped out by this point but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I was pretty pleased, not just with the result, especially since I didn't feel I particularly deserved the wins, but with how great a time I had. I'd had a long day and was a bit under the weather so I was expecting to not have the best time but I really enjoyed the games and it was enthusing to play. 

I'm planning to take a bit of a palette cleansing break from Warmachine for a while. In fact I just picked up Fishermen for Guildball! I'm actually really excited to play a new game so expect some posts about Guildball coming soon!

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

Mitsuharu on Bat Reps - Learning Legion Thagrosh, Prophet of Everblight vs Kromac, Champion of the Wurm

Hi everyone and welcome to the latest bat rep. This week I decided to change up my list slightly from the one I used last week. I just got (and painted) the BFS as my Facebook followers will have already seen and so I wanted to try them out. To fit them in I dropped one of the Shredders and the Gobbers from the list and swapped out the Foresaken for Shepherds, freeing up the necessary 5 points for them. This left my list as:

Thagrosh, Prophet of Everblight +5

-Succubus -2

-Angelius -9

-Angelius -9

-Carnivean -11

-Naga Nightlurker -5

-Shredder -2

Shepherd -1

Shepherd -1

Max Warspears -8

-Warspear Chieftan -2

Black Frost Shard -5

Objective - Fuel Cashe

This week I managed to get my game in against Andy who's been using Circle and beat me in round two at the last tournament with his Bradigus list in a long grinding game. This time he promised not to drop the Runecarver and instead played a proxy of the new Circle caster, eKromac! His list was pretty beast heavy with Ghetorix, a Gorax, a Rotterhorn Griffon, a Shadowhorn Satyr and a Warpwolf Stalker in the battlegroup, along with a Druid Wilder, a Wayfarer, a unit of Druids with UA, and two units of Shifting Stones, one with UA. We rolled for Scenario and got Incursion from the 2015 packet. I lost the pregame roll but Andy wanted to pick board edge and so I still got first turn. I deployed with my Warspears on one flank along with the BFS and the Carnivean while the Angels took the other. Andy deployed centrally with his Druids out in front. 

I started my turn by running everything up the board taking advantage of defensive terrain, using Thagrosh and the Succubus to put out defensive Animi on the beasts and had Thagrosh cast Fog of War and put Draconic Blessing on the Warspears. 

On Andy's turn the circle pretty much followed suit, advancing up the board behind Druid cloud cover. Kromac used his Howl and gave the Stalker a free animus with his spells. 

I was feeling a bit conservative on my turn and was leery of moving into his threat ranges so only advanced slightly. The Warspears advanced towards the Druids who were their prey and hit every single cloud with great accuracy, unfortunately not quite catching the Druids in their centre, though. The Carnivean advanced up and sprayed a Druid, unable to harm him because of hippy magic, but catching a stone and Ghetorix behind him. I hit the stone and boosted to kill it and then double boosted the hit on Ghetorix to put a handful of damage on him. The BFS advanced to the edge of the hill and got stelthed near the flag. The rest of the army shuffled forwards into better positions for next turn and Thagrosh advanced into the trench and he and the Succubus put out a bunch of animi again. 

On Andy's turn the Druids scattered, getting out of everyone else's way, popping out some more clouds, one heading to contest the flag to my left. Kromac then advanced up and popped his feat. The now freed up Ghetorix charged the Carnivean, warping snacking to RFP the heavy, meaning I couldn't feat it back and he healed some of the damage taken by Ghetorix last turn. Then he used Sprint to advance across and tie up the Warspears. On the other side of the board the Warpwolf Stalker charged an Angelius but thanks to Tenacity he was only able to connect once, not doing enough to finish it off. The rest of the force advanced up the board more, then the Wayfarer advanced up to control the flag to my right scoring the first point for Circle. 

On my turn the Warspears activated and all but one of them declaring charges on Ghetorix, the other going into a Druid, hoping to cause them to break from the Terror. The Druids braved it out and the Warspear that charged them failed his assault and charge against the Druid's high DEF. All three of the charges against Ghetorix that I'd managed to get missed and the other attacks only did a couple of points of damage. The wounded Angel took an Armour Pierce into the Stalker, boosting the attack and damage dice and cranking the roll to put a chunk of damage on it. It bought a second attack hoping for the hard roll, freeing my fury to boost damage, but missed. The second Angel then charged in, getting B2B with the flag and finishing off the Warpwolf with its armour pierce attack and repulsing to push away the Wayfarer. The Naga tried to take out another of the stones this time from the other unit, but didn't quite manage to finish it. The Blackfrost Shard charged the Druid to my left, killing him with a lucky to hit roll on the first attack and controlling that flag. The Shepherd accompanying the dead Carnivean ran across the board to the other flank and the rest of the beasts. Thagrosh and the Succubus then pumped out tenacities on every model in range of them. This put us on one control point each. 

On Andy's turn the Rotterhorn charged up the board, killing one of the BFS and then used its scream to kill the other two, clearing and controlling that flag. Kromac advanced up to the flag and put up Carnage and Howl and took a swing at a Warspear, but missed it with a double 1. Ghetorix then decided to show him how it was done and proceeded to kill the other 5 Warspears singlehandedly. The Shadowhorn charged the Angelius on my far right flank and rolled exactly enough to kill it. The Gorax charged the other, injured Angel but rolled poorly and didn't do much damage at all. The Druids continued to pump smoke and the Wayfarer moved back into the flag and sprayed down a Shepherd, putting Andy on 3 control points to my one. 

At this point two things were very clear. Firstly I was about to lose on scenario and couldn't contest effectively. Secondly Kromac was way upfront and was only camping one Fury. Hail Mary time then. The engaged Warspear moved away, taking a fatal free strike from a Kromac keen to prove he did know what he was doing and he was just unused to Rathrok, ok? I wasn't especially bothered about it since he wasn't achieving anything useful anyway. Then Thagrosh charged Kromac and boosted the attack. He connected and knocked Kromac down to only a couple of damage boxes with a fantastic damage roll. He then bought a second and missed the boosted attack roll. And the third. And the fourth. Humph. Not ideal. I moved on to the Shepherd who healed a little bit off the Angelius and then had the Succubus give it Tenacity. The Angelius then charged Kromac for the Armour Pierce of doom, taking three free strikes along the way. Only the Gorax connected but did exactly enough to cripple Spirit, meaning I couldn't boost or buy extra attacks, meaning that, with one transfer, he was safe. I moved the shredder up to contest the flag in a final effort of defiance. 4-1 and I was engaged by Ghetorix and Kromac on no camp. Kromac finished off Thags, but took a few swings to get there, which is something, meaning a Circle assassination victory. 

This was a fun game and I felt fairly confident going into the final assassination that I had a reasonable, albeit not great, chance to steal the win. I'm really unfamiliar with Circle so it was nice to get some practice against them as I think they're probably one of the factions I know the least. 

In terms of my gameplay, retrospectively I made some glaring mistakes that cost me the game. Learning experiences though, right? First off I was far too cautious moving up the board. I'm used to playing trundling Menoth and so I'm not used to moving up as far as I can with Legion. I should have moved much further and taken more real estate in the early turns. The Warspears should really have run to engage the Druids turn two and locked up his front lines and generally made a nuisance of themselves gumming up the Circle. This is something I can definitely do better in the future. The other major mistake that I only realised looking back was that I'd completely forgotten Death Shroud, which would have meant that my Angel that died would have survived the turn and that the vital Gorax free strike wouldn't have removed my spirit on the charge with the other one, which would have had a huge impact on the outcome if I'd been more on the ball. Obviously I've only got myself to blame and Andy took all the opportunities I handed to him like a good Circle player. Luckily he's a fun guy to play against and so I can't feel too bitter about the loss as it was an enjoyable game!

I feel like this game was particularly useful in helping me recognise some of the flaws with my play using Legion and hopefully I'll be able to capitalise on them in my upcoming games!

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

Cogs in the TheoryMachine

Hi all, and welcome back to the latest installation of Cogs in the TheoryMachine! Following the Valentines Massacre results from a week ago, I decided I needed to get more practice with some of the more traditionally tournament viable casters for the faction. I'm pretty ok with my eFeora play, and I got a decent run through with both pSeverius and pKreoss when I started playing Menoth. The caster I really wanted to get to grips with, though, was Harbinger.

I don't think that there would be any argument that she's one of the best casters in Menoth, and probably the game as a whole. Having said that she can be tricky to play, and I have very limited experience playing with her. In fact if you skim back through the archives I took her to a Tournament at the Outpost last year with a single practice game and got fairly consistently schooled using her against more experienced oppenents. To overcome this I've decided that now is the time to get a handle on her starting by playing her for the next few weeks until I feel confident enough with her. 

The list

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

Exemplar Errant Seneschal -2

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

Objective: Fuel Cache

The idea with this list is all control and denial. The Errant package (Max Errants with UA, Seneschal, Rhupert and Covenant) is designed to be a massive pain for my opponent to get rid of while also dishing out a reasonable amount of damage to clear zones etc. with Hunter Quick Work shots from charging weaponmasters. The Zealots are also in the list for zone control, jamming and obviously super-fun bomb throwing japes. The Bastions form a second wave to counter attack whatever's left from the rest of the grind in the list, adding in a hard to shift force that can polish off any troublemakers. The Devout is in the list to offer squishy Harbinger some protection from ranged, while the Reckoner is there to handle any heavy ARM that comes up. The support package is the deluxe edition with choir, wracks, vassal and a Heirophant. Then finally Dartan and his little brother are in the list to offer an immovable object to sit on flags and in zones and simply not die. Add in all of Harbingers cool native abilities (Awe for the pseudo DEF buff, FOCUS 10 for... being awesome, and obviously martyrdom) and the list becomes hard to kill and pretty heavy hitting on the retaliation. 

Test Game 

Ok. Full disclosure: I did actually already use this list and I was going to write it up as a bat rep... but the game went long and the store was literally closing around us at the time, so it didn't end properly and I didn't feel like it reflected how the game was going. I played against a Legion list that included pThagrosh with a Carnivean, Angelius and Scythean, along with a max unit of Legionnaires, a max Spawning vessel, the Black Frost Shard, a Foresaken, a shepherd and a Throne. We played Two Fronts from the 2015 Steamroller. 

My list out attritioned throughout the game, wiping out swathes of Legion models, including killing all the heavies (and one twice). The Reckoner in particular was very effective, using Enliven and Assault to dodge charges from a heavy and then one round it in the next turn. The Errants did a great job of making a nuisance of themselves while also whittling down the Legionaries. I wiped out the majority of the force and survived a couple of long shot assassination attempts along the way. By the last real turn his force was a Harrier with one box, a shredder, the Throne, Thagrosh, a mostly dead Carnivean and the Blackfrost Shard, while I had only lost about half the Errants along with all the Zealots, and only had a single model (the Harrier) stopping me from controlling the opposing zone.

I was in a commanding position and could easily have gotten Harby to a safe position from which I could continue to attrition and ultimately win on scenario, which is what I would have done normally, but as the store was closing and we had to get finished, I instead went for the cool option of charging the Throne with Harbinger to remove the last big threat. I used a boosted Cataclysm and a couple of melee attacks to hurt it and then poured damage onto it, and the Reckoner killed the Carnivean. The Throne was left on 1 box when I was done, and so I allowed him to take his turn, and he managed to kill Harbinger using every model he had left on the table to pull it off. It's a shame that we didn't have more time to be able to play the game out properly as I feel if I played it safe I was in a strong position to win the game within a couple more turns. More importantly I felt that this game gave me a good chance to play around with her abilities and use them effectively in a real game. 

I'm really looking forward to having a another practice with her to hone my experience a little further. I'll be sure to tell you all about it as it happens!

Stay tuned for more, and don't forget to like Mitsuharu on Minis on Facebook for more updates!

-M