#15 - Haley2 vs Lylyth2 Fire Support Revisited

To read the battle report from the game which this analysis comes from, click this link.

I've given a lot of thought to yesterday's game. I believe there are certain openings and certain patterns that can be exploited. Prior to this game yesterday, I believed the most important part of this matchup was to get the Stormwall into a Warbeast or two while Haley feats. In practice I believe this is impossible because of the huge threat range of the Ravagores. Instead, what I believe is necessary is 3 things:
1. Keep Haley alive. This sounds obvious, but it's harder than you might think
2. Keep Thorn so far away or so well protected that Lylyth can't reliably take him out without feating.
3. Keep the Stormwall in a position where launching a killing alpha on him is impossible.

With these in mind, let's consider my deployment yesterday:

The issues here revolve around the Stormwall being unable to get into a position where it's safe from an alpha strike while still being relevant in the game. Furthermore Thorn is too far away from a place where he can be safe. It's a naive approach and one that relies on Legion basically skewing right, which they have no reason to do. Indeed, Legion's T1 was like this: 

Based on this, I think the right move for the Stormwall would be to pre-deploy 5" or so to the right with Thorn close to him. The Stormwall can then run wide to the right and Thorn can simply walk up to be in cover from the wall. If you take a look at my first turn, you can see that I essentially tried to accomplish this but the deployment made their positions suboptimal (and expensive to even get to in terms of focus, Thorn needed Reaction Drive for example): 

Granted, a premise here is that Haley can survive. If I deploy the Stormwall and Thorn correctly and don't waste focus on TK etc, Haley can get away with camping 4 focus: 3 goes to Deceleration and 1 goes to the Stormwall running wide. I don't think it's a winning play for Legion to commit to Thorn here either as he's on DEF17 behind the wall, 19 with Deceleration. This in turn means that I can cast Arcane Shield on Haley as well, at which point I'm pretty sure the odds are in favour of her surviving if Lylyth goes all-in.

Ok, so that brings us past T1. As with my first game yesterday I believe Lylyth is largely stuck clearing ATGM and B13th with her T2. While being behind in the attrition game is never a good thing, there are openings here for Cygnar. 

I believe T2 is a feat turn. It obviously depends on Legion's play but I believe this is how to go about it. I don't think the Stormwall can get in melee range of the objective if it wants to stay clear of the alpha so taking it out boils down to shooting. Haley doesn't need focus at this point in time because her role is to get up behind the building. Doing this requires TK on herself. The Stormwall needs 2 focus to shoot the objective and Thorn needs 1 to run. That leaves 4 focus, just what's needed to TK 2 Legion beasts. While this doesn't ensure the destruction of the objective by far, it ensures that I'm safe from retaliation T3. What Thorn can't lock down with Reaction Drive and double TK can be "emergency engaged" with ATGM or B13th if it's needed. Assuming Alexia can get B2B with the flag, I'm ahead on scenario at this point and in my own T3 I have a big chance at simply winning the game: Kill off the objective, send the Stormwall in front of the flag and have Haley camp the opposing flag for 4 points total. It's a long shot, but it's a plan I believe is playable. The illustration below details what I've just described above:

The red arrows mark the deployment errors and where Thorn/Stormwall should have been. 

The blue arrows mark my T1 moves, Stormwall wide, Thorn behind fence, Haley towards the middle, also behind the fence, ATGM + B13th take the hill and central building for DEF bonuses etc. 

The green-yellowish lines mark my T2 moves where Haley moves up behind the house to feat, Thorn runs in to lock stuff down and TK beasts, Stormwall moves up and shoots the objective and ATGM + B13th come in from the opposite side. 

Now as I said, assuming this works out then T3 is pretty sweet. Legion essentially loses their ability to hurt both Haley and the Stormwall, likely Thorn as well. With the positions I have in this case I think getting Haley safely behind the Legion flag with the Stormwall blocking off the entrance is doable. 

Of course there are lots of ifs here and Legion won't exactly do nothing either, but it's a plan and I believe it's more solid than the one I had going into this game. Furthermore the aggression I put down T2 puts pressure on Lylyth herself, doubly so because of Killbox with ATGM + B13th coming from the left flank as well.