Internal Affairs Mk. I Game 4: Haley2 vs Saeryn1

:: Prologue ::

In a world filled with Doomie3, Harbinger of Menoth MMM, Butcher3 and Cryx (to name but a few!), the final player to be undefeated apart from myself after 3 games was a Legion player sporting the original pairing of Saeryn1 and Thagrosh1. I can't even remember the last time Legion played something like this into my Cygnar but I was, as always, eager to face something I don't usually face.

:: Lists ::

Cygnar:

Major Victoria Haley - WJ: +5 Effigy of Valor
- Squire
- Stormwall - PC: 19 (bonded)
- Lightning Pod
- Thorn - PC: 8
Journeyman Warcaster - PC: 3
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution - PC: 3
Alexia2 - PC: 4
Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team - Lynch, Ryan & Watts: 4
Arcane Tempest Gun Mage Pistoleers - Leader & 5 Grunts: 6
- Arcane Tempest Gun Mage Officer - Officer 2
Tactical Arcanist Corp - Leader & 2 Grunts: 4

Opponent: 

Saeryn, Omen of Everblight - WB: +5
- Angelius - PC: 9
- Angelius - PC: 9
- Nephilim Protector - PC: 5
- Nephilim Protector - PC: 5
- Nephilim Bolt Thrower - PC: 6
- Zuriel - PC: 10
- Nephilim Bloodseer - PC: 0
- Harrier - PC: 2
- Harrier - PC: 2
Blighted Nyss Sorceress & Hellion - PC: 4
Blighted Nyss Shepherd - PC: 1
Blighted Nyss Shepherd - PC: 1
Spell Martyrs - PC: 1
Spell Martyrs - PC: 1
THEME: Fallen Angels - Tier 4

:: Pre-Battle Thoughts & Deployment ::

Saeryn struggles against Cygnar in my experience. I believe this is largely because her spells struggle to make a big impact on the game while her feat is also all but useless. I have at least yet to experience it causing significant problems for me. We were playing Recon and I was going first. Regardless of caster, getting up first is important vs Angelii! 

:: Game ::

Standard formation with Stormwall in front, Haley behind and Alexia + Thorn in cover from Effigy. Deceleration up, Eiryss + B13th wide.

My opponent starts off with trying to blast Eiryss off the board from an arc node spell martyr. He fails to hit because of Stealth and instead I land the Pow14 on Saeryn's head (Whiplash!), dealing 10 damage which she transfers to one of her shield guards. The rest try and shoot up ATGM. Officer dies.

The Bloodseer is placed directly in front of my Stormwall and as I'm happy with my position I simply elect to aim. 3 focus on it, Temporal for 3 big gun shots and Deceleration. Blodseer dies.

Saeryn feat time! Everything moves up and the Angelius in combat with me gets respawn while Zuriel gets magic immunity.

I counter-feat. It's a bit of an issue with his Sorceress because she has this no shooting thing. He put no magic on her as well. Eiryss steps up, shooting it off. Haley Time Bombs and TAC take her out with fire bombs (or was it junior?). The closest Angelius is TK'd away.

The Legion push doesn't stop however and he moves in simply to jam me up.

I experience a bit of a deja vu: 4 focus on Stormwall, TK away Shield Guard, TK away Angelius. Telekinesing away beasts from the Stormwall seems to be the way this game is played! Eiryss shoots off Respawn and Stormwall kills Angelius as well as putting ~15-20 boxes on Zuriel.

Zuriel + Angelius engage the Stormwall. They deal somewhere around 35-40 boxes, no systems crippled.

I kill off Zuriel and Angelius with everything I have. At this point the game is basically over and the rest is about getting points etc.

Saeryn gets a control point from her flag. I score my 5 and kill off everything but the Warlock.

Victory to the Swans!

Tournament Victory!

:: Evaluation :: 

My opponent had never faced Haley before. His Cygnar endeavours have been against Stryker1, Stryker2 and Caine2. Haley is obviously something unique to face and yet again the feat basically just kills the game. While his list did have an impressive number of annoying beasts I had to deal with (and I believe my target prioritization could've been better!), it all boils down to running a melee list into Haley. If the melee-list isn't bricky or if it doesn't have tricks, this is a very hard thing to do. 

Before the game was over we were laughing over the new things my opponent "discovered" as we went along: Whiplash, Haley feat, TK in combat without negative modifiers from an arc node, Reaction Drives, Stormwall Lightning Pod, Electro Leaps, Arcane Vortex and many more abilities caught him by surprise. I am sure he'll be better prepared next time and I look forward to trying out my swans against tough Legion lists (there are -many- Legion players in our meta so rarely a shortage here) in the future :)

Overall I was happy with my play in this tournament. I made a few technical mistakes but those things will always happen because of the clock. The 2 strategic blunders I made (not placing Haley centrally on feat turn vs Circle and going for attrition vs Caine) was largely due to inexperience with these situations. I'll of course take it into consideration for future games and hopefully, the next tournament will see me play even better and make fewer mistakes! 

My opponents ended up taking 11th (1st opponent, Convergence), 5th (2nd opponent, Circle), 2nd (3rd opponent, Cygnar) and 3rd (4th opponent, Legion) out of 14 players in total. I was hoping to face Khador and Trolls, which I really need more experience with, but I can't complain having faced 5 very different lists and Convergence in particular (which I've almost never played against)! I had a blast and am very much looking forward to the next event, which is considerably bigger (Norwegian Master's in January).