Battle Report #100: Haley3 vs Vayl2

:: Prologue ::

Truth be told I'm skeptical about running Haley3 into Legion. Legion's primary strength, in my experience, is to take apart stuff at a distance and then pull back, often giving them 2-3 turns of softening things up before you get to strike back. While Cryx can overcome this by sheer numbers, Vayl2, Vayl1 and Lylyth2 all have feats that allow Legion to play a superior cat-and-mouse game (no pun intended), unless you somehow break the pattern. Having never actually played Haley3 into Legion though this is all theorycrafting at this point in time. Let's get down to business with a Haley3 vs Vayl2 Tier 4 game!

:: Lists ::

Cygnar:

Major Prime Victoria Haley - WJ: +3
- Squire
- Charger - PC: 4
Journeyman Warcaster - PC: 3
Haley Future - PC: 0
Haley Past - PC: 0
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord - PC: 2
Captain Maxwell Finn - PC: 3
Ragman - PC: 2
Storm Lances - Leader & 4 Grunts: 11
Trencher Infantry - Leader & 5 Grunts: 6
Horgenhold Forge Guard - Leader & 9 Grunts: 8
- Captain Jonas Murdoch - Murdoch 2
Tempest Blazers - Leader & 4 Grunts: 10

Opponent:

Vayl, Consul of Everblight - WB: +6
- Angelius - PC: 8
- Angelius - PC: 8
- Ravagore - PC: 9
- Ravagore - PC: 9
- Scythean - PC: 8
- Seraph - PC: 7
- Shredder - PC: 2
Blighted Nyss Shepherd - PC: 1
Blighted Nyss Shepherd - PC: 1
Spawning Vessel - Vessel & 6 Grunts: 3
THEME: Machinations of Shadow - Tier 4

:: Pre-Battle Thoughts & Deployment ::

We were playing Fire Support and Legion went first. Legion skewed heavily opposite my flag so I responded in kind opposite his flag. My goal was attrition so this was kind of uncalled for, but I wanted to wrap around the middle quickly and trap him so to speak.

:: Game ::

Legion move up. Christ, those Angelii are fast with the tier bonus.

Trenchers move up and dig in. Lances flank right, Forge Guard center. Blazers hold back.

Scythean takes out a Blazer. pot-spawned Harrier takes out another. The center is devastated by fire. It is probably better to have Forge Guard spread out because Vayl can take off Shield anyways, at which point continuous fire is a pain. The right-most Angelii messes up as it charges outside of an area where it can be forced as it tries to deal with the Lances.

I'm hoping I can control the game by taking down the Angelii. I'll have to worry about scenario later. I feat, Lances take out the right-most and move further towards the center with Tactical Supremacy. I revive Forge Guard to charge the other Angelius. Unfortunately Tenacity is a pain as I miss 2 attacks despite Temporal Flux and it lives on a few boxes.

Vayl gets greedy as she tries to take out Future with Obliteration x2 (she feated). My opponent does move to 3 points by taking out the objective and having Vayl on the flag, but with all those spells thrown out she's kind of low on fury.

I don't upkeep Past. Prime puts 3 on Charger. It's all or nothing. Junior Shield Charger who is about to tank a free strike. Haley moves up, Temporal Flux. Prime misses Vayl with boosted hand cannon despite Future being with 5" for Flux. Future hits with her shots and vayl's getting low on boxes. Finn moves up and hits her a time or two as well, so transfers start happening. A Trencher gets in range and removes the last transfer. The unengaged Tempest Blazer finishes her off with a Brutal Shot so the Charger doesn't even have to fear his weapon system being crippled by a free strike.

Victory to the Swans!

:: Evaluation ::

It was a strategical mistake to counter-skew against Vayl. Despite moving second I can't reliably advance far enough to get the flag T2. He has too much presence there. Instead I should've deployed opposite him and gone for a "longer" game.

I still struggle to see how this matchup is in H3's favour. Granted the Blazers are kind of useless here so army composition naturally matters a lot, but the main problem is that Legion can spot-remove key models quite easily. It'll have to be played some more to assess properly but with both Trenchers and Blazers being ineffective points here I believe Haley2 is simply a better drop.

I failed to bring the Storm Lances to bear properly. They were too far away to make the impact I needed them to. This is largely because the scenario aspect was rushed though, as the game was evolving now I believe I could possibly have controlled it into attrition by taking out a Ravagore and the last Angelius. That said my opponent would of course have played it all differently had he not gone for the scenario win, so it's all up in the air.

Interesting game regardless and Haley3 has plenty of tricks when the situation becomes desperate. Had Vayl simply opted to camp all 8 fury points (no joke) and ran her beasts over to my flag, she would've won almost regardless. The lesson to be learned: Don't lose sight on your best winning condition and do whatever it takes to maximise -that- angle.