Caine2 & Sloan Musings

My first thoughts upon seeing the Mk. 3 version of Caine2 was that this model is going to be a beast! While I'm not completely on the other end of the scale just yet, he hasn't impressed me as much on the tabletop, unfortunately. Caine2 is a caster I played for a good while earlier this year leading up and including NM, where the list performed amazingly well given the right matchups. One thing that was always a no-go for Caine2 was an opposing list with too much armor. He's just not equipped to deal with it and outside of his feat he is very inefficient at bringing down anything but light-to-medium armored models. One ability which offset this in Mk. 2 was Aiyana's Kiss. Now that has becoming harder to get: In terms of building the list her points have increased significantly and in terms of delivering the ability in a game her Magic Ability has gone down, as well as her defense. 

In Mk. 2 I typically played Caine2 with a single Warjack: Ace. He complemented him amazingly well and his innate True Sight often allowed me to put Magic Bullet on him to take out MVP-targets far away from Caine himself. In Mk. 3 I think this is by and large unnecessary as Caine got the abilities innate, which means taking Ace as well is overkill. At least that's my thinking at the moment, I could of course be wrong. Furthermore Caine2 now has to take a sizeable battlegroup to make the most out of his Warjack points. This forces him to play something he as a caster isn't designed to do particularly well: Neither of his abilities stand out as excellent jack spells (possibly aside from Bullet Dodger). On top of that he wants to spend the focus himself. 

Caine2 has evolved into an anti-infantry monster. His main problem is cracking armor. One of the big problems of that, in turn, is his lack of support for our strong armor crackers. He does next to nothing to help neither Ironclads, Stormclads, Stormblades or Storm Lances. As such the rest of his army has to be self-sustained. The good news is that we have a lot of this going around now, the bad news is that I haven't found a list I believe in yet. The shortcomings of the Stormwall was made painfully clear in yesterday's game where my opponent consistently took advantage of my fixed 10" threat-range to simply gradually push me away. Now I'm not saying that the Stormwall itself is necessarily a problem, but I found it unable to perform the task I needed it to, by far. It could be as easy as making points for Lanyssa, I don't know. I'll have to re-think my approach to Caine2. At the same time however I am also considering the possibility that Vyros2 might be a caster he simply cannot play into. With the changes to Vyros2 in Mk. 3 he might be one of the innately strongest casters against Caine2 in the entire game. 

Having dojo'd extensively I am having more and more faith in Sloan however. As I have yet to field her it's about time anyway, isn't it? Part of the problem Sloan presents I feel is an ever-present assassination threat. Coupled with her ability to seemingly trivially remove models from a long distance she appeals to my preferred playstyle as well. While I'm not completely sold on her concept yet as it feels kind of static on paper I at least need to try it out first. 

I've been debating whether to add support to her or run her with basically a full battlegroup. In the end I decided to go with the same philosophy that led me to the Haley2 list I finished Mk. 2 with: Take all the firepower! I think it's good to explore extremes before tightening in rather than to go the other way around because it pushes the limits and forces you to consider what is or isn't working well. I often find that if you aren't willing to try the extremes you often miss out on potentially powerful combos. Especially with shooting you can reach certain thresholds in this game that are just very, very hard to play against. 

Enough talk, onto the list itself: 

Sloan
- Reinholdt
- Stormwall
- Hunter
- Hunter
- Firefly
- Firefly
Junior
- Charger
Arlan Strangeways
Alten Ashley

As of now, this list is meant as a direct replacement for Caine2. We'll see how that evolves. Thinking pairs is important I believe, but it's too early to fixate anything just yet. A couple of thoughts on the choices: The idea is to blast stuff apart, quite straight-forward really. The Stormwall in this list will hopefully be able to be a stalwart defending piece that cannot be ignored. The idea is that if you stay outside of its 10" threat range your army will be quite literally shot away. I don't expect this list to be able to shoot through e.g. Vyros2 so I've resigned myself to the fact that certain Retribution pairings might simply result in list chicken situations (if I take Haley2/Sloan at least).

Alten Ashley is there because I have a feeling we will see a lot of repairs/heals in this game. On top of that she is quite deadly vs Warbeasts and I can see myself dropping this into a number of Hordes pairings. In particular I think this list is very strong vs Legion, and I just can't wait to feel like I have the upper hand in the ranged game against them.

Playtesting will commense as soon as possible!

Battle Report #166: Caine2 vs Vyros2

:: Prologue ::

Retribution today! Along with Khador I believe this is one of the best factions in Mk. 3. At least they look like the two top dogs from my point of view now. Theme lists may change things of course, as could a number of other things. Anyway I love a challenge and part of the design behind Caine2 was that he was supposed to be able to deal with this. While I anticipated and hoped for Ossyan, I got Vyros2 which is also a huge X factor for my list. Let's get right to an exciting game!

:: Lists ::

Cygnar:

Caine2
- Reinholdt
- Stormwall
Junior
- Charger
Rangers
Trenchers (max)
- UA
Trench Buster x2
Ragman

Opponent:

Vyros2
- Imperatus
- Sphinx x2
- Griffon x4
Arcanist x3
Sentinels (min)
- UA

:: Pre-Battle Thoughts & Deployment ::

We were playing Close Quarters and I went first. As with yesterday I had an idea that the Trenchers would run ahead of the Stormwall etc and be used to absorb the initial impact and/or charge out on their own. I put Rangers on Caine's flank and one Trench Buster on either flank. Stormwall went down centrally though in hindsight I think this is a matchup where he should probably be looking to flank. More on that later.

:: Game ::

Stuff runs, I take care to space out my Trenchers. Pre-measuring with a medium proxy base makes this very easy and quick to do. Caine gets up Bullet Dodger on himself and Shield goes up on Stormwall.

Retribution advance in return with mini-feated Sentinels. Vyros gets Synergy up and casts Deceleration.

I decide to try and go for the Sentinels because I have so much shooting, including lots of boosted POW12s, CRAs and even the Sniper. I reckon I can wipe them all out so that Vengeance doesn't matter (the ones behind the wall are too far away). Dice disagree however.

The Sentinels take out a couple of front-line models but nothing big. The jacks advance to be just outside of Stormwall threat range.

I contemplate going all in, going back or doing something in-between. I decide for the latter, sending the Stormwall back and the Trenchers in. The reasoning is that my shooting is doing so little and the Trenchers will slowly be whittled away. I have lots of good angles with them now and can get in a Buster as well. The idea is to buy time and hope that the assault + firepower can start whittling away the right flank so I can hopefully push up Caine a little further. The Stormwall doesn't accomplish much though and neither does the rest of my shooting. The Trenchers do ok but the damage is too spread out.

Trenchers are wiped, just a couple of models left. The pre-measuring allows Imperatus to stay safe from Stormwall.

I finally kill a warjack. Just one, though. Deceleration is so good for Vyros2, it makes all the difference in this kind of matchup as there are just too many boxes to punch through.

Imperatus has found a trick! Double Griffons is not something I can deal with so Imperatus can push them up and stay safe behind and thus force me further and further out. As the picture below shows, I am running out of flanks to threaten and places to back off towards.

Desperate times, desperate measures. I have an angle onto the remaining Sphinx with the Stormwall. I figure I take it and with a little luck it might go down as it was previously hurt. If I roll poorly I can hopefully disrupt Imperatus instead and maybe buy some time that way. I roll poorly but at least I get the disrupt on the Imperatus. That means the Arcanist there has to remove the disruption instead of power boosting him. Caine2 is very exposed though as I didn't upkeep Bullet Dodger. I was kind of afraid that he'd simply build up synergy on the Stormwall and go for assassination.

Retribution is content with killing a colossal. I breath a sigh of relief as Caine still lives. It doesn't make much of a difference though to be honest, but Vyros2 forgot to reposition in the middle of it all and as such, there's one last desperate chance for me to take the game.

I have 1 Trencher, Junior, Charger and Caine which can target Vyros. He is sitting on 4 focus. A Ranger runs in to give me +2. Junior misses. The Charger, aiming and boosting, also misses a shot. The Trencher misses. Caine misses a shot. With 4 focus then I simply can't punch through. Vyros is left on 3 boxes and I concede as there's no reason to play this out. 

:: Evaluation ::

Very much an uphill fight. From T2 onwards I had no idea what to do and I just couldn't put the damage on him. Dice seemed crazy at times but I don't think they were that far off. It's the Deceleration for Vyros which makes all the difference. POW12s are so different vs ARM20 than vs ARM18. It's basically more or less twice as good. That is a game changer in itself, on top of that Vyros basically gained a ton of focus through power up and the improved Arcanists. Caine really starts falling off in terms of effectiveness when he has to start boosting. He doesn't want to do that but in this matchup he has no choice. 

The list performed ok, it simply doesn't have the melee power to punch through here. I don't know how many lists in Caine's set of matchups can put this much arm into a strong list though. Vyros2 looks very strong now and I anticipate to see more of him. I don't see how Caine can be built to effectively take him on, perhaps unless you specifically tailor for him, simply because he is an ineffective caster vs ARM. 

What I could perhaps have tried to do was to flank with the Stormwall instead and thus ensure he couldn't create a semi-circle around me and deny me from advancing with it. However a SPD5 colossal with no boosts takes forever to pull off such a manoevre. Not sure if it had been viable but I certainly didn't get enough out of it as we were now. 

All in all a very interesting game full of learning points. Retribution is going to be a headache for us for a long time I believe, as they were in Mk. 2 as well. Back to the drawing board!

Haley2 Musings

Short list update: Having seen some of the lists out there, considered what Haley2 can do and what she's supposed to face and keeping my first 3 games in Mk. 3 fresh in mind, I don't think her Mk. 2 style of play works. Losing Deadeye hurts but in itself the main problem is gun mages I believe, in combination with more healing and repairing out there. Simply put I think she needs more melee game. Perhaps the Stormwall has to go as well in favour of e.g. Stormclads. That is definitely a possibility and something to keep in mind.

As such I've started looking towards other builds. Assuming we want to keep the 'jack setup we are looking at a fairly small part of the list that is changing. I believe it boils down to a question of Sword Knights vs Storm Lances vs Stormblades. For me, the first one pulls ahead because of superior defense combined with solid damage output, a cheap price (thus enabling other solos) and reposition. The list looks like this:

Haley2
- Squire
- Thorn
- Stormwall
Junior
- Charger
Arlan Strangeways
Gun Mage Captain Adept
Ragman
Sword Knights (max)
- UA

Is this what I need to deal with the things I intend to go up against? I don't know. It's a starting point though.

Battle Report #165: Caine2 vs Kromac2

:: Prologue ::

Following my new ideas for Trenchers and how I believe they should play I wanted to try a max-sized unit. I also found the Trench Buster to be absolutely brutal so I wanted to see if I could include another. By taking out Aiyana + Holt & Murdoch I could get the max Trenchers and the second Buster. By taking out Arlan I could get Ragman. Let's go!

:: Lists ::

Cygnar:

Caine2
- Reinholdt
- Stormwall
Junior
- Charger
Rangers
Trenchers (max)
- UA
Trench Buster x2
Ragman

Opponent:

Kromac2
- Warpwolf Stalker x2
- Feral Warpwolf
- Ghetorix
- Wilder
Lord of the Feast
Alten Ashley
Shifting Stones
Blackclad x2

:: Pre-Battle Thoughts & Deployment ::

A couple of changes on the Circle side as well. Interesting! Furthermore he now went first and the map was slightly modified. Based on the idea to have Trenchers more centrally, I tried to imagine what the board would look like at the end of the first round. I had an idea of the Trenchers pushing up with the Stormwall centrally and busters on the flanks. I deployed accordingly and placed Caine on my right flank, anticipating Circle to shift left again.

:: Game ::

Circle runs up and indeed it is slightly left. One Stalker moves right and the Blackclads hang back.

My reply is to get the Stormwall up but beware of the Blackclads. Going second vs Circle has always been hard and I found this to be no exception. At least I managed to keep the Stormwall safe by keeping it outside of Hunter's Mark range. As I intended I also got the Trenchers up in front. I tried a CRA on Ashley which left her on 1W and tried a CRA on one of the central Wolves which also missed. Snipe on these guys would be interesting! The Busters were positioned on either flank and the Charger was positioned to shoot into the center and/or contest the left flank.

Big mistake and Circle exploits it: By placing Reinholdt -and- Ragman right behind the Stormwall instead of behind the Fence suddenly the Lord of the Feast has a beautiful shot at making a huge mess in my back lines. He shoots the Stormwall, teleports behind and start throwing out attacks. Luckily he misses Reinholdt after taking out Ragman and his journey ends there. He's still holding down Caine2 though. Annoying. Circle then decides to force the issue and the beasts all push up heavily under Kromac's feat.

I spend forever figuring out what to do. I am trying to look for an approach to buy time but every single idea I come up with lead to Kromac moving to 2-0 on scenario easily. Instead I decide to go all out offensively. My intention is to kill a Wolf or two in the middle, commit the Trenchers and Stormwall, hold a couple of Trenchers in reserve alongside the Busters and let Caine's feat and Busters clear up hopefully enough in the next turn.

The Charger starts shooting the central Warpwolf. He doesn't want to use hyper aggressive now, I had anticipated as much. Trenchers mini-feat and I leave cloud defenses for Caine and the busters, having set them up with the proper distance the turn before. MAT6 isn't great but I land a couple of hits on the Wolves anyway and do some damage at least. Stormwall follows up, being fully fueled by Caine it hurts. The Warpwolf dies and the Feral is left at ~half boxes. Caine then clears out the Lord of the Feast and jumps behind the wall. Annoyingly I forgot to spend his last focus trying to land a Grievous Wounds shot on Feral, which would've been great seeing as its body was crippled. However I still felt I was in a good position.

Kromac throws out Primal for the Stalker and Ghetorix, killing a Trencher and lightning striking away. Feral kills a few Trenchers and Ghetorix + Stalker take out Stormwall.

Trenchers move in to ensure I have flank sources. Charger aims + backstrike on Ghetorix so it pretty much doesn't care about melee bonus. Quite a bit of damage is dealt. Busters then charge and both deal horrendous amounts of damage. Caine2 follows up with feat which takes out the rest, including a Trick Shot on the Blackclad which gets the Wilder.

With just Kromac, Ashley and Stones remaining and being down 0-1 Circle concedes the game.

Victory to the Swans!

:: Evaluation ::

Plan worked out well enough and I felt I got more out of the Trenchers this time around. Having them work more or less as a shield and then charge with them first and follow up with what's behind while you lead cloud covers for the 2nd wave really worked great. It's very counter-intuitive to how I've usually played and I'm certain there's a myriad of small tips and tricks to master to get the most out of them in this way. Cautious advance also really helps them stay annoying early on: Not being able to land stuff like Hunter's Mark on them means that sending in anything just commits so much. 

The big blunder was obviously crowding around the Stormwall early on. I should've used the fence for both Reinholdt and Ragman regardless and the Lord of the Feast had a huge target which could potentially have been game breaking considering the changes to back strike as well (he would've gotten an attempt on Caine, not bad but at least I would've had Bullet Dodger up). Luckily for me the 7+ on Reinholdt missed. 

As for the list overall it's hard to say if this is the right configuration. It's easy to get tunnel vision when you play against the same army/faction. I need more experience and for it to face a wider range of opponents. I'm trying to find a Retribution matchup and I'm hoping for a game vs Legion soon as well. 

Battle Report #164: Caine2 vs Kromac2

:: Prologue ::

Following yesterday's last game that ended somewhat abruptly when Rasheth took out Caine I was eager to try the list again. Today I would be facing Circle for 2 games. Traditionally, Circle has been a matchup that is dominated by the presence (or absence) of ATGM and Druids. With lots of changes to the both of them I had no idea how this would shape up. My opponent brought Kromac2, a caster I find very interesting in the current meta.

:: Lists ::

Cygnar:

Caine2
- Reinholdt
- Stormwall
Junior
- Charger
Aiyana & Holt
- Murdoch
Rangers
Trenchers (min)
- UA
Trench Buster
Arlan Strangeways

Opponent:

Kromac2
- Feral Warpwolf
- Warpwolf Stalker
- Ghetorix
- Argus
- Argus
- Wilder
Blackclad
Lord of the Feast
2x Shifting Stones
Wolves of Orboros

:: Pre-Battle Thoughts & Deployment ::

We were playing Outflank and I went first. I got the Stormwall down centrally with Caine on the right side and A+H on the left. I expected Circle to shift left and thus wanted the Stormwall in-between with Aiyana in a position to throw out kiss. His deployment indeed looked like he would do just that so I played Trenchers a little to the right as well with Rangers central.

:: Game ::

Turn 1 is usually boring and this was no exception. I shifted the Trenchers right and A+H left. Bullet Dodger up on Caine.

Circle responds in kind. They send up Ghetorix behind the impassable in the middle along with the Wolves in a jamming position. The rest go on the left side.

In reply I get a little too eager as my infantry advances up too far on the right flank. I completely forget that Ghetorix has Overtake with Kromac. So when I get to Caine's activation I have to be a little more cautious with him than I'd hoped for. At least I get the Argus and the majority of the jammers on my right flank with Trick Shots before he jumps away to safety. I set up the Stormwall to shoot out a stone, taking care to stay out of Kromac's base threat range.

What I didn't ensure however was to stay outside of 16" of the Blackclads. He could thus land Hunter's Mark. Kromac feated and kept a semi-defensive position while the Feral charged the Stormwall through the woods alongside the Stalker in the front. The Colossal went down. Now, we only discovered afterwards that indeed the Feral doesn't have Pathfinder. We decided to play on regardless. On the right flank Ghetorix wanted to slaughter stuff. I tough with a Trencher and he proceeds to miss a ranger something like three times I believe and the damage he does then is just completely irrelevant.

So I have 3 big bad wolves knocking on my door and they all have extra armor because of Kromac's feat. Problem? Possibly. I forgot about the Feral and Warpwolf being affected by Primal and how that would affect their activations in the ensuing turn. I set up a plan to take out Ghetorix + Feral with Caine2 and then start shooting up the Warpwolf with whatever was left. Aiyana opens the show with missing kiss on the Feral despite backstrike bonus. Caine feats following Reinholdt's reload but I come up with a snake eyes roll and roll somewhat low on the damage rolls. The net result is that not even Ghetorix goes down. Oh wow. Luckily he has but a couple of boxes left. The Trenchers charge following mini-feat with clouds and one of them gets the hit and takes him out. Another Trencher goes into Feral. Arlan charges the Feral and loses 7 boxes to Retaliatory Strike after dealing some boxes to it. The Trench Buster then charges the Feral as well and the damage is brutal, as expected. The Feral is left on fairly few boxes. I try and spread out so that he can't clear the right zone but even if he can I'll be ahead on scenario.

With me going to 2-0 my opponent has to do a lot of work to even get to 2-2. That doesn't happen and he concedes the game.

Victory to the Swans!

:: Evaluation ::

Lots of things done poorly, lots of lessons learned. Let's start with the Trenchers. I think I'm playing them wrong. I try to mimic the playstyle of ATGM in Mk 2 but that simply isn't how they play. I believe Trenchers are more effective as a screen. Whereas ATGM usually liked to flank and clear out infantry, the Trenchers' role is to simply roll up ahead of the Stormwall and force an opponent to respect them. Despite perfect distance for placing clouds there will be no room to let a heavy charge through in-between them. I think this is a key to their playstyle, i.e. they aren't meant to let models through, friendly or enemy! I believe that they should stay tight and simply hold the line so that your opponent has to either wade into them or face a charge from them + whatever's behind in return. This is far from how I used them in this game. Based on this I wanted to try a bigger unit and change how I approach the game with them.

Also, Aiyana + Holt & Murdoch were very lacklustre this game. Kiss is an amazing ability but I do remember questioning their inclusion several times in Mk. 2 as well. With Caine2 and Trenchers perhaps Ragman can largely perform the same role? The idea is that an enemy has to throw himself on the Trencher front lines in which case Caine2 can probably feat with Black Penny shots and use Death Field as sort of a poor man's kiss.

The Stormwall performed well: Buying me the time and place I needed. Although forgetting the Blackclads was pretty bad, the ensuing string of events go to show why I love this model: At ARM22 an opponent really has to commit to take it out. So despite it doing nothing other than shoot up a stone and thus prevent teleports on the left flank, I think it helped me win the game because of the 2 Primaled wolves moving in.

Battle Report #163: Trying out Mk. 3!

:: Prologue ::

My activity has been low lately. With no major events left in Mk. 2 the motivation simply hasn't been there. Now, it's back again! Until the rules are officially released the games will, to a certain degree, be based on faulty rules and lacking information. We are a group of people however who believe we now have enough info to make games meaningful in terms of learning Mk. 3 and our factions.

Onto this very first game, then! There has been a lot of dojoing lately. We have an amazing Cygnar chat on Facebook which is hyper-active these days with a lot of good discussions, input and feedback. However you only get so far without actually playing. Today I finally had the chance and the matchup was Caine2 vs Rasheth. Let's jump to it!

:: Lists ::

Cygnar:

Caine2
- Reinholdt
- Stormwall
Junior
- Charger
Aiyana & Holt
- Murdoch
Rangers
Trenchers (min)
- UA
Trench Buster
Arlan Strangeways

Opponent:

Rasheth
- Bronzeback
- Gladiator
- Titan Sentry
- Titan Sentry
- Agonizer
Willbreaker
Soulward
Nihilators
Beast Handlers (min)
Beast Handlers (max)

:: Pre-Battle Thoughts & Deployment ::

The scenario was Incursion and I went first. The idea was to shift slightly towards one side. Based on the terrain I anticipated Skorne would shuffle left so I sat up for shuffling right. It didn't occur to me just how much AD my list had until I actually deployed. A big front line of models to be sure!

:: Game ::

I run the Rangers up, pre-measuring to keep them outside of the Nihilators' jam range. Trenchers started moving slightly right while Rangers started moving slightly left. I was a little too cautious with Aiyana & Holt.

Skorne run up in return and Rasheth scatters one arced AOE3 onto a sole Trencher who toughs. Another one from himself goes dead ahead and kills a couple of models.

Now, T1 I cast Bullet Dodger on Caine. It's mostly because I don't know when I'll need it and the thinking is that while he has it up it saves me a focus as opposed to casting it when I need it. Now for my second turn my goal was to kill the Soulward to prevent Eyeless Sight and Trick Shot would be a good start. I moved Rangers into position and shot up a few. Caine then took out the Soulward but due to abysmal damage rolls I didn't get as many trick shots as I had wanted to on the Nihilators before I had to jump away again. The Stormwall followed up with putting the hurt on the Gladiator after Caine had pinged a few wounds off of it. Covering Fires went down as well. I felt fairly confident with my position as I didn't see what the Skorne could do about my right flank. Pre-measuring also allowed my shooting to get perfect distances and stay out of threat ranges.

This turn had an interesting start as it was revealed to me just why bigger investments in Beast Handlers might be a thing: They can heal multiple times! Ok, note to self: Grievous wounds is a thing. Use it. Just once is sufficient. However the next move completely caught me off guard: Rasheth physically moved up towards Caine and started casting AOEs on the Trenchers. After he got 2 of them scattering dead ahead and landing on Caine with boosted damage rolls, the game was suddenly over as my low-ARM caster died.

:: Evaluation ::

I was a little dumbfounded by the game-winning move I must admit. Rasheth was visible for my entire army and had his second nuke missed he would've had 3 fury, not nearly enough to survive. I do suppose though that the Skorne were in a desperate position: I had a Trench Buster sitting on the right flag, the Charger might've taken the left flag and the Stormwall would surely contest the center at the very least. On top of this Caine's trick shots kept clearing out support and infantry and his beasts, despite the heals, were still a little damaged. He was quickly losing on attrition and had to do something. Still though, scattering in the 1 direction you can and rolling the 4+ needed to get the correct distance. That is a longshot by anyone's standards.

Despite the short game I learned tons: Trenchers are great. Versatile, fairly cheap, tough is a bitch having to deal with. Max. Trenchers would definitely be nice. So would a second Buster to provide the damage output near them without committing too much. A+H+M are probably needed in this kind of list. I'm not 100%, but I believe they belong here. Stormwall did its job as expected and Arlan + Power Up ensured it could do its job without needing anything from Caine. It should also be noted that if Skorne had committed Beasts in T2 by for example simply running the 4 of them up, Caine would eventually only have to commit 1 focus to max out his allocation allowance. I've considered double Defenders but if I switch out Caine's battlegroup that likely won't be what I'll take. If it comes to it and I have to commit to combat the focus pull on Caine is too big.

The killing shots I have to write off as pure luck. Nothing can be done about these and you can't start playing like a paranoid either. True, it could be worthwhile discussing whether Arcane Shield or Bullet Dodger is most valuable to have on him early game. It's not as though the Stormwall needed the extra armour at that point in time in this matchup anyway. In most cases though Caine's survivability relies on his defense and boosting this even further is beneficial, I believe.

On the table next to me a couple of guys were playing Rhulic Mercs vs Baldur2 double gargantuans. If that, or something similarly extremely skewed, becomes a thing I have to re-think my approach to breaking arm. I think Haley2 can deal with ARM20 BG spam fairly well, but this is on a whole different level.

Lots of new impressions and lots of things to think about. Back to dojoing! Hopefully the next game will be before too long. Hopefully it will last beyond the second turn as well.

2d6 Internal Affairs - Sending Off Mk. II

Today our club had a send-off tournament for Mk. II. It was a 3-man team tournament with a total of 6 participating teams. Many of us are already heavily into Mk. III and as such it as a bit of a weird assortment of an otherwise very active group: Many of us had hardly played a game in weeks. Due to Mk. 2 being phased out I will not provide full-fledged reports from today's tournament but I will provide a quick run-through of what went down and how we did.

Our team had Cygnar, Cryx and Circle. All teams had one list per player so we had to decide what to go for. We landed on Haley2, The Coven and Morvahna2. I played the same Haley2-variant I took to the last few tournaments.


:: Game 1 ::

The first round saw us pair up vs Convergence (Lucant), Legion (Vayl1) and Skorne (don't remember but double Sentinels). I ended up vs Convergence which I was very happy with: Sporting 0 huge bases I was confident Haley2 could choose when and where to strike.

I get first turn and immediate send off my army with the intention being to begin chopping down his heavies with Stormwall while Haley slowly starts to grab points.

Feat goes up and the game evolves according to my plan.

I'm easily ahead and the Stormwall isn't even damaged. From here on in it's safe play all the way.

The rest of the team performed admirably, with Cryx taking on Skorne and Circle beating Vayl1.


:: Game 2 ::

We face a team with Cephalyx (Exulon), Legion (Thagrosh1) and Retribution (Issyria). I get matched up vs Cephalyx which I think is good for me. Considering I faced a very similar list in my last tournament I felt I had an edge.

Disaster strikes! I try and TK the heavy wrecker on the right side of the central impassable so that the Stormwall can strike down 2 of these in one go. Haley fails, despite having a Squire re-roll. Yes, that's 1/144. Dice happen!

My team looks to be doing good so I go for a biggie: wiping out the right flank and move to 3-0. Alexia 1 toughs twice and I can't get the UA to the right of the Stormwall. While this model doesn't contest, it will allow an Ambushing unit to get one very, very dangerous Grunt which puts Haley in dire straits.

Luckily for me Exulon misses his TK (he'd spent his feat trying to get Thorn earlier). 8+ boosted is 1/6th to fail and as he cast Hex Blast first he had no more focus left for a second attempt. His turned ended as you can see on the image above however I easily cleared out the rest and took the game 5-0. The team again performed admirably with Cryx winning vs Retribution and Morvahna2 taking out Thagrosh1 in Destruction. 

:: Game 3 ::

For our last game we faced a trio containing Protectorate (Harbinger), Trollbloods (Calandra I believe) and Circle (Krueger2). Honestly either of these matchups are fine with me. Krueger2 probably requires the most precise play but in my experience Haley2 is up here as long as you have ATGM. Anyway I got Krueger2 and it looked like my final game of Mk. 2 would be a classic!

Playing Two Fronts and I go first. Excellent scenario for me I think and I love going first. The idea is to threaten a 3-0 T3 and as such I put Haley opposite his zone.

I force my opponent's hand by shifting right. I place a pod behind Thorn and make sure that Watts from the Black 13th cannot be pushed out of the zone. For Krueger2 to move to 3-0 he has to TK Thorn to feat him out (because Pod is immovable) and kill Watts. In the process I also kill the Rotterhorn in the trench: ATGM Thunderbolt it out (I am so going to miss this in Mk. 3) with Deadeye and score a crit KD so finishing it up is trivial. I also get a Druid.

Circle tries to get the Blackclad behind the wall to cast Hunter's Mark on Watts. It's funny because with Prowl he was stealthed anyway but regardless he was too far out. My opponent ends up finding 0 good ways out of his position and the game more or less ends here.

 

With me moving to 3-0 and Krueger2, Druids and the remaining Griffon all affected by Temporal Shift my opponent moves to score CP for tie breaker purposes and I move to 5 in his turn. 

A bit of a disappointing final game. I had hoped this would be a classic. In a way though it was: Haley's extreme board control forces Circle gradually away while a plethora of utility tricks such as Prowl, immobile Pod and the ultra-mobile Thorn allow me to keep him from taking the lead in the meantime. Our team yet again had a strong showing overall with Cryx's Coven beating Harbinger in Outflank and Morvahna winning vs Calandra in Incursion. We finished with a whopping 40 CP in total and were naturally very happy with our Mk. II send-off tournament results. 

Warmahordes is dead, long live Warmahordes!