Battle Report #167: Haley2 vs Krueger1

:: Prologue ::

Time to field Haley2 again! A lot of interesting changes to her, both explicitly in terms of her abilities and implicitly in terms of what's happened to the rest of Cygnar. Today I was facing Krueger1. Without further ado, let's get to it!

:: Lists ::

Cygnar:

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

Opponent:

Krueger1
- Megalith
- Feral Warpwolf
- Warpwolf Stalker
- Pureblood Warpwolf
Blood Witch x2
Blackclad x2
Gallow's Grove
Shifting Stones
Bloodweavers

:: Pre-Battle Thoughts & Deployment ::

A quick look through Krueger's abilities and I quickly resigned myself to the fact that shooting here was going to be hard. The same for keeping Sword Knights alive. I would have to look for TK openings and hope Future Sight would help me spend my focus as efficiently as possible. The scenario was Incoming and this is typically a slow scenario where you can suddenly get into a position that is hard to contest midgame. I was hoping for something like this.

:: Game ::

Circle went first, sent stuff up and got the defense spell into play.

Despite high defense I managed to put quite a few wounds on one of his Wolves. I kept Haley in a conservative position. She also took out a Blackclad with Thorn's Reaction Drive taking him back to safety.

Circle play very passively here. The wolf I targeted is healed back up a bit.

The entire left zone is open so I go for at least a point. I wanted more however and pulled out one of the Wolves with TK before shooting it down with Stormwall + Charger. I did spend my feat because Thorn was the only one who could score in his zone with Ragman and GMCA being too far away.

Krueger feats in return and in the process clears out quite a few Sword Knights.

I make a big mistake as I want to take out the Feral (proxied by Ghetorix): I forget about his Cover (he was behind Effigy) which brings his DEF to 21. I should've ran Thorn to TK him but instead I have to try TK vs DEF21. It fails. Although the Stormwall does get an angle from which Effigy provides no cover I can't out enough damage on it to take it out. Thorn has to finish the job, which is a desperate move in itself, but at least he manages.

I completely forgot about Electro Leaps and Megalith simply charges Stormwall with it and Haley dies to the POW10s.

:: Evaluation :: 

Interesting game and lots of learning points, yet again! Wow, ok so Haley plays a lot differently now. Having Thorn run and Stormwall getting his full 3 focus by only spending 1 from her lets her do so much work! I think that in order to fully capitalize on this I need to find ways for Thorn to play more aggressively. Against something sporting DEF17 however it's tough, even for Haley the focus slips away fast in those cases.

The feat came a little early as I didn't really manage to get a big lead on it. 1-0 is nothing as early as this in Incoming, not with the position I had anyway. In the ensuing turn I was also too focused on the scenario, what I should've done was get Haley back behind the wall again and taken out Megalith with Stormwall, outside of the other Wolves' threat ranges.

The Sword Knights never got a chance to do much. With Haley's feat now being models she can't really cover them from the other side of the table. The lesson to take away from this is that Sword Knights need to be covered by Shift to get up the table. Also, Krueger's feat is a pain if I don't take care to spread them out.

Although I lost to a stupid assassination angle I probably would have been in trouble regardless: With Megalith bearing down on the Stormwall and thus giving me -3 SPD I'm not sure how I would've dealt with the other Wolves. I would have to TK them both away. Perhaps it would've been enough, hard to say.