Battle Report #191: Haley2 vs Vyros2

:: Prologue ::

Time to take out Haley2 with Gastone again! I was playing vs Vyros2, a matchup I'm quite curious about!

:: Lists ::

Cygnar:

(Haley 2) Major Victoria Haley [+25]
- Thorn [13]
- Stormwall [39]
- Squire [5]
Journeyman Warcaster [4]
- Charger [9]
Gastone Crosse [4]
- Buccaneer [6]
Ragman [4]
Storm Lances (min) [12]
Captain Arlan Strangewayes [4]

Opponent:

Vyros2
- Imperatus
- Sphinx
- Sphinx
- Griffon
- Griffon
- Griffon
Arcanist
Arcanist
Arcanist
Houseguard Thane
Houseguard Halberdiers (max)
- UA

:: Pre-Battle Thoughts & Deployment ::

The scenario was Outlast and I was moving first. The idea was to send stuff far down the table as early as possible and look for a classic Haley2-scores-in-your-turn situation.

:: Game ::

Temporal on Stormwall, Thorn shifts to the left side in anticipation of no enemies going right of the rock (and thus an opportunity for early feat + scoring), Haley TKs herself + charges with Deflection up and the Lances spread out. The Buster is a proxy for the Buccaneer.

Retribution decides to shift left. I must say, that caught me by surprise.

So I do what I planned to do: Haley moves up and feats. I start killing off the Halberdiers closest to me and fill the gaps with Thorn + Storm Lances behind covering fires. The Buccaneer knocked a Sphinx down and the Stormwall shot it up quite well.

Unable to move into my zone, my opponent focuses on getting 2 points of his own. He does take out the Buccaneer with a Griffon rolling a little hot and the contesting Lance is killed with shooting. 2-2.

I contemplate jamming my entire army down his throat and have Thorn disrupt 2-3 jacks. I instead settle on TK-ing a couple of jacks away and backing off with everything while Gastone contests. Vyros' feat is up so while the Halberdiers die he gets to move. However as I hold the Stormwall's activation he can't really move up. When I finally activate the Stormwall I move 5" backwards, as does Thorn, and Gastone contests (he also singlehandedly took out a Griffon. He literally shoots like Sloan with back arc bonus!

As I moved to 4-2 and his jacks were all in terrible positions my opponent concedes the game.

Victory to the Swans!

:: Evaluation ::

A fairly straight-forward game. My take away here is that this specific list configuration has the shooting and tools needed to deal with medium-to-high ARM infantry at a distance. Domination is a disaster for jacks and TK, as ever, is a very strong ability. The Buccaneer sets up nicely for the Stormwall and is also a bothersome scenario piece. It picked up Set Defense which puts it at DEF15 vs charges. 

The Retribution forces should definitely have deployed more centrally. It is a very classic Haley2 move but if you don't see it coming you're likely not going to be able to stop it. What I did notice however was that the cap on Synergy combined with Domination working on Imperatus mean that the Stormwall is a lot less threatened in this matchup than it was in Mk. 2. Haley also has a lot more focus to put to work because of Power Up + Arlan. All that said though there are a lot of boxes here and 3 beatsticks instead of 1, so it might be a bit of a problem if Retribution manages to get up the table and put pressure on you early.