Battle Report #437: Stryker1 vs Haley3

:: Prologue ::

Haley3 into Stryker1 Storm Division felt terrible. Would Heavy Metal be easier for her? Seeing as I'm looking towards Stryker1 Heavy Metal to be my mirror drop I need to find out. I got a fellow Cygnar player to play Haley3 against me and we went at it!

:: Lists ::

Cygnar:

[Theme] Heavy Metal
(Stryker 1) Commander Coleman Stryker [+30]
- Charger [9]
- Stormwall [39]
- Stormwall [39]
- Squire [0]
Captain Arlan Strangewayes [0]
Journeyman Warcaster [0]
- Charger [9]
Lieutenant Allison Jakes [0]
- Charger [9]

Opponent:

(Haley 3) Major Prime Victoria Haley [+25], Bunker
- Grenadier [9]
- Grenadier [9]
- Thorn [13]
- Defender [16]
Storm Lances (max) [20]
Trencher Infantry (max) [16]
Journeyman Warcaster [4]
- Charger [9]
Ragman [4]

:: Pre-Battle Thoughts & Deployment ::

Recon, Haley3 takes first turn. Idea? Covering fires to push her back, flank with Chargers, decisive move for scenario.

:: Game ::

Haley3 advances and clouds up. We discussed this and in hindsight it's probably better to dig in. Buys more table space.

My Stryker positioning here is awkward so an assassination might be viable. Apart from that it's a vanilla advance. Note to self: Careful with Force Hammer angles. Snipe on the left 'wall.

Clouds back up. That's right bitch, move!

Chargers are starting to get angles on the flanks. I make a strategical mistake and a mistake I didn't even consider: I start shooting the objective here. Just a tiny bit, it's a bunker, but I should not have. It's working for me here, basically, not against me. Furthermore I fail to put a covering fire on top of the objective...

...which provides my opponent with an excellent angle to get back into the game: Kill his own objective and push those clouds, boy!

One 'wall has started taking damage following my mistake last turn. I want to make a decisive play here so I trample both 'walls up, feat and pod Trenchers to death. I also land a couple of melee attacks so electro leaps help clear stuff out.

The left 'wall doesn't have Arcane Shield. It's ARM24. The funny thing about this Haley3 list, which I know very, very well, is that it packs one hell of a punch. If you can land Ragman and have enough landing space you can deal a -ton- of damage. Sure, Haley3 has Repudiate so the Arcane Shield would've disappeared regardless. However what she does not have is infinite focus. It's the basic "Haley dilemma", no matter which iteration of the caster you play. She has tons of options, but with a finite amount of focus she has to weigh them against each other and miss out on some of them.

In this particular case there was no need for repudiate, so she handed out focus across the board to Thorn, Ironclad, Past kept all of hers... The left wall took a brutal amount of damage (we ran the numbers and with Ragman Haley3 is indeed close to killing it on feat turn) and barely survived with 2 boxes (including cortex!) intact.

My opponent is way down on the clock. What I need to do here is kill Past to prevent her from doing more damage next turn. I allocate max. to both walls, start with one of them who punches a Grenadier and a Charger to death. Stryker then Earthquakes a pod so the second 'wall kills Past and the Ironclad with additional damage by electro leaps. I fail to disrupt Thorn with a pod. So annoying. Chargers keep pumping shots into Evil Cygnar.

One 'wall is cleared out easily enough. The Lances start working on the second. Past is spawned.

At this point in time I'm way up on the clock and playing Haley3 is often a race against time (yeah, I did that) so I figure I'll just try and clock my opponent. I KD Lances with Earthquake and clear them out with the Stormwall.

My opponent does kill the 'wall but runs out of time.

Victory to the Swans!

:: Evaluation ::

The covering fire mistake cost me dearly. I also think Stryker is probably better off trying to go for a flag in this matchup, at the very least setting up so that he's able to do so. The Echoes are hard to clear from the zone so getting to 5 could be a problem for sure.

This matchup feels up, but it's probably more even than Storm Division would have been. The electro leaps do so much work against Haley3 it's not even funny. From the games I've had with Stryker1 thus far I think I need a Firefly. Maybe 2, but we'll start with 1. In mirrors against Storm Division I believe the 'walls and my shooting are sufficiently strong anyways so I can probably live with 2 Chargers, possibly also 1.