SmogCon: Masters A #2 (#423): Haley2 vs Kraye

:: Prologue ::

The second round of the day saw me face a Cygnar mirror match. I was up against Jon who had a couple of interesting builds. including Stryker1 doublewall in Storm Division and Kraye with all the jacks in the world (also in Storm Division). The scenario was The Pit and I realized immediately that this could be an incredibly hard matchup: If Stryker1 was dropped he could just push the two colossals up the table and I'd struggle to deal with them. I decided to drop Haley2 because I think her Lances can possibly wrap around and give Stryker problems personally. At least that was the hope.

Much to my surprise Jon dropped Kraye in return. My immediate relief due to not facing Stryker soon turned to worry when I realized how much shooting he had...

:: Lists ::

Cygnar:

(Haley 2) Major Victoria Haley [+25], Storm Division, Fuel Cache
- Thorn [13]
- Stormwall [39]
- Squire [0]
Storm Lances (max) [20]
Storm Lances (min) [12]
Journeyman Warcaster [0]
- Firefly [8]
Major Katherine Laddermore [8]

Opponent:

[Theme] Storm Division
(Kraye 1) Captain Jeremiah Kraye [+30]
 - Ironclad [12]
 - Ironclad [12]
 - Ironclad [12]
 - Ironclad [12]
 - Charger [9]
 - Charger [9]
 - Charger [9]
Journeyman Warcaster [0]
 - Charger [9]
Storm Lances (max) [20]

:: Pre-Battle Thoughts & Deployment ::

The Pit is a great scenario for Haley2. The terrain was also super favourable here. I won the dice-off and went first. Jon deployed fairly centrally, a bit surprising to me as there was little terrain to help him there, but it did present a nasty threat projection towards my flag. My idea was to use the forest in front of my flag to LoS-block Haley out and feat early for attrition.

:: Game ::

I had run all my things basically and Jon started skewing slightly right, as anticipated. The angles towards Haley here were pretty obvious. Curiously he had left 2 (!) Ironclads within the Stormwall's charge range.

I send the 'wall into the Ironclads, killing one. An Ironclad on the left flank is dominated to move over and hit the Charger. No serious damage is done but this moves it so far away that it cannot contest me. Haley feats and Lances all position themselves to assault whatever wants to build pressure.

Unable to contest Jon spends his time under Temporal Shift to try and set up for killing Haley next turn. At least that is how I interpret his moves.

I need to do one thing here and that is keep Haley alive. I am winning on attrition and the scoring is running away, in my favour. The Lances on the left assault the Ironclad and reposition to LoS-block as good as they can. I then TK the Ironclad and finish him with the Firefly and Lances on the left. The Stormwall kills another Ironclad (just 1 left now) and I block up LoS as good as I can. Haley is camping 2 focus and sits behind a concealment-granting feature.

Unable to find an angle to shoot Haley, even with feat, Kraye resolves to trying to get some points instead by killing the Firefly and Lances.

I cruise in to a 5-0 CP victory. In reality it's an attrition win as Kraye has very few pieces left.

Victory to the Swans!

:: Evaluation ::

Kraye was surprising here, I must say. It's the first time I've seen Mk. 3 Kraye in play and I can totally see him being a thing in a theme (though I think Heavy Metal is what he wants). Reposition 5 is huge and he can bring some highly interesting configurations to the table.

In this game Jon was unable to bring the Chargers' might to bear on either the Lances or Haley. I'm not sure how he could've gone about it differently, perhaps the matchup is just very hard, but my plan to have the Stormwall as a big deterrent to keep the rest safe worked very well.

A very interesting game and 2-0 is obviously a great start to day 1!