2d6 Internal Affairs Mk. X: Doubles

:: Prologue ::

Games in my meta tend to be competitively oriented. Every once in a while we enjoy taking a little break and doing something for fun. That doesn't mean we'll get our SUSS-casters out necessarily, but rather that the format itself makes the game so crazy that we'll just drink beer and have fun. The last time we did this was back in October. You can read about that adventure here.

Today we had a similar setup. The only difference was that this time around we allowed teams to form beforehand. As such everyone was basically expecting cheese to the max. I paired up with Christian, my team mate from last time, and we dojo'd Cygnar + Protectorate things. We looked at offensive variants like Stryker2 and High Reclaimer, ARM-skew variants like Amon and Stryker1 and shooty variants with Sloan and Severius1. Eventually we landed on Reznik2 and Haley2. Together these casters create insane threat ranges, they have a lot of control and most importantly a lot of denial. Let's see how our day went by!

:: Lists ::

Cygnar:

Haley2, Heavy Metal
- Stormwall
- Thorn
- Squire
Junior
- Firefly

Protectorate:

Reznik2, Creator's Might
- Scourge of Heresy
- Templar
- Templar
- Hierophant
Mechanik
Rhoven
Max Choir

:: Game 1 ::

We faced a pairing consisting of Stryker1 and Helynna. Back-to-back ARM feats. Interesting! The tournament used SR2017 CID week 1. The first game was on The Pit II. We had first turn and the plan was easy: Force a bottom of 1 feat and play from there!

Stryker1 feats first. We dominate out Disco and kill her.

Helios enables various pushes to kill a Templar in return, despite Haley2 feat being up.

We kill the Stormwall under Helynna's feat. We take a commanding scenario lead.

Our opponents are able to take out the Stormwall but they are in horrible positions to contest. We are up on attrition as well but win the game on CP.


:: Game 2 ::

The second game sees us face a Krueger2/Vayl2 pairing in Standoff. Again we go first and again the plan is to apply pressure asap.

Our opponents end up putting up a Carnivean with Admonition. It's very hard for them to do much here with our extreme threat ranges.

We send in Reznik first. If the Carnivean Admonitions away we have Haley as backup. He elects to stay and Reznik kills him. Repos out, TK etc. Feat. Reznik has Lamentation up.

We don't want our stuff being pushed by Krueger2 feat!

Our opponents look for openings on Reznik through assassination as this game is quickly turning to shit for them. They find a 25-30% run. Lamentation prevents so many angles it's not even funny. They don't get the dice they need and we win the game!


:: Game 3 ::

Our last game of the day is against a Coven / Severius1 pair on Spread the Net. We go last and choose the side with the most defensive terrain. The idea is take it slow and react to our opponents. We have superior threat ranges, but their feats back-to-back could be problematic.

By having Reznik feat and the Stormwall + Firefly fire we can clear a lot of Satyxis on the left flank. We can also stay clear of most melee threat ranges. It's all going so well until we realize we've messed up with Scourge. For some reason we thought Arcane Vortex was 4", not 3". Because of this we don't get both Haley and Reznik within his denial range. Reznik's camping 4 so we go with Haley.

Unfortunately for us the magical barrage is too much and Reznik dies.


:: Evaluation ::

Doubles is a fun format and I highly encourage everyone to give it a go once in a while. On the tables around us we saw so many interesting variants of cheese, from Caine2 / Ravyn (next level Snipe, feat, go?) to Stryker1 / Damiano. I love it. It's pretty clear that the game was never meant for stuff like this, but it's good fun none the less.

SR2017 scenarios look really interesting. They appear to favour attrition plays and "shock scenario plays" are a thing of the past I believe. I think that's good for the game.