mandag 17. april 2017

Battle at Lund: Swedish Masters #3 (#492): Haley2 vs Nemo1

:: Prologue ::

The third game of the Masters sees me face Cygnar mirror! Against me is Cornelius from Denmark with a Haley2/Nemo1 pairing. His Haley2 is without a Stormwall so I figure I'm good to drop Haley2 here. I don't want to risk Sloan vs Nemo1 because of deceleration. In return I do indeed receive Nemo1, which is interesting since we're playing Outlast.

:: Lists ::

Cygnar:
Cygnar - Technical Death Metal v4
[Theme] Heavy Metal
(Haley 2) Major Victoria Haley [+25]
- Charger [9]
- Hammersmith [12]
- Stormwall [39]
- Thorn [13]
- Squire [0]
Captain Arlan Strangewayes [0]
Journeyman Warcaster [0]
- Charger [9]
Lieutenant Allison Jakes [4]
- Stormclad [18]
Opponent:
Commander Adept Nemo - WJ: +30
-    Squire - PC: 0
-    Cyclone - PC: 13 (Battlegroup Points Used: 13)
-    Centurion - PC: 17 (Battlegroup Points Used: 17)
-    Stormclad - PC: 18
-    Dynamo - PC: 18
-    Lancer - PC: 10
-    Hammersmith - PC: 12
Captain Arlan Strangewayes - PC: 0
Lieutenant Allison Jakes - PC: 0
-    Charger - PC: 9
Journeyman Warcaster - PC: 0
-    Firefly - PC: 8

:: Pre-Battle Thoughts & Deployment ::

I win the roll-off which presents me with a choice: Do I go for scenario or attrition? How do I approach this game? I figure my safest best is to claim table space asap and work the attrition angle. Nemo has a ton of jacks and Locomotion can be a thing. At the same time, I'm playing Haley2 vs tons of jacks. My biggest worry is asssassination actually so I decide to go for attrition, thus taking first turn. To accomplish this I want to skew towards one zone, forcing Nemo to throw stuff at me to contest.


:: Game ::

Stuff runs up. I figure that with Nemo's feat, neither the Hammersmith nor Haley's Charger will be getting a lot of work done this game when I need them do. It's up to Thorn, Stormwall and Stormclad to do the heavy lifting. Thus the "disruptable" jacks move to the left, sole purpose to delay Cornelius.


The Lancer runs up to put up Voltaic Snare on Thorn and the Stormclad. Cornelius forgets or abandons this plan after it's run though and it's thus left exposed with a Hammersmith in my zone.


I wasn't intending to get much running or charging done this turn anyway, with stuff in my zone I can simply walk up. I feat to cover my pieces and kill both the Lancer and the Hammersmith. The elements on my left side back out.


Firefly contests me and Nemo scores his own zone.


I dominate the Centurion and TK it into my threat, killing it and the contesting Firefly off. Haley's Charger runs to contest and the Hammersmith places itself so that Haley can get it to contest with TK + TA next turn if needed.


Stormclad moves to contest, Dynamo and Charger move up to deny Stormwall an easy contest and I lose both the Charger and the Hammersmith to shooting + Nemo feat.


If Nemo scores one more time I lose the game. As expected though my skewing on the right side has forced him to continuously throw jacks at me so I'm way up on attrition. I have Thorn charge the Cyclone to disrupt it. I then TK Dynamo to allow the Stormwall to charge in and contest. I TK Nemo's Stormclad around so Jakes' Stormclad can hit it. It doesn't go down because of Arcane Shield but it loses Cortex I believe. Dynamo dies and the Cyclone takes some collateral damage. Jakes' Charger is engaged but I don't want to take any chances now so I place a Squire to block off LoS to Haley, making an assassination run extremely unlikely.


Cornelius cannot kill the Stormwall nor score in my zone. He finds no assassination play either so he defaults to contesting me as best as he can. A simple TK in my turn seals the deal and I win on scenario.

Victory to the Swans!

:: Evaluation ::

This matchup is so extremely hard for Nemo1. He has to keep feeding me pieces. I kill too many too soon and have too many counters to his plays. Centurion is so sad vs Haley2 it's not even funny for example. Cornelius does put up a good fight though, using the tools he has available to the best of his ability. The Lancer play bot of 1 was arguably questionable, but remember that if he doesn't commit to my zone bot of 1 then my Stormwall can move freely to the very dead center of the map, at which point in time any and all scenario plays for Nemo1 are completely dead. As such I think it's a decent trade-off. If he could somehow have gotten control of Thorn (say, killing off his Arc Node and disrupting him with feat) there might be a scenario angle for him. This is extremely hard to do though, after all it is Thorn, and more than anything I feel it's the nature of the matchup which bags this game for me. 

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