Battle Report #516: Haley2 vs Karchev

:: Prologue ::

I wanted to try out the Storm Strider. I dojo'd it a bit with Haley2. The idea was to find a compromise where I could maintain the majority of my anti-armour capabilities while increasing the list's ability to deal with infantry lists, e.g. Ghost Fleet and Operating Theatre variants. At first I couldn't find anything I liked but then I started looking outside of the box... The inclusion of a Reliant made me more than a little skeptical, but I figured it would be worth at least trying out.

What better to try it against than Karchev? If the list can handle this much ARM it should have enough melee punch for virtually any thinkable matchup.

:: Lists ::

:: Cygnar ::

"TimeStorm"
Theme: Heavy Metal
4 / 4 Free Cards     75 / 75 Army
Major Victoria Haley - WJ: +25
-    Squire - PC: 0
-    Firefly - PC: 8
-    Thorn - PC: 13
-    Hurricane - PC: 39 (Battlegroup Points Used: 25)
Storm Strider - PC: 18
Journeyman Warcaster - PC: 0
-    Firefly - PC: 8
Lieutenant Allison Jakes - PC: 0
-    Reliant - PC: 14
Captain Arlan Strangewayes - PC: 0

:: Opponent ::

Karchev, Jaws Theme
- 2x Juggernaut
- 2x Devastator
- 5x Marauder
2x Forge Seer
2x Marksman

:: Pre-Battle Thoughts & Deployment ::

This report will be fairly short. We played Spread the Net and the idea was to see if Karchev's (proxied) force could overwhelm me.

:: Game ::

Khador start, battle-charged, run.

TK + TA on Storm Strider, some pretty good shots into a Jugger on the right flank.

Khador runs again. I forget to take a picture at the end of Khador's turn. I took out a Juggernaut with ranged attacks on the right flank and TK'd + Dominated out a Devastator in the center. 2 heavies down, no reason to feat. Junior's Firefly jams a Marksman on the left flank.

Karchev runs his jacks up further.

Feat turn! I let stuff hit jacks in melee as much as possible. Domination ensures second Devastator goes down.

Sadly for Khador, not much to do under my feat. Shuffle.

I clear out the right flank, the remaining jack there is basically dead. Thorn disrupts the remaining heavies in the middle, both of which have taken damage as well.

We discuss the situation for a bit. Even if Karchev kills the 'wall there's no way he'll win the game. He cannot hurt anything else in my list barring insane dice and even then I'm up on scenario and can probably just kill him (I think attrition from here is fine even). My opponent concedes.

Victory to the Swans!

:: Evaluation ::

I must say I was positively surprised by what this list was capable of. I had some hot dice initially but they started failing me later on (the Hurricane missing like crazy in melee for example, hardly ever taking out a Khador heavy without help). Overall I would say that the nature of this matchup is in Haley's favour still. The Reliant's melee output was an important factor here. It's not that PS17 is that hot, but it's the list's ability to constantly produce attacks which hurt. Obviously this isn't the prime targets for the Reliant, but it was still an important piece.

The Storm Strider was MVP. Did tons of damage and was a big safety net out on the flank. If I had somehow gotten in trouble previously it would've been easy to sacrifice it to buy Haley time and space to get away.

List overall performed better than I had hoped for. A very, very interesting variant!