Internal Affairs Mk. XI Game 4 (#524): Haley2 vs Thexus

:: Prologue ::

For the last game of the tournament I was paired up against Mercs. My opponent dropped Thexus and I went with Haley2. A very interesting 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 ::

Thexus, Operating Theatre
- 2x Wrecker
Agitator
Dominator
- Alexia1
3x Mind Slavers
3x Mind Benders
2x Overlords

:: Pre-Battle Thoughts & Deployment ::

The scenario was Standoff and Thexus chose to take first turn.

:: Game ::

Drudges swarm the table.

I have an interesting issue. The Ambushers coupled with Thexus' feat and Adrenal Flood threaten so far. I have to stay really tightly packed up and my two huge bases aren't doing me any favours. The Hurricane can probably tank the Ambushers but the Strider risks downright dying with a little support. The idea is to have the Reliant contest the right zone and the Hurricane the left zone. I fry a couple of dudes, pew pew style.

Thexus bides his time. Stuff keeps spreading out. One Wrecker toes his zone.

I have to keep attritioning and open up my lines a little. I decide to shift the huge bases left and feat. This gives me some space and lets me threat a lot more angles. My opponent also sadly forgets that I can shoot his objective so I take out a leader with Adrenal Flood in the center, leaving one on either side. Big win for me!

Thexus cannot do much under my feat.

I withdraw my forces, blow out the objective, keep killing drudges.

Ambushers come out on the right flank simply to force me to deal with more models. My opponent didn't know sidekick stops TK so his turn is kind of wasted as he learns that.

It's tight on CP but I have to play very precise. I kill the Wrecker with shooting and ensure that my lights get into stronger, central positions now that Thexus is almost out of Drudges.

The clock is becoming a thing so this is the last picture I take: My opponent tries to keep contesting with models spread out and waiting in reserve to run in.

I kill the second Wrecker with shooting, wipe out more models, ensure I contest better, get a Firefly in the zone. All in all I have to play the last 4 turns of the game in 16 minutes. I manage to do so barely and when my 7th turn is over I have 2 minutes left on the clock and a 2 CP lead!

Victory to the Swans!

:: Evaluation ::

Wow, what a tense end to a great weekend! This game was super clutch and really came down to it. Standoff is definitely one of the harder scenarios to face Thexus on. The terrain we had here was crazy tight (which often happens in a team tournament) so moving my huge bases around was... Interesting. In the end the Reliant stood watch on the right flank and that was key to my success.

I think Thexus might've taken this home if he had been able to deal with the reliant earlier. Best case: Hex Blast + feat + TK -> kill. The way this game evolved felt a lot like my last game vs Elara2: I cleared out the waves as they came too close for comfort and I never really had a lot of models making it into melee and actually hitting my stuff.

My team again won all of their games! After a miserable day 1 we went 10-0 individually in total on day 2. This gave us a 2-2 score with very strong tie breakers, and with the other WTC team making a clean 4-0 streak we got 2nd place! Certainly not bad considering where we started off. Every participating team won at least one of their games, which to me says a lot about how evenly matched players in our meta are overall.

A great weekend and a ton of good games. I really like SR2017 and the various things in CID we played and saw this weekend felt like steps in the right direction as well.