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Post by snarlyyow on Jun 19, 2017 17:47:35 GMT
Cory Doyle, Aaron (4 Man Meta), and myself head out to Mox Boarding House in Bellevue for their 3 man team tournament. All the teams had a chance to look at the other team's lists a week in advance. The format was interesting. Each team (Team A and Team B) was given three tables (1, 2, 3.) Each team secretly selects one of their players, Team A places their player facedown on table 1 and team B puts their secret player down on table 3. Then the players are revealed. Each team then selects one of their two remaining players to play against the revealed player. The remaining players play each other on table 2. I went in with Haley2/Nemo1 and said to my team that I was comfortable playing anything but Circle and Legion. We had tagged Team MoM as favorites to win the event (they did!) and I was bummed to get them round 1. They had Menoth, Khador, and Circle. Our thoughts were they would put down their Wurmwood/Baldur2 player (Jaden Iwaasa of Druid's Dice fame) first since Baldur2 is super strong into Cygnar. So I go down first to try to avoid him. This does not work as they drop their Khador player. Team MoM throws Jaden into me. He looks at me and says "Well, I know what I'm playing!" I shoot back, "You're playing Baldur2 and I'm playing Haley." We don't even reveal our lists to one another. For this Battle report I'll put what I think I should have done like this (I shouldn't write this embarrassing Batrep. Spoiler alert). I win the roll and choose to go first. This is a bad matchup for me, I'm counting on my team to pull out their games.  I deploy hard to my left, where's there's less terrain since I don't have pathfinder. Thorn goes hard to my right and the Stormwall is sort of central where he can influence as much of the table as possible.  Jaden deploys centrally with the Shifting Stones on the side of my Horsies.  I get Arcane Shield on big lances and run them up aggressively. TA goes on the stormwall and it runs up super aggressive. The Woldwraths cannot shoot anything in my army but I don't want the Mannikins to hurt the stormlances. |
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Post by snarlyyow on Jun 19, 2017 18:03:20 GMT
 Jaden runs up super aggresively counting on his high arm to save him. He chucks out a rock wall in front of his left side Wrath, the right side wrath gets Roots of the Earth making it an absurd ARM23. I think he sprays a pony and does nominal damage.  Things are shite for me turn 2. I have a lot of options and none I like. Simply put, killing the woldwraths without a melee damage buff is super difficult. I decide that I need to try to kill the one of the right (my left) because double colossal builds fall apart once one of them goes down. I can get nearly all my Stormlances from the big unit into it. I'm going to put everything I have into that Woldwrath, I don't know what the odds of killing it are but I know it's bad. The Firefly gets two focus from Junior and charges in doing nominal damage, I buy a second and boost damage. Lady K moves up and takes a shot, doing some nominal dice off 7 damage. The big unit charges in and my assault shots all do damage, I'm rolling 10s like it's going out of style. My charges, however, fall flat, and at Dice off 8 I think only one of them do damage. I move up Haley, Feat, throw TA on the Stormwall and boost 3 big guns. The second unit of Lances goes in and does some nominal damage. The damned woldwrath is left on 30 or so boxes, not nearly dead enough. I do kill a couple stones with eleaps. (I think I should have perhaps saved my feat here. Charged in a unit of lances and taken free strikes on the reposition allowing the small unit to not just assault but also get charge attacks in. If the lances die, fine, they're going to die anyway.)  The right side woldwrath kills a bunch of lances. Rock wall goes down on the left side wrath, which was probably a mistake, I'm going to ignore that wrath and focus everything in killing the right hand side one; I have no interest in splitting my forces in this matchup. Jaden engages thorn, backs Baldur up behind the objective and puts a bunch of stones between him and my stormwall. Megalith kills two stormlances with a Crevasse. The firefly dies. Blech. |
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Post by snarlyyow on Jun 19, 2017 18:19:00 GMT
 Jaden makes a minor mistake here leaving Baldur within range of the Stormwall. If I can kill the stones I can TA the wall and Charge the objective and get to Baldur. I don't love this plan but I hate this matchup even more. There's one stone that the stormlances cannot see because it is more than 3" into the forest so if I'm going to do this it needs to die to eleaps and without the firefly the odds of this are small. I TA the wall and fill it up, the Stormlances try to get rid of the stones and do get a couple of them but not the last. I do TK thorn around the wold wrath and charge Baldur, I'm trying to make Jaden's life as difficult as possible, trying to get him to split his forces so I can focus on one wrath. The Stormwall, unable to get to Baldur, moves out of threat range of the left side wrath, takes shots into the right side wrath, I throw a pod out to contest the flag.  Jaden beats the tar out of my remaining stormlances, leaving me with 1 and Lady K. Baldur hits Thorn dropping ihs defense to nothing then moves Megalith around and kills him. I don't think the right side wrath got Roots of the earth this turn, Baldur wants to camp and put it on himself. Baldur finally scores a point. Jaden's clock looks really good while I think I'm down to 20 minutes or so. He just has fewer activations then I do, fewer decision points: move forward, don't die.  Once again I accelerate the wall and I finally kill that damned right side wrath. I get Junior to the flag and score, 1-1! Arcane Shield goes on the wall. My remaining horsies are stuck in rough terrain. (I should re-examine the line I chose to charge on. Perhaps it was possible to leave the stormwall out of threat of the second wrath? I don't know, the flag might have been in the way.) |
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Post by snarlyyow on Jun 19, 2017 18:26:52 GMT
 Jaden gets the remaining stones to contest my flag. He charges in his WW and does maybe 20 boxes to the stormwall, his dice betraying him. Baldur casts crevasse and kills my pod.  I have Haley charge the contesting stones but fail to kill them both. Junior takes a shot and fails to kill it. The stormwall tries to kill the WW but fails. I throw a pod out to contest the flag. (I should not have put the pod so close to the flag. Derp.)  The WW and Megalith take the Stormwall down to nothing. Baldur gets to the flag and kills the pod. 1-2, Circle. |
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Post by snarlyyow on Jun 19, 2017 18:41:24 GMT
 Well, shit is real now. The Stormwall has, like, a single box left. I can no longer kill Megalith and a WW so it's balls to the wall time. I have Lady K take a free strikes from the WW, which misses, and I take a shot into Baldur. The Stormlance follows up. Haley charges Megalith, TKs herself to get LOS of Baldur and I chuck 3 Arcane Bolts his way. Yes, shit is this bad. I fail to kill and now it's all but over.  Jaden has two equally good options: Kill the stormwall which is on a box and Junior and score two points and win. Or kill Haley. He chooses the former and kills two stormlances for the points and wins on scenario. Going into this match I knew it was really bad for me. This is the second time I've played Jaden into a match where he simply out-listed me (the first time Nemo1 into Vindictus). Making matters worse, Jaden is a better player than I am. He doesn't make a lot of mistakes and the mistakes he does make rarely give an opponent a tremendous advantage. I knew going in I could not count on Jaden giving me an inch and the one mistake he did make (Leaving Baldur in charge range of the stormwall) he equally made a great move by his placement of the stones which denied me the opportunity. If you're going into this matchup the one problematic thing you need to consider with Baldur is rock wall. It's the ignored part of his kit but Rock Wall can be placed in such places where, even if you have pathfinder and reach, you cannot get all of your models to the WW. It's why I made such a gutsy top of 2 move, I didn't think Jaden would give me another opportunity to get all of my stormlances into the WoldWrath again. I knew the math was bad but I didn't see much of an option otherwise. I probably should have held my feat, though. If I do this matchup again I think I'll choose to go second, hard deploy the stormlances to one side and play strictly assassination. But this isn't a matchup Haley wants to see, nor much of Cygnar at all. It might be playable with Nemo3 but Circle's ability to pair with K2 means Nemo3 is a bad and desperate gamble. If you're a swan you need damage buffs so look to Stryker2, Stryker3, Siege2 (if his current incarnation remains), or Jakes2. |
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