Battle Report #20 - Butcher1 vs Sloan1

February 19, 2017
Scenario: Incursion
Opponent: Geoff M
Initiative: Me

Butcher1
Ruin
4x Marauders
3x min rifles w/9 total rockets
Joe
Mortar (free)
Field Gun (free)

Sloan1
Reinholdt
Grenedier
Defender
2x Hunter
Minuteman
Max Trenchers w/CA & 3 rifle grenades
Arlan
GMCA
Finn

This time I do remember to advance move the jacks.  Marauders on the left turtle up to protect ruin.  Sloan feats and damages a marauder on the left and leaves one on the right on 3 boxes.  Some bad dice and not getting sloan into shoot means he doesn't kill a jack. 

Marauder on the left moves onto the flag to force him to contest.  Marauder on the right contests right flag.  Middle left marauder runs up to engage 3 trenchers, removing dig in from them.  My mortar shoots it in the back misses but scatters forwards killing the 3 trenchers (or toughs them and rifle corp finish them off.)  Rifle corp and rockets focus on the grenedier and take him down.  Ruin charges to get into the rubble.

(MISSING PICTURE)

Hunters, defender and sloan kill ruin (I always underestimate her out put, even against khador jacks).  The 2 remaining trencher grenades kill 5 rifles and a rocket (stupid bunching up).  Other trenchers kill some rifles and put some damage on a marauder.  Minuteman moves up and slugs the left marauder, spiking hard to take out his cortex and right arm. 


Left middle marauder gets full focus and kills 4 trenchers.  I need to kill the minute man contesting my left flag so I could start scoring.  Decide to burn my feat to make sure it happens.  Couple rockets and rifles made sure it happens.  Other rifles kill some trenchers, but damn, def 17 is hard to hit. 

(Missing Picture)

Trenchers kill some more rifles, and the defender and hunters keep hammering away at my jacks, they are all getting really beat up, losing most systems.  Arlan charges my left marauder, and the GMCA also contest (he should have held him back to contest the following turn).


Middle marauders and rifles kill most of the remaining trenchers, leaving 2 alive and fin on 1 box.  Marauder on left takes a free strike and remains touching the flag.  Rifles and rockets kill arlan and GMCA.  Left maurader continues to trundle towards hunters. 2-0

Game is pretty well over at this point.  He can't kill butcher because of sac pawn and high armour, and his ability to contest my left flag is dwindling.  We play 2 more turns but there was no question of the outcome.




I played this matchup pretty bad I feel, I lost too many rifles to bad positioning, and rifle positioning is key to this list.  I haven't really talked about what its supposed to do, but its pretty straight forward and self explanatory.  Butchers feat is for extreme damage at range.  Maruaders and field gun Knock heavies down for rockets to focus fire on.  Rifles CRA to take out infantry to cav (on feat turn).  Very straight forward, but very strong. 

I chose butcher1 over vlad1 for a few reasons, tho I'm not sure its the stronger option.  Vlad brings the turn to turn accuracy and damage.  But Butcher brings the single turn of crushing damage output and he brings Ruin.  Ruin and Butcher are my only magic weapons in my pairing (Irusk2) so that's why I chose him.  Maybe I'll try vlad after the next convention.  His feat for 12" threat jacks is really strong over Butchers very static threat range jacks (tho ruin is good with his 11" threat).

Battle Report #18 - Butcher3 vs Haley2

January 29, 2017
Scenario: Recon
Opponent: Greg S
Initiative: Greg

Butcher3
Wardog

Ruin

Marauder

Min Uhlans

Min Uhlans

Eliminators

Eliminators

Drakhun

Drakhun

Orin

Kell

Bokur (c:Butcher)

Haley2
Stormclad
Stormclad
Thorn
Squire (Free)
Max Lances
Min Lances
Laddermore
Junior (Free)
Firefly
Min Field Mechanics
THEME: STORM DIVISION


This was the final table of a local 11 man steamroller.  Greg and I are both prepping for the LVO and we have relatively even record against each other so we knew it was going to be a tight game.  Greg felt his Haley3 didn't quite have enough arm cracking to deal with Harkevich as he is my normal Cygnar drop.  However entrenched is a scenario that Butcher loves, and with Orin and Ruin in the list he has some solid tools in the Haleys.  Giddyup.



End of Round 1.  Haley TK's 4 models and everything runs up.  I run up everything as well, trying to keep my forces spread out so Haley can't feat on everything.  While trying to keep Butcher out of feat range and still threatening the zone, I make a stupid mistake and place Ruin outta control.  Kell aims and kills a stormlance.  Not sure why Greg put them so close.



Thorn moves up, dominates the marauder forward which gets killed by Laddermore and a stormclad.  His max lance unit shifts over to cover his zone, knowing Butcher can easily clear and dominate, he doesn't want to put anything with 12" of Butcher in fear of losing too much.  He kills my jamming Uhlan, and the one behind the forest gets killed by eleaps.  Haley doesn't feat.



Ruin was out of control.  Stupid stupid mistake.  Kell aims and shoots the stormclad for 6pts.  Only need to do 5pts of damage to column 4 or 5 to take out the cortex now.  I move Butcher into the zone and position with entourage around him.  The drakhun covers most of the zone while staying outside of charge threat range of the lance that can see him.  I send Ruin into the damaged stormclad, but dont hit the right column.  If only I could have allocated to him.  My Uhlans charge his objective, bad dice require 3 of them to kill it, I jam with them and position the drakhun in the corner of the zone.  2-0.

(Missing Picture)

He clears out all my uhlans, puts 7 pts on my left drahun, and TK's him outt the zone.  Haley feats and moves far forward and barely clips the eliminator that I had positioned to run into the zone to contest.  Nothing on my right side is under feat.  He boxes out the zone so after my drakhun kills a lance he can't repo in.  Ruin dies but it takes a stormclad, 2 lances and a firefly charge to bring him down.  Go Ruin.  Everything is just outside of butchers 12" threat.  He runs the mechanic officer in to contest just outside of counter charge range.  2-1.



Kell aims and kills a lance.  With the mechanic in the zone, Butcher has his charge target.  He charges the mechanic pulls in the firefly and stormclad, killing them both.  He feats and energizes behind the wall.  Left flank doesn't do too much and unfortunately I can't contest.  3-2.

(Missing Picture)

Greg mops up the left side but has difficulty contesting.  He runs arcane shields laddermore and runs her into the zone.  She takes a free strike from an argus and a countercharge from my wardog, but she conests. 3-3.



Drakhun charges a lances, hills him and repo's into mechanics and Jr.  Bokur dismounts laddermore, bucher flashing blades her then backs up into the rubble.  I position my guys as so. 4-3

(Missing Picture)

To contest Greg runs Thorn to TK a dog, then TK the stormclad so the stormclad can run into my zone.  With a TK and a charge from haley, the lances and Jr are able to kill my Drakhun.  Greg clocks to me with 1 second left on his clock. 4-4.




All I have to do is kill the stormclad and clock over to him since we would both score to 5 and then he would time out.  Butcher easily kills the stormclad, and my dog is able to run to contest just for good measure.  5-4.  

Oh man this was a great game!  Couple mistakes on both sides, but when is there not?  Butcher is really strong in entrenched and going second (even against H2) probably won me the game, not that it was my choice tho.  The terrain also helped as he didn't have access to pathfinder, which is a problem with the Storm Division.  Although it does allow more beef in the list. 

The double drakhun is great in this list.  The double Uhlans.....I'm not sure about, I've thought about dropping a unit for a Juggernaut, but being able to act outside of 12" from butcher is really good, especially in scenario's like this one or recon.  Anyways, I'm not gonna make any changes this close to the LVO.

Battle Report #15 - Harkevich1 vs Haley2

January 19, 2017
Scenario: Recon
Opponent: Greg S
Initiative: Greg

Harkevich1 (Irusk proxy)
Kodiak
Kodiak
Kodiak
Juggernaut
Juggernaut
Marauder
Marauder
Joe
Max Winter Guard Infantry w/3 rockets
UA (Free)
THEME: WINTER GUARD KOMMAND

Haley2
Stormwall
Thorn
Squire (Free)
Max Lances
Min Lances
Laddermore
Junior (Free)
Firefly
THEME: STORM DIVISION


Another battle of the themes.  Greg is trying out the theme as a means to get more beef into his lists.  He loses out on Ragman, Anastasia and Rhupert, but gets way more brawn.  Lack of non-colossal pathfinder maybe an issue in the future tho.  We're both prepping for the LVO.



He TK's some models, TA's the stormwall and runs stuff up.  Shifting haley towards the right flag. Everything runs up and I trample the kodiaks up and make my cloud wall.  Hark 101.

(MISSING PICTURE)

Its to bad I forgot to take this picture.  Anyways.  Greg allocates 2 to the stormwall and TK's thorn and with the reaction drive it gets thorn into my cloud wall.  Stupid me should have built the wall over 5" away from Thorn, I knew he could do that and he was barely in.  Haley then TK's a kodiak into the clouds and TA's the stormwall and FEATS.  Stormwall charges and kills the kodiak, getting one swing into the other kodiak.  Thorn moves up disrupts the left most jack and gets some damage on him.  Lances all run into annoying positions staying outside of 1" on all my stuff.

 




His feat catches Hark, all my jacks and about half my WGI.  My marauder and juggernaut who were engaged by 2 lances both take free strikes at dice-10, the Eleap killing a winter guard they were also engaging.  Lances on the left are now unengaged.  my WGI remove both lances on the left and an aiming rocket rolls the hard 8 and kills the lance that was also in the middle trench.  Right most Kodiak takes a free strike from a lance and vents steam on another 2 lances on the right.  Boosts on both, kills one, leave the other on 1 box.  Hark moves up and is sitting on 5 focus.   Four storm lances killed on Haley's feat turn....not bad.



Haley loads up thorn and the stormwall.  Thorn TK's the remaining kodiak and tries to TK the right most juggernaut, but misses twice even with the reroll (couldn't boost). Haley moves to dominate the right flag.  Thorn pokes the left juggernaut disrupting him and bonks the marauder 3 times with his shield to knock out his cortex.  Lances move around and shoot/smack some stuff, killing more WGI.  Laddermore threads the needle between my 2 jacks on the left, and kills something like 6 WGI.  Stowmwall moves to protect haley and kills my kodiak on the right.

Joe gives attacks to WGI and shoots the pod to free up Hark.  Right marauder hits the 7 to combo slam Thorn into my objective.  Hark casts mobility and walks over to laddermore, and bonks her on the head, doing 5 pts and staggering her.  Middle juggernat moves around objective and finishes off thorn, repo'ing towards the trench.  Left maruader moves up and combo slams the firefly outta the zone and kills a lance.  WGI mini feat and spray down the middle lance to allow my juggernaut to walk towards his stormwall (taking 2 free strikes on the way).  I put some pts on his stormwall and repo into contest range.



Haley charges Juggernaut contesting, does some damage and TK's him away.  Stormwall moves out of range of my jacks, and finishes off the jugg.  One lance charges my middle juggernaut and the other kills 2 WGI.  Firefly moves in to contest and Jr runs out of the zone.  Haley goes to 2.



Hark casts mobility and takes a free strike from laddermore, luckily she misses.  Left Marauder slams the firefly and kills him and puts 8pts on the objective.  Right marauder kills contesting lance and repo's into contest range.  Kodiak walks into b2b with laddermore, dismounts and kills her.  This is where I make my game losing mistake (spoilers!).  Instead of moving the kodiak so he could punch laddermore and then reposition to touch the object and block LOS to Hark.....I don't even repo into b2b with hark?! Plus I dont even move the remaining WGI to block the lances charge on hark.  What the heck was I thinking!  Anyways, I go to 3pts.



As expected, greg has to kill or lose.  Lance charges hark doing a lot of damage.  Haley TA's stormwall and charges juggernaut and throws an arcane bolt into hark for more damage.  Stormwall moves and shoots hark with his big guns....in the back.  Dead Harkevich.


Man this was a really good game!  The shooting presence and advance move that the theme brings seems worth the loss of orin and ragman, its at least a very interesting choice.  By the end the game, it was mine to lose as I had every tool to keep Hark safe.  But better now than in a tournament!  Might have also been a good idea to instead of get the 3pts, get 2 and move hark towards my left flag as greg had hardly any pieces left to contest.  I need to somehow do better at protecting my WGI from electro leaps, he hardly put any attacks on them directly and still managed to wipe them all out.  This matchup (when Haley doesn't bring ragman) seems pretty even but will likely favour the player going first.

I will need to continue to test it, but it feels like even without orin, the benefits of the theme and the strength of the list give it solid game into cygnar.  Haley3 will still likely be problematic since Hark is the only source of magical attacks in the list, but perhaps I should change my objective from fuel cache to armory for the scenario dependent magic attacks.  Luckily my butcher3 list can also play into non-sloan cygnar if I find a matchup that I don't feel Hark can really play into.

Battle Report #11 - Vlad1 vs Haley3

January 16, 2017
Scenario: The Pit
Opponent: Greg S
Initiative: Me


Vlad1
Marauder
Marauder
Marauder
Kodiak
Min rifles w/3 Rockets
Min rifles w/3 Rockets
Min rifles w/3 Rockets
Min rifles w/3 Rockets
Joe
Mortar (Free)
Mortar (Free)
Field Gun (Free)
THEME: Winter Guard Kommand

Haley3
Thorn
Grenadier
Grenadier
Ironclad
Max Trenchers
Max Storm Lances
Jr w/ Charger
Ragman
Rhupert




End of my turn.  This terrain is terrible, I thought going first would be best to set up my gun line, but it was a huge mistake.  I should have taken the better side and scored first.  Anyways, a unit of rifles flank hard up each side around the terrain.  Everything else runs up.  Mortars advance and shoot, getting a lucky swatter forward killing 2 trenchers (and toughing 1) and putting 6pts on a grenadier!

(MISSING PICTURE)

His first turn is pretty uneventful. He moves up his grenadiers, puts a couple points on a marauder and a scatter kills a riflemen behind the right building.  Trenchers cloud up, but because of the trenchers that died, he can't make an unbroken wall, leaving a small space where Baby Haley is standing in the next photo.



Vlad moves up to get on the flag, he casts SnP and feats.  Kodiak tramples through the clouds and buys attacks on the grenadier, leaving it on 2 boxes, the steam kills the trenchers on either side.  Both Mortars shoot my kodiak in the back, one scatters and kills the grenadier, the other toughs a trencher.  Winter guard move up as shown.  Terrain and clouds are really hindering the gunline.



I had tried to position my stuff so that contesting would be very difficult, I forgot ghostwalk allows him to move through obstacles.  With ragman, his ironclad plus some shooting take out my kodiak.  Haley casts Distortion and moves onto the flag.  Baby Haley goes into the zone, Grandma puts, ghost walk on lances.  Lances run and charge, killing a couple riflemen on my right side and put some points on a marauder.  Thorn gets LOS to my mauraders with a reaction drive move and disrupts both. 



He scores 1, and due to a bit of mistaken positions, contesting is going to be difficult, silly me.  But I see an opportunity.  Vlad casts SnP, charges the stormlance into the zone, kills it then and blood boons a razor wind into Baby Haley.  Needing a boosted 11 under SnP, but I miss, sad face.  Zone isn't getting cleared, I'm in scenario trouble now.  Oh well.  One marauder combo slams thorn into a lance.  Shooting kills thorn and the other marauder kills the last remaining lance in the zone.  Rifle corp continue to flank, but i don't contest.

(MISSING PICTURE)

Ironclad and ragman move in and kill a marauder.  Haley feats, casts Distortion and revives some lances.  Lances charge in kill some more rifles and tie up some more.



Greg scores again, 3-0.  I'm in big trouble, need to do something drastic.  Vlad BoK's himself and charges Baby Haley, trying to kill her, then blood boon a razer wind into grandma haley.  But I keep missing the boosted 8 to hit baby haley, so that fails. Some other stuff happens but next turn he's able to quake hammer his grenadier to knock vlad down and then kill him with baby haley.


This is a bit of a tough match for Vlad I think.  If I can't get to his trenchers, he can protect his army from shooting/charges and can dictate the engagement.  His defense is also a bit of a problem, especially when I don't play with Joe. I forgot to deploy him and figured I'd experiment to see how the list plays without him.  Against this list, the +2 would have been very effective...obviously.  Signs and Portents can only do so much.

I got pretty luck top of 1 with my mortar killing 2 trenchers to disrupt his cloud wall.  The pit is probably also not great for vlad to try to fight haley3 into.  And I have to be very mindful of terrain.  It can make or break any match up with this many guns.  Need to keep working on moving and positioning this many guns as well, I spend too many turns not doing much.

Battle Report #5: Harkevich1 vs Darius1

January 8, 2017
Scenario: Outlast
Opponent: Greg S
Initiative: Me

Harkevich1
Kodiak
Kodiak
Kodiak
Juggernaut
Juggernaut
Marauder
Marauder
Ogrun Bokur (c: Harkevich)
Ogrun Bokur (c: Ragman)
Ragman
Orin Midwinter

Darius1
Sylys
Centurion
Centurion
Stormclad
Stormclad
Jr Warcaster
Sentinel
Ragman
Laddermore
Strangeways
Tinker


-This game was pretty straight forward
-I run up, he runs up
-I notice ragman is killable, I allocate all my focus and cast mobility
-He has nothing in charge range since the centurions have polarity field up
-I run or trample all my jacks forward, buying attacks on a stormclad to get the damage train started
-Orin moves up, zaps a kodiak in the back, because so much of his stuff is electric immune, the closest model is ragman, so I boost and kill rags
-He tries to fight back, but without ragman and subpar dice he only wrecks half a kodiak
-I move my ragman into position and remove three of his heavies
-Greg concedes

-We re-rack and try to have a fast game before the store closes an hour later, he goes first this time to change things up
-He runs up, I run up
-This time he keeps ragman way back, realizing that with crane, ragman can affect an enemy model just under 15" away
-I want to save my feat so I try to stay out his threat range but have to put something in the zone
-He responds by killing the jack in the zone and refuges away, moving darius into the zone
-Very bad play by me, he gets 2pts, a free jack and once again, nothing is in my threat range, stupid me
-He shifts his other jacks towards the zone he dominated
-Now I feat and throw my jacks at him, but can only trample, but with ragman and 3 jacks he's able to do alot of damage
-he doesn't score but does a lot of damage and I lose ragman to silly placement.  I have no assassination vector, he has all 4 heavies and the store is closing, I concede


-Sorry, no pictures again, why do I even try?
-Darius with double centurion is a tough matchup for Harkevich I feel, at least in this scenario, especially if Hark goes second
-Darius can get around the cloud wall by running or tramping followed by a lot of jack hammers
-The arm23 and arm24 centurions that can't be charged are incredibly difficult to deal with without Ruin (even with ruin they are no walk in the park)
-using crane, his ragman has a ~15" application of his debuff
-If I can kill ragman before I use my feat, I'm in good shape, if not I think Hark needs to spread his jacks so Darius can only apply dark shroud to a few of my jacks
-Need to keep juggernauts safe, they are the most important in this matchup
-I also need to work hard to keep ragman safe, need to be wary of the d3 leaps from laddermore
-I think this build of Darius is favoured against my build of Hark

Battle Report #1: Harkevich1 vs Haley2

January 2, 2017
Scenario: Take and Hold
Opponent: Greg Schadt
Initiative: Greg

Harkevich1
Kodiak
Kodiak
Kodiak
Juggernaut
Juggernaut
Marauder
Marauder
Ogrun Bokur (c: Harkevich)
Ogrun Bokur (c: Ragman)
Ragman
Orin Midwinter

Haley2
Squire
Hurricane
Thorn
Ironclad
Min Stormlances
Min Mechanics
Jr Warcaster
Firefly
Ragman



-Due to good dice on my side, and bad dice on Greg's, Greg conceded after a long grind
-Matchup is not great, slightly favoured to Haley2 but Hark does have tools
-If no Thorne, matchup is much better for Hark
-Orin placement is crucial to stop Haley TK and dominate control
-Be wary of Thorn, cant bunch up too much or he will disrupt everything. his mobility is amazing
-Hurricane shock fists very good for taking out cortex's even under Harks feat
-Keep marauders alive against huge bases, they are amazing
-Against TK and mass knockdown + disruption, jumpstart is amazing