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 #14: Harkevich vs Doomshaper2

January 18, 2017
Scenario: Recon
Opponent: Dan W
Initiative: Me

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


Doomshaper2 ADR
Mulg
Mountain King
Mauler
Earthborn
Axer
Runebearer
Janissa
Whelps
min stone 
THEME:POWER OF DHUNIA


No pictures this time so I'll just give a brief overview of the game.  Once again, Dan's list is so fast and threats so far!   I wanted to see if Hark in theme could play into it.  Unfortunately I think doomy is advantaged a bit too much for comfort. 

I go first and blaze up the table, staying just out of his threat ranges (15" MK melee threat!)  He responds by running up just outta my threat.  I try to make a cloud wall that stays just outside of his feat walk and punch range, forcing him to either cast rush and feat to walk into my kodiaks, or feat and trample with rage.  He opts for the latter and kills a marauder, 2 kodiaks, cripples a third.   Ouch.


My first priority is killing the mountain king.  I try to move up and kill a couple stone guys to get the MK out of stone protection, but the 3 shots I take on the stone bearer, I don't even force a tough.  The rest of the winterguard fire at his mauler and a rocket goes into the MK.  The mountain king has probably taken 8pts so far.  I feat and get a fully loaded juggernaut and loaded marauder into him.  My dice are terrible with the marauder and leave the MK on 1 box!  I feel the MK HAS TO DIE, so I take 2 free strikes and get my final juggernaut into him, killing him on the charge, wasting 3 focus.  Perhaps I should have just killed the mauler like I planned, but I felt the MK was too big of a threat to leave fully functional, surrounded by whelps. 

That was the turning point, with the mauler still alive and my juggernaut banged up from taking a bunch of free strikes, he is able to get to much work done on his turn (even tho his earthborn and axer were full fury (but didn't frenzy!).  He grinds me out and my last ditch assassination attempt fails.




Thoughts.  I'm not sure what the best way to play into this game with Hark is.  Especially if he goes first.  Do I be really aggressive, cloud up and feat hoping he doesn't do enough?  Do I cloud up and stay much farther back?  The amount of damage he can do even from just trampling under Doomys feat is staggering.  I think Butcher3 is generally what I want to drop into trolls, and this convinces me further.  Even though with butcher the matchup isn't that great either.  Retalitory strike with wild aggression on mulg is terrifying and mulgs animus is rough on Butcher. 

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Battle Report #13 - Harkevich1 vs Amon1

January 18, 2017
Scenario: The Pit
Opponent: Bryan Taylor
Initiative: Me

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

Amon1
Templar
Templar
Crusader
Crusader
Dervish
Dervish
Dervish
Dervish
Dervish
Devout
min Choir
min Choir
Wrack
Vassal Mechanic
Free Vassal
Free Vassal
Free Covenant of Menoth
THEME: CREATORS MIGHT

Battle of the themes! Jack spam on jack spam.  Last time Bryan played the High Reclaimer into me and after that he felt that if he couldn't kill Harkevich, the cloud wall and armour hark brings is to much.

Turn 1 we both run up.  And man is Hark fast in theme.  My kodiaks are past the halfway mark top of 1!  Once again, lots of missing pictures :(.


End of my turn 2. I didn't need mobility so I load up 2 kodiaks and a maurader on the left.   The maurder charges the dervish on the left, boosts the combo slam and rams him into the building.  One more attack goes into him leaving him on 3.  Marauder repo's back.  One kodiak charges the templar that WAS besides the building and the dervish.  He did have fortify and enliven on him, but because of bad positioning on bryans part, i was able to pin him in with a charge.  Punch him at dice-7 a couple times and throw him into the wall.  Next Kodiak charges in doing more damage and throws him at a choir member further away, leaves it on 18 boxes.  The Blue and white templar in the picture is where the it ends up.  A rocket moves up, hits and kills a vassal that bryan accidently put within 20".  I create a cloud wall but didn't quite plan it out well enough as I leave 1 kodiak in sight.  Hark runs to the flag

(MISSING PICTURE)

With full synergy and d battle he kills the kodiak in sight and gets 2 fully loaded dervishes onto the left marauder and kills him as well.  He needs to feat to do so.  With side steps he also contests my flag with the broken dervish and a full one.  He contests with 3 heavies in a triangle, placing the fortified jack in front to stop me from throwing it out of the zone.

 (MISSING PICTURE)

Feat turn.  I load up a kodiak and 2 juggernauts.  My WGI, joe and hark kill the 2 contesting dervishes and shoot up the third south of the building, crippling its arms.  Kodiak kills a dervish blocking my juggernaut, juggernauts go in to finish off the fortified jack and kill the crusader.  I score 1.

Bryan is in trouble, to much armour and not enough jacks left to chew through it.  He leaves a kodiak on 3, and does some damage to my marauder knocking both its arms out.  Unfortunately the crusader had to trample to get in range though.  Bryan feels the game is pretty well over so to maximize damage, he allocates everything and gets the syngergy chain started with Amon, butting him in a risky position.



I load up my jacks that have cortex's.  The kodiak damages the templar and the juggernaut finishes it off with its charge.  With his 3 remaining focus he boosts his fist and buys and boosts an ice axe into amon, killing him. 


Bryan is still learning Menoth and in time he'll be quite skilled.  He did very well in mk2 with both cryx and khador.  He made some mistakes by not effectively using enliven and boxing in his templar turn 1.  His list struggles with the cloud walls, but at full synergy, his crusaders hit at even dice against my feated jacks.  It's crazy.  This is a game of positioning, enliven and effective cloud walls.  The list probably favours Hark slightly, especially with in theme with the extra move turn 1, but amon definitely has game into it.

Battle Report #9: Harkevich1 vs High Reclaimer1

January 11, 2017
Scenario: Incursion
Opponent: Bryan Taylor
Initiative: Bryan

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

High Reclaimer1

Scourge of Heresy

Reckoner

Knights Exemplar

Max Vengers

Max Idrians + CA

Rhoven and co.

Min Cleansers + CA

Min Choir

Ok so there's a lot of proxies in this report but I remembered pictures again. My models are out being painted and Bryan just bought a bunch:

Here's the proxy legend:
Winter guard infantry = Idrians

Storm knights = Vengers

Ternion + IF Kovniks = Rhoven & co.

Risen = ChoirRockbottom = Cleanser CA

Templar = Scourge of Heresy

Large bases with Khador jack pictures on them

End of Round 1.  I run up, he runs ups.  His Idrians advance and shoot the prey'd Kodiak (shield wall token kodiak). He does something like 16pts doing 2 man CRA's with Hof.

(Forgot picture)

Hark casts mobility, moves up and shoots an Idrian. Kodiaks tample up and make a cloud wall spanning from the forest on the left to almost the house on the right.  Maurader on the left charges venger closest to him and such an angle that the combo slam slams him into the leader.  Killing the charge target and knocking the other down.  Other stuff moves up

The standing vengers charge the maruader which was right beside the house, as does the reckoner.  I could have moved hark a little to the left and put the maurader out of LOS of the reckoner, oh well, dead marauder.  Idrians move up and shot my juggernaut, as do the cleansers.  About 9 damage is done.  Other stuff moves up.

It's feat turn!  Ragman moves up so that dark shroud will be applied to the templar.  Full kodiak charges into templar, hits it twice, throws it into the building and continues to beat on it.  My dice are terrible tho and leave it on 9.  Other kodiak charges it to finish it off instead of fighting vengers.  Orin, and kodiak kill some Idrians, juggernaut tramples the rest, finishing off the unit and buys a couple attacks into Scourge.  Decent damage on Scourge and I hit the crit so he's stationary.  Marauder kills 3 cleaners then repo's back to the flag to score.  Silly me doesn't repo the kodiak onto the flag

(Couple missing pictures)

1-0.  Bryan is in a rough spot and reponds by trying to do damage to my jacks, not much is done.  I respond by killing all but 1 vengers (mistake on my part leave the last one alive) and I kill some exemplar as well as Rhoven and co. I run Harkevich away but do it haphazardly not respecting the crazy threat range of HR.  I also score a flag.

2-0.  Bryan has his feat for a last ditch assassination run, he is far to down on attrition.  He is able to get one exemplar onto Hark as well as 2 HoF'd Vengers.  But Hark is camping 3 and Hark lives with lots of life to spare.  I kill HR.

Not to much to say about this matchup.  Bryan made a mistake by letting me kill all the Idrians, if he held one back his assassination would have had more attacks.   However, the amount of armour and clouds I bring HR can't really deal with effectively (it's possible Bryan didn't leverage the Exemplar well enough, perhaps they can tip the scale). The match should be in Hark favour if and ONLY IF I can keep Hark safe.  That is what this match hinges on and it will likely be difficult to keep him safe against a cagey opponent.

Battle Report #7: Harkevich1 vs Una2

January 10, 2017

Scenario: Line Breaker
Opponent: Idavoll H
Initiative: Idavoll



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



Una2
Wilder
Gorax
Scarsfell
Scarsfell
Scarsfell
Scarsfell
Scarsfell
Scarsfell
Scarsfell
Scarsfell
Scarsfell
Shifting Stones
Shifting Stones
Sentry Stones
Sentry Stones
Blackclad

Idavoll proxied this list so I could get experience against Una2. I wanted it to be a worse case scenerio so we dropped the pieces that don't do much against my list (like the pureblood) for more Scarsfell. Also gave him first turn to see what its like going second against her. Since it was his first time playing her, and we were trying to see how the matchup played, we played pretty loose with some take backs and such. Because of this I'm not going to do much of a battle report and instead focus on the matchup in general.

I knew how hard the griffons hit but seeing it play out was still eye opening. Their damage output is absolutely ridiculous. The game ended with him getting a single primal'd griffon into hark and running another griffon in for flank. Hark was sitting on 4 focus, and under feat so arm 19. Two griffons benefiting from flank can kill a jack outside of feat turn.

Under Una's feat, my list does have some methods to deal damage. Orin shooting a friendly jack and then boosting on the griffons gets some good damage on. As does the boostable vent steams. Applying ragman to any of this damage is just gravy. It can reliably kill 1-2 griffons through Una's feat turn depending on positioning.

Harks cloudwall is quite beneficial. Staying just within 10” of the front griffons, but outside of 9.5” with clouds is ideal if possible. That way even under feat the griffons cannot walk into my jacks and my jacks threaten his griffons. Save Harks feat for the turn after Una's feat if at all possible.

Keeping Hark safe is paramount to this matchup. Need to remember about thunderbolt. Fishing for the crit with thunderbolt allowed Una to knock down my jack blocking LOS, and push hark away so he doesn't benefit from Iron sentinel. This also allowed Una to get the griffon in which killed Hark. Blocking landing zones for griffons is important to keep hark safe as well.

This matchup is favoured for Una, but not crushingly so. And the more common builds with a pureblood and only 6 or 7 griffons is better for hark. Will need some more practice against her.

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 #3: Harkevich1 vs Baldur1

January 4, 2017
Scenario: Extraction
Opponent: Idovall Heimdall
Initiative: Me

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

Baldur1
Pureblood
Megalith
Woldwarden
Woldwyrd
Woldwyrd
Sentry Stones
Sentry Stones
Shifting Stones
Shifting Stones
Skinwalkers + UA

-Clock Victory, attrition disadvantage.
-He was slowly grinding me out and was soon going to start out scoring me
-His list hits hard between megalith and the skinwalkers (cycling stone skin) and he can use his feat to deny me the alpha while standing quite close
-He can also place a forest to deny LOS
-Hard to protect ragman and orin with all his boosted sprays, the bokurs only last so long
-Need to be very conservative with the placement of ragman, deathfield is crucial
-Orin is also important to stop geomancing earth spikes scalpeling  out ragman
-Need more practice against circle in general, their angles are very difficult to stop/predict against a skilled player

Battle Report #2: Harkevich1 vs Amon1

January 4, 2017
Scenario: The Pit
Opponent: Bryan Taylor
Initiative: Me

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

Amon1
Templar
Templar
Dervish
Dervish
Dervish
Dervish
Dervish
Dervish
Dervish
Devout
min Choir
min Choir
Wrack
Anastasia
Kicky Monk


-Scenario Victory and attrition advantage
-I was able to sit on my flag and box him out of scenario after I killed Anastasia and the monk as they were his only mobile models
-Amon's jacks hits very hard, getting an easy +5 swing to their pow, can get to even dice or dice-1 (jack dependent) even on Harks feat turn
- Amon has no way around the cloud wall unless he can spread way out.  This should allow Hark to get into position with clouds then feat the the following turn AND get the alpha
-As always, work hard to keep Ragman alive.  Against Amon, with good use of reposition should be able to keep Ragman alive and death fielding for 2 rounds
-Make sure to save juggernauts for the heavies, send kodiaks and marauders into the dervishes
-Vent steam is great for dealing with kicky monks
-Going first is very beneficial.  If Hark goes first, matchup is likely favoured decently.  Much closer to even if Amon goes first

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