2. Rocky Mountain Rumble - It’s Safer in the Killbox

Vyros2, Incissar of the Dawnguard - Forges of War

- Griffon x5
- Aspis
- Imperatus

- Helios

- Shyeel Magister
- Arcanist Mechanik x3

Lord Arcanist Ossyan

- Discordia

- Moros

Max Strikers + Commander

Max Strikers + Eiryss3

Max Halberdiers + Officer and Standard + Soulless

Lady Aiyana and Master Holt

Houseguard Thane

Arcanist Mechanik

Battle report time!  I scrubbed out of another WMW qualifier, but had a great friggin time and played fairly well regardless.  These guys put on a really great event and highly recommend it to those of you looking to travel.

Round 1 - Outlast

Vyros2 vs Sloan (Chris G)

W

Was disappointed to see this scenario come out so early.  My opponent had Haley3/Sloan and I felt really confident with Vyros2 into both.  I can grind them out and don’t need to rely on scenario to squeak out a win.  Outlast is really live and Retribution performs really well on it, particularly with Ossyan.  This game was over before it started.  Chris was a really great opponent, but did not choose the correct list.  He went with his comfort pick into something custom built to make life miserable for gunlines.  Shield Guards everywhere share the love and Armor Deceleration goes up every turn to lube up the bullets so they hurt less on the way in.  Vyros and co. trundled forward, took Sloan’s feat on the chin, and crashed into the zone for a clean scenario win.  

Round 2 - The Pit

Vyros2 vs Absylonia2 (Kyle W)

W

Here’s a common matchup and a really great illustration of how to get around extended threat ranges.  In this match, all of Abby2’s beasts out-threaten my myrmidons and I can’t fix this with Helios drags due to Fortify.  Instead, I position myself in a great spot to score the following turn, and force my opponent to start trading in order to not give up scenario points for free.  I set up some Griffons in the Zone with Imperatus and Helios behind them and running towards the enemy flag and block some LoS using a central forest.  Imperatus being too close forces Abby away from her own flag and makes it impossible for Kyle to start scoring without losing her.  This threat shoves his entire army to the opposite side of the table and lets me rotate the line of engagement sideways and get ready for a scenario checkmate.  Kyle opts to keep his contesting models to a minimum so he doesn’t lose too much to my alpha.  This allows me to score 3 points in one turn with Vyros2 safely in the edge of the zone and a Griffon on his flag.  The following turn I run Vyros over to his flag and clear it off again to seal the deal.

Round 3 - Take and Hold

Ossyan vs Witch Coven (Shrum)

L

This is where it all went tits up.  Was pretty disappointed to lose one of my strongly preferred matchups.  I felt confident going in and played very well, but I didn’t compensate for a turn of bad dice and lost as a result.  In a lot of ways I enjoy losing more than I do winning.  We all play to win, but you learn so much more from a hard fought defeat instead.  For me personally, it’s a new challenge to overcome and a reason for me to do better next time.

In this match, the Soulhunter unit(s) are almost the only things that matter. Occultation makes them all but immune to your shooting and Coven’s feat helps deliver them.  They’ll tear through your lines and wipe out your poor infantry.  You need to make sure you deal with them as early as possible.  I get an early opportunity to kill the Hellsinger and leave out more Strike Force than I should as bait for the Soulhunters.  They can threaten them even on feat turn by using mini-feat to ignore LoS and charge in to CMA.  Shrum takes the bait to kill the Strikers, but I held my Halberdiers back to counter-punch.  Coven feats and passes turn.

Using the mini-feated Halberdiers and remainder of my vanilla strikers, I’m able to wipe out all of Shrum’s soulhunters despite the feat being up.  The rest of his pieces are far back and safe, but out of position to threaten me the following turn.  The only thing close enough is a single Seether, which turned out to be my downfall.  Discordia went up to take care of business: ready to crack the Seether into the wall he’s standing in front of.  Ossyan’s battlegroup has Future Sight, so I can try to hard roll my attacks and boost to hit or damage accordingly.  The Combo: Smite will leave it knocked down and unable to countercharge or hyperaggressive   I miss my first boosted 7 and the entire plan falls apart.

Not only did I miss my attack and lose the Chain Attack, my damage and column spacing was pitiful only taking out a single arm.  I was worried Shrum would sacrifice a witch to score his flag and clear my models off my flag if I went into the killbox, giving him a new victory with 4 CPs.  Instead, I get as far into the corner as I can without giving up the points.  Ghost Walk, Infernal Machine, and Veil of Mists later, this Seether gives no fucks about anything else on the table besides killing Ossyan.  Making great use of countercharge, Shrum is able to land in the perfect spot where Admonition won’t save me.  

Playing this match again, the correct play here was killbox myself.  The assassination run is nearly guaranteed, so I needed to change my plan and keep my caster alive.  There’s a lot that can go wrong with dice on both sides, so forcing my opponent to roll as many as possible to clear a flag would definitely been a stronger play after my dice went south on me.

In an exciting turn of events, the Seether missed his boosted charge attack, giving me a brief glimmer of hope that was smashed into the ground after Ossyan was killed by the rest of its attacks.

Ossyan and Ret in general vs Witch Coven is in a really interesting and precarious place at the moment.  The roll to go first here sets the pace on when Coven has to feat and the winner of that roll can have a significant advantage on board presence and scenario pressure.  Both players definitely want to go first to establish this dominance.

Round 4 - Incursion

Vyros2 vs Makeda2 (John B)

W

Once Shrum had knocked me out of the competition, I decided to take full advantage of the fact that the venue was actually a microbrewery (we were playing between the vats in their warehouse!) and… things started to get a bit hazy from here on out.

Makeda2 is a strong caster in Skorne that plays a mean attrition game with her Stay Death ability to stop you from actually killing stuff.  Ossyan can struggle into some Skorne builds, so I didn’t want to take any chances on a bad matchup.  IIRC John had some variant of double kitty cav in his list.

My gameplan here is similar to previous matchups vs Harbringer: Smash ‘em!  With a list like Vyros2, the quality of your attacks is punishing enough to chew through their loss prevention tech.  When every single one of your attacks is killing models, Makeda runs out of Fury fast.  I’m able to chew through them and open a lane up to Makeda herself and win on a comfortable assassination.

Round 5 - Recon

Vyros2 vs Stryker1 (Robert P)

Onto Day 2:  Where the beer was flowing like wine.  I was very familiar with this matchup, but wanted to put a different spin on it to start testing for SR17 in a backwards way.  Stryker1 has a Hurricane and a Stormwall in his list, plus a few other jacks in the Heavy Metal Theme.  As long as you can ride out the feat, it’s fairly easy to trade vs this list since his colossals should not be one-rounding your Helios/Imperatus combo.  I know how to win the attrition game, but I went for a scenario lock instead.

The idea of throwaway lights has been discussed previously among several of my Warmachine friends in early Mk3 and I still think there’s something here.  There is an early turn when Rob doesn’t have either colossal in the zone and I made my move from there. I ran 1 Griffon in front of each colossal simply to engage and body block them from moving.  He doesn’t have enough firepower to clear them without activating the colossals themselves, and the huge bases can’t really fit around my model without dealing with them first.

I used this advantage for 2-3 turns in a row while picking up scenario points and eventually get Vyros2 up to 5.  I don’t believe I ever killed either colossal, but I had enough Griffons to feed him to delay them long enough for the win.

Round 6 - Entrenched

Ossyan vs Mohsar (Dan Yount)

L

Although I speak with Dan on a somewhat regular basis, we don’t ever actually get to play against each other very often.  Although he’s an outstanding player who’s win record speaks for itself, I can’t help but feel like he took advantage of my less than sober state… ;)

Dan had a bit of an off pairing with his deadly Moshar list paired with a Bradigus Bones of Orboros list.  I really liked Ossyan into both of them and had a favorable scenario/table setup on top of it.  Neither one of his lists was thrilled to take Ossyan’s feat on the chin and my Halberdiers out threat him by miles.

Unfortunately I punt all of those advantages out the window and end up playing like a school boy on prom night.  Half on auto pilot, half drunk with confidence, half drunk on beer I plow forward into the matchup thrusting as hard and fast as I can.  Quicken goes onto the Halberds so that his Woldwyrds can shoot them better, and I sacrifice an entire unit of Strikers to take pot shots into a Woldwyrd that I can’t even hurt in a significant way.  These two early mistakes allow Dan to get a huge lead early on that he eventually presses into an assassination win.  I’d like to think I put up a good fight regardless, as the AP and CP were reasonably close in the end.

As the saying goes: doesn’t matter, had sex.  I enjoyed the game regardless, and look forward to a rematch at Gen Con later this year.  Hopefully Dan’s doesn’t regret having me on his team this year XD.  I can do better I swear!  This has never happened before…