8. Gencon 2017 - That Time I Almost Won But Didn’t

Welcome to the world of salt and misery that was my Gencon performance this year.  The US WTC Team chose Gencon as our “practice event” this year.  At our practice events, we typically are bringing our proposed lists for the event and testing them against each other and play a few trial runs into perceived problematic matchups we might be concerned about.  This led to a very high talent ceiling for the event from an excellent pool of players.  One could easily go 0-3 in a qualifying event and not feel too bad about it given the caliber of opponents.

Personally I’ve never done particularly well in the first round of tournaments and events.  I don’t wake up well and my auto-pilot doesn’t always protect my fragile Retribution models as well as it needs to.  This is coupled with my own personal unlucky black cloud/tendency to hit some of my strongest opponents also in round one.

My lists:

Elara2 - DoI

- Phoenix Banshee

3x Halbs with UA and Soulless

AFG

2x Thane

Vyros2 - FoW

- 4x Griffon 1x Aspis 1x Helios 1x Imperatus

Shyeel Arcanists with Soulless

2 Arcanists

1 Artificer

Round1 Day1 was vs the lovely Jason Watt piloting Axis Convergence vs Elara2 - Defenders of Ios.  This felt like a very favorable matchup and despite Watt’s expertise with the list I should have been able to pick it apart and grind out a comfortable scenario win.  Until I forgot Counter-Charge.  During my second turn I got so spoiled for choice I started to derp models forward.  I activated my Banshee very early on which allowed him to Countercharge with his heavy later in the turn to smash poor Banshee in retaliation.  I also had a unit of Halberdiers a bit too far forward that ended up caught in his bottom of turn one feat.  On the plus side, I was able to put my Phoenix into his only TEP and knock that down top of two.  We grind back and forth and I’m able to make an admiral comeback that leaves us both low on clock.  Jason goes for a ~60% assassination run that kicks off with a Slam power attack from his Corollary to knock Elara2 down and follows up with some Battering Ram nukes.  His dice don’t punch through Elara2 and Axis ends the turn staring down Elara2 with Scything Touch camping a single Focus.  My AFG frees itself and takes two shots at Axis killing the last shield guard and hitting him with boosted damage.  I didn’t want to slam for fear of screwing up my charge lane passed the Corollary and I felt confident Elara2 could hit her boosted 7s to put him in the dirt.  I was mistaken.  Elara2 whiffs her charge attack with a 6 and it all goes downhill from there.  Watt takes his second assassination attempt and misses several of his attacks, nearly failing to kill Elara2 a second time.  A really close game ended in a dicey shitfest of our warcasters slapping each other leaving Watt the victor.

Shoutout to Andrew Lotz in Round 2.  A really cool dude I had the pleasure of playing in Round2.  Valiantly defending his Trollbloods honor instead of sidelining them until the CiD goes live.  He drops Gunnbjorn into Elara2 and it does not go well for him.  Mr. Andrew took it on the chin with a smile and killed as many models as he could after Elara2’s murderous alpha strike, then promptly lost on scenario.  I feel guilty for not playing Vyros2 in this game.  It list locked me for the final round and would have been a more entertaining match for my opponent.  Andrew, if you’re out there, next time we play I promise not to drop a dogshit theme-spam list so that we can have a proper matchup.  

Round 3 was vs my buddy Chris running Denny2 Ghost Fleet (list locked) vs Vyros2 (also list locked).

Let’s take a moment to complain about how much I hate Divide and Conquer.  It punishes you for preparing for matchups appropriately, but seeing duplicate factions/lists in your randomly selected tournament opponents.  You don’t see the consequences until the final round which is supposed to be this exciting raid boss top table warmachine match that can turn into one sided garbage because I played Cygnar 4 times and am now locked out of my Cygnar drop.

Anyways.. We both wanted to check out Gencon so we throw down fast and furious.  Imperatus weirdly gets really deep into his lines with Side Step and manages to kill Blackbane and Rengrave (with fire) while engaging a bunch of rifles.  I charge a Griffon to wreck a Stalker through a forest.  Denny2 feats and tries to assassinate Vyros2, but doesn’t quite factor in exactly how many Shield Guards he needs to chew through.  I use Feat moves to bring Imperatus into range and easily counter-assassinate for a 2-1 finish.

Day2 I hit another soft opponent round one to give me some time to warm up and get ready for the tougher matches ahead [/sarcasm].  I see the sexy smiling face of the legendary Jake Van Meter sitting across from me as I clench my butthole and prepare for a difficult match.  We’re playing Outlast which puts his Abby2 list at a huge scenario disadvantage lacking any units.

Jake has Scythean, Proteus, Seraph, Neraph, Naga, 2x Blight Wasps, 2x Forsaken, 1 Hellion.  Maybe some other shit?  I’m not sure.

I outrange him by a fair bit, so am able to set the line of engagement and get the first swing.  Elara2 sets up her feat turn to kill Proteus, Seraph, Scythean, Naga, Hellion.  Proteus has Bracer, so I need to commit my Phoenix and the Seraph is blocking LoS to the Scythean.  My dice go a bit limp and floppy on me which leaves the Seraph with 2 boxes left prior to my last unit of Halberdiers activating.  With nothing else to go I miss out on my opportunity to charge the Scythean with 5-6 Halberdiers.  I may not have killed it outright, but it would have made the rest of the game substantially more comfortable for me.  Jakes wasps and Forsaken do lots of work clearing Halberdiers and I start my scenario grind.  By Round 7, both Jake and I have under a minute left on our clocks and I’m 3-4 points ahead of him (at the end of the round) making it impossible to catch up.  I don’t realize this and should have run Elara2 into the far corner of the table where it was safe.  Prepping for his final turn, Jake runs his remaining Neraph and Scythean into base to base with Elara2 (outside of Abby2 control range) and passes the clock to me.  I’ve got about 45 seconds on my clock vs Jake’s 30 seconds.

Here’s a great learning opportunity:  When the checkmate appears in front of you, make sure you use your entire clock to try and think of a way out of this.  Jake’s plan was to bully me into a bad decision and it worked out in his favor.  The free strikes from the two beasts have a reasonable chance of killing me, even through my Focus, so I’m not immediately excited about that.  Abby2 can run to get her beasts back in control, but I don’t quite measure how far that’s going to be.  I have Halberdiers that could have charged Abby2 with mini-feat still active to have a very good chance of killing her.  I could risk the free strikes and run to outrange her Scythean and risk one unboosted charge attack from her Neraph.

I did none of these things.  I stood still for a few seconds.  Then attacked the Neraph.  Missed.  Passed turn back to Jake hoping I can survive long enough with my full Focus stack for him to clock out.  My thought here was that if I connected with the Neraph I could boost damage and possibly take out an Aspect and/or threaten to kill it with a Retaliatory Strike.  It was basically the worst plan I possibly could have thought of.  I’m terrible and no one should even read this blog, but here we are.  Jake wins and carries himself all the way to the top table where he loses out to Convergence in the finals of Masters.

My other two games on Day2 were sweet, but we were in the fun bracket so a little less intense.  Round2 was a Retribution Defenders of Ios mirror.  My opponent has Kaelyssa, 2x Halberdiers, 2x HRT, and Ellowuyr Swordsmen.  I see the Swordsmen in a lot of DoI lists and they feel overcosted and suboptimal every time.  If you love the models and want to play them, more power to you, but I’d leave them out of your list unless you’re running Thyron.  The ARM 13 is where they fall apart.  I was able to kill ~5 of his Swordsmen with a round of AFG shooting without sacrificing much on my end.  They killed a few things, but are way overcosted for what they can actually accomplish on the table.

The final round was against another amazing Trollbloods opponent.  I’m locked into Vyros2 again vs Doomshaper3 with Mulg and the Mountain King.  I set up a masterful Sidestep run with Imperatus into Mulg by dragging a Northkin Shaman into the perfect position AND drag the Kriel Stone Aura away from Mulg with Helios.  Imperatus comes in ready to fuck some shit up, then gets punted on a Critical Slam directly into the Mountain King.  With my plans in ruin, this dude’s next turn is a massacre.  He downs Helios and Imperatus which is usually a Game Over for Vyros2, but he caps out most of his beasts on FURY, so I’ve got one quarter left.  Vyros2’s feat lets him wiggle into charge range of Doomshaper himself.  I use my remaining Griffons to build Synergy and kill his transfer target Light Warbeasts.  Then Big Daddy V goes in for the kill.  Implacability stops Doomshaper3 from falling down, so the Tough checks get a little kinky.  I kill him in a few swings and end up with 3 attacks left to chew through tough checks.  This bastards makes his first two and leaves the entire game up to a 5+ with my final attack.

He fails it and I win.  Lul.  RIP Doomshaper3.  Get rekt by the champion of the losers bracket.  I got to wander around GenCon for the rest of the day feeling like a big man.