Battle at Lund Swedish Masters game 2: Cyphon vs Haley 3

For my second game, I got another excellent player to go against: Chrisopher Wedding with his Cygnar. I figured from his army lists that he'd take Haley 3 and decided to go with Cyphon. That's mainly because I, as many others, have come to associate her with the cloud wall, and that hurts Ossrum. In retrospect, that may have been wrong seeing as this list only has one minimum unit of trenchers.

With the scenario having an objective in play, my objective being Armory, and the option to have A&H swapped in from ADR, Ossrum could also probably deal with the Echoes.

Anyways, I go the chance to go first, and got the side with less defensive terrain. I forgot to make photos during the he first turn, and here is the snapshot from after my second turn.

As you can see, I have already made one very big mistake: I forgot to get my ambushers out. What you can not see is that I also forgot to allocate focus, so my monstrosities are still empty :(

In his turn, Christpher kills all the risen and Alexia, plus one wrecker, half the unit of left-most benders and the leader of right-most benders. The medium-range shooting of his army is much stronger than I could have expected.

I feat and take his grenadier, two lancers and another light in the center. Jakes' hunter is still contesting the right flag. I again forgot to ambush.

ARM20 is not a problem for baby haley to break with Ragman's help - she removes the left wrecker. Some more infantry is picked off.

I kill Jakes' hunter with the Subduer and score the right flag. A wrecker gets magic weapons from Armory and tries to kill Granny Haley but can't hit with either of the two boosted atacks. I also finally don't forget to ambush and contest the left flag.

Baby Haley kills the last wrecker, Granny Haley contests, a lancer jams. Left side is slowly destroying my slavers.

I do basically nothing this turn, there is no hope at all.

Cyphon gets killed.

All in all, not a very interesting game due to the massive amount of mistakes I made. It was entirely possible to not stupidly lose Alexia and not to play half the game at minus one unit. With those changes, I might have actually learned something meaningful form the game.

Battle at Lund Swedish Masters game 1: Cyphon vs Sloan

I went to Battle at Lund this past weekend. On the day of arrival, I played a practice game against a friend's Ghost Fleet list with Cyphon but didn't make any pictures.

During the first day, the main event was Swedish Masters. I went with two lists:

Ossrum with ADR
Ossrum
- 6 Gunners
- 2 Blasters
Thor
- Avalancher
Max Forgeguard
2 Artilleries
Kell

ADR: Eiryss1, Alten, Eliminators, Reinholdt, A&H

Cyphon with ADR
Cyphon
- 3 Wreckers
- Warden
2 Max Benders
1 Max Slavers
Dominated Alexia
2 agitators
Free Overlords

ADR: Subduer, 1 Max Benders

The first game, I was facing Jarle Svensrud. I knew that he would take Sloan because of the insane attrition she has now in heavy metal. This meant I can't take Ossrum, as he will be destroyed.

Unfortunately, I lost the roll off so I had to go first. From the lists, it was obvious that Sloan would focus monstrosities - since they can destroy the Wall if they get there. So, I decided to get them all on one flank (which has more rough terrain), and get all my infantry on the other flank; monstrosities shold buy them time to overwhelm a flank and hopefully score enough.

When allocating focus, I made the crucial mistake of giving a Warden a focus to keep up with Cyphon, so one wrecker couldn't run forward. Otherwise, I run everything ahead.

Sloan feats and takes out two wreckers, the one agitator protected by a forward wrecker, and all overlords.

I plan to counterfeat defensively - to first run the monstrosities and then give them armour. I run all infantry further toward the flag, and also ambush from the side closest to Sloan's support solos, to either be a distraction, or start doing harm in the back lines. Unfortunately, I forget to feat.

Sloan diverts efforts to the back lines, and to my surprise backs off from her own flag, leaving it completely uncontested (but I do not score yet because Alexia and the Dominator are too far). My wrecker is killed by shooting and the charge of Jakes's heavy.

This turn, I feat and through the heavy away with my now stronger Warden. I use adrenal-flooded drudges to charge the heavy but only slightly scratch him. I jam a bit with both the drudges and the risen, and create a thrall solo to score on Sloan's flag. Cyphon is also scoring, so I go to two points.

Sloan kills both drudge unit leaders, the dominator, a full unit of left drudges, and also contests my flag with a hunter. The thrall warrior is also killed, but I wouldn't score anyway due to contesting pod.

Since the dominator is dead, Alexia's unit can only run, so no thrall solos this turn. I decide that I will score with the remaining five drudges, after killing the pod with an agitator and jamming with risen. Cyphon runs away from his flag, prepared to get to the enemy flag next turn (not shown on the photo). I also try to kill his heavy with mine but fail. Anyway, I go to three points, and unless Sloan can contest me with something I can't kill, I will win the game on my next turn, despite being so far back on attrition.

Jarle briefly considers assassination but gives up on that plan (it may very well have worked). He also considers running to contest with the Wall but we find that he can't unless an agitator dies first, which he thinks is unlikely. In the end, he goes for cleaning up the risen jam. Due to the way I placed my models, he kills something like 6-7 risen with a pod, and then his solos free up space for 4 hunters to get into contesting range.

There is no way to score the remaining to points now, so I try a very unlikely assassination, trying to free up LOS to Sloan and spell/shoot her with Cyphon and Alexia. As expected, it fails (the chance was really low).

The mistakes I see:
1. Wrong time to feat. There is no place on the board where Sloan can't shoot me, so I should have feated defensively on turn 1. I just didn't anticipate a feat turn from Sloan on turn 1.
2. Wrong way to jam. I could have had two separate lines of jammers in the critical turn, which couldn't all be killed by a pod. I am not sure it would have helped though. I may very well have failed to kill even one hunter at this point - depending on the amount of Risen that survive. Also, the threat of assassination was very real.

I am not sure if Mercs currently have an answer to this firepower. A swarm list has problems with killing the wall, while anything in Mercs that can kill the wall is too easily removed by Hunters.

I will need to try both Bart and Thexus into it.

Practice game: Ossrum vs Kaya3

This was a practice game I played against my friend who plays circle.

I played my ADR variant of Ossrum list out of theme.

ADR-choices-wise, I figured that against Kaya I'll need stealth removal, so I dumped a spray bunny for Reinholdt, and also changed Kell for Alten.

Kaya's army included two Ferals, a Pureblood, a Stalker, WE&SJ, two compulsory units of mannikins and an arc node tree.

I won the roll to go first, and the terrain on my side forced me to skew to the left due to a house on my side. I figured I would need to contest the flag there, and try to kill anything that tries to contest the left flag.

Turn 1, I give out FFE to the artillery and energize, also running with all bunnies, creating a huge zone where any beast entering it would be killed.

Kaya hides behind the cloud and advances somewhat. I don't go for assassination only since the objecive can't be targeted (so I would have to roll to hit against her full defence; also, the cannons are out of position to target her).

Instead, I kill the Pureblood and some mannikins. I also create a clear zone around Snapjaw, but contesting with one dwarf. Basically, if he wants to score with flag, then Wrong Eye is almost guaranteed to die next turn.

I was careless with Thor last turn, so he's taken out by a mannikin spray. Other mannikins do some very good work on dwarfs. SJ charges to kill a dwarf, but WE doesn't run to the flag to score, instead putting up Star Crossed and Submerge and hiding behind the wall. Stalker damages a bunny but fails to kill it, so no sprint.

I use the damaged bunny to bulldoze the stalker away from other bunnies and sacrificing it to a free strike. Shooting softens him up, and then the dwarfs finish the job. Three of the dwarves were sent to kill Wrong Eye, and they did their job. I move a bunny to score and the Avalancher to contest (outside of both ferals' LOS).

Mannikins kill an artillery and a few drarves. Ferals kill a bunny and slightly scratch the avalancher. I score one more point.

I didn't make the photo of the next turn but I killed a Sentry Stone with Avalancher, damaged another feral somewhat, killed the arc node tree, and pushed the blue feral toward the other one and blocked the way with bunnies, and went to three points. Next turn, my opponent was unable to get anything to the flag to contest so I won on scenario.

The biggest lesson I re-learned from this game is that Avalancher is not a front-line piece in this scenario despite having all the stats for it. The reason he isn't is that Thor needs to get BTB with him every time he tunes up, and Avalancher really needs Thor alive to pose a threat. As long as Thorvalancher is on the table, I am guaranteed to take a circle heavy per turn and still have some shots remaining.

The second lesson is to focus Sentry Stones early. After all, they are the reason Reinholdt is even taken into the list.