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.