Battle at Lund Champions game 1: Cyphon vs Axis

Next day I played in the Champions tournament. My Cyphon list remained the same, and I didn't actually use Ossrum.

The first game was against Convergence, and my opponent's name was Michael.
He had Axis with double TEP:

Axis
- 2 Conseervators
- Invertor
- Cypher
- Diffuser
- Corollary
2 TEP-s
6 attunement and 9 elimination servitors

He won the roll-off and chose to go first. Here, I chose the side that allowed me to deploy my heavies in the center - the other side had forests and water clustered together, which wouldn't allow my heavies to deploy centrally. However, looking at the battlefield now, long after the game, I am realizing that the side I have would have been a nightmare for my opponent, with his two TEP-s. As for myself, I could have worked around the forests by simply keeping some drudges back to contest my zone and pushing with everything into his.

He advances with everything.

I mark TEP threat zones and advance all my heavies and unit leaders outside of those. The overlords ignore the left TEP-s threat zone, but they also spread out in such a way that he can only take one with each spray (effectively meaning that he could wipe them out, but only if he leaves my drudges alone).

Both TEP-s go for spraying drudges instead. Heavies advance with caution, careful not to get within 13" of my heavies.

Alexia does her recursion thing. Overlords spray over TEP and servitors. A thrall warrior goes and hits TEP a bit. Ambushers go for the second TEP, but I can only get one in (other kill some servitors). I also advance my heavies a bit more, and make sure to keep trampling landing spots in front of them blocked out (I don't want to feat purely defensively, and I want to feat after him, offsetting the debuffs somewhat).

He feats now but doesn't do nearly enough work (I took care to keep my heavies away). He does thin the ranks of my slavers but has some bad dice on the left TEP against my overlords.

It's my time to feat. I can't get to his TEP with heavies but I continue sprayng with overlords, as well as create one more Thrall (which can charge, as he wasn't in Axis's pulse feat). Basically, I get lucky with dice and take out the left TEP. In the middle, I can't to much either. I can still get my Subduer within 6" of one of his Conservators, which I do. He doesn't countercharge (probably forgot to), so I shoot, knock him down, drag and finish off with the help of a wrecker. Another Adrenal-flooded slaver drudge charges the right TEP, doing a bit of damage. The situation is actually really good attrition-wise, although I somehow spent a ton of time on the clock. I also destroyed his objective and score one point.

Axis goes into overlords personally, and scores in his zone, He also destroys my objective. Score is 2-1. This isn't really a problem, though. I can destroy two heavies and his TEP now, getting full dominance on my own flank and contesting his. The real problem is the clock.

I can see an assassination angle. I pre-measure and see that I can get my wrecker to axis in a point where I would be within my Agitator's Instigate bubble. However, I am in a bit of a hurry (which is why I am going for assassination in the first place), so I forget to first block the Invertor with a risen. When agitator advances to Instigate, the Invertor countercharges. He doesn't kill the agitator but he is now in a position where I have to slightly alter the charge lane of the wrecker to avoid a free strike - which in turn takes me out of the Instigate bubble. Long story short, I missed both of my boosted initials on Axis, and he lives. Next turn, I lose by clock.

Lessons learned:
1. When the opponent has two huge bases, look more carefully at the sides and focus more on the obstacles that are going to hinder him instead of just my own perspective.
2. Don't forget about countercharges.
3. Not really a lesson but I do have to get more practice against Axis to avoid wasting time. This was going really well attrition-wise.

Battle at Lund Team Tournament Game 3: Cyphon vs Nemo1

I played the third game against Cornelius Dyhre-Poulsen with Cygnar, and he had two heavy metal lists, so I chose Cyphon.

His list was:

Nemo 1
- Squire
- Lancer
- Hammersmith
- Stormclad
- Cyclone
- Dynamo
- Centurion
Strangewayes
Jakes
- Charger
Journeyman
- Firefly

Cornelius deploys fairly centrally, and I skew my deployment towards the left with monstrosities, because of the wood on my right flank.

Nemo advances as far as possible, with upkeeps going up. The stormclad gets arcane shield, and Jakes' charger sidekick.

I advance with the infantry horde in front to screen from charges, and advance my monstrosities behind those. One wrecker is redeployed more centrally. The only upkeep going up is onslaught.

Nemo opens with some shooting, clearing a ton on infantry (who will be brought back by Alexia later). He also for some reason commits the stormclad, probably hoping that Arcane Shield will save it. Jakes and her jack do some work on the Overlords on the right and prepare to secure the flank against potential ambushers,

I contemplated not feating but I just really need the armor bonus. The central wrecker easily takes out the stormclad (POW22 is a thing), while the rest cooperate to remove the lancer (iirc). The new risen jam up the center. I must say, it was pretty difficult to maneuver with the risen, trying to avoid blocking myself from places I needed to get. On the right, I bring in the ambushers and get some work done on the charger, but haven't taken him out yet.

Nemo removes a wrecker and does some damage to the other one, as well as the subduer. However, the brain on both remains intact. Jakes and her charger try to do some work but aren't very efficient. He keeps dynamo conservatively back, which is a big deal, since this jack is bound to be a big pain in the end game, once the exchanges are done.

I remove a hammersmith and a firefly, as well as Jakes' charger but am unable to do more than that.

Nemo removes a second wrecker and cripples brain on the third (I have paper armor after all, outside of feat turn). Jakes kills the agitator on the right. Cyclone gets Arcane Shield.

With no brain on the one wrecker, I am unable to remove Cyclone. I move Cyphone away from Dynamo. Drudges kill Jakes.

My heavies are already damaged a lot, so it is trivial to remove them, and then get a heavy to Cyphon. Cyphon dies.

Lessons learned and thoughts on the matchup:
The only mistake that I have maybe made is not putting up perseverance on one of my heavies. Otherwise, the match up is just not kind enough to Cyphon. The jacks under Nemo can be as powered up as monstrosities (on feat turn, it is actually very easy for him to go all convergence-style on focus). The fact that monstrosities have paper armor is huge here, as in a prolonged grind this just means he can survive my attacks and I can't survive his.

Battle at Lund Team Tournament Game 2: Cyphon vs Axis

I played the second game against Tobias Ollson with Convergence. I had a bit of a practice against convergence recently, and I am always using Cyphon as the drop here.

He chose Axis. His list:

Axis
- 2 Conservators
- 2 Inverters
- Corollary, Diffuser, Cipher
TEP
3 Attunement (flare), 9 Elimination (sniper), 3 Accretion (repair) servitors
Optifex

Unfortunately, he got the first turn. Mainly this is bad as it makes my ambushers appear later - even though I still prefer to keep them ambushing, to keep TEP more honest.

I deploy almost totally symmetrically. This scenario is so dead that it's going to be an attrition game, so I feel no need to skew. The asymmetrical choices are: which side to put the Subduer and which side to put the Overlords. Both go left: subduer because more heavies are there, Overlords because TEP isn't there.

He runs up. I understand that losses to shooting on the way in are inevitable, and so don't hold back too much either (alexia and one of the wreckers on the right side are outside of TEP's threat range).

Axis shows why TEP is in every list. The right side benders are almost all gone. Elimination servitors also kill quite a few benders from the left side. Alexia collected a ton of corpses.

Since his heavies are still far away, I can't feat yet. I kill a lot of servitors with my overlords, and I use the newly created risen to jam the heavies. I use the ambushing slavers as a distraction on the left side. I also move my heavies aggressively forward. I understand that he outthreatens me with charges because of the feat, and so I move in with my own heavies. If he wants to kill them, then he will have to trample, which means that he greatly reduces the effectiveness of his alpha. I make one big mistake in this turn, too - I forget to allocate focus to my monstrosities to prepare them for the action in my next turn.

He feats of course. He clears the landing spots (although some had been left open, near the left wrecker - also my mistake), and then tramples forward. He takes out the brain on the left wrecker, removes the subduer, but doesn't take out the right wrecker. The far right wrecker takes a hit from TEP and moves over. Basically, my losses could have been less if I had properly covered the landing spots near the left-most wrecker with drudges. One of the conservators is occupied with my slavers, as I had hoped.

My feat turn comes, and I remove TEP and the right-most invertor. I made a huge mistake in planning here. Basically, I wanted to opent the scoring, and so went to the flag. However, after removing the TEP I moved the wrecker closest to Cyphon in a wrong position. I killed the Invertor with just three attacks, and it would have been better to spend the remaining atacks to damage the Conservator.

Tobias sees an assassination angle, and so instead of chewing throught the attrition game with my ARM20 heavies he just tramples the conservator over my agitator and kills Cyphon.

Lessons learned:
1. With the style of jamming of this Cyphon list, it is important to remember to cover trample landing spots, preferably with something that has high defense (like an overlord - to prevent them being easily shot off).
2. Always keep assassination angles in mind in this kind of a grind.

Battle at Lund Team Tournament Game 1: Ossrum vs Gunnbjorn

The next day, I was randomly paired into a team for the team tournament. The number of teams was odd, and our team was he one to get a buy. So, instead I had a game against my team mate Joe Jephson and his Trollbloods.

I haven't written down his list but it had two Earth Borns, mauler, Dozer, a bomber and a some kind of storm troll. Since I wasnted a game to learn something from, I pointed out to my opponent that I have a 23" threat range KD gun on Avalancher, and that Gunnbjorn can use EB-s animus to become immune to KD.

We both deployed rather centrally. My intent was to go for dominating my own zone, while contesting his and trying to weather him down with shooting.

I put up snipe on Avalancher and FFE on an artillery, and run everything up.

Gunnbjorn advances cautiously, hiding the bomber behind a forest, and preparing to contest my zone with his storm troll. Dozer takes two dwarves and an artillery (so a usual crewman dies instead). No feat yet.

Since he hasn't feated, it's too early for me to feat as well. I advance and start doing work on Dozer. Some bunnies are further away, in preparation for massive jamming and contesting action. Spray bunnies are forward to act as shields.

Gunnbjorn goes into his zone and feats. Bomber and Dozer do more work on my dwarves, and also damage some bunnies. He goes to one point.

The storm troll is out of feat, so I kill him. Dwarves and driller are sent into attack, while bunnies run to contest and jam. Three bunnies are kept in reserve to kill Dozer later. I score, so we go to 1-1.

He kills two bunnies and a dwarf, and fails to finish the driller. Score goes to 2-1.

I kill Dozer, block the Mauler outside of EB-s' melee range, kill the objective and to to 4-1. Since he can' contest my zone, I go to 5-1 and win.

Lessons learned:
1. Dozer is a very high priority target.
2. In correct hands, this match up is attrition-wise bad for Ossrum. If it were not for the scenario, he would have won the game.

Battle at Lund Steamroller Game 3: Cyphon vs Morvahna2

I played the last game of the steamroller against Morvahna2.

The list was in Devourer's Host theme:

Morvahna 2
- Gorax
- Stalker
Bloodweaver Night Witch
Tharn Ravager Shaman
Death Wolves
Shifting Stones
Max Blood Trackers
2 x Max Wold Riders
Max Tharn Ravagers + Chieftain

I don't think this is a good match up for me, but his other list was Baldur2 IIRC, so I decided I shouldn't drop Ossrum into this pair. I won the roll off, and in my first turn send everyone forward at full speed. The upkeeps that go up are Onslaught on Cyphon and Blur on Overlords.

Morvahna advances cautiously, and I now make the huge strategic mistake of going full throttle ahead instead of spreading out. I also forget to Ambush. The thing is that I'm more used in my recent games to use drudges as living shields instead of spray fuel, while monsrosities have been the ones doing work. This is not the correct approach here, but I haven't realized it yet.

As you can see from the result of Morvahna's turn 2, I am out of drudges, risen and overlords.

I start cleaning things up with monstrosities, and as you can see do a reasonably good job of this.

Morvahna feats and brings back almost everyone, and takes the Subduer. I kill several more models, and also finally (in turn 4) remember to bring out the ambushers. There are a few more turns of grinding, but I'm too low on attrition now to be able to get the game, and eventually Cyphon is killed.

Lessons learned:
1. Cyphon actually can play reasonably well into infantry with this build, but I have to use my Benders sprays, and I have to spread bodies around much more.
2. The main reason it went so badly for me is because I was 100% sure that I am losing in this matchup, so I made it worse by forgetting to bring ambushers and doing some other stupid decisions.

Battle at Lund Steamroller Game 2: Ossrum vs Gunnbjorn

I had previously faced Gunnbjorn with Ossrum, and my experience had been that he was very easy to assassinate. On the feat turn, I can't damage him. Hower, it is very easy to wait the feat out and then assassinate.

My opponent's name was Andreas Graae and here is his list:

Power of Dhunia
Gunnbjorn
- Runebearer
- Mountain King
- Earthborn
- Bomber
- Dozer & Smigg
2 Shamans
Dhunian Knot
Krielstone min + Elder

I get the first turn, and he gives me the side that is more difficult to maneuver around, with the obstruction in the way. I advance aggressively, preparing to go for an assassination if he doesn't feat.

He advances not nearly aggressively enough, and he does feat. One surprise I get is he EB animus on Gunnbjorn - so he is basically immune to knockdowns. I realize that assassination, even on the next turn, will not work. Also, my list lacks the tools to kill Mountain King. I decide to feat and go for scenario instead.

I feat and jam him out, getting my spray bunnies on flags to score. The MK and EB are blocked by sturdy bunnies, and the ones blocking EB are not in MK-s melee range. The driller blocks the MK as well. I've also removed the shaman on the left that might otherwise run to contestm bulldozed the bomber further away and then blocked him with bunnies and engaged with dwarves, and removed half of the Dozer&Smigg wih shooting.

There isn't much that Andreas can do at this point. He removes one bunny with the bomber and some help from other models, and frees up a lane for Smigg to trample towards the left flag. He can't contest the right flag with anything (the driller is still alive, too). I get a point in his turn. In my turn, I kill smigg and block everything, scoring two on my turn and another two on his, because he still can't contest.

Lessons learned:
1. Gunnbjorn does not necessarily die to Ossrum's shooting, if he has an EB.
2. Ossrum doesn't have to be a static gunline. He can be a highly mobile jamming force, especially against low model count armies without flight and other mobility shenanigans. Not sure how this will fly in the new steamroller, but this is still an important consideration.

Battle at Lund Steamroller Game 1: Ossrum vs Ashlynn

Several people dropped from the Masters by this time for the steamroller. Since there was an odd number of players, one had to get a buy, and it turned out to be me. So, I instead dropped also and joined the Steamroller.

Here, I took a different Ossrum army:

Hammer Strike:
Ossrum
- 2 Blasters
- 6 Gunners
- Driller
Thor
- Avalancher
Max Forge Guard
2 Artilleries

I played against Robin Fredman with Ashlynn, and the scenario was Outlast.

His list was:

Ashlynn, Nomad, Talon and Vanguard
WE&SJ
Dahlia & Snake
Gorman, Ragman, Gibbs
Max Nyss
2 units of Eliminators

Robin got the first turn.

Seeing his deployment, I thought it should be easy enough to contest the left zone with the driller and a couple of bunnies, and deployed to clear the right zone and start dominating there.

Both armies ran and upkeeps went up.

Robin advances on both flanks very cautiously. He puts corrosion on two bunnies with snake.

I make a big mistake here, forgetting that Quicken (which is on Nyss) only gives +2 defence against shooting, and so I commit to killing too few Nyss with dwarves and also bundle them up too much. I have to rely on shooting to remove the remaining Nyss from the zone but fail. The right-side eliminators are gone. Driller gets the Vanguard after some shooting drops it.

Snake kills a lot of the dwarves, and nyss and talon help a bit with bunnies. Snapjaw easily kills the driller with the help of Ragman and Gorman. Ashlynn scores 2 while I am still at 0.

I clear the right zone and contest the other zone with a bunny. The problem is that I can't currently do to reign in Snapjaw and the Snake. Score goes to 2-2.

On his turn, he kills the bunny with something and then sends the lessers and eliminators to do work. He also contested with a nomad, the score now going to 4-2.

I then kill the nomad and still am unable to do anything about the Crocs and Snake. I am only able to contest wih one bunny. Score goes to 4-4.

On his turn, he used ashlynn to kill the remaining bunny and goes to 6 points.

Lessons learned:
1. I am reminded how Ossrum can start losing to scenario pressure, when he has to solve tricky attrition problems.
2. Against Ashlynn and any army with a support bloat, it migh be good to just point AOE guns that way and hope they kill models such as ragman or gorman..