I don't know anything about Grymkin, so I chose my army simply by what I like to play in general - i.e. Damiano. Johan played the whole tournament with the Child, and wanted to try the Heretic. His army:
Dark Menagerie
Heretic
- 3 Crabbits (one free)
- 2 Cage Ragers
- 2 Gorehounds
- Skin and Moans
Death Knell
3 Free Gremlin Swarms
Lady Karianna Rose
2 x 10 Dread Ros
He chose the following arcana:
Pandemonium: cancel one order
Sacrifice: remove all damage
We rolled a scenario that is pretty good for me in the match up, since it has an objective right in the middle. I chose the one that gives a magical attack. He chose the one that heals.
Johan won the roll off and elected to go first. His deployment was fairly symmetrical, and so was mine.
During his turn, Johan advances, puts fury on left dread rots and places the wall of fire in front of my trenchers to prevent them killing too many of his infantry.
I put dead eye and sure foot on the trenchers and do an assault order. One trencher also received a magical attack, and he kills a gremlin swarm. The rest kill a few dread rots, and some hang back in reserve. The trump arcana is triggered, with trenchers becoming pray. I advance the rest of my forces into positions, wary of the dogs on flanks.
Now I want to kill Skin and Moans, and the plan is to get both Manglers on the job. I will need to trigger road to war for that (which I need to cast first).
I can't remember all the details of what I did during the turn but I did make a mistake: instead of triggering road to war for the red mangler first, I charged the green one into Skin and Moans. I got more than half of his health down, and triggered road to war after that. Johan triggered sacrifice, and Skin and Moans goes to full health. Understanding that I can't finish him now (since he's DEF13), I instead concentrate on the left Cage Rager, and manage to kill him with my two heavies (I feated, so had POW21). My halberdiers on the right kill the dog, while the ones on the left do some work on the Dread Rots. Kell and trenchers kill one more Swarm. I score on my flag.
Dread Rots and Skin and Moans (with POW24) work together to kill a mangler and a nomad. Rebuke is placed on the right halberdiers. Heretic Scores on his flag, while I score on mine with Kell.
I try to kill the last swarm but fail. Left halberdiers do some work on the left dog. Right ones continue killing Dread Rots. Jacks in the middle kill Skin and Moans. We both score our flags again.
Heretic kills all left halberdiers. Dread Rots and Cage Rager kill a nomad and a mangler. Dread Rots and a crabbit kill most halberdiers. Score goes to 3-3.
I fail to do much meaningful work, having my nomad locked. Damiano kills a crabbit to resume scoring, but this leaves him in a bad position.
Next turn, Johan kills Damiano with his Cage Rager.
Analysis
This game was won by Johan on Attrition, and there are two important lessons I learned:
1. I now know the way for going around the Sacrifice Arcana. Simply concentrate on the model you wish to kill until it's dead. My mistake here was not triggering Road to War earlier. With Skin and Moans dead, I believe I'd have been in a much better place attrition-wise.
2. There is one more thing about Arcana: when you suspect which one the opponent will want to use this turn, you can safely go for making actions that could be exploited by others. E.g., if you think he'll use Sacrifice, you can go issuing orders to your units all you want.
My compliments to Johan, I think this was the most enjoyable game of the weekend.
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