As my first opponent, I got Marius Larsen with Cryx. What I noticed right off the bat is that the lists were unconventional, and there was no wraith engine there. Now, my Cryx drop is Ossrum and not Damiano - because Damiano doesn't have magical weapons to deal with the Wraith Engine. Ossrum, though, will not be able to deal with the high armor of the Black Industries.
I thought a bit and decided to go with Damiano. No wraith engine on the table makes it playable.
My opponent chose Denny:
Scourge of the Broken Coast
Denny 1
- 2 deathrippers
- 2 stalkers
Ragman
10 Blood witches + hag
2 x 10 Raiders + Sea Witch
Gunslingers
Max Croe's cutthroats
I hoped to get the first turn, but there was no such luck. With this scenario, turn 1 would have been preferable to claim a lot of territory and start scoring my flag. However, with turn 2 the plan will most likely involve dead eye and some shooting.
Satyxis run very aggressively all over the board. One surprising thing for me is the group of gunslingers behind he hill. As my opponent later told, he made the mistake here by confusing it with a wood. Notable is the fact that stalkers are placed very conservatively, so there will be no walking up and shooting them.
I decide to go with the first idea: surefoot and deadeye on trenchers, after which they drop the smoke screen and go assaulting forward, taking out two gunslingers and some croes and satyxis. Halberds advance in a layered defensive formation, where the first row makes it difficult to reach the second row. Damiano stays behind the screen, Kell benefits from stealth, Orin hides behind the clouds and advances towards my flag.
On the right flank, croes shoot off some halberdiers, creating lanes of charging for Satyxis. Both the halberdiers and the trenchers here suffer heavy casualties. The left flank is attacked by ambushing Blood Witches. I am very happy to see that the stalkers back away. One very important thing here: there are 23 minutes on my opponent's clock after this turn and 40 on mine. I understand that long-term attrition advantage is probably not with me, so going for clock victory is what I need. To force that, I will need to get a slight advantage on points too.
I feat (for armor mainly) and use my road to war to get jacks into places where they'd otherwise be hard pressed to get (one Nomad gets to an arc node that thought it was safe behind the wood, using the Pathfinder from the objective and the road to war). I manage to destroy a big chunk of croes, as well as satyxis. Orin is a star here with the boosted chain lightning, claiming the flag. The left flank is playing the delaying game, killing a few satyxis but mainly just trying to avoid dying too easily.
Denny feats in response but does not manage to do any serious damage to my jacks because of the high feat armor (ragman is out of position, and is used simply for scoring a point). Points go to 1-1 but I think I am ahead with my plan.
I keep grinding, using small trick such as Damiano's blast shot and Orin's chain lightning to rack up the kill count; I also finish the arc node. We both score points this turn, but the clock is really tight now for my opponent. I am up one point, because I also killed the objective. Even without points advantage, I see that I will either clock him or get really short inefficient turns from him, which will enable me to improve attrition a lot.
Some more killing happens from Denny's side, but mainly only infantry suffers - my armor still protects me. He gets ahead on points, since he contests my flag, while I don't contest his zone or his flag.
I finish the right flank and the center, run away with Damiano and contest the opposing flank and zone with a mangler and a bucaneer. Score becomes 1 in my favor, but from now on I will be scoring two per turn (zone and flag). My opponent does not have enough time on his clock to kill the mangler and I win.
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