…and make it double

Introduction

As was foretold, here is the second installment of my experiences this past weekend. This was a 12-player Steamroller with 4 rounds.

I’m back to my trusty pairing:

Cryx
[Theme] Dark Host
[Skarre 1] Pirate Queen Skarre [+28]
– Stalker [8]
– Stalker [8]
– Stalker [8]
– Stalker [8]
Bane Lord Tartarus [0(6)]
Darragh Wrathe [9]
Scrap Thrall (3) [2]
Bane Knights (max) [15]
– Bane Knight Officer [0(4)]
Bane Knights (max) [15]
– Bane Knight Officer [0(4)]
Wraith Engine [15]
Wraith Engine [15]

Cryx
[Theme] Scourge of the Broken Coast
[Skarre 3] Skarre, Admiral of the Black Fleet [+27]
– Kraken [35]
– Satyxis Blood Priestess [4]
Axiara Wraithblade [0(6)]
General Gerlak Slaughterborn [0(6)]
Misery Cage [2]
Ragman [4]
Warwitch Siren [4]
Black Ogrun Ironmongers [6]
Blighted Trollkin Marauders (max) [15]
Bloodgorgers (max) [15]
– Jussika Bloodtongue [5]
Satyxis Blood Witches (min) [8]
– Satyxis Blood Hag [4]
Scharde Dirge Seers [0(6)]

Round 1

Skarre 3 vs Vlad 2 WoW (/Strakhov 1 )
Bunkers

I take first turn, because he’s really fast. I put Skarre, alone, on the side with an obstruction in the middle of the table. Next to her are the Bloodgorgers, then Kraken, then Marauders. The Misery Cage goes behind the building so it can contest the right flag forever.
Draconic Blessing goes on the Bloodgorgers so they can stand up to flaming Victor shots. I also cast Dash and Deceleration. Marauders get Prowl from Axiara.
I pretty much rush everything forward as far as possible, staying outside of 13″ of his Doom Reavers. Anybody see the problem with that?
The problem with that, my friends, is that Doom Reavers under Vlad 2 threat 16″… Luckily he only succeeds at getting 4 onto my Kraken, which survives on about a third of his boxes. But the (unfeated) Escort is nearby saying I can’t repair, so this will still be difficult. Vlad also Wind Blasted the clouds that were in the middle of the table, so it’s not basically an open table.
I lose Ragman, a Dirge Seer and some Bloodgorgers to the Victor. The rest of his stuff doesn’t do much noteworthy, though Alexia goes behind the building as well to collect those tasty souls to turn into Thralls.
I ambush the Blood Witches on my left because they can get to 2 Ternion and a Doom Reaver or 2 as well. I then proceed to get so busy with clearing the stuff in front of me, that I completely forget about them…
Anyway, I Vengeance with the Bloodgorgers and they get 1 of the feated Doom Reavers out of the way. I activate the Marauders to shoot a couple of times at the Escort, combining in twos, but he uses Sacrificial Pawn, which kills another Doom Reaver and sets 2 more on fire. 1 of the Marauders moves in front of the Kraken for Gang Fighter. Skarre feats to cast Dash because I need to pull shenanigans, and I want Guided Fire to take out as many opposing models as possible. I also put up Deceleration and Dark Waves does something inconsequential. She then moves to the right, slightly behind the building and kills the majority of the Swordsmen that were clumped up there, using Reposition from Axiara to move back a bit.
A Dirge Seer walks into the back of a Reaver that is blocking a charge lane to the Escort and stabs him to death. Jussika charges the Escort, other Bloodgorgers dig into another unit, taking a bunch of them out and engaging Alexia. The Escort dies, so the Iron Mongers are now free to repair the Kraken and curse the remaining Doom Reavers so the Kraken can take all of them out.
On his turn, he has the Ternion spray down the forgotten Blood Witches (we only noticed afterwards that they don’t have Frost Bite anymore).
Some stuff dies, we both score our zones. This is a recurring event throughout the game.

The game continues by Skarre going onto the right flag after killing the remaining Doom Reavers and constantly gunning down the contesting Thrall Warriors. Marauders and Bloodgorgers eventually grind through the rest of the Reavers. A lot of them had actually already died on my counter attack, so my opponent has trouble with whittling down my forces, especially with Bloodgorgers having Overtake and Berserk, which means they often trade up. Meanwhile the Kraken and Victor are trying to dance around each others threat ranges (11 for the Victor because of Assail, 12 for the Kraken), while they both gun down some models every turn.
Eventually my opponent runs out of time while I still have a couple of minutes left. This allows me to run the Blood Priestess to contest his zone and he just doesn’t have time to do anything about that, even with Vlad being there. Skarre continues to score her flag while gunning down solos and I score my zone every time, also after killing the contesters.
Eventually a chance to charge the Victor with a Kraken on 2 corpses presents itself, but I don’t go for it because my opponent has no time to leverage it anyway and it would cost me too long. I go for the sure thing and win on scenario 12-7.

This was a good game though I made some silly mistakes. I blame not having had coffee after I almost overslept and it being the first game of the day. We were both pretty much mentally drained by the end of it.

Round 2

Skarre 3 vs Old Witch 2 WoW (/Butcher 3 JotW)
Spread the Net

This round gives me Khador again, with more Doom Reavers… I contemplate for a long time whether or not he was going to drop Butcher, because this is basically a list chicken. Skarre 1 can’t play into Old Witch, but Skarre 3 can’t really chew through Butcher’s jacks, especially Devestators. Old Witch also has a good game into Skarre 3 though, so I decide that that will most likely be his pick. I was right, but I’m not really happy as now I’m facing even more Doom Reavers.
I succeed at getting first turn again. From left to right, I have Marauders, Skarre, Bloodgorgers + support, Kraken, Siren. This means the Kraken can score my zone and it was actually very useful because it meant I could skirt around Old Witch’s control area and he was able to shoot a lot.
This game is actually not as tough as expected, partly because my opponent also didn’t sleep well. He forgets that Bloodgorgers threaten 12 against living models and doesn’t move back when I point this out, I guess partly because then he doesn’t have a foothold in the zone.
I ambush the Blood Witches in his zone and they take out a Ternion model and some Doom Reavers. Over the course of the game they take out both units and constantly contest that zone. Gerlak does nothing the whole game except sit on my flag, scoring it every turn, so he’s a good boy. It’s better than flubbing his charge attack anyway.
My Bloodgorgers kill a lot of Doom Reavers, though eventually get whittled down to only about 2 of them. Reinforcements really helped here to pose a constant threat.
As said, the Kraken skirts outside Zevhanna’s control area the whole time and kills a lot of Reavers. I scalpel out the Escorts as soon as possible.
The Warwitch Siren kills a couple of models with her spray by simply targeting something else.
Skarre herself didn’t do an awful lot as I didn’t really feel like going within 7″ of something she wanted to shoot. She just stayed away from threats and cast Guided Fire and Dash a lot.
I eventually grind through everything and my opponent concedes.

Round 3

Skarre 1 vs Baldur 1 DH (/Wurmwood DH)
Invasion

This is the guy to beat at this tournament. He’s a great player and plays a list that I fear quite a bit. Nonetheless I’m confident that Skarre 1 is the right drop here as I mostly ignore both feats and Wurmwood won’t like having to break ARM 20 all the time with his spells.
I again win the roll-off and elect to go first because I want to push him back as much as possible. The middle of the table has a large cloud partially overlapping his objective, which gives Eyeless Sight, and some rubble on my side. The zone on my left has some rubble and a wall. And there are forests on my right.
I deploy symmetrically with Skarre in the middle, flanked by Bane Knights and then the Wraith Engines. My opponent starts with a heavily refused flank with just the Death Wolves near the zone on my left and Lord of the Feast, Stones, Brighid & Caul, Baldur and the Storm Raptor in the middle. The Well, Blood Trackers and Ravagers go on my right.

Blood Trackers Prey the Wraith Engine on that side and Brighid and Caul a Stalker that I then promptly run behind the forest that is in the right zone, so he can’t be shot by the Well. The Wraith Engine relocates to the middle, further away from the Blood Trackers. For the rest I move up, staying mostly outside of the 16″ threat of Lord of the Feast, except with a Stalker in rubble and everything stays 14″ away from the Well, because I hate that thing. I roll a 6 on Ritual Sacrifice this turn, though it doesn’t matter.
My opponent also advances cautiously after filling up LotF with the Spirit Cauldron. The Well of Orboros summons a Tharn Ravager Shaman into play. I guess my opponent felt like he could need some magical weapons.

I advance some more, spreading out the Bane Knights so the Well can’t get too many with blasts and LotF can’t get too much. The Wraith Engine, that is now in the middle, as well as a Stalker, in rubble, are hanging out near my objective. The Stalker in the zone on my right positions so the Wolf Rider Champion cant jump behind it. This time I rolled a 1 for Ritual Sacrifice…
The Storm Raptor gets Sigil of Power from the Shaman, puts up the animus, moves to within 10″ of the middle Wraith Engine and blasts away at it, leaving it at 9 hp or so. Key point is that it can’t reposition too far back because of the Well and his objective.
The Lord of the Feast, who has Stone Skin, then pulls himself to my objective and finishes off the engine as well as the objective; I forgot he had a magical weapon.
1 Death Wolf is now on 3 corpses and the other 2, each on 1 corpse, get into my left zone. Brighid and Caul stay in the middle, looking all threatening. The rest of my opponent’s army floods the zone on my right, killing a couple of Knights and crippling the right arm of the Stalker that was there. My other Stalker is still contesting the middle zone, though it did lose its movement from the Well, so he scores 0-1.

Ok, this doesn’t look great, but not that bad either. I’m confident I can get the big bird, clear the left zone and possibly kill his objective, which would clear the middle zone.
I allocate 1 to the left Stalker because it needs to kill 1 Death Wolf. I allocate 2 to the middle 1 for backup to kill the big bird, or kill the objective. I feat for 9: on Skarre, 4 Stalkers, 1 Wraith Engine, Darragh and 2 Knights that can get to the Raptor.
I cast Dark Guidance and Skarre charges feasty boi, managing to stay just behind the cloud. I take the first attack with the horns and leave him on 1 (dice -3), then shank him with the dagger and heal 3! That’s like the first time that’s happened, as usually I spike on the charge attack and kill whatever I’m charging.
Anyway, I move Tartarus closer to the left Knights so they can hope to hit the Death Wolf a couple of times. I then throw 6 Knights at the one engaging the Stalker, they actually do hit a few times and he dies. All the Banes then Reposition into a good position to score the zone. The Stalker then walks through the Knights (I really love that about them) and goes to take care of the other Death Wolf.
The remaining Wraith Engine takes a large chunk out of the Storm Raptor, while projecting Dark Shroud on the objective. The 2 feated Knights and 1 non-feated charge the bird and take it out, though I lose 1 to Plasma Nimbus. The backup Stalker is then free to kill the objective and Caul, which makes it very difficult for my opponent to attempt to take out the Wraith Engine. The other Stalker kills the Wolf Rider that was creeping closer, while the last one stays behind, maybe killing some Trackers, and Darragh goes to stand behind the Wraith Engine with Mortal Fear. I swing the score back to 3-1, so I feel quite good about this.
In retaliation the Blood Trackers take out the Knights that are in his zone, then the Ravagers take Stone Skin and 3 of them charge the Wraith Engine, managing to stay far enough from Darragh to not take the debuff. They do a lot of damage, but don’t kill it. Charge attacks were at dice -6 and bought attacks at dice -8. Unfortunately for my opponent, the other 3 utterly fail at hurting the Stalker besides crippling the right arm. The Spirit Cauldron drags the Stalker closer so Brighid and the Blood Shaman can take it out. The final Death Wolf runs into the zone on 3 corpses. My opponent feats this turn, for all the good it’ll do. Score stays the same.

Skarre retreats back further behind the clouds and starts moving towards the zone to relieve the Knights. I still cast Dark Guidance though.
11 Bane Knights and a Stalker don’t have much trouble with taking out the last Death Wolf. Darragh kills a Ravager engaging the Wraith Engine, then puts up Mortal Fear again by triggering Battle Wizard. The resulting Machine Wraith charges Brighid in the back, but fails to hit. The Wraith Engine is now free to take out some of the shifting stones that came to contest.
The Stalker on the right received 2 focus and manages to kill all 3 Ravagers surrounding it, while the other one takes care of the other Ravagers around my Wraith Engines. Turns out Stalkers are good at killing models under Stone Skin, by virtue of benefiting from the DEF penalty but not caring about the ARM buff. Who would’ve thought?
Score goes to 4-1.
Brighid fails to kill the Machine Wraith in return, but the Blood Shaman helps her out. The Trackers get Stone Skin and my opponent manages to clear Darragh and the Wraith Engine, but can’t score the zone. He floods it with as many models as possible and finally clears his zone as well, which the Blood Trackers can score. He can’t contest mine so score goes to 5-2.

The middle zone has only a handful of models: some stones and the remaining (male) Tharn. If I can clear those, I win the game. I then just need to run the Scrap Thrall that was hiding behind the theme cloud, 10″ away from the zone, for exactly that purpose.
Tartarus charges the Blood Shaman and succeeds at taking it out as well as one of the Shifting Stones. The (fully loaded) remaining Stalker succeeds at taking out the other models and scores the zone, ending the game at 7-2.
I got a bit lucky with taking those models out, because I needed to roll average without getting any bad rolls. The Knights were unable to do anything this turn because everything except the Tharn Ravager Shaman was behind the clouds. But Skarre had arrived to score the zone by now, so I could start throwing Knights forward. It’s likely that we would’ve grinded it out to turn 7 if it came to that.

This was a really tight game, with lots of back and forths that mostly came down to my opponent underestimating the damage I could put into the Storm Raptor and being unable to get a big scenario lead bottom of 2. This allowed me carve out a lead for myself while keeping him busy on his side. If a few things had gone differently, the game could’ve easily swung the other way.

Round 4

Skarre 3 vs Kallus 1 PT (/Twins RoW)
Anarchy

Another great player and a grind I’m not looking forward to, especially against this version of Primal Terrors that has a lot better output compared to the Blight Bringer version.
This time my opponent wins the roll and elects to go second so he can choose the better side. This gives him a large obstruction in the zone on my right where he can hide the Hellmouth behind, while the other can hide behind a small forest on the other side of the table. The only other terrain of note is a patch of Burning Earth in the middle.
My opponent slants heavily to my left, the side that doesn’t have a Hellmouth guarding the zone from behind a house. I deploy, from left to right, Marauders, Kraken, Bloodgorgers, Skarre. I do this, because I can’t really do much about the Hellmouth in the zone anyway, but can always Ambush in my Witches if I need to get there, not that they would be likely to kill it…
My opponent sets himself up to bait an Ambush on my left, by putting a lot of models in threat range, which would mean his Hellmouth on the other side would be free to do whatever it pleases. I think about it for a while, but eventually decide to go for it, as it would get me about 6 birds and a Warmonger; everything that is dead before Kallus’s feat is something I don’t have to worry about turning into an Incubus. I run some Bloodgorgers towards the Hellmouth zone.
My opponent then gets aggressive and basically puts Kallus in the middle of the table on 1 transfer to get a good feat turn. He kills my Blood Witches with Vengeance and the Warmongers. Golab enables him to kill a bunch of trolls, including Jussika. Most of his army is in my face and he scores 0-1 on his own flag, as he was unable to kill the final Bloodgorger, which is now the unit commander (not the Leader because Golab).
I contemplate for a moment to throw my Kraken at Kallus, but I would have to clear a couple of models and they would turn into DEF 16 Incubi every time and then he would still be 17/18 with 1 transfer and Mad Visions. Instead I do what any sensible person does/should do on Kallus’s feat turn: focus on the beasts and/or kill models that actually get weaker by becoming Incubi, such as Chosen. Skarre feats because I want Dash, Guided Fire, as well as boosting some rolls and allocating to the Kraken. I also cast Deceleration because I can, so I take 3 damage. She shoots a bunch at Golab, in the hope of taking out an aspect, but the first cannon shot disappears due to Mad Visions, so Golab is only mildly discomforted.
The Bloodgorgers that I wanted to contest his flag with were out of formation of the newly promoted commander, so I had to run the Iron Mongers, meaning I couldn’t repair Skarre. The Kraken meanwhile succeeds at killing the 3 Chosen in front of it, with some help from the Marauders.
I put some models in front of Skarre, who is camping 4, engaging some birds, because it’s starting to look dangerous. With Golab still alive, countering my main attrition tool, and my numbers dwindling, it’s not looking too great.

My opponent sees a damaged Skarre and gets a red haze in front of his eyes with all his Finisher models standing right there (Golab and Rotwings). The main problem is that there is an Iron Monger, that is engaging 2 Rotwings, standing in front of the already damaged Golab and my opponent worries that a free strike could take out something important, such as Spirit.
So he walks Kallus forward, cycles Ignite to Golab, casts Dark Guidance and kills the Iron Monger contesting his flag. He then sends in a Neraph to kill the 2 Bloodgorgers that are bothering Golab, including the 1 that was contesting the zone, after which the Neraph sprints out of the way.
He then sends in 2 tentacles to take care of the Iron Monger, but gets unlucky and both miss the 7 on 3 dice that he needed. Now he starts to doubt for a long while, but eventually walks the big carrion bird past the Iron Monger, taking the free strike for… 1 damage! Feeling a bit silly about himself, he still wants the Iron Monger out of the way for the smaller birds to swoop in. He puts an initial, at P+S 15, into the back of the poor Ogrun and hits, but then his dice fail him again and he leaves him alive, taking the second initial talon to take out the blocking model. His dice then continue to fail him some more, but he still burns through a bunch of Skarre’s focus.
3 Rotwings manage to charge Skarre and they leave her on 4 boxes. My opponent had spent so much time hemming and hawing about what to do to go for the assassination that he now only has about 5 minutes left and effectively concedes, somewhat anti-climatically.

I should’ve put Skarre slightly further back so Golab couldn’t have simply walked up to her and I had honestly forgotten about Finisher. Then again, if he really wanted to, Golab’s first (charge) attack would’ve still damaged the boat, enabling all the other attacks.
I mostly got lucky on the cold dice, but, while the assassination was likely (*), I think it was unnecessary. My opponent would’ve probably succeeded at taking out my objective, clearing his flag and scoring the zone with the Hellmouth, meaning he would have a 4-point lead and an almost certain scenario victory. So I was double lucky that his blood lust got the better of him and then his dice failed, but it left a bit of a sour taste for both of us. Lessons learned, I guess.
After talking about it with my opponent, maybe I could’ve clawed back on attrition, since he had very little left that could threaten the Kraken, especially since Golab was likely to die, but I doubt I would’ve been able to offset the scenario lead.

(*)
– Skarre was DEF 12, ARM 19, 23 boxes and 4 focus
– A walking Golab with Ignite is MAT 7 and can put out 2 P+S 15 attacks, 1 P+S 16 attack with 4 fury to buy more of the latter.
– 3 Rotwings are effective MAT 7 (Sitting Vulture + Veteran Leader) and P+S 9 charges.
– All attacks would benefit from Finisher
– Buy or Boost? has this as a 72.8% assassination
– two charging Tentacles (MAT 6, P+S 10) under Dark Guidance, with Golab negating Tough, have a 88.3% chance of killing the Iron Monger (DEF 13, ARM 15, 5 HP) that was in the way.
– This puts everything together at 63.84% = 72.8% * 88.3%

Summary

I had a bit of a slow start, culminated into beating Baldur 1, and then had a bit of anti-climactic final, but I’m (obviously) happy with how my day went.
I tried a different deployment with Skarre 3 a couple of times, putting the Marauders where they can support the Kraken instead of next to Skarre.
Sometimes it’s worth it, so the Kraken doesn’t anchor alone, but then it goes back to the old problem of missing out on support, so I’m not sure if I will do this very often.
I’m still very happy with how both lists play and am almost done getting them painted up.

Thanks to all my opponents and of course to the organizer, who were all great!