WTC 2019

Introduction

So the event of the year has come and gone. If you’re a regular of this blog, you already know my lists, but if you don’t you can always follow the link and have a look.
I’m honestly quite pleased with how I did this year, getting an adequate 4-2 personal record and delivering my team to the best result our country has ever achieved!

For those following at home, you can check out full round coverage and final leaderboard at wmh-wtc.com. The site also has a team browser with lists, but you probably already checked out the interesting ones in my previous post.

Round 1 vs Lithuania Combine

Skarre 1 vs Madrak 2 (/Grissel 2)
King of the Hill

There’s honestly not that much to say about this game. Skarre is already amazing on this scenario and this was the one and only game where I won the toss and got first turn.
I deployed symmetrically, with both units of Knights flanking Skarre and the Wraith Engines on the flanks.
I pushed as hard as I could, parking the Stalkers outside 13″ of the Fenblades, because of the No Quarter mini-feat and outside of 10 of the Sons of Brag.
My opponent could do little else but run up to jam, putting Hero’s Tragedy on his Fenblades to scare off the Bane Knights.

I consider going for an assassination for a moment, because I think I can get 2 feated Stalkers onto Madrak. I seemed to recall that “Grim Salvation” only worked within 1″, but after checking War Room, I see it’s 3: not going to happen, so new plan.
2 Bane Knights fall on their asses after they unjammed the Stalker. I feat on all the Stalkers, Skarre and the Wraith Engines. The left Wraith Engine can’t charge because there’s a forest and the objective is in the way, so he just runs to the Earthborn, engaging some Fenblades.
I put a Stalker each on the heavies, leaving the Mauler on 1 and taking about 50% of the Earthborn. Another Stalker puts all the Champions on 1-2 hit boxes by mauling Skaldi, who eventually goes down. The fourth takes out the Fenblade Officer and some other members of the unit, turning one into a Machine Wraith, courtesy of the Wraith Engine. The other big ghost kills 2 Champions, because the third toughed. Both newly spawned Machine Wraiths charge the nearby heavy, but they both miss. The one on the Mauler could’ve probably made it into the back arc, but I was trying to avoid losing Incorporeal for being too near to the stone, so didn’t think about it.
Both units of Knights put up the mini-feat for Defensive Strike, which means the Fenblades have to be really careful.
My opponent flounders a bit, losing a couple of Fenblades to the Defensive Strikes and killing some Knights. He feated this turn, but I had anticipated this, which is why I put up Serpent’s Coil; every time he wants to surf, that’s another Bane Lance to the face. The Wraith Engine on the right almost dies to the combined might of the remaining Champions, but survives on 5 boxes (would’ve been 1, if the +1 STR aura had been up). The Mauler and Earthborn, being severely damaged and unable to be healed due to Grievous Wounds, accomplish next to nothing. I hadn’t set up to score on his turn, choosing to press my advantage instead, so the score remains 0-0.
On my turn I have a Stalker take out the Stone Bearer, which drops the aura because he can’t Self Sacrifice. The left Wraith Engine repositions and takes out the enemy objective. I clear out the middle zone with the remaining knights of the left unit and Reposition all but one, who charged the Earthborn, into it. Both heavies and all the Fenblades and Champions die. It takes me 2 Machine Wraiths hitting the out-of-formation Bane Knight in the back to kill it. I place the other Wraith Engine in the other rectangular zone to score it and run a Scrap Thrall into the Burning Earth to score the flag, making the score 5-0 top of 3.

My opponent was a cool guy, but I think there’s only very few Trollblood lists that can stand up to Skarre 1, especially 1 that goes first, and this one was sadly not it.
My other team members also won their games, so we went 5-0 this round; a great start of the weekend and boost to our morale!

Lithuania Combine would continue to go 1-5, getting 63rd place.

Round 2 vs USA East

Skarre 3 vs Kallus 1 (/Fyanna 2)
Bunkers

I know this matchup and have played it plenty of times before, nevertheless it is still a hard game. I lose the toss and get “given” second turn, which is a trend that will continue for the rest of the event.

My opponent pushes forward as hard as he can on his first turn and I go to just in front of my zone. Bloodgorgers in the middle get Draconic Blessing, which means the Blightbringer can’t turn off their tough, which is good. The Kraken kills a couple of birds with blast damage.
After this my opponent pushes harder, putting as many models in my zone as possible and positioning the Blightbringer aggressively, while leaving the Harrier behind in his zone. He of course feats.

I ambush, but the Witches don’t do much more than kill some birds and Gudrun. I feat because I want Dash and Guided Fire. I mess up by spending too much time on killing Rotwings, but it didn’t really matter. I end my turn with 2 Incubi still in my zone, but I did manage to contest the middle flag which he would’ve also scored. The Kraken and Bloodgorgers together succeed in taking out some Chosen and the resulting Incubi, so the Kraken is now full on corpses, ready for next turn. Score goes to 0-1.
On his turn my opponent succeeds at killing all of my Blood Witches and killing 2-3 models that were contesting the other flags each. He would’ve had one last model to take care of the last Bloodgorger had he failed to do that by that point, but the result is that he can score four more points to go to 0-5, winning scenario top of 3.

I got a bit overexcited with killing things in this game, partly because I was so desperate to clear my own zone, even though I know it’s not worth killing Rotwings on Kallus’s feat turn unless I really have to; they only turn into better models anyway.
That said, my opponent was definitely a great player, so there is no shame in this loss. Aside from going on a killing spree with the birds (and almost forgetting about activating my ambushers, which he graciously allowed me to), I don’t think I made any major mistakes. Had I won the roll-off, it would’ve been an entirely different game already. Had he been unable to clear all the flags, the game would’ve most likely swung back my way, though I had already spent a lot of time, so that could’ve been an issue as well.

Unfortunately we lost this round 2-3, but there’s definitely no shame in losing against such strong opposition with such nail biter games, so we don’t feel too bad.

USA East would continue on their rampage, going 5-1 and taking 5th place!

Round 3 vs China BaiZhan

Skarre 3 vs Skarre 3 (/Skarre 1)
Spread the Net

So, who has the bigger boat? Since I’m going second, I get to counter deploy my Bloodgorgers across his Marauders. My own Marauders get Draconic Blessing in the first turn to be able to traverse the massive Burning Earth in the middle and then it gets cycled to the Gorgers to get some good surfs in. He has his own Bloodgorgers on the flank with the rectangular zone and the Raiders, DSM and Leviathans in the middle.
His Leviathans actually don’t do a lot (quelle surprise), but I still needed to stay 11″ away from them with Skarre because of Dark Waves. Most of the Raiders and DSM die early, because of Skarre’s shooting and with some help from Gerlak shouting at them, the Marauders can hit them, some also died to a surfing Bloodgorger. For the rest Gerlak disappointed by only killing 2 Bloodgorgers on the surf and then, when he got a second chance the next turn, just failing completely.
I ambushed my witches on the Bloodgorgers to kill some. Grievous Wounds and Side Step is nice, but the latter was little more than a way to spread Gang More as the horns struggled to break ARM 18. I needed to contest there anyway and the Kraken was still busy shooting Jussika.
Meanwhile, the Marauders and Dirge Seers proved to be an annoyance for my Bloodgorgers and there was a lot of back and forth on that side. My opponent did eventually get a Leviathan onto Skarre, but I was camping 4, so it was only a flesh wound.

I did have to remind my opponent at one point why you always want Gerlak when you have Bloodgorgers, when he tried to start a surf through my Blood Witches. No dice when you don’t actually have Berserk though.

I eventually won this grind 13-8 after the Kraken had claimed the far rectangular zone as his hunting ground and the Misery Cage was continuously scoring my own flag from behind a forest. This happened with 20 seconds on my clock and about a minute on my opponent’s. Regardless of time, I had slaughtered almost everything he had and I still had some remnants of most of my units, so on paper, this looked like a blowout, but it was far from easy.

Incidentally, I had the bigger boat. My team also closed out most of their games in our favor, so we ended up 4-1 here.

China BaiZhan would go on to a 3-3 score, ending up at the 36th place.

Round 4 vs Italy Luigi

We’re 2-1 at the end of the day and feeling very good about ourselves. Pairings are announced in the evening so we have a look at the potential matchups and have a pretty good feeling about our chances.

Skarre 1 vs Dreamer (/Old Witch 3)
Invasion

This is a great table for me as it has a couple of large buildings near the center of the table, so I chose the side where I can potentially hide Skarre best. Both my theme clouds go on either side of my objective. That way I can protect myself from anything besides the Clockatrices while still leaving my own line of sight through my objective.

I deploy in the standard formation and move up rather aggressively as the chickens are both behind a building so can only charge the Wraith Engines. Seeing this, I decide to put both of them in threat of 1 bird each, to bait them in. I figure there’s no damage buff and at least one of them would survive. Between all the Knights and some Stalkers, I can then take care of them and be ahead, because the rest of the list is slow, with static threat ranges.

Thus it shall be, he charges both engines and leaves them both on a couple of boxes. He also jams each one with a Gremlin Swarm and also puts another B2B with a Stalker. He’s conservative with his other heavies and still hasn’t Enfeebled the Knights because he needed fury for other things.
1 Bane Knight gets a magical attack from my objective. I rolled well for Ritual Sacrifice, so all Stalkers get a bunch of focus. I move Skarre forward, within 1″ of a Knight and ask my opponent if he wants to trigger Labyrinth, which he does. This is good as it makes it easier to plan my turn, now that I know, and it actually doesn’t change a lot, except that my Bane Knights can’t charge his objective. Skarre continues to feat and cast Dark Guidance, she also uses Sacrificial Strike to chuck a Bane Knight at the Gremlin Swarm annoying the Stalker.
The magical Bane Knight charged through the Wraith Engine to take care of the bad Gremlins, while his friends banged up the chicken. Eventually a P+S 18 charge from Darragh finished off the poor fowl and he used the dying energy to put up Mortal Fear. The Wraith Engine, now free from annoyances, used this opportunity to charge a Cage Rager, almost killing it.

On the other side, there was little I could do about the Gremlins, but he only rolled -2 speed, so it was not so bad. First I charged the chicken with some Bane Knights, who also put up Serpent’s Coil, then after the Time Stutter, they repositioned, to make a landing for the Wraith Engine, which got one good hit in, before the bird had had enough again. The Stalker then managed to finish it off by jumping. Another Stalker jumped to the objective and with the help of the Wraith Engine, easily took it out. With the remaining focus he bought and boosted an attack into Dreamer, which spiked and dealt her a whopping 16 damage, which she transferred to a poor Skin & Moans.
The last Stalker found he had nothing left to kill, as the Cage Rager was just out of reach and so just ran to the middle, glaring menacingly.

At the start of his turn, I was worried that my opponent would use his Gremlin Swarm to finish off the Wraith Engine engaging the Cage Rager, which was on 3 boxes and corporeal, but instead he chose to run him to the round zone on my right, even though I had no plans to score it.
Said Cage Rager flounders at the effective ARM 25 Wraith Engine and on the other side a Skin & Moans goes slightly towards my zone, where the final Gremlin Swarm went to hide behind the house so Skarre can’t get to it.

The rest of the game just has me attritioning him piece meal. I never score the right zone, but I put a Scrap Thrall in it, so he never will either. I eventually take out the other Gremlins with another Sacrificial Strike and leave Skarre in the zone so the Bane Knights can now go out to play rather than babysit my scenario points. They promptly get Enfeebled, but it’s too little too late. I take out most of his army, though killing the banged up Cage Rager allowed him to trigger Sacrifice for the crippled Skin & Moans, and win on scenario.

I think the main thing here was that my opponent didn’t really know what to do against Skarre 1 and because he was so conservative, I had all the time in the world to tear him apart. Also, I always made sure to kill everything dead before moving on to the next thing, or trigger another Arcana, so an untimely Sacrifice wouldn’t mess up my plans.

Italy Luigi didn’t do too bad for itself at all and went 4-2, taking 18th place overall.

Round 5 vs England Lions

Skarre 1 vs The Child (/King of Nothing)
Anarchy

This is where our “choosing matchups” strategy starts to unravel. The team is quite skewed (double Grymkin with all the clockatrices, double Circle and Harbinger) and I get shafted by being put on a table that has nothing but clouds in the middle; a Clockatrice’s playground… To make matters worse, I lose the toss, again.

Abuse lets the Clockatrices hit above their weight class, so I can’t afford to offer my Wraith Engines like I did against Dreamer. Boosted sprays from down town also worry both Skarre and her Stalkers, so I try to play conservative. My opponent abuses this by just spraying as many Banes as he can before lines meet. My left Wraith Engine bites the dust against a chicken with Enrage and Abuse, forcing me to skew more to my right side, so Skarre starts to move towards the right zone and feats. I already have some crippled Stalkers and lost a Wraith Engine, so I also feat on some Knights, so they can deal some heavy damage. Those also put up Serpent’s Coil, because P+S 17’s might give the heavies some pause. I take 2 chickens and put 2 more on about half boxes. I had used 1 Stalker, that got a magical attack from my objective, to kill the Gremlins that were in the right zone and left another in the zone on the left to contest and basically run around the Gremlins that were there for the rest of the game, until The Child made short work of it.

Next turn there is a heavy with Discord in my lines, so my knights don’t achieve a lot. I did my best to save it from there, but I can’t kill enough and start to fall more and more behind until I only have half a Stalker and Skarre left with the score being 4-1 or something. So I do the only thing any sensible person would do and charge Skarre out of the zone to take out a heavy by herself. After spending all of her focus on buying attacks against the Cage Rager, she is on 1 hp due to Life Trader and the beast is dead. This deprives my opponent from killing my caster as it also means that I don’t score, nor contest, and the score goes to 6-1 at the end of my turn.

I asked my opponent what I could’ve done differently and he said that maybe I should’ve focused more on the center, which would’ve forced his models to be closer together, so I could retaliate more efficiently. I can kind of see the point, but I do also feel like this would’ve just lost me models faster, though it would’ve probably saved most of the Knights, that now just got picked apart by sprays.

We also lose this round 2-3, which is again no shame against such amazing opponents. The games were good and there were some close calls, so all was well.

England Lions were possibly our toughest opponents and that showed in their results; they went 5-1 and took the 3rd place on the podium!

Round 6 vs Wales Glyndwr

Skarre 3 vs Old Witch 2 (/Karchev)
Recon II

The middle of the table has nothing but a large patch of rough terrain (formerly a hill), so that’s where I put my Bloodgorgers with Jussika. The Kraken is on the left of them and the Marauders to the left of that. I’m not sure this was the best idea, but I figured the other side would be better to Ambush on, so I just put Skarre there and the Misery Cage in range to contest the flag. I didn’t put the cage B2B, because going second meant some Doom Reavers could just take it out for free on a charge top of 1.

Anyway, this game goes like most games against Doom Reavers go. The Kraken shoots a bit, though I messed up at one point and misjudged the range reduction of Windstorm so almost killed my own Marauders…
I’m forced to ambush in on the right just to contest, because everything was out of threat. Blood Witches killed some Doom Reavers, Bloodgorgers killed lots of Doom Reavers. Gerlak disappointed by missing his second attack, then lived to try again (though he got Blinded, but then got better by courtesy of a friendly Dirge Seer) and then simply missed his first attack. I really hate him sometimes and I’m sure the feeling is mutual, you crazy old general. The Warwitch Siren managed to kill some Ternion and a Greylord Escort with a spray, at least someone I can be proud of.

So in the end, my opponent shoved Ruin in my face, daring me to do something about it. So after the charges of 2 Ironmongers and Axiara, the poor hunk of metal is on a handful of boxes. Skarre feats, casts all the things, save for Guided Fire, cycling Draconic Blessing onto herself and killed him handily. I’m now standing in front of Old Witch while camping 6 and am on 22 boxes. I was getting low on time and scenario was slipping, so I figured I might as well tempt him into a mistake.
My opponent takes the bait and delivers 4 Doom Reavers to me, then needs to kill one of his own that he put in the way and delivers Old Witch to me, choosing to reroll her attack rolls. I Sucker off the shot that would blind her to a nearby Ironmonger and after the dust settles, Skarre is still on 10 health. So, I cast Dash so my models don’t have any trouble making room, shoot the old hag in the face twice with my cannons and let the Kraken finish her off.

This was a good game, but I’m used to the matchup and my opponent wasn’t, which really helped me. I’m also glad he took the bait, because I’m not sure if I would’ve managed to crawl back on scenario, though it’s likely I would have, as I was about to bring the Kraken to bear anyway.
Using Buy or Boost? (substituting rerolls to hit with an extra dice and dropping lowest) it turns out this was about a 55% assassination, which was honestly higher than I expected. It would’ve been only 40% if I hadn’t forgotten to take a corpse from the Misery Cage though…

The rest of my team again made me proud by winning the round 4-1.

Wales Glyndwr ended at a respectable 3-3, which got them the 26th spot on the ladder.

Summary

Like I mentioned before, I’m really pleased with this pair and feel like it can play into a variety of opponents. The Skarre 3 list is incredibly deep and I have no doubt that I can still learn to play it much better, still noticing small mistakes here and there and sometimes taking too much time. Now it’s time for some rest and playing stupid fun shit though, so maybe another time.

Note that we always chose matchups this year, regardless of winning the roll or not (most teams choose tables), and that it worked out quite well. I’m not saying that it’s definitely the way to go, but we had a pretty terrain agnostic team setup (lol Dark Host), where we could make up for some skewed tables by picking a good side. At the same time we had a couple of dodges and could put some pressure on the pairing process by choosing more matchups; I think we did very well here, leveraging our advantage sufficiently.
We rarely got any sure-fire wins out of it, but we got slightly favored to favorable matchups, which definitely helped a lot with achieving the result we did.

The only time it really didn’t work out was against England Lions, which had quite a skewed team setup to begin with. We didn’t really get overwhelming matchups here and them choosing tables really gave them a good edge. Them being anything but slouches, they finished 3rd, definitely didn’t help our case either.

All in all I’m extremely proud of every single person that was on my team. They really pulled together and pushed through, with our only losses being 2-3’s against top-5 teams and the others being overwhelming victories. It has been an honor to be their captain and I’m excited to aim even higher next year!

I’d also like to take a moment to thank everyone that was present: my opponents, the organization, the volunteers and the plus ones; they were all great and every one of them added to the fact that the WTC is an absolutely amazing event that I hope will last for many more years to come.

Bonus: Solo Masters winner

You may have heard that the Solo Masters this year were also won by a Cryx player. I heard he played his Skarre 1 list, paired with Asphyxious 3, exclusively and while I can’t write about his games, because I don’t know him, I did some digging for his list and I have it on good authority that this is it:

https://conflictchamber.com/?c4201b_-1W0F1h1h1h1he21h1h1hkr2IoR1_kk1R1Tko

[Theme] Scourge of the Broken Coast
[Skarre 1] Pirate Queen Skarre [+28]
– Stalker [8]
– Stalker [8]
– Stalker [8]
– Stalker [8]
Aiakos, Scourge of the Meredius [4]
– Stalker [8]
– Stalker [8]
– Stalker [8]
Axiara Wraithblade [0(6)]
General Gerlak Slaughterborn [0(6)]
Hermit of Henge Hold [5]
Bloodgorgers (max) [15]
– Jussika Bloodtongue [5]
Satyxis Blood Witches (max) [13]
– Satyxis Blood Hag [4]
Scharde Dirge Seers [0(6)]

That’s definitely a lot of Stalkers, a large amount of Grievous Wounds as well as some solid infantry clearing potential between the Bloodgorgers, Gerlak and the Side Stepping Blood Witches. The damage potential is also quite high between the Hermit and Dark Shroud from the Hag.

I don’t actually own this many Stalkers, but I could see myself tweaking this, possibly adding Kharybdis, and giving it a shot.