Pick & Ban – Round 1

Introduction

Turns out that my opponent for the first round had dropped, so I was lucky enough that the organizer stepped in to make sure we had an even number of participants. As he was filling in for the drop, it defaulting to him being my opponent in the first round instead.

I was up against a Thyra EI / Feora4 CM / Reznik2 TFM setup.
My lists for posterity.

I had a hunch that Goreshade would get banned, so Reznik’s colossal really worried me. Even if he didn’t ban Goreshade, this list would still give me trouble, so I really wanted to ban it. The expected happened and we ended up having a game between Mortenebra 1 and Feora 4. I didn’t feel comfortable with Scaverous because most of the jacks can be kept safe with Hymn of Shielding.

Battle Report

End of game board state at the end

My opponent rolls a 2 and starts to lament his luck until I promptly roll a 1. He chooses to go first and I choose the bottom side, as that gives my flag camper a building to hide behind.
I choose the Pathfinder objective which actually turned out to be irrelevant as Gaspy flies, Kharybdis and Mortenebra have Pathfinder and Barathrum got Spectral Steel turn 1, oh well.
My opponent chooses Treasure Chest.

Turn 1

PoM

Feora starts with Road to War on herself, Hellwrought on Scourge of Heresy, Firestarter on her Dervish and couldn’t care less about Death March. She moves her models up relatively far, being careful to not give my Stalkers any good targets.

Cryx

I give Spectral Steel to Barathrum and move up gingerly, staying outside of 12″ of the heavies.

Turn 2

PoM

Feora gets the Treasure Chest buff, as well as Eyeless Sight from Rhoven, and uses her Revenger to blast a Stalker off the table (whoops). A bunch of stuff bunkers up behind the wall on the right, with the remaining 3 heavies standing just outside the zone on the left and an Exemplar Warder in each of the zones, so I wouldn’t score much regardless.
Gade shoots some Scharde Pirates from behind the wall, but can’t touch my Stalker that’s hanging out in the rubble.
Road to War is used for some minor repositioning.

Cryx

I go for a bit of a greedy play on this turn; I upkeep Spectral Steel, allocate 1 each to Kharybdis and my right Stalker and Ambush in on the right. My Blood Hag can then run to the Indictor that is on that side to apply Dark Shroud and Gang Fighter, with 2 witches killing some Choir members and the rest standing around in the zone. The plan is to have Kharybdis kill that heavy, triggering Overrun on Barathrum who can then kill the Revenger that is in the cloud near my opponent’s objective (moved back with Road to War), for which he would need to move through the building. That would then give me an additional Overrun trigger for either of the Stalkers to dig deep.
The problem is that Kharydbis will have to abuse Bloodthirst by charging the Warder before I can get to the heavy, so 3 unboosted dice+1’s to deal 32 damage. It’s possible if I feat, but it was still actually too greedy, thinking about it now.
So I cast Sacrificial Lamb and Overrun twice, “hiding” Mortenebra behind my objective. I activate and run the Scharde Pirates, realizing that I forgot to feat, which was not so great.
Asphyxious moves closer to the middle of the board to get Kharydbis in range and just puts a cloud in front of the Warwitch Siren on the flag; my opponent has access to Eyeless Sight so it’s not likely to do much anyway.
Siren gives an extra focus to Barathrum while scoring the flag. I actually botched Deryliss this turn, so he can’t do anything. Barathrum, Kharybdis and the Stalker in the right zone are fully loaded, Mortenebra is empty.
The Stalker walks to in front of the wall, jumps over and leaves Feora’s Dervish on a few boxes. Kharybdis charges the Warder and puts him in the dirt, the 3 attacks on the Indictor leave it on 8 boxes, but seeing as the Warder can’t die, I don’t get Overrun, which is bad.
Barathrum instead charges Gade, kills him, heals the Warder, Overruns to engage both Dervishes, finishes Feora’s and cripples Severius’s, dealing some damage to both of them through Feedback. Asphyxious’ Toro remains in the zone, but can’t get to anything, although I send my Stalker forward to deal with the Warder on that side.

Turn 3

PoM

My opponent goes for it and runs his arc node to Mortenebra, within 4″ of my flag. Feora is on 5 Rage tokens by now, so has 8 Focus and gets Harmonious Exaltation from the Hierophant. He misses twice, and botches the damage rolls on the hits he did get, which leaves Mortenebra standing, stupefied, with having taken a mere 4 damage.
My opponent doesn’t like this and feats, leaving Feora standing behind the cloud, but without any focus.
He goes on to kill Barathrum, both remaining Stalkers and a handful of infantry, as well as the Warwitch Siren, which died from the feat damage.

Cryx

I give a long, hard stare at the table and figure I can get Kharydbis into his caster, by having Mortenebra finish off the Dervish on 1 box, then charging the objective and swinging at Feora 3 more times; a pattern is starting to emerge for old noodle arms… This would have me take 1 free strike from Scourge of Heresy, which isn’t such a big deal.
Anyway, I go into the tank because I really need to get a Gang Fighter trigger there as well, or it will be very unlikely to happen. I weigh all of my options and, if the stars align, I can charge 1 of the Witches as far as possible, then Side Step for max range twice and barely make it. Except I suddenly remember that Side Step is a Granted ability and I already lost my Hag, sadly.
The Toro and Kharybdis both get 2 focus. Mortenebra casts Overrun on herself, charging the Dervish in the back and easily dispatching it. I finally feat and camp 3 focus, then have Kharybdis overrun to the left.
I have the Blood Witches murder some Choir boys, Rhoven, and finish off the Indictor. The Crusader takes a Toro to the face and stays on 3 boxes, another pattern…
Asphyxious charges the Revenger, and promptly misses his unboosted 5, even after the reroll. I swing again and hope to still finish it off, but forgot about Repel on the shield and get pushed backwards, after rolling some useless amount of damage. Rather than spend more focus and risk not doing anything useful, I cast Caustic Mist to protect Mortenebra, feeling confident that the arc node won’t be leveraged while engaged by Asphyxious. Deryliss also charges into the light warjack, but only scratches some paint.
As the assassination is highly unlikely at this point, I decide to just walk over Kharydbis so he can put another cloud in front of Mortenebra and whale on Scourge. I did forget about Hellwrought boosting his ARM, so I’m at rerollable dice-3, as I did get a Gang Fighter trigger in there. Even with rerolls I leave the heavy on about 10 boxes, although I did take out both arms, which will hopefully keep me safe. I actually forgot about spawning a Servitor at the start of the turn, so maybe I would’ve been able to get Dark Shroud in there, but we’ll never know.

Turn 4

PoM

My opponent lost access to Eyeless Sight when Rhoven bit the dust, so can’t leverage Feora to join the fray. She’s still a very angry lady though and wants stuff to die so allocates full focus to her Revenger and what’s left of Scourge of Heresy. The Revenger takes a free strike from Deryliss, this time at dice-5 and takes no damage, he manages to stay in Gaspy’s melee range and deals quite some damage to Mortenebra, causing her to burn some focus.
Scourge had been able to move a bit closer through the Hellwrough trigger and got sung the Hymn of Battle by his people, which meant his main attack was hitting at P+S 21, after also basking in the Eye of Menoth, which means Mortenebra is pretty much dead, even with crippled arm systems, if he hits that attack. He boosts to hit, needs a 7 on 2 dice, gets it, I die, whether or not I spend focus.

Summary

The list is definitely interesting, but with so few models, it feels like it needs to trade efficiently every time. The matchup was not the worst, but with such dicey trades, I really needed the dice to swing my way and they didn’t. I also screwed up plenty, partly because of lack of reps with the list, and probably didn’t get the most out of it. Though in hindsight, not feating on turn 2 was probably for t he best, as I was still unlikely to kill the heavy.
It’s not easy to leverage Overrun when and where you want it without an arc node, which meant my Stalkers were often not the bests targets for it, simply because I couldn’t get to them.

My opponent was a great sport, so even though I didn’t win, I at least had a good time trying to figure out this list.