#welshmasters

Last game of the day. One to go out on. I knew I was not getting best in faction, and I considered losing this game to get worst in faction, but in the end I knew I would have to play a good game for both me and my opponent.

So I get paired up against Menoth. He had Kreoss 3 and Feora 1, and the scenario was Extraction. He goes for Kreoss 3, since he said he knew him better, and I decide to go against my usual plan of Mother vs Warmachine and Axis vs Hordes, since I thought I that axis would do better with the dual TEP’s against his vengers.

I won the roll to go first, and choose to do so. My opponent does not want to move, and there is a lovely hill to sit on for Kreoss in the front of the objective. I also get lombered with a large building just outside my deployment zone on the left, and a rock next to the left flag, making it just big enough to squeeze a huge base through, but not in a straight line…

Anyway, I deploy the TEP’s on each flank, each with a galvaniser. Axis goes in the centre, and the inverters flanked him, along with the Diffusers and the bots. He deployed his Vengers on the left side, to use the building for cover, Reckoner next to them, a bunch of iridians in the centre as a screen, with a guardian on the right side, and a Devout with Kreoss in the centre.

Turn 1: I ran most things forwards, getting iron aggression and onslaught out to start the game. The TEP on the left moves to a better position to get through the gap but there is a lot of stuff in the way.

For his turn, he runs the Idrians up, and Mini-Feats with them to protect them from the bomb bots that are standing nearby. The rest of the army moves up to get ready to attack.

Turn 2: I feel that this is a great time to feat on him, and catch a large part of his Vengers and jacks in the feat to deal with them. My only concern is the Idrians, who have preyed Axis, and whilst I can survive their shooting, I might not have the best time surviving their charges.

Razor wall to the rescue… except I appear to have lost my Razor wall template since my last game with Axis, the day before. So that goes out the window, as no-one nearby has one to borrow. So axis still feats, but I don’t get to put him so far forwards, and I use the save the focus for defence instead.

The Inverter on the left goes into the Reckoner, who has been shot by a diffuser to get the free charge and extra distance, allowing him to come right from the far right into it. I knock him down and proceed to kill it with ease. The other inverter goes into the Guardian and kills that, and the TEP on the right side re-aligns its target to the Idrians and sprays them into oblivion.

The TEP on the left side moves into the gap by the building, now partially blocked by my own inverter. I planned for it to be there to reduce the damage any surviving Vengers would do to the battle engine, since his jack on that side was dead. It clipped three vengers, and killed them all with little problems. The TEP’s are so versatile it is amazing.

Now with a jack on both Flags, and only one Iridian left contesting it, I ended the turn ready to defend.

For his turn, he came back swinging. The last two vengers made a charge at the Inverter, whilst the Iridian jammed as much as it could. The choir moved up, and Kreoss got himself into a more offensive position. As the Venger Solo moved in though, I counter charged with the right inverter to bring it so much closer to his Objective (Bunker), and Kreoss. He then charged the Devout into it, and got some really great rolls and crippled the Inverter. Some good placement stopped me scoring any points.

Turn 3: I needed to push hard with this. I killed the two vengers with the left inverter, and dismounted and killed the Venger Solo with the other inverter, whilst also killing off the objective. The left Battle engine moved up to get a better shot at things, whilst the right one cleared out the choir, but a lucky roll also killed off a galvaniser I had clipped with the template. (Tactical tip: don’t  max out on dice just because you can, especially if it hits your own models…)

I ended the turn 3 points up, and kreoss looking certainly worried.

He starts his turn by cranking Kreoss up and feating, killing the inverter and moving around onto the hill to have a better defence against the TEP’s. his Devout moves over to the left flag to contest, and I counter charge it with the Inverter waiting by it. He then looks at his card, and says “Its got something here called defensive strike…” and proceeds to finish off the inverter in one hit before it attacks. He runs the hierophant over to the right flag to contest, and ends his turn.

Turn 4. The clock is getting really low, and an almost full health Devout running around is not what I want. A galvaniser goes in to push it away with a charge, and is also killed by the defensive strike… (It had taken some damage from the Iridians earlier, but was still quite healthy, or so I thought.) a slapping match began between the hierophant ond some Optifex directive for the flag, but the TEP decided to end it with a couple of heavy blasts to Kreoss’ face… Which missed one hit, and he was still alive. I engaged the Devout with a diffuser and and ended my turn on 4 points.

Understanding he was not going to win, my opponent was going to concede. I suggested that he went full power at the TEP and kill it, which he did, and ended his turn with about 20 seconds to spare, giving me the win.

So the match up for the morning went up, and I get to play against Retribution again. Since I learn at my best by doing, and playing, I felt this would be good to see if I could put my ideas from the night before to the test.

He has Rahn and Vyross 2. I expected Rahn again, but got Vyross with 4 griffons, Imperitus, a Phoenix and Helios, plus Sylas and a few support models.

The Scenario was Incursion. There was a building on the right side that would make it difficult for anyone opposite it to contest it, and also make it hard for a colossal to go there.

I chose Mother, hoping to get a backlash kill, and use the drag on the griffons to get them in and kill them piecemeal. I won the roll, and also went second to ensure I had the building on the far side to protect whatever I sent over to that flag.

He set up the Helios in the centre, surrounded it with the griffons, put the phoenix to the left side, with Imperitus on the right, behind a wall. Vyross went behind Helios with Sylas and his support with him.

I deployed the Axiom on the left side, between the two flags. The assimilators went in the centre by mother, and the Cipher went on the right side. I placed both arc nodes on the right side, since I had a plan to deal with Imperitus.

Turn 1: As usual, he ran forwards, mostly down the centre. He was more cautious than most opponents of the axioms drag range on his griffons. I could understand why, since once they started dying, he would have difficulty building up the Synergy Chain.

For my turn, I ran the two arc nodes up, one to hide behind the building by the flag, and the other to stand on a hill near the same flag. The axiom advanced forwards and dropped a Bomb bot, which ran over to the far left side. The rest of the force advanced to just outside his threat range.

Turn 2: He starts moving his griffons up to past the half way line. He is threatening me with their attacks, and also with the scenario win if I do not come to deal with him. A lone griffon moves to the other side of the building, but it is just too far away to contest the flag. A few shots are fired and a few bots are killed, and Imperitus stands near to the back to be the big threatening piece he is.

My turn, I look at my options. With Imperitus on the right side, and the Helios in range of anything that goes for the griffons, I don’t believe I have enough power to kill both and come out on top. I also know from the last few games that Backlash can work, but I can’t do it in one turn, and Vyross is playing far back anyway so I cannot get an additional hit on him to finish him off. So with my assassination and attrition plays off the field, it looked like I would have to go for scenario.

So I ran the arc node that had been hiding behind the building out and within 8” of Imperitus. I flared Imperitus with a bot, and moved a puncture bot onto the flag on the right side.  Mother went next, feated, and channelled domination into Imperitus, to make him turn around and walk back to Sylas, who he butchered with one hit, even over a wall. That jack was now facing the wrong way, a further 5” away from the front line, and just to make sure, I shot him with two Rough terrain shots from the cipher to really slow him down.

One of the Assimilators charged into a griffon, and mostly killed it. The other shot and hit two more to give them a dent, and then the axiom went in for the walk. I knew I was not going to survive the two griffons, a phoenix and the Helios in combat but I needed to make the Helios move to the left side so that it would not be able to contest the right flag. I was within walking distance of the griffon I had not killed with the assimilator, so I moved up, and shot into the other griffon that was out of my melee range. I pulled it closer and took a nice chunk out of its health. I shot the Accelospiker into the support staff, which was enough to kill them, and clear a drag route for me to hit the Phoenix and drag that in. Unfortunately the Griffon was in the way, and I could not get the Phoenix in close enough to hit it. I spent the rest of the focus killing the griffons, and I spawned a bot to get in the way of the phoenix moving away. I also moved a flare bot onto the left flag, and ran a bomb bot into base contact with some more of his support staff. I scored two points.

Turn 3: My opponent moved the griffon on the right side round to the flag, and killed the two bots guarding it. The cipher was still within 4” so he could not claim it for now. The Phoenix moved forwards to deeper into my lines between the axiom and the assimilator, and hit the axiom to start the synergy chain. (The other griffon was out of range from Vyross when he made his attacks.)

Imperitus moved through the rough terrain and tried to get back in the game, while taking a swing a rogue bomb bot that had been running for the first two turns, and the last griffon took his revenge on the arc node and killed it, getting the synergy chain up to full. With an arcane boost, the Helios went into the axiom and killed it with ease, and also took out the assimilator as well… But he was now only able to contest one flag with it. But because it can, it also shot at the bot sitting on the left flag to pull it out of position! Dual attack on that is great!

Vyross moved to the left side to get away from the chance of me dominating Imperitus again (I had considered it in the turn previously, but he was behind a wall as well and the odds were better against Sylas.)  He feated, and took a few shots to lower the number of bots on the board, but stayed way behind the Helios for protection.

For my turn, I had to keep the scenario pressure up. So I dominated the Griffon on the right side, and moved it to a point where the cipher could charge it in the back. I then hit it with an imperil, and also moved mother way back from the middle. The Cipher went in for the kill, and stopped on the flag to get the point. The last assimilator went into Helios to get rid of some of his health, and to keep him where he was. The rest of the army, now almost entirely bots, surrounded Helios and the Phoenix to stop them getting to most places, and I put another bot on the left flag. I ended my turn to be up to 4 points.

Turn 4: With the pressure really on for the scenario, he had to contest two flags without the griffons, and a Helios that was stuck in place. He had a plan though! He used the last griffon to clear some of the bots around the Helios, and then moved it to a point where it could shoot the Cipher around the building. He pulled the cipher way out of position and into Imperitus’ charge range. This also meant that he was not able to put anything close to contest the flag, but the cipher was off of it. The Helios then used its melee attacks to kill the last assimilator, and a few of the bots surrounding the Phoenix, which set more on fire…

The phoenix ran round to contest the left flag, and Imperitus did what he does and easily killer the Cipher. The side step was not enough to get him into contesting position either, but he had stopped me scoring. He then goes to run Vyross over to the right flag, before I remind him that Casters cannot contest, and that he had 5 minutes left on the clock (More than me at 3 minutes).

So to end my turn, I have two options. I could dominate the Phoenix contesting the left flag using the Corollary as an arc node and pull it out of position, or, the easier option, I could just run the other arc node, still sitting on that hill, onto the right flag, and win. I did the latter, and finished the game on 5 points, with just a minute left on the clock.