Longest Day - Tournament in Bethlehem, PA

Alrighty, I have a few write ups to do, and this is me starting out with the oldest one I can still remember well enough to do this with. This tournament was a 75pt standard SR down in Bethlehem, PA, about 3 hours and 15 minutes from where I live. Ever since I gave up smoking, doing these early tournaments that require a long haul has been kind of brutal on me, and I've generally done pretty frickin' bad. Right now I'm planning on chugging a bunch of energy drinks when I get there, hoping that will simulate being on my previous cocktail of stimulants. As is, though, I got my bags packed the night before, loaded my car, and went to bed early on a Friday night after having a relaxing time hanging out with my cats and watching TV.

I just dropped Rasheth the entire day, as my off-list was more for infantry spam and/or Cryx in general. So... the list!


https://conflictchamber.com/#c9201b_-0k6IeGeG6N6v6vcvgggg6q6q6p6F6p6F6X

Skorne Army - 74 / 75 points
[Theme] Winds of Death

(Rasheth 1) Dominar Rasheth [+28]
 - Aradus Sentinel [16]
 - Aradus Sentinel [16]
 - Aptimus Marketh [0(5)]
Extoller Soulward [3]
Extoller Soulward [3]
Mortitheurge Willbreaker [0(4)]
Venator Dakar [4]
Venator Dakar [4]
Venator Catapult Crew [0(5)]
Venator Catapult Crew [5]
Venator Reivers (max) [15]
 - Venator Reiver Officer & Standard [4]
Venator Reivers (max) [15]
 - Venator Reiver Officer & Standard [4]
Venator Slingers (max) [13]

Round 1

Rasheth vs Haley2

So my opponent's list brought a colossal and battle engine, and a handful of other jacks and support. I wound up going first, and put my reivers on the flanks with slingers and aradus in the center. I've been using slingers near the center of the board more frequently now - with the changes to terrain setup there now tends to be a convenient piece of terrain to hide a few behind near the middle of the table. In this scenario, that happened to be a forest near my objective so I went with the pathfinder objective. This winds up being common for me, these days, allowing me to rocket a slinger through a forest to use as a node. Thanks, SR2017!

I think I've got this on scenario, just due to volume of contesting models, even with my opponent running Haley2. Still, I start up a bit cautiously, making sure I leave a few models in the left in range to walk and contest and solos on the right to walk and snag my flag if capable. Gotta be ready for that feat.

He moves up aggressively on my left and shoots a few slingers and reivers down. Does the same on the right taking out a few more guys. He opts to put arcane shield on the strider, and I decide I'm going to top of 2 his hurricane. He doesn't feat, planning to use it round 2 for a harder scenario push.

Slingers go, walk up and throw some shots at the hurricane. Rasheth goes, arcs bloodmark at the hurricane. It isn't in range of my feat, but whatever. I throw a BoC at it for good measure and boost damage. Reivers go, and shoot the hell out of it. Repo 3 of them into 4" of his flag. Catapults go and pop two more shots into it. Dice + 1 is pretty good, and they both hit easily. A bug puts a shot into it, boosting damage. It's left on one box. Woops.

I put some damage out on the right, and put a reiver in position to drop a cloud next to the forest to extend my LOS blocking, and Marketh hits him and makes a cloud there. Extoller walks up to snag my flag.

My opponent goes, and Arlan repairs the Hurricane. It pops some shots and moves back to hide.

Strider shoots down a few more reivers, as does his firefly and reliant drops Marketh. Jakes kills a guy and sprints back into her trench. Haley feats and takes the left flag.

Well, Rasheth was in the feat. That... doesn't do anything to him, though, and most of my guns are fine here. Slinger walks up to the Strider. Rasheth feats, blood marks the Strider. Walks up to the wall. I should note this game goes to scenario victory, but I can't for the life of me remember what the score was here or anywhere at this point forward. I think it was 17-12 at the end?

Anyway, reivers, catapults, and bugs delete the strider and finish the hurricane off. Bad feat turn for Haley.

Haley uses her fireflies and Thorn to finish off the left unit of reivers. Jakes puts more hurt onto the right unit, both herself and with her reliant. Haley backs the heck out and squire takes the flag.

I've been slowly creeping a bug over to the left zone, and right now the only thing in there is Haley's firefly. Bug goes, walks into the zone, boosts damage into the firefly. Dakar aims and pops him one.

Catapults kill it. No luck in killing the squire, but I got the zone at least.

Reivers on the right go and put some damage into the firefly over there. Bug on the right pops Thorn for some damage, and Rasheth goes, arcing a BoC into Jakes. She goes down, leaving her jack inert. My zone!

Haley is now on tie-breaker mode. My objective gets smashed, Jr's firefly runs into the right zone and kills a few guys.

Reivers run around, getting one near Jr. BoC kills him. More shooting drops squire.

Few more of my models get killed by Haley, Thorn runs to contest my flag. I run a guy to contest her flag, scoring and taking it down.

Game 2

vs Thyra, Legends of the Hidden Temple

My opponent has a lot of cavalry. I again have a forest in the center to hide stuff. He has some ambushers, but whatever. His cav go on the flanks, and I'm pretty sure they're going to die before they do anything. My gameplan this time is to just table him - his high arm single wound infantry can't really handle scathers and his cavalry are exactly what Reivers want to fight. This should be pretty easy.

He moves up aggressively, flanking hard with both units of cav. Thyra comes down the middle hot.

I run a few slingers up and shoot her with BoC, dropping her to 3 health. Reivers on the right kill 4 of his cavalry models. Sentinels drop scathers into the flameguard, and some more slingers body block for them.

Thyra is not happy with this situation...Daughters ambush on my right, and them and the remaining cav model jam up and kill a few reivers. Flameguard kill a few slingers and wall up a bit on the right as well. Thyra moves up to a hill, heals for five.

I can get a few guys up to range of Thyra, and she's on 8 and in range of a fat man feat. So... bluebug clears a path, and some reivers run to within 8" of her. Rasheth goes, pops feat, and... doesn't have eyeless sight. Fuck. I fling a BoC at her, miss, and again, clip her and boost damage. She reduces it, but goes down to... 3 again I think? Maybe 2? It isn't a good look on her.

I give eyeless sight to a slinger. He gets Combat Coordination from the Dakar. Puppet Master from the Willbreaker. He walks up, and shoots for it! 11 to hit, and..... NAILS IT! First try he lands the hit, and kills her.

Game 3

vs Haley2, again.

This time it's into Storm Division, with a lot more infantry. I'm going first, and it looks like I should be able to clear the table off again... So let's see how that goes! His stormblades advance move, and I start by running some slingers up near them. I advance centrally, hard, and throw a BoC into the stormblades, taking out a handful. Bug goes and throws a scather for them to catch. Rest of my stuff spreads out and moves down the board. 

His jacks and Strider move up centrally, remainder of the guard moves up as fast as they can, and the lances go hard left. Haley takes the hill next to Thorn.

I've fucked up my fury, didn't expect to spend as much as I did and end up cutting for 4.... So... Bluebug kills a handful of the stormguard, and I move up my reivers and minifeat on the right, and put a CRA into Haley. Rasheth gets puppet master and lobs a BoC into Haley, boosting damage. Damage is whiffed and I reroll it. She's on 4 health, and I decide to throw up castigate and play for the long game now that she's well and neutered. Reivers on the left drop a lance, and a bug helps out with a scather.

He's decided I've pushed him all in... Strider gets TA and puts two shots into the fat man. Laddermore moves up, and lances assault. I go down by 3 health. DON'T FUCK UP FURY.

Game 4

vs Issyria Shadows

He has a ton of infantry models with stealth, and two heavies. I have a lot of AOE's though, and I think I can probably rely on deviations to handle things! It's Spread the Net, and I think I can pull out the scenario win.

He moves up aggressively on both flanks with his MHSF. I've deployed to have coverage on both sides, and I move up to commence carpet bombing. A few slingers run into position to direct AOE's on the right, and I lob scathers and BoC clouds into them doing... not enough work, honestly. Oops.

He uses his phantom seeker minifeat and Issyrias feat and puts the hurt on my reivers at ranged, and positions to get more work done back on my lines the next few turns.

I make an aggressive push of my own, knocking him out of the center, off my flag and rectangle, and contest both of his zones. 3-0. Unfortunately some of my scathers miss their mark and deviate poorly, putting me in a non-ideal position. A few more decent pushes like this, though, and I should be in a good spot. Unfortunately I've lost a lot of steam, though, so we'll see if I can do it.

He clears off his flag and zone, and contests the middle with his heavy, and I unfortunately didn't castigate - Rasheth gets hit with a blinding light. His other heavy comes down to my flag, and a few infantry models come into my rectangle. He scores 1, 3-1.

I clear off my rectangle, and run a Dakar over to Eiryss. I clear a few models out of the center, but don't have the volume of fire to get through them (both my extollers miss boosted attack rolls anyway). I go for a throw with redbug on his heavy, to clear off my flag, and... forget about admonition. 4-1

It pushes on for a little bit longer, but between bad list selection and some bad rolls, I wind up losing out on scenario as I run out of steam.

Thoughts: I should have picked a side and focused my carpet bombing there, instead of devoting half my resources to each. I might've been able to deny an entire side and wipe out a unit, instead of partly hurting each unit. I also shouldn't have relied quite so heavily on deviations - Morghoul3 would've been a perfect drop here, as I only need eyeless sight on him and Marketh and bring 2 extollers. Should've known better, but it was good practice into what I didn't realize was quite so bad a matchup. Further, stealth would've been pretty helpful here. I'll need to get more practice with him into Ret, but my local ret player has been flakey lately thanks to a busy schedule.

Game 5

vs THE CHILD! My first tournament game into Grymkin! Kinda excited to see what happens, but definitely fell off on taking pictures here and was pretty fried.

Big takeaways - Being able to focus fire and arc spells was huge. I could take out a single S&M at a time, reducing the value of Sacrifice, and easily take out gremlin swarms. Further, shutting down channeling was useful, and the catapults had no problem hitting his cage rager. Yes, The Child has a lot of abilities to make it hard to shoot into her, but on a spread out scenario she can't reliably keep all of her toys close enough to really take advantage of her bricking. She had to send stuff out to get work done and keep her alive on scenario, leaving me with targets to drop. Still, it was a tough match, and I damn near clocked myself before taking it on scenario.

Repo on the reivers was incredibly powerful on this scenario, considering one could contest two zones at a time, making it quite a bit easier to get work in and deny while controlling with a single unit.

Winds is probably going to hang out in my pairing for the foreseeable future, with the caveat that if we get something incredible with Praetorians that allows extollers I could see that taking its place. The Extollers here, though, got so much work done. Throughout the whole day they were gold, and this game they took out a Skin and Moans in 2 shots. Having guns that get better as they gain more armor is pretty funny, and I'm really looking forward to seeing where we can take them once Themeapalooza hits.

This round my opponent was one of the folks over at Not Snakes, and I met a few more of their group as well (they also made their way up to Rochester for the WMW qualifier there this summer). They have some well done videos, including Skorne. I definitely recommend checking them out on Youtube.

Afterthoughts:

I downed a bunch of red bulls round 1. I was definitely flagging by round 3, and round 5 I think I may have been in pretty bad shape - right after the game I ran and grabbed a juice box. Front loading caffeine and then not paying attention to my water intake was kind of a mistake... Need to bring even more caffeine and a bigger water bottle.