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| Scrubland noun: land consisting of scrub vegetation |
The last month has been pretty hectic for me in my personal life. In that I went on a long vacation. So... by hectic I guess I mean I relaxed and didn't play games and had a really great time?
Anyway, at the start of March I hit the OTC - running Morghoul3/Rasheth, and managed to have a pretty mediocre showing (team went 2-2, drop - I wound up being the ritual sacrifice more often than not and went 1-3, though I think overall we made some good decisions as a team and I managed many mistakes on my own). After that I jumped over to practicing for Champions at the SOO, got two games in with Jalaam, and then left the country.
On my return I hit the Buffalo Team Tournament, a 3-man team tournament in it's second year. I kept with my habit of being the ritual sacrifice (okay, I was only the sacrifice twice here), and wound up going 3-0, with my team making the final tables and taking 2nd place overall!
Below I'll go through a quick debriefing on the OTC, and then hopefully tomorrow I'll go into a bit more detail about the Buffalo tournament since I can actually remember that one...
OTC
Lists-
https://conflictchamber.com/#c9501b_-0k6IeG5z6v6vfFgg5U6q6q6p6F6p6F6WhV___-0ZhS6U5G6N6v6vfFfs5U676c6d6c6d6h
Skorne Army - 75 / 75 points
[Theme] Winds of Death
(Rasheth 1) Dominar Rasheth [+28]
- Aradus Sentinel [16]
- Rhinodon [12]
Extoller Soulward [3]
Extoller Soulward [3]
Swamp Gobber Chef [1]
Venator Dakar [0(4)]
Paingiver Beast Handlers (min) [5]
Venator Catapult Crew [0(5)]
Venator Catapult Crew [0(5)]
Venator Reivers (max) [15]
- Venator Reiver Officer & Standard [4]
Venator Reivers (max) [15]
- Venator Reiver Officer & Standard [4]
Venator Slingers (min) [8]
Siege Animantarax [17]
Skorne Army - 75 / 75 points
[Theme] Masters of War
(Morghoul 3) Dominar Morghoul & Escorts [+25]
- Archidon [10]
- Titan Gladiator [15]
- Aptimus Marketh [5]
Extoller Soulward [3]
Extoller Soulward [3]
Swamp Gobber Chef [1]
Legends of Halaak [8]
Paingiver Beast Handlers (min) [5]
Praetorian Ferox (max) [20]
Praetorian Swordsmen (max) [13]
- Praetorian Swordsman Officer & Standard [0(4)]
Praetorian Swordsmen (max) [13]
- Praetorian Swordsman Officer & Standard [4]
Tyrant Commander & Standard Bearer [0(6)]
So, I had a decently specific goal in mind going into this. I was meant to mostly be thrown at Cygnar, Particularly Haley3s and Nemo3s. Morghoul3 I find works great into Haley, blind being able to shut down her long gunners rather easily and stealth working fantastically vs most of her army. Double Extoller and Marketh are there to potentially shut down two units a turn via blind through a cloud wall. Rasheth, on the other hand, is there for dealing with Nemo as well as being dropped as an all around list. Yes, only one turtle - the goal being using the threat range on 2x reiver units to take out important parts of a Nemo army before they get any work done - Striders being the main targets but sometimes you just have to accept a firefly or Dynamo etc.
Games-
So, I don't have the best memory of this event at this point, so I'm just going to do some quick rundowns of the games I got in. Will be quick recaps...
Game 1
Rasheth Vs Madrak1
My opponent had Madrak1/Bearka. I went with Rasheth, half expecting to be able to just shoot my way through a brick of warbeasts. Instead I ended up playing into Madrak with a bunch of champions. Fortunately a decent chunk of their defense is vs Melee only, so they only hit defense 14 against guns. Carnivore also does a good job here.
Game opens with Rasheth flinging a BoC into my opponents fenblades, killing one and putting a scather in front of his army. Good times. Opponent does his defense aura thing and runs forward. Surprise! I pop some minifeats and shoot down a decent chunk of stuff, putting some damage into champs and long riders. He feats to heal back up and comes on in, doing a little bit of damage and gumming up some of my reivers.
In retaliation I feat and wipe his champs and all but 1 long rider - who despite my best efforts is standing in my face. Turtle got some serious work in this turn, killing a few riders himself. Unfortunately I fail to clear any zones, because tough checks are a thing.
We continue to punch back and forth for awhile, and I'm feeling decent on attrition, but just due to the volume of attacks it takes to put his stuff down through tough and steady I'm losing on scenario. I end up clocking myself before I can actually make any serious headway, but my team takes the round 3-2.
Game 2
Morghoul3 vs Haley3
This is a matchup I wanted, so I'm feeling pretty good here. I throw occultation and mirage onto my swordsmen units and move up pretty aggressively. Lose a few cats, and my opponent drops a cloudwall in front of his army before digging in his long-gunners.
My remaining cats move in, kill some trenchers, whiff attacks into express teams, and use reach + repo to pop a trencher long gun out of dig in. Morghoul gets eyeless, walks up, and blinds the long gunners. One unit of swordsmen can see a few enemies around clouds, and one of them gets eyeless as well, and they go forth to fuck up a grenadier and some trenchers. On the other side my stealthed swordsmen run + charge into trenchers and blind long gunners, cutting down a decent chunk.
Opponent gets some work in via express teams and Haleys, and jams a grenadier and a dog into my close zone. I try to fuck up the Grenadier with the Legends of Halaak, and fail because lul defense Haley3 - Marracas fails to smite the fucking thing, and I whiff my attacks. Gladiator gets enraged, and a bunch of other shit tries to kill the patrol dog and fails. Gladiator... fails to kill the Grenadier.
Morghoul flashes his blade at the grenadier, then charges, out and kills baby-haley's ghost. He repos back up.
I forgot to deal with the dog. Also, for some reason I repo'd back towards my zone... where the dog was. Dog barks, Morghoul dies.
Team goes 0-5
Game 3
Rasheth Vs Vlad1 WGK with double fun carriage.
Opening volley from slingers and turtles cripple his marauder. I wipe out a unit of riflemen + rockets. Fun carriages run down a bunch of my dudes, and fail to get work into my heavies or turtle. Feat turn I take out the carriages, marauder, Joe, and some more rifles. Vlad rebuts by fucking up my turtle with some rockets and a Spriggan - this thing hit like an angry god with flaming dice and did an obscene amount of damage. Fortunately I'm way up on attrition, and disassemble more of his army. I pull ahead on scenario, and my opponent winds up flinging vlad in to try and handle my heavies. Vlad fails, and my Rhinodon and Sentinel fail to kill him on 0 camp in return. He's kinda screwed, now, though and runs to his flag for tie breakers. Sentinel aims, boosts, hits. Vlad melts.
Team goes 4-1
Game 4
Morghoul3 vs Stryker2
This wound up being a super fun game vs a really great player out of Buffalo. I was half expecting another game vs Haley3, but felt pretty confident going into this. For those keeping track at home, though, I went 1-3, and going into this game was 1-2.
I flung my archidon up early, as well as quite a few swordsmen on one side, to try and bait out his feat top of 2. Stormblades took the bait, and dropped the Archidon. I also lost a decent chunk of swordsmen to stormlances. Next turn, feat pops and I blind the stormblades and one unit of ponies. Legends kill some jamming stormlances, and ferox go forth to finish off that unit. Swordsmen pop forward and drop the stormblades, and the rekt unit kills some more storm ponies.
Things go back and forth, but my failure to kill a stormclad with the legends and some swordsmen as well as a lancer with my gladiator puts me on the back foot. Stryker comes in and kills my gladiator in 2 swings. I wind up taking out the stormblades and lances, but am facing down Laddermore, a stormclad, ... something else (jr?), and Stryker with little more than Morghoul and his fan club left. My opponent closes out the game with me just having Morghoul remaining, and him scoring every zone on the last turn for a huge CP victory.
1-4, and we drop.
Afterthoughts
I relied a little more on theory than practice for my matchups than I should have. Honestly I don't have a ton of practice into Cygnar because my meta is weird, so trying to be our Cygnar drop was going to be rough on me anyway. I think that given more practice I could realistically have turned either of those games into wins, but was just not as good a player as my opponents. They played tight games, executed well, and were just overall more experienced.
I definitely need to get back to traveling more to get a wider breadth of games in. Locally there just isn't enough variety to prep for these bigger events.
This was also my first experience into a team event outside of the one year I played in the NETT (lacks much in pairing process, just players 1 2 3 on each team play their mirror). It felt a little more... uncontrolled than I would have expected? All in all though my team had a pretty good showing for our first event of this scale, and our first event in this format, and everyone left in a super good mood. I've gotta say, the OTC is a really great event and the organizers for it are really awesome. Definitely hoping we can make it out next year, maybe with a little bit more polish on my lists and matchups. Playing as a team, though, really seemed to bring our meta up a notch, and I was really impressed with how everyone performed.
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