torsdag 22. september 2016

Battle Report #1: Haley2 vs Haley3

For the first battle we go blue on blue (or an my case, purple). I play Haley2, and Lars plays Haley3. Messing with the space-time continuum leads to such stuff, I hear.


The Lists


Haley2 Rookie Squad (75 points)


My experimental Haley2 list.

Haley2 (+25)
- Squire (5)
- Centurion (17)
- Ironclad (12)
- Thorn (13)
Journeyman Warcaster (4)
- Firefly (8)
Jakes1 (4)
- Thunderhead (20)
Lanyssa (3)
Ragman (4)
6 Trenchers (10)

Haley3 (75 points)


This is fairly standard type of Haley3 list, nothing unusual in here.

Haley3 (+25)
- Ironclad (12)
- Thorn (13)
- Stormclad (18)
Journeyman Warcaster (4)
- Charger (9)
Piper (4)
Ragman (4)
5 Storm Lances (20)
10 Trenchers (16)


Lars, my opponent

Pre battle thoughts

The scenario is Outlast.

Both our lists have a similar basic strategy: Advance with our army protected by clouds, and try to do damage without retaliation, to shift the attrition in our favor. Both of us can do fairly long range assassinations.

My opponent was wary about Thunderhead, and I made sure to point out the tricks with threat range and the auto hitting.

The good



  •  I have better melee threat ranges.
  •  Haley3 has lots of fryable infantry targets, including the Echoes when they are corporeal.
  •  Thunderhead ignores DEF skew, which is Haley3's main attrition trick.


The bad



  •  His long spell threat ranges (15" Thorn move) and True Sight on the Echoes puts Journeyman and Jakes in danger.
  •  His Lances are lightning immune, so I cannot fry the most valuable targets.
  •  It's a bit tricky for me to defend both objectives.


First Game


Our first game was a total mess due to a rules error (True Sight does not work while channeling, so my opponent could not get me by arcing through my clouds). We reset the match and went for it again. At least, now we knew better what the other list did.

Second Game


Setup


My plan when setting up was to have Thunderhead central to try to blow up as many Trenchers as possible, and then have the rest of the Warjacks close by in order to deal with any retaliation. I would try to clear the right zone and start scoring as soon as possible.

A challenge with my list is the low model count, which can make it hard to contest split objectives like this one. I could split off the Journeyman and Firefly but I think it would be hard to defend them properly. Next time I think I will have the Centurion closer to whatever zone I am not gunning for.

Turn 1


He wins the roll and moves up and clouds.
I do the same.

Turn 1: Haley3 moves up the board

Turn 2


Lars could not really get much done with my cloud wall up, so he advanced again and shot and killed two Trenchers. He had one possible move with running Thorn into my clouds, arcing one spell to move it 3" more, and then trying to pull out a Warjack to get the alpha. But it's possible that the Echoes would not close enough to arc through it then. Past walks up to see my Firefly through the clouds, and blasts away both Lanyssa and Ragman with one spell. This was a mistake on my part, they could have been a bit further back and still have helped in the ensuing melee.

I see an opening. I clear out a blocking Storm Lance, move Thunderhead up, and fry a handful of Trenchers and Haley Past. I then run Thorn into his clouds and dominate his Stormclad, making it walk into his clouds and present ass. Haley feats and moves up. I do not manage to completely kill the 'Clad, leaving it at a few boxes, but since it has its back turned he is unable to retaliate under my feat. I don't contest left, so Lars scores 1-0.

Turn 3


My feat has shut Haley3 down completely. Everything is caught, and since Lars must revive Haley Past he cannot do any slam shenanigans this turn. Maybe it would have been better to feat anyway and try to dominate one of my jacks into position so he could kill it. He ends up just shooting the Firefly a little, and I can go bananas with Thunderhead again next turn. Lars still holds the left zone, and scores 2-0.


The assassination angles are real.
Looking at the board, I just need to clear out one Stormlance and one Trencher to open up space for Thorn to move up within 8" of Haley Prime. I do so. Haley2 is at 5 focus and tries to Telekinesis Prime into Thunderhead range. Her first attempt comes up snake eyes, but on the next I connect with the boost.  The chances were excellent, I needed 10+ on 3D6 with two attempts and one reroll (this gives roughly a 95% chance of success). Haley also presents ass to Thunderhead, who walks up and fries her down to 4 boxes (some bad rolls there). Jakes takes a potshot, connects, and Prime is dead. I also had a fully loaded Ironclad that could reach her so this was all very likely to work.

If the teleport had failed, I would probably have aborted the assassination and sent up the Ironclad to kill something. I would have been in real danger of being spell assassinated by the Haleys in that case.

Cygnar wins by assassination!

Post game thoughts


Well, this was a good start! The threat skew is extreme. I got the two turn Pulse off as planned, and it was devastating. I think that keeping the Journeyman and Jakes alive might be hard work, so I will really have to learn all enemy threat ranges with this list.

Covering both objectives is hard. The forest here made it even harder. I am not quite sure how to handle it, I should probably just have the Centurion toe the zone.

I has a discussion with Jarle (one of the better Cygnar players on the planet) of Courage of Caspia fame afterwards, and he suggested that I swap Centurion + Lanyssa for Dynamo + Gobber for more armor cracking potential and a better shooting game. It seems like it would be an improvement. I have neither of those minis yet, though, and I really prefer playing with my own painted minis. Anyway, I think I should try the list some more times before changing it!

Thanks to Lars for a great game!


Things I forgot


1. Haley and her battlegroup can choose to boost after rolling. I forgot this several times, but Lars kindly reminded me!
2. Centurion has Critical Sustained Attack and Ironclad has Critical Knockdown. I forgot to check for critical hits all game.

Corrections


Jarle correctly pointed out that I could not have killed Haley Past with Thunderhead, since magic attacks do not remove Incorporeal.

4 kommentarer:

  1. Interesting game! A couple of questions:
    1. How did you fry Past? She should be invulnerable to most things in your army and on top of that she should have Arcane Shield and camp, preferably.
    2. Assassination run on Prime. Did he not have Dirge of Mists up on her? What about Arcane Shield?

    Lastly a not on channeling and true sight: True sight -does- work, just not the way Lars wanted it to. The thing is that if say, Past is casting a Chain Blast on a stealthed model through Thorn and the stealthed model is more than 5" away, the attack does not auto-miss because Past has true sight. However you draw line of sight -through- the arcing model and true sight is required for LoS purposes to see through clouds. It's kind of the opposite interaction compared to Vayl2 arcing through her Eyeless Sight warbeasts ;) When Echoes channel through Thorn he cannot reaction drive by the way, only when Prime does. Likewise the Echoes cannot channel through Thorn when he is engaged.

    SvarSlett
  2. Thank you!

    1. We made a mistake. We thought that magic attacks remove Incorporeal, but only melee and ranged attacks do. Maybe I should swap Ragman for Arlan anyway! Everything moves so fast here that Ragman could have trouble keeping up.

    2. Dirge and Arcane Shield was on the Storm Lances. Dirge would have reduced my 95% chance of landing Telekinesis to 75%. Arcane shield would have made it almost impossible to kill Haley with only Thunderhead.

    Looking at it now I see that I could have improved my assassination chances by running the Firefly up after casting Telekinesis and using the Ironclad to Tremor both it and Haley. I think that if Haley had had all the defenses up, then I would have ignored her this turn and concentrated on clearing the right zone and taking out the enemy Thorn, Ironclad, and Future.

    Nice tips on Thorn there. If I place something where Thorn wants to run to then Haley Past + Prime will have a much harder time doing the double whammy on my caster. Could be useful. :D

    SvarSlett
  3. With Distortion and Dirge Prime should be DEF20 so you're looking for a 12+. The re-roll does help but my math puts it at 60.9% (http://www.courageofcaspia.com/p/theory.html), not 75%.

    Dirge and Shield on Lances is a trap which is rarely ever worth it. Possibly sometimes for the very first turn of the game if you want your lances in position while Haley is safely tucked away far behind the front lines, but after that you need to protect that unit at all costs.

    Ditching Ragman is... iffy. Sure Arlan is nice but I find he's a more situational piece for his 4 points than Ragman is. There is just so much armour out there! While Ragman is slow his effective range is pretty decent as he just needs to be within 3" of a friendly model who can in turn apply Dark Shroud quite a lot further. Once you factor in TK you can effectively apply Dark Shroud 8+3+2+2 inches, adding another 3" if you have a colossal. Note that for these examples I'm rounding a large base up to 2" and a huge base up to 5" so strictly speaking it's a tiny bit less but for practical purposes these are the numbers you need ;)

    What Haley3 needs to do vs Haley2 on Haley2's feat turn is to basically have anticipated the feat in advance, have the models in place and stall the game. You can spend throwaway pieces to get this done, for example Thorn isn't that vital to Haley3 in this matchup once the lines clash. However letting Thorn live can be disastrous for Haley2 as his Disruption spear can completely wreck your plans (at least if you don't have a colossal). Lastly, if Haley3 can dominate a jack and possibly counter-feat to get value out of both Past and Future that should be something to consider. I can recommend my report against Tor Egil at Invasion for a different take on the matchup: http://www.courageofcaspia.com/2016/09/invasion-2016-game-4-291-haley3-vs.html While the specifics of the lists are different you can see the various plays I'm talking about in effect here.

    SvarSlett
  4. I had three tries on Telekinesis, that's why - 2 cast + 1 reroll.

    I agree on Ragman. I have redesigned the list to get Ragman back. :D

    Thanks for the reference, I'll have a look at that report! :D

    SvarSlett

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