Captain Allister Caine (75pts)
Captain Allister Caine (+27)
- Reinholdt (4)
- Stormwall (39)
Journeyman Warcaster (4)
- Firefly
Captain Arlan Strangewayes (4)
Gun Mage Captain Adept (5)
Lanyssa Ryssyl (3)
Ragman (4)
Rhupert (4)
6 Rangers (9)
6 Trencher Infantry (16)
- 2 Trencher Infantry Rifle Grenadier (4)
Stormsmith Storm Tower (4)
High Allegiant Amon Ad-Raza (75 pts)
High Allegiant Amon Ad-Raza (+29)
- Hierophant (3)
- Devout (9)
- 4 Crusader (40)
- 2 Templar (30)
Allegiant of the Order of the Fist (3)
The Covenant of Menoth (4)
2 Vassal Mechanik (2)
Vassal of Menoth (3)
2 Wrack (2)
2x4 Choir of Menoth (8)
Deployment
OK, this looks bad. I don't have nearly enough armor cracking to deal with this stuff. My plan will be to try to remove his support with Caine to hopefully reduce the effectiveness of his army. Also I will try to use my Trenchers and Heavies to jam him as much as possible, maybe buy me an extra turn. But - 6 heavies? Haley2, where are you when I need you!
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| Deployment |
Turn 1
Amon moves up outside my threat range, I do the same. Nothing dies. The armies stare menacingly at each other.
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| Add caption |
Turn 2
Wall of jacks deploy in the center. So many jacks... in a straight line... right near my Stormwall... whatever can we do about that? :D
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| Ready to engage the jackwall in the centre |
A Ranger peeks around the jack wall and picks off a Vassal, and the GMCA shadow fires the center jack to give me vision of all the support.
Caine moves up and does what Caine does best - he shoots away the entire right flank Choir, the Mechanic, and one more support model (the Hierophant? Not sure). The Covenant is an excellent Trick Shot target, guaranteed to not die before I have bounced off him 5 times! He then Gate Crashes behind the objective. I think he is safe but boy am I wrong.
I move my Firefly up and do little damage.
Stormwall moves up and pods 3 of his jacks, disrupting them. It then punches a Templar to death with focus from Arlan and Death Field from Ragman. The Trenchers charge but do not do a lot of damage.
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| Chaaaarge! |
Turn 3
I have forgotten about Trample and Parry! I should have placed some models to make it impossible to land before Caine - but I have not.
Amon builds up the Synergy chain. The Firefly dies in three swings. My Stormwall is left at 11 boxes. And then, a Templar tramples up to Caine. It has only 2 focus now, of course, and can only buy one boosted attack. Luckily the Templar is outside Synergy range now!
He takes the swing, it connects, but with 1 Focus camp Caine survives at 7 boxes.
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| Trample and Swing |
Looking at the board it seems clear that I cannot kill his jacks and win on attrition. The next turn I would surely see the Stormwall dead, and then I have nothing,
Amon is within 19" of Caine, but behind a rock and a light jack. But, there are other ways to get at him rather than shooting at him directly.
The Stormwall runs across the wall and lands barely within 4" of Amon. He pods Amon for 3 damage.
I count the shots and focus, and give Reload to Caine.
Moving out of melee with the Templar will give a free strike on Caine at 9+ on 2 dice, and I see no way to avoid it. I cast Bullet Dodger on myself to increase it to 11+ and walk out... and he swings and rolls a 9. Good call! One boosted swing from that dude would probably have turned Caine into mincemeat,
Caine then starts firing Tricks Shots off the Stormwall into Amon. Amon dies while Caine still has two rounds in the chamber!
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| The shots, so trick. |
Yes we Caine! Cygnar wins on assassination!
Post game thoughts
This is a hard matchup for Caine. My list is focused against warrior spam and cloud walls, with some armor cracking thrown in. Amon's army is exactly the type of list I do not want to face. I would much prefer dropping Haley2 into this.
Maybe I should have had Bullet Dodger on Caine from the beginning instead of Heightened Reflexes, but I was worried about any possible throws, they are so hard to spot. Come to think of it is hard for him to follow up the throws with anything, so maybe I was worried about nothing.
Possibly Amon was too far forward here, but on the other hand he cannot be further away and still fuel the Synergy chain. He can have Synergy up, though, do the attacks, and then back out for 1 turn.
Thanks to Geir for a great game!
I love his high contrast color scheme, very nice for the tabletop. When the army is finished is going to look amazing.
Rule blunders
I forgot to add in all bonuses from Ragman and Firefly when doing my attacks.
The Lightning Pod needs to damage to disrupt. It would have been POW14, but still it's very possible I would not have disrupted all three of his jacks.
I see that I had changed the list back and forth so many times that I had not noticed I had put in Min Trenchers in the list, but put Max Trenchers on the table. As the games developed the amount of Trenchers did not matter, but still, got to be more careful!
Good game! Parry indeed caught me by surprise yesterday as well. It's an amazing field marshal ability.
SvarSlettI think that T2 you can change your game plan. You will basically never get an opportunity like this again. What I'd like to see here is the all-in move: Firefly on full focus, move up ahead with Ragman, go in with Firefly, charge all trenchers, feat with Caine, send in Stormwall, disrupt whatever's still dangerous with pod.
With Death Field you'll start at POW14 with Caine and you have POW12 trick shots throughout. Trenchers move to PS13 on the charge and the Firefly is PS15. Lastly Stormwall is PS22 with POW14 electro leaps and the pod is POW14 as well.
The way the game turns out for you the Stormwall nearly dies (and possibly would have if his Templar had committed to the 'wall instead of Caine?) and you end up getting a win condition based off of where Amon is positioned. If you go all in on the alpha and pop the feat you might cripple enough to have an attrition angle :)
Sounds like an interesting plan. That could actually have done a hell of a lot of damage, and also kept Caine safer since he could have been a bit further back.
SvarSlettMaybe I should add our old pal Gorman to the mix for another +2 damage against jack walls! :D
I noticed now that Lightning Pod requires me to damage to disrupt, but I also forgot the +4 POW when dropping it (I did go in with Firefly and Ragman first). That could have mattered, since it's possible he could have gotten another trample off to get to Caine. But he had no more focus to spare, either.