Battle Report #52: Nemo3 vs Haley3 (match #2)

After the quick assassination in the previous game, we decided to reset.

Artificer General Nemo (75 points)

Artificer General Nemo & Storm Chaser Finch (Nemo3)
Objective: Fuel Cache
* Reinholdt
* Dynamo
* Firefly
* Thorn
Journeyman Warcaster
* Firefly
Gun Mage Captain Adept
Major Katherine Laddermore
5+3 Storm Lances

Major Prime Victoria Haley (75 points)

Major Prime Victoria Haley (Haley3)
Objective: Fuel Cache
* 2x Grenadier
* Ironclad
* Thorn
Journeyman Warcaster
* Charger
Ragman
Rhupert Carvolo
5 Storm Lances
10 Trencher Infantry

Deployment

I win the die roll again, and go first.

Turn 1

I decide to pressure more this game, and see what happens. I am a bit sloppy and do not measure the right flank, if I had stayed just slightly further back the Grenadier would not have been able to aim at the Lances.

The left side Lances got Arcane Shield, the right side Lances get Electrify, Thorn gets Lightning Shroud and Nemo3 takes Magnetic Field.

Haley decides to just summon Past, and uses the rest to cast Repudiate on the right flank Lances and load up the Grenadier. Together with a Trencher CRA, all 3 Storm Lances fall.

His Lances are placed fairly far back. I think this is a mistake, since I cannot charge through his clouds he could be further up.

Storm Lances vs Storm Lances is a typical Mexican standoff - whoever gets the charge will murder the opposing Lances.

Turn 2

I decide to try a different tactic. I do not feat, just shuffle the Lances a bit and shoot away as many Trenchers as I can get hold of, hoping to kill so many that he loses his smoke wall. Only 3 Trenchers survive the ensuing barrage of electro leaps. I block as many angles as I can, toe into the zone, and camp 3. I make a mistake by having a gap between Dynamo and the Firefly.

Haley decides to go for the kill, Thorn runs in, Haley feats - but this time I am camping enough, and Nemo lives!

1-0

Turn 3

I decide to get further up and attrition. Nemo feats. GMCA tags Thorn, and then Dynamo aims and blasts Thorn to bits with 3 shots. The remaining Lances kill off the rest of the Trenchers and both Grenadiers. Lastly, a Firefly runs up to engage the Charger and block Haley Past from getting much forwards.

2-0

My opponent surrenders the game at this point. He has not assassination angle. He cannot stop me from getting to three control points on his turn, and then getting to five on my turn by killing the objective.

Cygnar wins by scenario!

Post Mortem

I should have placed a bit better, but my extremely aggressive play on turn 1 forced Morten into a difficult choice. Either shoot some of my stuff, like he did, or summon both Echoes and either allow me to murder his front line, or back off and give me a big head start on scenario and a lot of board control.

Clearly going first is big here. It's an interesting matchup - Nemo ignores much of Haley3's defensive tech, but she has a strong assassination against squishy old Nemo.

I am very happy with the result of my two first games. Morten's list is probably one of the strongest in WARMACHINE, and I definitely had game into it.

My first change to the list is going to be to remove Thorn and get even more punch! Thorn is good and Force Hammer is sexy, but since I can mostly ignore defense anyway I think it's better to focus the list a bit on hitting harder.

Battle Report #51: Nemo3 vs Haley3 (match #1)

A brand new list, this is going to be exciting! This is my second Nemo3 game ever, and the first was a 25 point game vs my son. I am facing the Double Grenadier Haley3 list used to great effect by Jarle to win Clogcon, and Olov Winroth to win the Nordic Championships. No half measures here! Today the list is piloted by Morten Gran.

Morten shows his Haley Prime in an attempt to intimidate me.

Artificer General Nemo (75 points)

My goal was to make a list to try out Nemo3's full spell list and various tricks. I went through the thoughts about this list in my previous blog post.


Artificer General Nemo & Storm Chaser Finch (Nemo3)
Objective: Fuel Cache
* Reinholdt
* Dynamo
* Firefly
* Thorn
Journeyman Warcaster
* Firefly
Gun Mage Captain Adept
Major Katherine Laddermore
5+3 Storm Lances

Major Prime Victoria Haley (75 points)

Major Prime Victoria Haley (Haley3)
Objective: Fuel Cache
* 2x Grenadier
* Ironclad
* Thorn
Journeyman Warcaster
* Charger
Ragman
Rhupert Carvolo
5 Storm Lances
10 Trencher Infantry

Deployment

I win the die roll, and you always go first against Haley3 since her first turn is so gimped. My plan is to move up quickly and begin scoring in my zone.

Since I have no pathfinder, the 5 Lances go to the more open ground on the left, and the 3 Lances go to the more congested zone on the right. Everything else goes up the middle.

Turn 1

Lances run up, most of them outside his Grenadier range. I am already greatly missing Rhupert. The upkeeps are as follows:

* Arcane Shield on 5 Lances.
* Electrify on 3 Lances
* Lightning Shroud on Thorn
* Magnetic Field on Nemo3

Trenchers get Tactical Superiority and make the cloud wall. Baby and Grandma Haley appear out of the mists of time. His Lances go into Mexican Standoff mode. just outside my charge range.

Turn 2

Both Fireflies and Thorn runs up. Reinholdt gives Nemo3 an extra shot. Nemo3 feats, shoots twice and arcs Chain Lightning at a Firefly. The Lances move up and fire at the Fireflies. Net result: One Grenadier dies, the other has his gun crippled, 6 Trenchers are toasted. Not bad! I did one mistake by not using the GMCA to make it easier to hit one of Fireflies.

The Lances reposition to make a wall in front of Nemo3 who is camping only one Focus - which is too little. I should have skipped that Chain Lightning, and rather camped 3 more.

Haley3 has lost a large part of her army to my feat and alpha, so Morten decides to go for the kill. The Charger kills a Storm Lance to give vision, Haley3 feats, and I get fried by a barrage of Chain Blasts through Thorn.

Post Mortem

My first impression is that Nemo3 sure packs a crazy punch! Getting an alpha on Haley3 to kill or cripple both the Grenadiers and most of the Trenchers is just sick.

I got to greedy trying to score control points - there was no reason for me to risk it when I could such an attrition advantage right away. Also I knew the Chain Lightning was too greedy, but I wanted to try stuff out.

I already have a feeling that my list is trying to do too much. 7 Focus + free focus + a free upkeep is a lot, but clearly I cannot upkeep all my stuff, shoot the gun twice with boosts, arc spells and also camp enough Focus to be safe. I will have to make some decisions!

That feeling of confusion...

...when you lick your painting brush after washing it, and it suddenly tastes of coffee...

Hot Coffee Haley Prime

Basecoating done, and started work on the purple cloth highlights.

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.