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March Scrum 2018 - Round Six

Round Six:  Vs Rich Owens
Scenario:  Outlast

When I saw Rich's list pairing I thought I would see the Morghoul2 Disciples of Agony list.  Usually the possibility of seeing a wraith engine forces people into playing the list that has or can give our magic weapons.  As I looked at my lists, I once again felt that dark host was the correct play.  If he dropped Makeda and I played my Coven list, I knew I would be completely unable to handle all his beasts and armor.  To my surprise, Rich declared he was going to play is Madeka3 list.  I knew his only magic weapons were Makeda's unit and Zaadesh, so I felt good about getting decent work from the wraith engine.  Our lists are below.

(Makeda 3) Makeda & the Exalted Court [+24] - Imperial Warhost
 - Agonizer [0(6)]
 - Archidon [10]
 - Bronzeback Titan [18]
 - Molik Karn [19]
 - Titan Gladiator [15]
Mortitheurge Willbreaker [4]
Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor [5]
Tyrant Zaadesh [4]
 - Basilisk Krea [0(7)]
Paingiver Beast Handlers (max) [7]
Siege Animantarax [17]

(Deneghra 2) Wraith Witch Deneghra [+28] - Dark Host
 - Deathripper [6]
 - Deathripper [6]
 - Stalker [8]
 - Stalker [8]
 - Skarlock Thrall [0(4)]
Bane Lord Tartarus [0(6)]
Darragh Wrathe [9]
Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor [5]
Soul Trapper [1]
Bane Knights (max) [15]
Bane Riders (max) [20]
Bane Warriors (min) [10]
 - Bane Warrior Officer & Standard [0(5)]
Wraith Engine [15]

Deployment: Rich won the roll and chose to go first.  He placed his siege animantarax on the right flank.  Despite being the model deployed furthest to the right, it was still positioned on the inner side of the right circle zone.  To the left of the battle engine was the krea and Zaadesh, with the Archidon behind them.  Molik Karn was to the left of Zaadesh, with the bronzeback next to him.  Makeda and her ancestral escorts were to the bronzeback's left, with the gladiator on the left flank.  Orin Midwinter and the willbreaker were deployed near Makeda and the beast handlers were spread out behind his lines.

I deployed the bane riders on my left flank with a deathripper to their right.  The skarlock, Deneghra, Darragh Wrathe, the soul trapper and Orin Midwinter came next, with the second deathripper behind Orin.  The wraith engine was to the right of Orin and positioned mostly behind the wall on my side.  To the wraith engine's right I deployed the bane knights, with the bane warriors on the far right flank and Tartarus between the two units.  My stalkers deployed centrally.

Holy shit ... there's pictures!  Terrain is a trench overlapping the far side of the left zone, and a house overlapping the right edge of that zone.  A wall was in the left zone and a forest behind the left zone on my side of the board.  There was a patch of rubble on his side behind the left zone, but a little towards the center.  A wall was positioned between the two zones on my side and shallow water overlapped the near edge of the right zone while a forest overlapped the far inner edge of the right zone.  I placed my clouds in front of the wall on my side.


Top 1:  Makeda cast hand of death on herself, rush on the bronzeback and charged one of my bane riders to move up to just outside the left zone.  Her two ancestral escorts ran and positions around her.  The gladiator ran forward into the trench.  Orin advanced and cast stealth and the will breaker moved forward and gave Makeda tough.  The bronzeback ran forward, staying just outside the zone and keeping the house between itself and most of my army.  Molik Karn moved up to be just a little behind the bronzeback.  The siege animantarax ran forward and just toed into the inner side of the right zone.  It stayed outside the threat range of everything I had except one stalker.  The archidon flew into the forest overlapping the right zone.  The krea ran forward to be standing behind his flag.  Zaadesh cast tag team and advanced.  The beast handlers moved up and used condition to remove enough fury to prevent any frenzy checks.


Bottom1:  The bane riders ran forward.  Two got into the forest behind the left zone, while the other three positioned around the outer edge of it.  The left death ripper ran to be behind the forest.  The left stalker moved to be just behind the house and out of Makeda's line of sight.  The wraith engine ran forward into the zone, keeping out of Zaadesh's threat range.  Darragh Wrathe moved over, cast death ride and repositioned so all the banes on the right side of the board could benefit.  The soul trapper ran forward onto my flag.  Deneghra, Orin and the skarlock all ran forward to sit behind the wall behind the clouds.  The bane knights ran forward.  Three arranged base to base in the left cloud, while four gathered in the right cloud.  The remaining three stood base to base just to the right of the wall.  Tartarus ran to be behind the knights.  The warriors ran so three of them were in the right zone, three were behind them and the officer hung a few inches behind the back line.  That one model in the far right corner of the picture is the standard bearer.  He was just within command range of the officer.  The right death ripper ran up behind Tartarus.  Finally, my second stalker ran to engage the siege animantarax.

 

Top 2:  Makeda upkept hand of death on herself and Zaadesh upkept tag team.  She moved slightly forward to be just inside the zone, while her escorts stayed a little farther back.  Orin positioned within three inches of Makeda and cast stealth again.  The willbreaker applied tough to Makeda.  The bronzeback moved up into the zone, but staying mostly behind the house.  The beast handlers moved up, enraged Molik Karn, put two points of damage on the siege animantarax and then healed it back up, with the net effect of granting it two rage tokens.  Molik Karn moved up and killed the stalker blocking the siege animantarax, then between side step and fate walker he ended up roughly where he started the turn.  The siege animantarax then moved forward and took some shots into the bane knights.  The right group lost two of the three knights that were clumped together.  The krea ran to get in the way of the rest of the bane knights.  Zaadesh moved up onto the flag.  The archidon moved behind the siege animantarax. The gladiator stayed in the trench.  Rich scored on his flag, going up 0-1.


Bottom 2:  Deneghra had nothing to upkeep and did not allocate anything.  On the left flank, a single bane rider had distance to charge the bronzeback and the rest ran to continue positioning around the edge of the zone, with one from in the forest stepping partially out to lose the benefit of prowl.  The single charge on the bronzeback spiked and it lost its spirit.  When the bane riders repositioned, I moved the one that charged farther into the zone to engage Makeda.  With the lucky damage spike on the bronzeback, the remaining stalker moved up to apply grievous wounds.  The first attack I boosted damage and between the two I had a couple more lucky spikes, taking out the bronzeback's mind.  The right death ripper ran into position to arc onto the siege animantarax.  The wraith engine charged the animantarax and put a solid amount of damage on it.  The bane knights then charged.  Three managed to get on the siege animantarax, while the rest charged the krea.  They killed the krea and finished off the siege animantarax, which means I don't need to keep typing that name out for the rest of this report.  (note to self - start using nicknames for models when the actual name is annoyingly long and complex for typing).  The bane warriors ran into the zone, but the standard bearer did not have distance to get in for scoring purposes.  Darragh Wrathe cast mortal fear and stayed behind the clouds.  Orin and the skarlock stayed behind the wall.  Tartarus ran to be near the flag, but able to help threaten both sides of the zone.  Deneghra feated and rolled 5 targets.  She made herself, the wraith engine, Tartarus, the death ripper and the stalker incorporeal.  I scored one on my flag, tying the score at 1-1.


Top 3:  At this point, he knew he had limited options on the right flank and started focusing hard on the left flank where I had not committed much of my army.  Makeda upkept hand of death and Zaadesh dropped tag team.  Zaadesh moved to the far side of the flag.  Makeda killed the bane rider engaging her and used blood boon to shoot an eliminator at another bane rider, killing it as well.  She then killed the stalker engaging the bronzeback and cast rush on the bronzeback.  The bronzeback walked forward and killed a bane rider.  The gladiator moved forward in the trench to contest and threaten the left zone.  The archidon killed two of the bane knights and sprinted back to the other side of the house.  Orin continued to hang out near Makeda and fired off a chain lightning.  He used two boosts, but killed at most one bane knight.  The willbreaker granted tough to Makeda again.  Molik Karn took a slight step to the side, but mostly stayed back waiting for his moment.  The beast handlers ran forward to contest my flag and try to screen for some of his models.  Rich scored his flag, going up 1-2.


Bottom 3:  The two bane riders used vengeance to get back in formation.  The two remaining bane riders charged the bronzeback, putting some damage on it.  They then repositioned so one contested the left zone and the other moved back into the forest.  Due to Tartarus's facing, he could not see the bronzeback, so he walked and with his two attacks finished the bronzeback off.  Orin walked up to contest the flag and cast chain lightning, killing 2 beast handlers and one bane knight.  The bane knights charged and killed Zaadesh and the remaining beast handlers.  The wraith engine moved forward to contest his flag and threaten.  The bane warriors ran to get into the right zone for scoring.  Darragh Wrathe cast mortal fear again.  The skarlock ran into the clouds.  One death ripper moved to get line of sight to arc onto one of Makeda's escorts and Deneghra cast a boosted breath stealer.  Orin used his last power token to cancel it.  Deneghra used the last of her focus to cast an unboosted breath stealer again, which hit the escort.  The other death ripper hung far back.  I scored my flag and the right zone, going up 3-2.


Top 4:  With Deneghra sitting on no focus, Molik Karn's time had come.  Makeda dropped hand of death and charged the bane warriors.  She feated and killed the first knight, using blood boon to put hand of death on Molik Karn.  With all her bought attacks, she was able to kill all the bane knights and one bane warrior, before casting lightning strike to sprint back to my side of the house.  The beast handlers enraged Molik Karn and the willbreaker put puppet master on him.  Molik Karn charged Orin.  Orin died, which allowed both side step and overtake to take effect.  His second initial killed a bane warrior and the overtake and side step moved him up to the wall.  Deneghra was effectively DEF 18 with the wall between her and Molik Karn.  Molik Karn forced twice to buy the attack and boost.  The swing missed and puppet master was triggered.  The reroll hit Deneghra doing 8 points of damage.  He forced twice more to buy and boost and missed the second attack.  At this point, he conceded the game and we recorded and reported it as if I had counter assassinated.


Post Game Analysis:  With the exception of actually giving Molik Karn a chance at assassination, I felt very good about how the game played out.  Unless someone is in a truly dominating position, I don't think it is likely for control point scoring to be a huge factor in this scenario.  Due to this, at deployment I decided to only really commit the bane riders to the left zone.  That said, I did get super luck on dice spikes against the bronzeback.  It wasn't my plan to commit the stalker on the turn it attacked the bronzeback, but when my bane rider took out its spirit I knew that I could effectively keep the bronzeback from being relevant if I applied grievous wounds.

When I saw that the only models in the list with magic weapons were Zaadesh and Makeda's unit, I knew that my feat would be used for a more defensive purpose.  Getting to attack with the wraith engine and then knowing that it would be incorporeal again and safe after feat was great.  While the feat can be used for a great assassination threat, in a matchup like this using it to keep key pieces safe is even stronger.

As for things I probably could have done differently, it was pointed out that I basically threw my first stalker away.  He had to commit resources to kill it, but Molik Karn wasn't going to do anything else that turn anyway.  It probably would have been wiser to keep the stalker back and have it on later turns.  Also, I don't know if casting breath stealer on Makeda was the right thing to do.  I was hoping to keep her from getting to my last two bane riders, but the gladiator and archidon could have addressed them if he wanted.  My hope was to position the wraith engine so he would have to either commit Makeda to killing it, which would probably leave her in threat range of other things, or to have to run her away, which could have started allowing me to get up on scenario scoring.  I figured I was totally safe behind a wall and clouds that he couldn't see through.  Even with side step, I don't think he had distance, but I forgot about overtake from hand of death.

This was a really good game.  As much as I felt good with my play, I never really felt like Rich had run out of options or ways to handle what I still had on the board.  My biggest advantage was incorporeal on the wraith engine, but if he had not gone for the assassination, I think he could have torn up a solid chunk of my army, leaving me without much to handle his three remaining heavies.  Thanks to Rich for the game and thanks to everyone who read this!


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