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July 2018 Scrum - Round 3

Round 3:  vs James Lesko
Scenario:  Mirage

This was my first time playing mirage in the 2018 steamroller packet.  I had heard that the scenario was very live and was concerned about being able to contest everything I needed to in order to keep the game close.  Here are the lists we brought:

Me:
[Asphyxious 3] Asphyxious the Hellbringer [+24] - Black Industries - Nightwretch [0(7)]
 - Nightwretch [0(7)]
 - Ripjaw [0(7)]
 - Slayer [10]
 - Slayer [10]
 - Slayer [10]
 - Slayer [10]
 - Slayer [10]
 - Slayer [10]
 - Slayer [10]
 - Slayer [10]
 - Slayer [10]
Machine Wraith [2]
Soul Trapper [1]
Black Ogrun Ironmongers [6]

[Venethrax 1] Lich Lord Venethrax [+26] - Slaughter Fleet Raiders
 - Deathripper [6]
 - Kharybdis [17]
 - Scavenger [7]
 - Scavenger [7]
 - Satyxis Blood Priestess [4]
Axiara Wraithblade [0(6)]
General Gerlak Slaughterborn [0(6)]
Misery Cage [2]
Misery Cage [2]
Ragman [4]
Black Ogrun Smog Belchers (max) [15]
Blighted Trollkin Marauders (min) [9]
Bloodgorgers (max) [15]
 - Jussika Bloodtongue [5]
The Devil's Shadow Mutineers [8]

James:
[Vyros 2] Vyros, Incissar of the Dawnguard [+27] - Shadows of the Retribution
 - Harpy [9]
 - Harpy [9]
 - Imperatus [22]
 - Siren [8]
 - Siren [8]
 - Siren [8]
 - Sylys Wyshnalyrr, the Seeker [4]
Arcanist Mechanik [2]
Arcanist Mechanik [2]
Arcanist Mechanik [2]
Narn, Mage Hunter of Ios [0(6)]
Mage Hunter Infiltrators (max) [13]
 - Eiryss, Mage Hunter Commander [6]
Spears of Scyrah [9]

[Elara 2] Elara, Death's Shadow [+28] - Defenders of Ios
 - Phoenix [18]
 - Siren [8]
Arcanist Mechanik [2]
Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios [0(7)]
Fane Knight Skeryth Issyen [0(8)]
Houseguard Thane [0(4)]
Houseguard Thane [4]
Cylena Raefyll & Nyss Hunters (max) [19]
Houseguard Halberdiers (max) [13]
 - Houseguard Halberdier Officer & Standard [4]
Houseguard Halberdiers (max) [13]
 - Houseguard Halberdier Officer & Standard [4]
Ryssovass Defenders (max) [16]

When I looked at James's lists, I had two thoughts.  First was concern that if I dropped Venethrax I could be seeing the Vyros2 list.  I know that slaughter fleet can have issues with heavy armor and when I saw the jacks, it scared me away from my Venethrax list.  Second, when I was looking at his lists I didn't think they had the damage output to deal with nine slayers.  I figured the halberdiers would get a solid charge in and do some serious damage with the charge plus mini-feat.  However, after they got in the mix I believed they wouldn't have the damage output without the charge and mini-feat bonuses.

In the end, I decided to drop Lich3 with nine slayers.  James played the Elara2 list, which is what I expected.  I figured he would try to jam with his advance move halberdiers and play a scenario game.  I just hoped I could win the die roll and not have my entire army in his threat range on the bottom of turn one.

Deployment:  I did win the die roll and I chose to go first.  I spread the slayers out in a line across my deployment zone.  Lich was deployed centrally with two of the arc nodes by him.  The iron mongers were spread out across the back of the middle of my line.  The last arc node was out to the left.  The machine wraith, soul trapper and Vociferon were also deployed in a cluster around Lich.

James deployed Elara in the center with her jacks to either side.  To the left of that center cluster was a houseguard thane with a unit of halberdiers to his left.  The nyss hunters were depolyed out on the left flank.  To the right of Elara's battlegroup was the ryssovass defenders with the other unit of halberdiers to their right.  The second houseguard thane was behind the right side of the ryssovass and Skeryth was out on the right flank.  Eyriss was deployed centrally in the forest.  Both his halberdiers took their advance move benefit.



Top 1:  Lich cast mobility and walked forward into the trench.  Slayer 1 ran forward to try and bait a charge from the left halberdiers.  Slayers 2 and 3 arranged back in the left circle zone with the left arc node and iron mongers behind.  Vociferon ran to stand behind slayer 3.  Slayer 4 ran to be just behind the fire cloud and slayer 9 ran across the formation to stand behind slayer 4.  The ripjaw stood in the trench next to Lich.  Slayer 5 ran forward to stand just in front of the right flag, with slayer 7 standing behind the fire cloud.  Slayer 6 ran out to the right behind the house, with slayer 8 standing in the water behind.  The machine wraith and soul trapper moved forward to be in walking distance of the right flag next turn with the other arc node standing in front of them. The turn ended with 54 minutes on my clock.



Bottom 1:  James had both thanes move forward and put desperate pace on their respective halberdier units.  Elara cast scything touch on the officer for the left halberdier unit and stood behind the central forest.  The left halberdiers received the press forward order and charged slayer one, destroying it.  They then repositioned three members of the unit forward and the rest moved back a little.  The nyss hunters ran to stand behind and a little to the left of the halberdiers.  The ryssovass ran forward around his objective.  Eiryss walked forward, shot and disrupted slayer 5, then repositioned back into the forest.  The right halberdiers received the shield wall order, walked forward and then repositioned into three pods grouped around the house.  Skeryth stood to the right of the center halberdier pod.  Both jacks ran forward and stood on either side of the central forest.  The turn ended with 45 minutes on James's clock.



Top 2:  I had hoped to bait out the charge with slayer 1, but thought it would at least survive.  The jack's death was the first signal to me about how badly I mis-analyzed the matchup and Elara's damage output.  Lich3 spread some focus around to the various slayers and then cast mobility.  Slayer 6 walked to the rightmost pod of halberdiers and killed two of them.  The right nightwretch stood behind it, next to the house, with slayer 8 backing the arc node up.  The machine wraith ran forward to stand on the right flag and the soul trapper stood behind the fire cloud.  The rip jaw stayed put next to Lich in the trench.  Slayer 3 walked forward and killed two of the more forward halberdiers, while slayer 4 charged the phoenix, missing its attack.  Vociferon killed the third halberdier that was forward in the zone with hellfire and then slayer 2 charged forward and killed three more halberdiers.  The left arc node stood behind my objective and the iron mongers moved up in the zone a little.  Finally, slayer 7 ran into the far zone, hoping to deny the ryssovass the ability to attack with charges.  The turn ended with 44 minutes on my clock.



Bottom 2:  Elara gave the siren a couple focus and upkept scything touch.  Eiryss disrupted slayer 6 and then repositioned back into the forest again.  Elara stayed positioned behind the house.  The left halberdiers got the press forward order and got charges onto slayer 2 and slayer 3.   Both took damage and then the halberdiers repositioned into the zone.  The nyss hunters charged slayer 2 and left it only a couple boxes.  The siren moved forward and finished off slayer 3.  The ryssovass got charges in on slayers 7 and 4, along with slayer 5 and 6 each getting charged by single models from the unit.  putting decent damage on both.  The phoenix activated and finished slayer 4.  The right halberdiers activated and charged slayers 7 and 9.  Slayer 7 was destroyed and slayer 9 took a bunch of damage.  The halberdiers then positioned around the house.  Skeryth charged slayer 9 and put some more damage on it.  The turn ended with 22 minutes on James's clock and no one scored.



Top 3:  I was already down 4 slayers and one more was crippled beyond real use.  Things had gone south quickly.  Lich3 again spread some focus around, however he no longer needed mobility.  Slayer 5 trampled forward, killing the ryssovass on the right in the fire cloud and failing to kill the halberdier it also passed over.  It got into melee and killed two more ryssovass.  The soul trapper collected all three of those souls, moved over to the flag and passed the souls to Lich.  Slayer 9 activated and killed a pair of the halberdiers in combat with it.  Slayer 8 killed another and the right arc node failed to kill the halberdier in melee with it.  Three of those souls went onto the soul trapper.  The ripjaw ran into the fire cloud to kill the other ryssovass in the cloud.  The left nightwretch shot slayer 2 in the back and killed several nyss with the blast damage.  The iron mongers moved forward and killed a pair of the halberdiers in the near zone.  Vociferon killed another with a halberdier.  Lich stayed in the trench and popped his feat.  The turn ended with 27 minutes on my clock.  I scored the right flag, opening the scoring at 1-0.



 Bottom 3:  James put a couple focus on the phoenix and upkept scything touch again.  The nyss killed slayer 2, with one member of the unit getting onto the left arc node.  The left halberdiers got in on slayer 6 and then repositioned to apply scything touch to both the slayer and ripjaw.  The phoenix charged in and killed the slayer, but didn't have focus left to kill the ripjaw.  The ryssovass charged slayer 5 doing decent damage, but leaving it up and functional.  Elara moved into the right zone and popped her feat.  Skeryth charged slayer 9 and put some damage on it.  The right halberdiers received the press forward order.  One ran through the house onto my flag.  A couple charged slayer 5, a couple charged slayer 9, killing it, and the rest spread out around the house.  The siren entered my zone and killed two of the iron mongers.  He managed to contest the right flag, while scoring the left.  This put the score at 1-1 and the turn ended with 6 minutes on his clock.



Top 4:  At this point, I was starting to think that trying to stretch out the game and hope he clocked himself was my best path to victory.  The problem was, I was running out of models quickly.  Lich handed out some focus and charged the phoenix.  He hit it and put damage on it.  The first bought attack went onto the halberdier next to the phoenix.  It died and Lich used blood boon to cast calamity on the phoenix.  Lich then spent focus to kill the phoenix.  The machine wraith ran to stand in front of Lich to help prevent landing spots for assassination attempts.  The right arc node failed to kill the halberdier engaging it, so slayer 8 had to spend its activation killing it.  Slayer 5 killed two more ryssovass.  The ripjaw moved forward to attack Eiryss, but missed the attack roll.  The left nightwretch killed the nyss engaging it.  The last iron monger charged the siren and put damage on it.  Vociferon shot a nyss with a hex blast and killed a few with the blast damage.  James scored the left flag again, putting me down 1-2 in the score.  The turn ended with 16 minutes on my clock.



Bottom 4:  Elara held onto her focus and stayed in the right zone.  The ryssovass killed slayer 5, even without the charge bonus.  Skeryth and the right halberdiers damaged slayer 8 and the right arc node.  Eyriss killed the ripjaw.  The nyss charged in on the left nightwretch, putting some damage on it and the siren failed to kill the last iron monger.  James scored the right zone and the left flag, putting the score at 1-4.  The turn ended with 1:28 on his clock.



Top 5:  My ability to stretch the game out was greatly limited, but with only a minute and a half on his clock, I might still have a shot at squeezing something out.  I needed to contest all the flags and the right zone.  The machine wraith ran to stand between the center and left flag to contest them both.  The last iron monger allowed one nyss a free strike as it tried to walk away, but died to the free strike.  The nightwretch on the right failed to kill any of the nyss.  Slayer 8 killed a halberdier and was in position to contest the right flag.  Lich moved over to the three halberdiers around the right flag, hoping to kill them and score on that flag.  Instead, he failed to kill any of them.  At this point my turn ended and I had failed to get anything into the right zone, which meant James scored a point there, putting the score at 1-5.  The turn ended with 10 minutes on my clock.



Bottom 5:   James's clock was too low for him to even try for extra army points.  He simply ended his turn and scored the final point needed on the right zone.  The final score was 1-6 and the game ended with 1:26 on his clock.  I did not take another picture, since nothing changed from the last turn.

Analysis:  Well, there's a lot of takeaways here.  First, I grossly mis-evaluated this lists's damage potential.  In hindsight, I would have been much better off dropped Venethrax.  I allowed myself to get scared off because of the jacks, but I would have been seeing mostly lights and one heavy.  I think slaughter fleet could have handled it.  That said, there are definite mistakes I made here.  First, I gave him my first slayer for free.  I still think trying to bait out the initial charge was the right move, but I should have stood the slayer where only one or two halberdiers could have charged, unless Elara chose to feat just to get a single slayer off the table.  I would have happily taken that trade.  Second, I needed to figure out a way to handle Eyriss.  I was effectively playing down a slayer every turn because of her disruption.  It would have been worth it to run an arc node forward just to try arc'ing a hex blast onto her.  Something needed to be done.

When it came time to stretch out the game, I was running very low on models that could contest.  I am still trying to work out a plan where I could get something into his zone so he didn't just auto win.  If I can been able to get the machine wraith into the right zone and find some way to free up another model to contest the left and center flag, there is a chance he could have clocked.  However, I would have been spread so thin that I likely would have needed some bad dice from James in order to get the win.

This was still a good game, even though I was basically losing the attrition battle the entire time.  With the amount of clock getting chewed up on his turns, I always felt like there was a path open to victory and I just needed to find it.  James was a great opponent and I look forward to future games against him.  Hopefully next time, I don't  drop the completely wrong list and it's more of a game.  Next week, I am paired up against Nate Em, whom I played in the last scrum.  Here's hoping we have another great battle.  Thanks for reading!

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