Rallypoint Coverage & Batreps

A great event in terms of turnout, competition level, and fun had by all. Let me extend my congratulation s to Chris, Sean and Ian for making the podium. I'm extremely proud to have somehow placed 5th, about half of the field were seasoned veterans of the game and it was a very tight field through the whole thing. The rigorous practice of 3-4 games a week must have paid off - plus the usual draw dodging, mild risk taking, and of course luck.

For more detailed stuff, of course, as it all uploads... www.youtube.co m/user/vaulsc

I did a lot of agonizing over my two lists, I felt I had some bases covered but a lot of matchups really slipped through my fingers.

*Kromac*
- Warpwolf Stalker
- Warpwolf Stalker
- Pureblood Warpwolf
- Gnarlhorn satyr
- gorax
- Shifting stones
- Stone Keeper
- Min/Wolf Riders
- Lord of the Feas

Since starting the game I really cut my teeth on Kromac, won a few games with him at CTA, practiced with him most, and generally felt in tune with his strengths. I thought about including a lot more fury management, but in practice games I was easily able to either cope with just the stones for serenity, or just throw everything at the enemy in one hot wave of fury, or just dish out a beast each turn with primal that was going to frenzy anyway.

Apart from the usual mass threat ranges, berzerking, bestial non-magic zone, armour cracking - it's quite a handy list for trumping lists that rely too heavily on defenders ward/iron flesh etc as well, thanks to the pureblood. Unfortunately it has some real problems with tough... and with no swamp gobber or druids, the stalkers won't always get to prowl - so hard shooting can also be a worry.

Much more could be said about the list, but that's the essence of my most prominent thoughts on the matter.

*Mohsar*
- Megalith
- Warpwolf Stalker
- Wold Guardian
- Gorax
- Max/Bloodtrackers
- Nuala
- Druids
- Druid Overseer
- Shifting Stones

Up until a few days before the event, I had been practicing this list but with eKreuger as the caster. 'Let's just make a tiny change to the list at the last minute', I thought - replacing eKreuger with Mohsar instead.

In theory eKreuger should be the better tourney caster, but in practice I was losing with him often, couldn't always work out the best way to play him or what to put in his list, or when to time the feat. But with Mohsar it always fell into place in practice, I always felt confident and knew what to do, and when to do it.

Have to thank one of my many practice partners, Chris Russell. Chris has a lot of ideas with Mohsar, and the games I played against him really opened my eyes to the potential. So I went with it.

#1 - Kromac vs eDeneghra

First round I drew Mr Snook, Sean told me afterwards that he actually wins a lot of their local events down in wellington. Looking at his lists I was in panic. On the one hand, he might go with eGoreshade and throw so many banes at me that I couldn't hope to cut through that much tough with kromac, and picking at him piecemeal might not work with the flag scenario we were playing - revelation, I think.

On the other hand, it might be eDenny, who would feat and then spend a couple of turns chipping away at me with a sea of solos and drowning me in mech thralls. I nearly went with Mohsar, for the sake of his RFP crevasse, but the problem with Mohsar was the scenario - I play an avoidance style with Mohsar and it wasn't going to cut it against those lists, on that table, against those casters.

I went first and put everything in a stones triangle, in the middle of the table. Mike responded by moving up catiously, but feating turn one. I was surprised at this, because I thought he'd feat when I was actually in range for him to start hurting me, and then hurt me some more while I would be bogged down by mechanithralls by then.

My response was a stone-teleport a primal'd stalker out to scrap his only heavy warjack, and annoy him with the LOTF. eDenny showed her tricks by walking incorporeal through a pillar and smacking the stalker via a teleport out where he could pick it apart with his forces.

But he'd left her within 13" of Kromac.

I pushed him with a gorax to get him into a slightly less contentious position, then went for it. Mike did say that he hadn't faced Kromac before! It happens to a lot of players at least once...

#2 - Kromac vs eStryker

First game in a tournament against Josh, who I play practically every monday. We'd played each other's list choices over and over again, we even had a game where we swapped and I used stryker while he used Kromac. Every game goes the same, i'm winning on attrition after 2-3 turns, but 40% of the time he assassinates me because I get overconfident and leave myself open.

Josh pulled ahead early on this one due to my mistake - not using stone form on the stones UA and letting him die to a lightning bounce from the strider. I pulled back by taking a risk - firing a LOTF raven at the black 13th needing an 8, I got it and butchered two of them. This let me advance with my wolf riders into his flank in a lot more safety.

Cygnar mid game plan was to feat, push his knights and jacks up to me with a run, then use purely the feat attacks for his alpha strike. It partially worked - I lost a stalker to a combination of all of the above, plus more strider shooting.

Things began to look very dark when I countered with three heavies and left rowdy with only half a dozen boxes left but all systems go. He promptly took 3 focus and killed another stalker. After I cleaned up it was only a Gnarlhorn and group of wolfriders threatening eStryker, while Kromac was nearly dead from shooting.

Josh went for a final dash, pulling his caster out of the 'bestial' counter magic range, then using velocity to go 6 back inside it, to shoot Kromac. No luck from him, or jnr, or eiryss. The strider came in needing to hit twice with 7's, to strip my transfer then get the kill. He only picked up one 7, leaving kromac on 4 boxes.

Ironically it was a wolfrider who got the kill after that, with a 6,6 hit and a 6,5,4 damage roll, but kromac had a 'sass ready to go.

#3 - Mohsar vs Scaverous

Felt much better about this one for three reasons. 1) capture the flag - I could play my nice, comfortable circle style avoidance attrition game, which I love. 2) pDenny or Scaverous - both spell reliant, I had answers for that. 3) No Tartarus in either list, and only one unit of tough banes each list as well. Mohsar could handle this one, I knew it.

My first 'sands of fate mission' saw mohsar head out and net a couple of satyxis witches and more importantly, two members of the Withershadow combine. The cryx saw that I meant business, so the witches came screaming at me along with the banes, although the rest of the army held back, which baffled me. My stalker and megalith easily cleaned up the witches after they burned their minifeat a turn too early, while the blood trackers & mohsar wiped the thralls - they were a prey target.

Scaverous quickly ran out of options and had to enter the fray himself, carving up my stalker. Although this meant no primal beatstick, I still had megalith and a wold guardian, plus curse of shadows, easily enough to crack him - especially as he hadn't been camping focus.

#4 - Mohsar vs Maelok

Second time against Casey, but he beat me down last time I faced him. Those gatormen are tough as nails. Now they're more so with this new caster of his. I thought i'd try Mohsar again especially since he might get to use his feat. And Kromac would only wind up getting bogged down, wounding his beasts on all that spiny growth, while the gators only came back to haunt him.

My plan was to hold up the left flag in 'diversion' which he would need to capture, hopefully using curse of shadows on the gatormen that side, throwing volleys each turn before reforming behind a line of pillars.

Didn't work - got foiled by his bog trog ambushers, even though he explained before the game about how the radial deployment affected their arrival. The bog trogs totally 'bogged' the trackers down, while my right flank was just a stalling process against some gatormen, although megalith and druids/ua is far too many points to use holding up a posse.

When I finally was forced to commit my beatsticks in the centre, I wiped out the target gator posse, but crumpled against his own beasts. Game went to time with Casey up a control point and in a commanding attrition lead.

#5 - Mohsar vs Saeryn

Still relatively at the top of the tables, I drew Ian who of course is a long time rival, I recently borrowed his Legion and painted much of the army, and played a bunch of games with all his casters. Still, it was going to be an especially tough one - I went with Mohsar though, because I figured that if Mohsar's feat was ever going to make a difference, surely it would be in this sort of situation. Both of his lists were exactly the same composition except for the casters - saeryn or eLylyth.

Luckily my druids would be immune to all of his shooting, but I would also not be able to get in close to do much damage to him either. It would be a very difficult game.

We both deployed in a tight formation, heading towards the control zone in 'sacrifice'. I saw him place his support solos in such a way that mohsar could really punish him, so I sent him out on a sands of fate sniping mission. His spray took out two forsaken, and a crevasse took out a spell martyr and feralgeist heading for the flag. That meant when my feat came, it would be worse for him, and he couldn't score unless he headed a shepherd or beast the long way over to the flag.

Sadly, even with a 16" teleport back, it dawned on me later that still wasn't safe enough, not without at least a transfer or two, which I didn't leave myself. I'd forgotten about slipstream and the range of Typhon's sprays. True to form, Ian pulled out all the stops to try and make the assassination as reliable as possible, but still only barely did it - if mohsar had just opted to keep one fury instead of boosting every single spray shot earlier, he'd have survived, and my counter attack the following turn would have beeen sweet - not to mention the feat havoc.

#6 - Kromac vs Xerxes

Finally, a slightly easier matchup - by that I mean one I have practiced, and one with less tricks to foil my lists. Dan actually took two separate lists, both with xerxes in them, so it was an easy choice to go with Kromac, who could actually crack a lot of that armour and generally get a lot of mileage out of his list choices and spells. I had wraithbane available as well, so it was definately a goer.

Scenario was Incursion, and after a turn each, it became clear that I could go for a scenario win. There was a big wall blocking his main brick advance, so he'd have to go around it - I could commit to destroying everything on one side, and just keeping everything clear of that particular flag.

The plan went ahead - one stalker going primal and hacking into the cetratii wall and generally holding them up, while the other went over to the other flag and cleared it of a recent nihilator infestation - with the help of the LOTF. Dan's tough rolls were made about 25% of the time, which helped.

Molik showed up and nearly caused me some serious trouble. In the turn I meant to get rid of him, the bastard managed to survive with a few boxes. Kromac howled with anger at the situation and rushed in himself, wrecking Molik, and lightning striking back to safety. I nervously put a wall of shifting stones up in the way of his cetratii charging the remnants of my forces, but I was on 2 points. The next turn saw some lesser units try to deny me the third point, but it wasn't enough.

#7 - Kromac vs pStyker

It was a real relief to see JJ in the last round. The guy came around to my place a few weeks back, we set up in the living room on a sunday and played six games back to back, before finishing up and watching the rugby. In that time he declared that he'd never won with pStryker, so for a couple of games he cranked a non-shooting cygnar list. In a very close game it successfully beat pKrueger. This time I would have Kromac however...

But it was a dream matchup. The only way that list had a shot against Kromac would have been if the scenario was winnable enough. But with revelation, he'd have to score points over several turns, if I was contesting every so often. But there'd only be one turn where I was shut down by the feat.

As it happened, I got the LOTF in early, killing only two sword knights, but baiting rowdy into dealing with him and lagging back behind the army when he was meant to be up front laying down an iron wall with the rest of them. I was able to send my stalker in and rip up about 8 sword knights even with the feat, then warpath back out of rowdy's threat range that way.

After the feat went down it was just carnage. Lucky matchup, lucky draw, lucky me!