Game 4: Helynna vs Deneghra1

Game 4 – Vs Duncan Harradine – Cryx – 15/03/17

My list:

Helynna (Forges of War)

-Sylys

-Helios

-Helios

-Hyperion

Arcanist

Arcanist

Artificer

His List:

Warwitch Deneghra (Ghost Fleet)

-Nightmare

-Nightwretch

-Nightwretch

Captain Rengrave

Machine Wraith

Machine Wraith

Pistol Wraith

Pistol Wraith

Max Blackbane’s Ghost Raiders

Revenant Cannon Crew

Revenant Cannon Crew

Min Revenant Crew of the Atramentous

-Revenant Crew Rifleman

-Revenant Crew Rifleman

-Revenant Crew Rifleman

Min Revenant Crew of the Atramentous

-Revenant Crew Rifleman

-Revenant Crew Rifleman

-Revenant Crew Rifleman

Min Revenant Crew of the Atramentous

-Revenant Crew Rifleman

-Revenant Crew Rifleman

-Revenant Crew Rifleman

Game 4 with the Pacific Rim list sees me go up against long term opponent and mentor Duncan with his Cryx. He has been trying out the Ghost Fleet with a number of different casters now and seems to have settled on Deneghra 1. My main thoughts for the game is that is an awful lot of men for my colossals to try and chew through, with a strong recursion mechanic and one of the best single target de-buff casters in the game to back it up. To make matters worse the scenario was Incursion meaning I would have to split my limited force up and I lost the roll to go first.

Duncan goes first and the Cryx run up, flooding the table, with the incorporeal models leading the way, and the solos flanking hard.

The only way I am going to avoid being jammed out of scenario quickly is to run up fast, so my force does so, casting Deceleration in order to reduce the impact of his fairly significant shooting. Both Helios throw Distortion Field in order to attempt to push back any models taking pot shots.

The use of Distortion Field almost pays off in a significant way here. An arc node advances into Parasite range of my right hand Helios, and attempts to fire his gun. He misses and is pushed back D3 inches. If it weren’t for the wall that he was pushed back against this would have left him out of Parasite range. As he wasn’t, Parasite was cast and a load of shooting was poured into the Helios. With Deceleration up, this pretty much just resulted in the force field being brought down. Splendid.

Force field being down and the line of engagement drawn pretty much meant feat-time and see how many models I can remove, with arc nodes being a priority as much as possible. Nightmare’s stealth bond meant that he was untargetable so it was all about killing men. This went poorly. Helynna missing an Arcane Secrets Hand of Destruction on the Raiders was a bad start but in general I just couldn’t hit anything. The right Helios managed to drag in the arc node and all but take it out, and Hyperion caused some damage but nowhere near enough.

Blackbane's apparitioned to open up charge lanes to my support and powered on through. The incorporeal solos ran round to give me nowhere to hide. My feat meant that little damage was done but I was so far down on positioning that the writing was really on the wall.

Before reaching the inevitable conclusion of this game I did have one great moment, my first ever Hyperion Critical Consume! Granted it was only on a cannon and the two crew but in games like this you really just have to take what solace you can get! This turn proved to me that I was never going to be able to kill more models than would come back and I was slowly taking attrition damage on the colossals.

Duncan’s second arc node moves up to put Crippling Grasp on Hyperion and the first non-feat turn of attacks goes into my colossals. And my does it take its toll. Half of the right Helios is gone and the Hyperion takes fair damage from the few attacks it takes. The inevitability of defeat finally sinks in as my support staff evaporates.

When faced with an unwinnable game there is one thing I always try, partly because it occasionally works (or at least did in Mk2) and partly because I don’t really believe in conceding. Load the caster up on focus and run it into the enemy’s face. Basically say kill me or you’re in trouble. He feated, Scourged and killed me. Obviously.

DEFEAT

I don’t know whether a closer set scenario and going first would make any difference in this match-up, but I do know that the way this game was set up was basically impossible for me to win without a whole load of luck on my part and bad plays on my opponent’s.

This is my last game before having a proper list pair in order to force matchups properly. This weekend sees my first Steamroller event with Retribution, so I will have a number of reports and summaries coming up.

Who knows, I might even win a game?

Game 3: Helynna vs Amon Ad-Raza

Game 3 – Vs Matt Harris – Menoth – 25/02/17

My list:

Helynna (Forges of War)

-Sylys

-Helios

-Helios

-Hyperion

Arcanist

Arcanist

Artificer

His List:

Amon Ad-Raza (The Crusader's Might)

-Hierophant

-Crusader

-Crusader

-Castigator

-Castigator

-Devout

-Dervish

-Dervish

-Dervish

-Dervish

-Dervish

Vassal

Vassal

Covenant

2x Wrack

Vassal Mechanic

Min Choir

Max Choir

So we went for the most relaxed gaming day dinner I have ever experienced and then came back for a second game, this time against up and coming Menoth bad-ass Amon Ad-Raza. I used this caster a lot when I was playing Menoth back in Mk2 so have a pretty good handle on his game, but haven’t played him yet in Mk3 so was excited to give it a go. Thankfully we rolled up Recon, which meant I had an objective to give one of my Helii magical weapons to be able to drag jacks in, but I didn’t give enough thought as to how much of a big deal Fortify would be in this particular match up. I won the roll-off and went first. I ran, obviously.

Matt was using the tier list and so had started with Fortify on a Crusader and Synergy up and running. Having Reposition on all the choir meant that he could put Passage on all of the jacks but still get far enough up the table to be useful on the next turn. For someone who says he hadn’t played a lot of the caster, Matt seemed really slick at this as he moved up the table.

For my turn I gave magical attacks to the left Helios and used him to pull a Dervish in and put him in the dirt. Hyperion had a dream crit-consume that would have removed a whole load of support but didn’t get the critical hit. Game 3, still no crit-consume, I was sold a lie! Positionally, I moved the jacks up so that no more than 2 of his jacks could get on any one of mine, and didn’t feat. My thinking was that he would send them in, and do a load of damage, but then I could feat the next turn, remove the jacks he sent in and push others out of threat range, and get up enough on attrition that I would eventually win the game.

None of that happened. A Dervish and Castigator between them took out Helios. Should I have given him this opportunity? Probably not. I ran the chance of it in OddsMachine and it put it at just under 20% chance, which is really too much to risk, but the more frustrating part of the whole thing is that if I’d just put up Repulsor Field on the two Helii then the whole thing would have been off the table. Frustrating to lose so much on forgetting a rule but it just hadn’t come up in my previous two games. I’m sure I won’t forget it again. The other two jacks got slightly dinged up but nothing too serious.

With this huge loss on attrition I had no choice but to go for the low change assassination. I could kill the objective and clear a path through to Amon (camping 1) and then shoot him with Hyperion. I would need to roll at least 1 unboosted 11 on the small guns but it really was the best change I had. It didn’t work out and he lived on about 8 boxes.

Needless to say Helynna was left swinging in the breeze and was torn apart by a Crusader the next turn.

DEFEAT

A frustrating game but a great opponent to play against. He said that the dice on the Helios didn’t matter too much because with the Crusaders pinned in place with Fortify even if my plan had gone right he would have had enough in reserve to come back. I’m still not sure but we’ll never know! I’m glad that I’m still learning and now that my Frozen Forge tokens have arrived I think I’ll be better at remembering all the rules that the Helii have. Not sure when my next games will be but I have plenty of painting time coming up. Maybe the list will fight better once the models have arms?

Game 2: Helynna vs Borka1

Game 2 – Vs Tom Wiggins – Trollbloods – 25/02/17

My list:

Helynna (Forges of War)

-Sylys

-Helios

-Helios

-Hyperion

Arcanist

Arcanist

Artificer

His List:

Borka (Band of Heroes)

-Bouncer

-Axer

-Mountain King

Horgle

Stone-Scribe Chronicler

Max Fennblades + UA

Max Krielstone + UA

Min Long Riders

A local club where I have played a Steamroller event before was having an open gaming day, so I decided to go down and get a couple of practice games in with the Pacific Rim list. Most people were bringing two lists but as this was all I had even partially painted at this stage I just brought the one, slapped it down on a table, and made an open invite to the room. Up stepped Tom Wiggins, with a troll list that he thought would be a good match up. We randomly selected XXXXX as the scenario, he won first turn and I swapped sides, because doing so if far less of a pain when you only have 8 models in your list, and the wall on that side seems less problematically placed, though in hindsight I probably miscalculated this.

We deployed and he ran up, he put Arcane Ward up on the Mountain King to counter me using Hand of Destruction to remove it easily. Horthol ran up the left flank behind a wood, thinking he was safe from anything I could do to him, which brings me to my first “Helios Moment” of playing Retribution.

Helios trampled up and the proxy bases show the route he was pulled in. The first shot was unboosted needing a 7 as I’d had to use one focus for the trample and I wanted to be able to use the focus differently if I had to bail out of the plan. The 7 landed, the second and third were boosted, and he was dismounted in one punch and splattered with the second. It was intensely satisfying. Everything else basically ran up, keeping out of Rush+Feat+Charge range of the Mountain King. Again in hindsight this feels unnecessary and this is one of the areas I need to improve. Had I moved up into range that he needed to Rush and Charge in order to get to me he would have arrived with 6 attacks at only P+S19 as he wouldn’t have Rage up, and as a result would only do 46 damage on average (plus a bit extra if the assault spray lands). Giving him this would have possibly encouraged him to spend his feat and potentially put his Mountain King in a bad position, as well as allowing me to take a few extra inches of board space.

Tom continues to run up during his T2, and this is where my tentativeness in T1 shows, as the Mountain King is able to sit on the flag without being threatened by my right Helios. The Long Riders flank hard and the Fennblades take up board space.

Unable to get to the Mountain King I instead work on grinding through Troll models. Hand of Destruction goes on the Fennblades in order to make sure attacks aren’t missed and the Hyperion shoots a few dead, whilst Helios tramples into the wood and removes a couple more with bought attacks. The Helios near the Mountain King moves to contest the flag, prepares to take the charge and pulls in a Long Rider, but he toughs the attack. I feat, ready to face the wrath of the Mountain King.

Rage is cast by Borka on the Mountain King and he charges in, the position of the flag meaning that he couldn’t just advance and attack. My feat and Rage cancel each other out and huge chunks are taken out of Helios, leaving him on 10 boxes with the entire right hand side destroyed. This was slightly over average on the dice but not in a meaningful way, as the right side would realistically always have gone. A couple of Fennblades charged into the other Colossals but didn’t achieve anything, the Long Riders continued their flanking, with even the knocked down model breaking free from Helios due to that entire side being wrecked (I missed the 4+ to hit on one dice)

Another early mistake reared its head at this point. I had been very nervous to have Arcanist Mechanics anywhere near the Mountain King as I was worried to lost them to the Assault spray, but there was no reason that one should not have been 8 inches behind the Helios in order to put Concentrated power onto it. As I couldn’t do this I was worried about the amount of damage I would be able to do to the Mountain King, with it being able to heal back by eating the inevitable whelps. If I had been able to move the stone away to remove the armour buff I might have been ok but Tom had been clever to keep it under the Wind Wall bubble from Borka. As such I made the decision not to attack the Mountain King and instead concentrate on removing the rest of the Fennblades and Long Riders. The Artificer slammed one Long Rider into the other two, killing the first and knocking the other two for the damaged Helios to drag in and kill.

It rapidly becomes the case where nothing in Tom’s force is achieving anything except the Mountain King. In his next turn it finished off the Helios and starts to threaten further into my lines. Vitally at this point of the game, Tom starts to score Control points, with me having to throw away the Artificer on my next turn to stop him scoring on his own turn. I’ll skip forward to the point below, where I have removed almost all of the infantry, and the Mountain King has charge in on Hyperion, leaving it on around 24 boxes or so, and Tom is 3-1 up on Control Points. In the last turn I was looking for an assassination angle, but clever use of the Bouncer animus and switching Arcane Ward onto himself meant I just couldn’t find a decent angle.

In this turn I had to kill the Mountain King and get something over in order to contest the flag and this wasn’t an easy order of activation to work out. In the end Helynna shot the last remaining Fennblade and swapped Hand of Destruction onto the Mountain King, Hyperion ran to contest the flag, taking a free strike doing a chunk more damage, and Helios charged into the Mountain King. And my word did it hit hard! P+S23 was dice plus 4 on the Mountain King, and with Hand of Destruction further altering the dice the Mountain King fell over with attacks to spare. Awesome!

Less awesome was the fact that Borka walked up to Hyperion and smashed him to bits with his massive club, and the Axer finished off the objective for a scenario victory.

DEFEAT

Another great fun game with plenty to take from it. I need to be able to work out how much punishment the colossals can take and they play them almost as tempters sometimes, and it is slowly sinking in just how vital support positioning is. Trollbloods feel like fairly hard work for this list due to the Bouncer animus and nothing being able to be trampled over, but I still feel that I would have been up in this game if I’d played a few things differently.

Game 1: Helynna vs Garryth

Game 1 vs David Newton - Retribution - 23/02/17

Right then, on with the first battle report. For my first game with a new faction I thought that there would be nothing better than to play the mirror, so that at least one of us would have half a clue what was going on. David hadn’t played in a while so was a bit rusty but the game was still an excellent learning experience for us both.

My List:

Helynna (Forges of War)

-Sylys

-Helios

-Helios

-Hyperion

Arcanist

Arcanist

Artificer

David’s List:

Garryth

-Sylys

-Moros

-Phoenix

Heavy Rifle Team

AFG

Max Halberdiers + UA + Soulless

Max Sentinels + UA

Arcanist

Arcanist

Arcanist

Artificer

David went first and the early turns were spent with the predictable running. His T2 saw some shots (including a Sentry shot from the AFG) go into the jacks, but were spread with Shield Guards to maximise my feat, his Halberdiers moved up into an advanced Shield Wall and Sentinels got ready to charge into the right Helios.

My turn 2 saw some shooting take place whilst slowly advancing forward. In my head I saw the Helioses (need to work on a plural for this) aggressively running forwards early game but in practice it just can’t be done. I feat, but foolishly don’t cast Deceleration, and the Hyperion shoots the objective for 6 points, sadly failing the Critical Consume that would have removed Sylys, the Soulless, an Arcanist (who died to blast anyway) and several Halberdiers. I will have to live the dream another day. I began my new favourite game of moving his Phoenix behind terrain to stop him being able to charge.

Despite it being my feat turn David felt it was necessary to send in the Sentinels onto the right most Helios. I think he was right as he used Iron Zeal the turn before and without it and under Hand of Destruction he would have lost a lot of the unit to the Hyperion’s guns. He did a fair chunk of damage to the Helios, destroying about half of it once the force field was taken into account. I won’t mention it each turn, but the three AFG shots and the HRT were starting to do significant damage to the left Helios, and this turn in particular stung as there was no reason for me not to have Deceleration up.

The above picture shows the beautiful sweep opportunity that the right Helios was presented with, and it was taken killing 4 of the 6 Sentinels, with a bought attack taking out another. Several Halberdiers are removed allowing me to score on the left flag and the objective is finished off by the Hyperion. Deceleration is put up as it should have been the turn before.

The remaining Sentinels charge in and, without Helynna’s feat being up, effortlessly scrap the right Helios. More shots occur, I didn’t give the amount of shooting in his list enough credit, and my boxes are slowly starting to run out. With the right Helios down, Garryth comes out of hiding and heads towards the right flag.

The game somewhat breaks down at this point sadly, as we both forgot about Killbox, but we eventually reach the point at the start of my turn in the below picture, with Garryth up 4-3 on scenario and my having removed both the AFG and the Phoenix, the latter of which was dragged in by Helios and splattered by Hyperion. An incident of not was that whilst under Garryth’s feat, Hyperion fired his Starburst Cannon at a clump of 5 Sentinels who were effected by Hand of Destruction. I rolled 4,4,5 to hit and was ecstatic right until realising the spell effect meant I had to drop the lowest, not one of my choice.

Whether I blame tiredness or inexperience for what happened after this picture was taken is unclear, but it was a real mess regardless. I fuelled both colossals in order to take out Garryth, and moved Helynna to hit him with Hand of Destruction, forgetting that he has Stealth, and leaving me within 10" of Garryth, Sylys long since having perished. The plan to knock down Garryth with Hyperion and then drag him in with Helios was out of the window too, so I had to get it done with Hyperion alone. I basically needed to hit 2 boosted 11s, and I hit neither.

Then Garryth jumped over Hyperion and effortlessly cut Helynna to pieces.

DEFEAT

For a first game I was pretty pleased with how this went. The list has so much beef to it and an impressive amount of control. My main concern for the list was that there would be no room to improve with it but that is certainly not the case, as there are many areas of improvement that I need to tap. Activation order, focus management and activation efficiency are so much more vital when you only have 8 models, so I need to improve on this. This was a highly enjoyable first game against a great opponent, and I can’t wait to get more games in.

Thanks again for reading, more should follow next week after gaming on Saturday.

Introduction

Hello all and welcome to the start of my Retribution blog.

I started this blog on the Privateer Press Retribution sub-forum before they were removed. A forum moderator was kind enough to dig out the text for me so I am reposting here and will be adding to it over time.

I have been playing Warmachine for a number of years now playing Menoth in Mk2 before switching to Cygnar at the start of Mk3 with pretty decent success. 9 months later I feel like playing Cygnar has lost some of the shine for me and I have been looking for something new. I bought a job lot of unpainted Retribution from a friend, added a few bits to update for Mk3 and I’m ready to go.

This blog will cover both painting and battle reports along with occasional posts on how I feel about the faction in general.

My starting list for the faction will be the list known colloquially as “Pacific Rim” usually followed by at least two or three exclamation marks. This list really excites me and I can’t wait to get it into games. I will be using the version with Helynna as the caster, with the four free solos being Sylys (a tricky inclusion to justify, but I think worth it to extend the range of Hand of Destruction to 12”), an Artificer and to Mechanics.

I am building towards the Welsh Open at the moment, which is a two list, seven round Masters event on the 13th and 14th of May. Last year I went 4 wins 3 losses with Menoth so I am hoping to beat that result. I foresee a great deal of this blog will be trying to find a pair for the colossals list.

Painting wise I am going for an orange scheme with turquoise as a spot colour for the gems. The scheme was inspired by the blog of Gdaymate on the old Privateer Press forums (may they rest in peace), so if anyone knows him please pass on my anger, painting orange is not something a middle-ability painter should be taking on.

So far I have my support for the list painted, and have the three colossal painted to the point that they are usable in practice games (bodies and legs painted and assembled, with arms to follow once completed). I love the Retribution models so painting is not feeling like a chore at the moment, though I am warned that my opinion on that may change once I start taking on Dawnguard Sentinels.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you stick around as I get my first few games in.