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Friday, 24 March 2017

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?

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