Game 10: Kaelyssa vs Mother

Game 10 – Vs Toby Jennings – Convergence of Cyriss – 11/04/17

My list:

Kaelyssa, The Night’s Whisper

-Sylys

-Helios

-Banshee

Arcanist

Arcanist

Artificer

House Vyre Electormancers

House Vyre Electromancers

Max Dawnguard Sentinels

-Officer and Standard

-Soulless Escort

His List:

Iron Mother Directrix & Exponent Servitors (Destruction Initiative)

-Prime Axiom

-Corollary

-Assimilator

-Assimilator

-Diffuser

-Mitigator

3x Attunement Servitors

9x Elimination Servitors

9x Reflex Servitors

Optifex Directive

Third game with Kaelyssa sees me face Toby with my personally most hated theme list in the game. At least he had the decency not to have the battle engine in the list to spit out 3 more shield guards a turn, but it still shuts down shooting incredibly well. Electromancers clear out the servitors fairly well but it would still be a tough game.

I took the first turn and ran up, with Refuge on Kaelyssa and Blur on the Sentinels to protect them from Groundpounder shots. Toby advanced up behind his wall of dug in Servitors and set me a puzzle to try and unlock.

I did a fairly good job of clearing out the Servitors, but a few mistakes were made that I would hope not to again. Mainly this involved activating the Electromancers too early, whilst they were able to clear out several models, I unnecessarily lost 1 to a countercharge that wouldn’t have been possible had I activated Kaelyssa first and feated. Other than that I threw a Sentinel forward as Vengeance bait and advanced the Helios out of the Prime Axiom’s advance and attack range to threaten next turn.

Toby’s turn is his feat turn and it achieves more than I hoped, but less than he did. His 2 ground pounder shots and some servitor attacks killed all but 5 Sentinels and the light jacks on the right killed off 2 Electromancers. His Prime Axiom backed well off, and I felt at the time that he had really taken it out of the game.

Note: The above pic was taken after vengeance moves, but before the attacks which killed the Servitor.

My aim for this turn was to kill 2 heavies and clear out the rest of the servitors, leaving me in what felt like an insurmountable attrition position. The central Electromancers cleared out several of the Servitors, including those around the right Assimilator with Kaelyssa helping out with her gun to clear stragglers. The Sentinels charged into the left Assimilator, with one making sure to deal with the last Servitor in range of the other. Sadly, out of the 4 attacks on the jack 2 missed, but the 2 that connected did decent damage. The removal of the shield guards allowed the Banshee to knock down the right Assimilator, for Helios to drag it in and destroy it. I felt that I was in a very strong position despite the Sentinels failing. I wasn’t.

I think this is down to relatively few games against Convergence but I had left Toby several assassination opportunities. The first he tried was to dominate the Banshee to slam my Electromancer stood next to Kaelyssa over her, but thankfully this missed, leaving me to think I’d dodged a bullet, but he was then able to use Mother to clear out the Artificer, allowing the knockdown gun jack to hit the Electomancer, knocking down Kaelyssa. The Prime Axiom that I thought had been badly positioned then proved me wrong by walking up and shooting her to death.

DEFEAT

Toby doesn’t play as much as he once did but he really knows his way around his Mother list, and with the release of the theme list he now has the tools to play it very well. I was still pleased with how the list performed but will be putting it down after this game to concentrate on ADR casters for the Welsh Open. I will probably try a different list with her when I return (depending on how much I am able to get painted, my painting time will be split as soon as the Dark Souls board game comes out) but I’m not exactly sure how yet.

My next pairing will be Helynna with the much shared “Scary Garry” list first posted on Ghost Dice, to which I’ve made a slight alteration.