Game 24: Helynna vs Arkadius

Game 24 – Vs Richard Dunne – Minions – 13/05/17

My list:

Helynna (Forges of War)

-Sylys

-Helios

-Helios

-Hyperion

Arcanist

Arcanist

Artificer

His List:

Dr Arkadius

-Targ

-War Hog

-War Hog

-Road Hog

-Gun Boar

-Gun Boar

-Battle Boar

Min Bone Grinders

Wrongeye

-Snapjaw

Gremlin Swarm

Bog Trog Trawler

Victor Pendrake

Game 3 of the Welsh Masters put me up against Richard Dunne and his Minions, a faction that I still really don’t know anything about. I opted to drop Helynna as I feel more comfortable with her when I’m unsure, and he dropped Arkadius. On paper I didn’t think he would have enough hitting power to get through the colossals but I think I misjudged that situation. I win the first turn and we get going.

I run up to take board position and he runs in response. Wrongeye and Snapjaw are Submerged to protect against pushes and the other heavies use these and the central building to keep themselves safe. Richard plays this turn really nicely and give me absolutely nothing to go on, so in my turn 2 I opt to simply run up and feat, leaving it to him to work out what to do next.

Arkadius’ feat turn. 5 days on and having played a number of games since I will admit that the intricacies of this turn have been slightly forgotten, but the result of it is that horrible dice leave Helios alive on 3 boxes with the Road Hog and a War Hog both due to Frenzy next turn due to Primal. Richard’s dice really were awful this turn, he should have comfortably killed the Helios and had attacks left to move onto the next one, but I was lucky and still in the game. His Gremlin Swarm runs to the living Helios to be a pain. Arkadius scores his zone to lead 1-0.

My focus on this turn is obviously to take down the beasts that didn’t have Primal cast on them, to buy me a turn to deal with the rest. My first activation has to be Hyperion walking over to the Gremlin Swarm and killing it with the Magical Attacks granted by Armoury. The remaining Helios destroys the non-Primal War Hog and the heavily injured one damages the Road Hog. Attrition doesn’t feel great but his next turn will be lessened by Frenzy.

Frenzy happens and finishes off the damaged Helios. Unfortunately in doing so Snapjaw is blocked off from getting to the central Helios. A Gun Boar is ­Primaled and charges into Helios, dealing a massive amount of damage aided by Parasite.

Helios and Hyperion between them kill the remaining two Farrow heavies, but have to leave the right zone to do so

Snapjaw charges into the remaining Helios, killing it, and the Battle Boar and Gun Boar make a decent hole in Hyperion. Bad dice once again mean that Richard is unable to destroy my objective, leaving it on 2 boxes. He scores his own zone again to go 2-0 up.

From this position I can see no way to win other than assassinating Arkadius. My chances are low, needing to hit a boosted Arcane Secrets 12 to land Hand of Destruction, followed by a boosted Hand of Destruction boosted 14 to push him from behind the wall, and then ideally a crit knockdown from Force Strike to allow Hyperion to shoot him to death. I ran the maths on it earlier and for all of this to work the chance is about 11%. It didn’t all work. I failed and conceded.

DEFEAT

It’s a shame that I can’t remember more of the details for this game but there are two important things that I do remember. One, it was an extremely fun game. Two, my opponent outplayed me completely. This is a real example of how you need to know what every faction is capable of. We discussed the game afterwards and he suggested that I should have taken Garryth, as the rough terrain from the AFG would have been a real problem. One to remember for the future.