Greetings and salutations, Soldiers of the Swan!
First weekend of November meant finally getting some games in again, on a team tournament with three player teams. I and Cygnar friend Olov Winroth decided early on (or well sort of, I was considering attending a non-wmh event this weekend) to team up, and we eventually found Torbjörn Hansson who I played in the WTC with as our third guy. He was interested in playing Cygnar, so naturally we decided on an all-swans team.
The name of the team was a source of great discussions. Olov propagated for "All Haley All the Time" while I naturally preferred a much superior alternative, namely "Haley to the King, Baby" (actually credit goes to one of the WTC teams which had fun names for all their lists). Since we both sent our suggestions to the TO, we wound up with "All Haley to the King All the Time, Baby" which, honestly, was better than either by far.
So Torbjörn, being the newer guy to Cygnar got first pick and chose Haley2. I refused to play Haley1 since she's boring, so I got to play Haley3. This meant that Olov, the better player of the three of us, got stuck with the C-tier caster Haley1 (she's not C-tier, I'm joking guys).
So to the surprise of the thousands upon thousands of long-time readers I'm playing Haley3. I chose the same list as always:
(Haley 3) Major Prime Victoria Haley [+25]
- Grenadier [9]
- Grenadier [9]
- Ironclad [12]
- Thorn [13]
Storm Lances (max) [20]
Trencher Infantry (max) [16]
Journeyman Warcaster [4]
- Charger [9]
Ragman [4]
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord [4]
Unlike most tournaments though, this one we get 30 points of specialists. This is to alleviate the weakness of only getting one list each, which in itself is to make the match up selection process a bit more interesting.
My specialists were:
- Sylys Wyshnalyrr, Seeker [4]
- Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator [4]
- Min Trenchers [10]
- Alexia1 [10]
- Gobber Tinker [2]
I figured that if I got dropped into Ossyan, I could throw in some more trenchers instead of my ironclad and keep the cloudwall up a turn or two extra which probably could get me far. Alexia1 I figured maybe could be cool somewhere. Sylys and Reinholdt could change in for Rhupert in match ups where I felt I didn't need concealment of the Haleys, which admittedly is very unlikely.
Anyway, onto the tournament. Torbjörn did all the match up fixing at WTC, and Olov is also good at those kinds of things. I could be good-ish if I had the need for it, but in a team with these two fuckers I just told them what I wanted to face/not to face, went talking to people I knew, and came back to choose a table.
ROUND 1
David, one of the guys on their team, spend a long time flaming me trying to get me to tilt, apparently thinking that'll work. I don't think it would, I don't tilt to stuff like that anyway, but I guess he was grasping at straws. We're good friends so no harm done either, it was done in jest.
In a fit of karmic justice, I get paired up versus David. He plays Haley2, so we get Haley3 vs Haley2, Haley1 vs Madrak2 and Haley2 vs Wurmwood. We go into the games feeling that 2-1 or 3-0 is the likely outcomes.
David played a very popular Haley variant:
Major Victoria Haley - WJ: +25
- Squire - PC: 5
- Ironclad - PC: 12
- Stormwall - PC: 39 (Battlegroup Points Used: 25)
- Lightning Pod
- Thorn - PC: 13
Captain Arlan Strangewayes - PC: 4
Journeyman Warcaster - PC: 4
- Firefly - PC: 8
Lanyssa Ryssyl, Nyss Sorceress - PC: 3
Storm Lances - Leader & 2 Grunts: 12
The scenario is Entrenched and Haley2 has a rather legit scenario game here, which he needs to leverage strongly to have a shot versus Haley3. This match was quick - we advanced towards each other as was expected, David spent top of 2 podding into the wall and shooting the pod with bouncing lightning, killed a couple of Trenchers and not much else. He decided to hold his feat and advance onto a hill into his zone.
Unlucky for David, he placed a Storm Lance 2 inches in front of Haley2. Since he didn't feat, this means he died. A quick Force Hammer followed up by two shooting storm lances, an electro leap and then finally the grenadier unloading meant her death. She did have Arcane Shield, but Haley3 don't care.
The other two Haleys also win their games. Torbjörn fucked up a LOT by forgetting to feat and losing the stormwall to a couple of warpwolves as a result when playing into the Tree, but he managed to ride that out to a scenario victory anyway. Apparently his specialisted Gastone plus Freebooter throw tech was very good in this match.
ROUND 2
Our opponents for round 2 are The Irken Empire which I forgot to ask about. I guess there's some meaning to it?They run Exulon Thexus, Haley2 and Reznik2. It's once again decided that since I'm our best match up into Haley2, that's what I get. Torbjörn plays Haley2 into Cephalyx, and Olov steers Haley1 into the foul heretics and their chariot-riding overlord.
Fredrik Bäckstrand runs a Dynamo variant on Haley2:
Major Victoria Haley - WJ: +25
- Squire - PC: 5
- Dynamo - PC: 18 (Battlegroup Points Used: 18)
- Thorn - PC: 13 (Battlegroup Points Used: 7)
- Defender - PC: 16
- Hammersmith - PC: 12
Journeyman Warcaster - PC: 4
- Firefly - PC: 8
Captain Arlan Strangewayes - PC: 4
Arcane Tempest Rifleman - PC: 4
Arcane Tempest Rifleman - PC: 4
Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios - PC: 7
Gun Mage Captain Adept - PC: 5
The scenario is Extraction, which I think it's decent for Haley2. It's not really fast, but you have to get far up to contest it properly. On that topic, I fuck up my contesting pieces top of 2 a bit, so Fredrik can easily score 2 there. This is fine though, it's more or less expected, but I should've made it a bit harder for him. Anyway, he decided to have Dynamo run and score on his right flag.
This was probably a big mistake, since it meant I could shoot him down even though Haley2 had feated to protect her army.
From there on out, the game was pretty much in the bag. The following turn when his feat was down, I swarmed onto both flags and denied him any real chances of getting to 5 points. Thorn disrupted a Defender a couple of times, and Past Haley probably got to beat something to death.
This is a picture describing the end of the game. Fredrik had a fair bit of bad luck upon trying to kill Past Haley, failing with Thorn one turn and Haley2 the next.
We got 3-0 this round too. Olov won a close game versus Reznik2, and Torbjörn killed Exulon top of 2.
ROUND 3
Jönköping is a town a little more than an our away from Linköping, where, again, I've been living for a while until recently. We got paired down against them in the third round, us being 2-0 and them 1-1.They've got Rask, Irusk2, Doomshaper2. We don't get perfect match ups this round, but 2 great and 1 rather bad. I get Rask, Haley2 gets Irusk2 and Haley1 gets stuck versus Doomshaper2. Flogger, who's playing Rask, fielded this list:
Rask - WB: +27
- Targ - PC: 4
- Ironback Spitter - PC: 15 (Battlegroup Points Used: 15)
- Swamp Horror - PC: 14 (Battlegroup Points Used: 12)
- Blackhide Wrastler - PC: 16
- Blackhide Wrastler - PC: 16
Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor - PC: 5
Bog Trog Mistspeaker - PC: 4
Bog Trog Mist Speaker - PC: 4
Wrong Eye - Wrong Eye & Snapjaw: 17
- Snapjaw
Gatorman Bokor & Bog Trog Swamp Shamblers - Bokor & 9 Grunts: 11
The scenario is Incursion, which is good for me.
My game plan here is simple, I don't think this list has enough attacks and durability to chew through my list so I'm gonna wade up to the middle line and start killing his shit, and seeing how small his army is I'll also probably want to start scoring rather soon.
And that's pretty much what happened. Flogger made a rather big mistake when he charged Snapjaw into 2 Storm Lances (he actually did get to shoot one too I think) and moved Wrongeye a bit too far up. Past Haley could punch him into the dirt as a result which gave me control of my left flank. Flogger scored twice on my rightmost flag, but after that I could get his Wrastlers dead and Spitter under control.
In the end it came down to Flogger not being able to contest my left flag while a Grenadier scored on it, and running out of time while failing.
Torbjörn did as was expected and managed to get a win out of his match versus Irusk2, and Olov also managed to push around Doomshaper2's beasts enough to handily win on scenario too. 3-0, again.
This marked the end of day 1, and All Haley to the King all the Time, Baby, has a perfect 9-0 score. There's two other teams with a 3-0 score at this point, I think.
I'm not really sure if we got the match ups we wanted in this round; I got Ossrum, Haley2 got Damiano and Haley1 got Wurmwood. Scenario is Outflank, and Jocke played:
General Ossrum - WJ: +28
- Ghordson Driller - PC: 10 (Battlegroup Points Used: 10)
- Ghordson Driller - PC: 10 (Battlegroup Points Used: 10)
- Grundback Gunner - PC: 6 (Battlegroup Points Used: 6)
- Grundback Gunner - PC: 6 (Battlegroup Points Used: 2)
- Grundback Gunner - PC: 6
- Ghordson Driller - PC: 10
Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor - PC: 5
Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios - PC: 7
Anastasia di Bray - PC: 3
Horgenhold Artillery Corps - Gunner & 2 Grunts: 6
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt - Lady Aiyana & Master Holt: 8
Horgenhold Forge Guard - Leader & 9 Grunts: 16
Alexia Ciannor & the Risen - Alexia & 9 Risen Grunts: 10
- Thrall
This game was enjoyable, but not a great game from my end. We juggled around a little bit, doing a little damage here and there to each other, until Jocke decided to feat with Ossrum and push his three heavies into my cloudwall and make me deal with them. At this point my fucking Ironclad was disrupted by Eiryss1 and Past Haley died.
Thorn does his thing and disrupts two of the warjacks, I deal some damage through his feat, semi-cloud up again and just decide to wait out the feat and then win.
Bad plan as it turns out, since Jocke had one non-disrupted heavy in my lines. He's pushed a bit up on either side and with Snipe and Energizer and bulldoze and shit he's got a way to get a fair few shots into Prime Haley. She's defense 20 though, Flux and in a forest. I forgot about his Drillers having open fists was the issue. So the driller goes to throw my Ironclad (which I put next to it giving it a good target for throwing...) and rolls a 4 on his STR-check. I decide I'm just going to boss the STR roll and rolls the 6 needed to stop the assassination.
As a result the assassination fails and I believe Jocke even clocks out at this point. His earlier turns took too long and this turn even more so. Jocke said afterwards that he thinks this was his best shot at winning considering the clock, and I think attrition would go my way anyway.
Olov who got put into the tougher match up lost this round. Torbjörn looked to have a cool match up vs Damiano, doing Torbjörn stuff like spending a Domination to "soften up" Damiano. A bit later, he pushes up the Stormwall to a great position SHOULD HE REMEMBER TO FEAT TO PROTECT IT.
.........
So the Stormwall gets to fucking Nomads or something into it and down it fucking goes. Torbjörn looks to give away the game and round then.
Then he does Torbjörn things again and manifactures an assassination run which works out. So we're 2-1 and due to the other games we're the only team at 4-0.
Like the team before us, it's comprised of three really good players, two of which have played in the WTC multiple times. They're running Irusk2, Ossyan and Haley2.
We get Haley3 vs Haley2, Haley2 vs Irusk2 and Haley1 gets thrown into Ossyan. Torbjörn should beat Irusk, so it's really up to me to carry this round.
The scenario is Take & Hold which should be in my favour. I get a bad side, with a forest really disrupting my advance, but at least I got to go first to alleviate this a little bit. My plan is as always push up, kill the Stormwall, contest scenario. Again, Haley2 has to pressure scenario a lot to force Haley3 into bad attrition plays to have a game.
Bottom of 1 Jeppa forgets that Haley3 has Domination. He puts Thorn aggressively behind an obstruction to threaten REALLY far into my army next turn. I have to chose between Repudiating and doing a little more than half of the Stormwall's grid, or killing Thorn. The latter costs me my feat. Seeing how Thorn is VERY important to Haley2, I go for that play and down he goes.
Interestingly enough, this turned out to be the wrong play! Jeppa pushes into my army with Stormwall, feats and since Arlan gave him magic attacks he got to kill a badly positioned Past Haley. My next turn is abysmal; I use lots of my warjacks to make sure Prime can't get something thrown onto and die. Jeppa correctly moved Haley2 onto his flag too, which I contest weakly.
From here on Jeppa actually manages to get good attrition done to my army, which is very unusual. He pushes scenario incredibly hard, standing aggressively and camping 4-5 focus with Haley2. I try to find a way to get her killed but the Stormwall is holding onto too many of my warjacks since I had to committ them to bodyblocking Prime Haley last turn. In the end Jeppa takes down this game on scenario.
What went wrong? As I said, taking Thorn top of 2 turned out to be the wrong play. I can hardly believe it as I'm typing it, but it definitely was. I should've put 30-32 boxes on the Stormwall instead, which would've meant I could simply have killed the fucker under Temporal Shift the following turn! This would've meant that my warjacks weren't tied up just keeping Prime safe (on top of the colossal being dead of course, which would've been great). I would still have been pressured a bit on scenario, but by then I think I could have attritioned Jeppa's remaining pieces down so quickly that he wouldn't have time to win on scenario.
The Thorn move wasn't a bait from Jeppa's side either. I asked him "On a scale between 1 and tons, how much did you forget that Haley3 has Domination" and his reaction was deep despair I hardly think he could've faked, haha.
Again Torbjörn pulls through as he should. I'm pretty sure we'd lose the round now on the back of my bad judgement, but it turned out Andreas who played Ossyan has so fucking cold dice that more than ten MHSF couldn't kill a Stormwall under Ossyan's feat. As a result, the fucker got killed and we won 2-1!
This of course puts us at 5-0 and undisputed winners of the tournament! Both Olov and I went 4-1, and Torbjörn having barely played Cygnar before carried us with a perfect 5-0 score (even losing his stormwall twice to forgetting to feat... ).
Winning is of course very fun. We got a nice trophy which I was allowed to take home with me (apparently Olov's price rack is too full and Torbjörn had left already to catch a train home). I'm childishly excited by this, haha.
The reasoning behind our team composition was simply that it'd be fun to run all three Haleys, and since they're all really strong casters we figured it would work out nicely. The tournament were filled with strong players, even though only drawing 12 3-man teams.
As a fun side note, the team we faced in the third round from Jönköping got a nightmare draw through all of the tournament. They managed a 1-4 score, but had to face at least 1 WTC player each round and got an amazing 18 SOS out of 5 rounds.
Bog Trog Mist Speaker - PC: 4
Wrong Eye - Wrong Eye & Snapjaw: 17
- Snapjaw
Gatorman Bokor & Bog Trog Swamp Shamblers - Bokor & 9 Grunts: 11
The scenario is Incursion, which is good for me.
My game plan here is simple, I don't think this list has enough attacks and durability to chew through my list so I'm gonna wade up to the middle line and start killing his shit, and seeing how small his army is I'll also probably want to start scoring rather soon.
And that's pretty much what happened. Flogger made a rather big mistake when he charged Snapjaw into 2 Storm Lances (he actually did get to shoot one too I think) and moved Wrongeye a bit too far up. Past Haley could punch him into the dirt as a result which gave me control of my left flank. Flogger scored twice on my rightmost flag, but after that I could get his Wrastlers dead and Spitter under control.
In the end it came down to Flogger not being able to contest my left flag while a Grenadier scored on it, and running out of time while failing.
Torbjörn did as was expected and managed to get a win out of his match versus Irusk2, and Olov also managed to push around Doomshaper2's beasts enough to handily win on scenario too. 3-0, again.
This marked the end of day 1, and All Haley to the King all the Time, Baby, has a perfect 9-0 score. There's two other teams with a 3-0 score at this point, I think.
ROUND 4
There's really 3 more or less successful team tournament captains in Sweden, looking at international results. They decided it'd be fun to band together in one team, and thereby try to bereave the rest of us of their amazing brain powers. Hugo Svanborg, Jocke Rapp and Christoffer Wedding are the three amazing captains, playing under the team name L'Equipe Les Trois Capitaines running Damiano Kingmakers, Ossrum and Wurmwood.I'm not really sure if we got the match ups we wanted in this round; I got Ossrum, Haley2 got Damiano and Haley1 got Wurmwood. Scenario is Outflank, and Jocke played:
General Ossrum - WJ: +28
- Ghordson Driller - PC: 10 (Battlegroup Points Used: 10)
- Ghordson Driller - PC: 10 (Battlegroup Points Used: 10)
- Grundback Gunner - PC: 6 (Battlegroup Points Used: 6)
- Grundback Gunner - PC: 6 (Battlegroup Points Used: 2)
- Grundback Gunner - PC: 6
- Ghordson Driller - PC: 10
Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor - PC: 5
Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios - PC: 7
Anastasia di Bray - PC: 3
Horgenhold Artillery Corps - Gunner & 2 Grunts: 6
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt - Lady Aiyana & Master Holt: 8
Horgenhold Forge Guard - Leader & 9 Grunts: 16
Alexia Ciannor & the Risen - Alexia & 9 Risen Grunts: 10
- Thrall
This game was enjoyable, but not a great game from my end. We juggled around a little bit, doing a little damage here and there to each other, until Jocke decided to feat with Ossrum and push his three heavies into my cloudwall and make me deal with them. At this point my fucking Ironclad was disrupted by Eiryss1 and Past Haley died.
Thorn does his thing and disrupts two of the warjacks, I deal some damage through his feat, semi-cloud up again and just decide to wait out the feat and then win.
Bad plan as it turns out, since Jocke had one non-disrupted heavy in my lines. He's pushed a bit up on either side and with Snipe and Energizer and bulldoze and shit he's got a way to get a fair few shots into Prime Haley. She's defense 20 though, Flux and in a forest. I forgot about his Drillers having open fists was the issue. So the driller goes to throw my Ironclad (which I put next to it giving it a good target for throwing...) and rolls a 4 on his STR-check. I decide I'm just going to boss the STR roll and rolls the 6 needed to stop the assassination.
As a result the assassination fails and I believe Jocke even clocks out at this point. His earlier turns took too long and this turn even more so. Jocke said afterwards that he thinks this was his best shot at winning considering the clock, and I think attrition would go my way anyway.
Olov who got put into the tougher match up lost this round. Torbjörn looked to have a cool match up vs Damiano, doing Torbjörn stuff like spending a Domination to "soften up" Damiano. A bit later, he pushes up the Stormwall to a great position SHOULD HE REMEMBER TO FEAT TO PROTECT IT.
.........
So the Stormwall gets to fucking Nomads or something into it and down it fucking goes. Torbjörn looks to give away the game and round then.
Then he does Torbjörn things again and manifactures an assassination run which works out. So we're 2-1 and due to the other games we're the only team at 4-0.
ROUND 5
The only team standing between us a certain victory is team Inside Ticklers. I don't know about the name, I didn't want to ask.Like the team before us, it's comprised of three really good players, two of which have played in the WTC multiple times. They're running Irusk2, Ossyan and Haley2.
We get Haley3 vs Haley2, Haley2 vs Irusk2 and Haley1 gets thrown into Ossyan. Torbjörn should beat Irusk, so it's really up to me to carry this round.
The scenario is Take & Hold which should be in my favour. I get a bad side, with a forest really disrupting my advance, but at least I got to go first to alleviate this a little bit. My plan is as always push up, kill the Stormwall, contest scenario. Again, Haley2 has to pressure scenario a lot to force Haley3 into bad attrition plays to have a game.
Bottom of 1 Jeppa forgets that Haley3 has Domination. He puts Thorn aggressively behind an obstruction to threaten REALLY far into my army next turn. I have to chose between Repudiating and doing a little more than half of the Stormwall's grid, or killing Thorn. The latter costs me my feat. Seeing how Thorn is VERY important to Haley2, I go for that play and down he goes.
Interestingly enough, this turned out to be the wrong play! Jeppa pushes into my army with Stormwall, feats and since Arlan gave him magic attacks he got to kill a badly positioned Past Haley. My next turn is abysmal; I use lots of my warjacks to make sure Prime can't get something thrown onto and die. Jeppa correctly moved Haley2 onto his flag too, which I contest weakly.
From here on Jeppa actually manages to get good attrition done to my army, which is very unusual. He pushes scenario incredibly hard, standing aggressively and camping 4-5 focus with Haley2. I try to find a way to get her killed but the Stormwall is holding onto too many of my warjacks since I had to committ them to bodyblocking Prime Haley last turn. In the end Jeppa takes down this game on scenario.
What went wrong? As I said, taking Thorn top of 2 turned out to be the wrong play. I can hardly believe it as I'm typing it, but it definitely was. I should've put 30-32 boxes on the Stormwall instead, which would've meant I could simply have killed the fucker under Temporal Shift the following turn! This would've meant that my warjacks weren't tied up just keeping Prime safe (on top of the colossal being dead of course, which would've been great). I would still have been pressured a bit on scenario, but by then I think I could have attritioned Jeppa's remaining pieces down so quickly that he wouldn't have time to win on scenario.
The Thorn move wasn't a bait from Jeppa's side either. I asked him "On a scale between 1 and tons, how much did you forget that Haley3 has Domination" and his reaction was deep despair I hardly think he could've faked, haha.
Again Torbjörn pulls through as he should. I'm pretty sure we'd lose the round now on the back of my bad judgement, but it turned out Andreas who played Ossyan has so fucking cold dice that more than ten MHSF couldn't kill a Stormwall under Ossyan's feat. As a result, the fucker got killed and we won 2-1!
Victory to All Haley to the King, All the Time, Baby!
Winning is of course very fun. We got a nice trophy which I was allowed to take home with me (apparently Olov's price rack is too full and Torbjörn had left already to catch a train home). I'm childishly excited by this, haha.
Weeeeeeeeeee!
As a fun side note, the team we faced in the third round from Jönköping got a nightmare draw through all of the tournament. They managed a 1-4 score, but had to face at least 1 WTC player each round and got an amazing 18 SOS out of 5 rounds.
Overall, a very fun tournament. Team tournaments are the best, and winning is even better.
