Battle Report 23: Cygnar vs Protectorate of Menoth

Greetings and salutations, swanophiles!

Long time no gaming, as they say. Christmas and finals and vacations etcetera. Let's get to the game instead.

I've played almost solely Haley2/Haley3 for the entirety of 2016, so I figured I could try something else for a change. Nemo3 is being talked about a lot in Swanworld lately so I was a bit interested in that. Stryker1 is another caster who's been mentioned increasingly lately. Hearing good things about Stryker1 from Patrick Dunford, and actually owning that model, I decided to go in that direction.

Theme: Storm Division
Stryker 1 [+30]
 - Hurricane [39]
Storm Lances (max) [20]
Storm Lances (min) [12]
Stormblade Infantry [10]
 - Stormblade Infantry Officer & Standard [0]
 - Stormblade Infantry Storm Gunner (2) [4]
Journeyman Warcaster [0]
 - Firefly [8]
Captain Arlan Strangewayes [4]
Major Katherine Laddermore [8]
Bunker (Steamroller) [0]

Stormblades I hear you say?? Yeah I know, but they seem to fit well here. You get so many hard-hitting units this way. They're very good with Snipe, and they're good with Blur as well. You get two Arcane Shields, Iron Zeal, some models with natively high ARM to make sure the feat turn is a real time walk. Squire sure would've been cool but I think this is a better build than making room for it.

I know the Hurricane isn't out yet, but it seems so cool so I wanted to try the list with it anyway. It should work roughly as well with a Stormwall instead.

I faced off against Björn Wahlstrand, who used to be an aspiring swanlet but who betrayed us for the Creator of Man. He played Severius2.

Severius 2 [+26]
 - Reckoner [16]
 - Reckoner [16]
 - Reckoner [16]
 - Blessing of Vengeance [13]
Choir of Menoth (max) [6]
Idrian Skirmishers (max) [15]
 - Idrian Skirmisher Chieftain & Guide [5]
Vassal Mechanik [1]
Vassal of Menoth [3]
Wrack [1]
Visgoth Juviah Rhoven & Honor Guard [9]
Bunker (Steamroller) [0]

We rolled up Extraction.

This looks rather stretched out here due to formatting.

Björn wins the roll and choses side, and lets me go first as a result. This was a tough choice since the side I wound up on really was bad, but on the other hand going first is often great. The table we play on has a fair bit more disruptive terrain than we're generally used to, which I found pretty interesting. Terrain being relevant is good for the game, I believe.

As always, I forget taking pictures sometimes. This game I got pictures of the end of my turn every time, but I didn't get any at the end of Björn's.


Deployment

Okay so there's a big fucking house right outside the middle of my deployment. That's shit. This picture was taken before I advance moved my stormblades, do that in front of the Hurricane. The three carnivean-bodies pretend they're Storm Lances this game, so as to stave off the feeling of irrelevancy which came with mk3.

Top of 1 looks like this. Not much to say. Storm Lances on the left should've been more aggressive. 

Here Blur is on the Stormblades, Snipe on the Hurricane, Arcane Shield on both units of Storm Lances.

Björn advanced a bit too warily his turn 1. He killed one storm lance with his idrians, and damaged a second one. Passage out on the warjacks. 

Top of 2:

I've killed 7 idrians here, and got some damage into one Reckoner (the one next to the objective) as well as knocked it down. One of Rhoven's buddies shield guarded a momentum shot so he and a choir member was killed as a result.

I feated this turn too, of course. The plan turn 2 is pressuring your opponent really hard. I should've played all my units a lot more aggressively here, and more than anything I should've put my lances around each of the flags to threaten scoring on his turn. I'm too rusty.

Nevertheless, the feat protects my army splendidly. Björn gets very little done, killing just one Storm Lance which was too far away to get the feat. He stripped Arcane Shield from the right-most storm lances, but junior put it back.

This is after my third turn. I've killed the remaining idrians since Björn used them to try jamming my army, which really didn't do him any good considering how many leaps and lightning generators I'm running. I got 13 damage into his Bunker objective and scored 2. 

At this point I'm feeling pretty in command with a good scenario lead, and I've got a sniped Hurricane doing decent damage behind all my dudes. What remains of Björn's army is very resilient though, considering Hymn of Passage and Field Marshal: Oracular Vision. Luckily for me he's got pretty few attacks though.

Björn feels really pressured on scenario here (rightly so) so he sends his 3 Reckoners up to contest both flags. He uses Severius' feat and a Hex Blast to kill 2 Storm Lances and a Storm Gunner. The latter is really annoying considering his feat now creates dangerous clouds and shit, protecting his objective really well.

I fail scoring any points at all my fourth turn. The Hurricane spreads his shooting between the Reckoner on the left and the central one (the hole near Laddermore and the firefly). Björn has been very disciplined about keeping a focus to mitigate a heavy hit on each of his warjack all game so the grind is slow. The leftmost Reckoner gets disrupted by Stryker, but I forget to move Snipe to the stormblades. This means 3 shots rather than 8, so that's boring. 

Björn gets a little little work done in return, killing only Laddermore and 2 Stormblades. 

By this point the game is over more or less. Hurricane and junior shot down the Reckoner contesting my left flag. He also shoots Rhoven who gets slammed into my own Storm Lance, which dies. The lance had already killed the objective so it doesn't really matter, but I feel a bit stupid anyway. 4 Stormblades charge Blessing of Vengeance and kill it. I'm at 4 CP and Björn cannot contest.

So instead he decides to kill as much as he can. Severius goes in and whacks two stormblades, and the admonisher from his staff kills off lots more of them. He also hex blasts the firefly for 10 points. The poor robot gets finished off by Gius and the Reckoner. 

Victory for the Swans!

I'm not sure what to say for the post-game summary. I did quite a few mistakes, mostly due to not playing much lately. The list seems really strong, and Stryker1 surprised me. He's got a great feat, a disruption gun, good spell list. He's not very dynamic or active himself though, which is something I value highly. Nevertheless, the sniped colossal is great fun and the supertanky army I enjoy. Versus an army without Oracular Vision and Hymn of Passage I think the list has tremendous damage output. Momentum guns work very well with storm knight shooting, and everybody knows how much Stormblades hurt in melee anyway.

Learning points to bring with me, I should've been a lot more aggressive top of 2. I think I could have pushed Björn really far back, or gotten a great attrition turn top of 3 if he decided he couldn't back up that far! 

Haley3 and the Errata

As everybody who reads WMH-blogs know by now, the errata was released just before Christmas. Being a Haley3-fan I considered writing some about how the errata affected Haley3, but there is not really a lot to say. I didn't expect Haley3 to get changed, instead hoping they remove the echoes' ability to contest in SR17, and she didn't. 

Assuming that I would be correct about that, I thought Haley3 would get comparatively buffed - throws would get hit because they were obviously fucked up and Haley3 skewing DEF so hard would as a result become an even happier camper. It was sort of correct, throws are worse now, but seeing how clumped up Haley3-lists often play there's sadly often going to be Cygnar models close enough to her for your opponent to have a good model to throw at her. Nevertheless, it's going to be harder than just running a model there so it's a small buff to her anyway. 

As for the other models being changed in the errata, Ossyan and the Karchev Mad Dogs list are the main problems being removed from the meta. Ossyan I think was playable (though I never got to try it) but Karchev Kennel was probably not so that's a good change. By now I think Haley3 plays well into anything Khador can come up with (at least everything I've seen), but maybe Zerkova1 or Vlad2 can build something to trouble the Queen.

Other than that, not much new for me. Here's to hoping Haley3 survives SR17 too!

The year in review - 2016

Greetings and salutations, boys in blue!

2016 was a good year for me in warmachine world. I won some smaller tournaments, placed well in big ones, was chosen for Sweden's third team in WTC and placed 11th in said tournament. I played Cygnar almost exclusively for the entire year too, which is a big thing for a (former?) faction hopper like me. And the last tournament I played was a very enjoyable team tournament in which my team ran Haley1-Haley2-Haley3 and won, to really hammer in who the top dog is. 

As for the number of games I played, the year was less impressive. I managed to rack up a total of 84 games played during 2016, which is fewer than many top tier players do and definitely too few for me to continue to increase my skill in a good pace. 

Nevertheless, the games were good. I've played almost solely Haley2 and Haley3 both in mk2 and mk3. 

38 games of mk2: 29-9
46 games of mk3: 32-14

For a total of 61-23 W/L record over the year, with many good opponents. Not too shabby. 

The lists themselves, and I'm focusing on mk3 here since that is what feels relevant, have been very good. I've felt slightly disadvantaged versus Circle and Mad Dogs, but not much else. The pairing got me to at least even versus everything else in my experience. Not only that, I often felt upon choosing lists that either of mine would give me an advantage versus either of theirs. Whether that is a result of faction imbalance or just that my lists are better developed than my opponents' is hard to say - a mixture likely. Cygnar has a very active community nowadays where ideas spread quickly and are improved upon. I guess the only negative thing with the Cygnar community is that Jarle's ideas (and perhaps Scandinavia in general's) have a profound effect on Cygnar players all over the globe. This is fine as long as Jarle knows what he's doing, though, and that doesn't look to change.

For next year I'm going to continue playing Haley3 for as long as I can before she gets changed (I still believe echoes should not contest scenario elements for the best of the game) but maybe change up her buddy. I'm really keen to try Nemo3 after talking to Jarle and some other Cygnar players about him (see I'm doing it too!) so hopefully I can get a chance to do that sometime soon.

As for goals for 2017, I'm not sure. 2016 I had the goal to beat current and former WTC-players, which I now have done a fair bit. I will probably not apply to the WTC teams for personal and financial reasons, though it was an incredible experience and I really enjoyed the preparation work too. 

I would like to win a big, national tournament in Sweden so I guess that will be my goal. If I can get top 10 on the Swedish ranking system that would be swell as well, but more than anything I think I will set a goal to get 100 games in during 2017. It's going to be tough, sadly, since I'll be spending a lot of time away from home due to my university studies sending me to small hospitals all around southern Sweden. Anyway, a goal is a goal is a goal :)

Painting wise I'm less impressive.. I finally finished my Haley3 unit lately, after playing her base coated for almost a year. I have to repaint my Stormwall too eventually (it was bought second hand already painted). 

A short mention of the errata - I'm slightly disappointed. I had hoped for more changes, it feels like there are more obvious problem models than those addressed, and more than anything I would have hoped for some more buffs to bad models. 

This post is probably of no use to anyone else, but it helps me gather my thoughts, or something.