BSK Team Tournament Tumble (Battles 18-22)

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

First round we get matched up against three guys from Linköping, where I used to live until the summer, and where I still study. Honestly considering the history, and how they'd mock us if we lost, this is the most important round in the tournament, no contention!

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.

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!

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.

 

Weeeeeeeeeee!

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. 

Overall, a very fun tournament. Team tournaments are the best, and winning is even better.

A Time Walk in the Park

Greetings and salutations, Cygnar lovers!

Overview:

1. Introduction
2. The List
3. The Haley Unit
4. Win Conditions
5. Bad Match Ups
6. Alternate Builds
7. Conclusion

As I'm sure you've noticed if you've read more of my blog (why would you have done that, though), Haley3 is my favourite warcaster. She's the BOMB. Back in Mk 2 I played a rather unusual variant forgoing the Trenchers for Boomhowlers, though still utilising waves of revived Stormblades and Storm Lances to do most of the work in the army. In mark 3 I guess there is no standard list just yet so I guess mine is as reasonable as anyone's.

I'll preface this by saying I'm not an exceptional player. Haley3 is MY best warcaster by far, but that's not saying I'm the best Haley3 player (or even close to it). She's also good enough a warcaster that there are a multitude of ways to play her with many different viable builds. In my eyes, she's at the time of writing absolutely a top 5 warcaster choice in the game, losing the top 1 position she had in mk 2. Her incredible attrition power combined with a surprisingly hard to assassinate Prime Haley and the Echoes ability to stall out scenario makes her power almost unparalleled. 

I'm going to talk about my preferred style of play with my list. Many of you will likely have lots of objections and different experiences, which I'd love to hear about (unless you're a shithead saying Haley3 is bad in which case fuck off).

Furthermore, this piece will refer to Mk 2 a fair bit. If the post for some reason is read a while into mk 3 this will feel completely unnecessary. Really, some people will likely think so already, but it helps me frame my thoughts, and I hope it will be helpful to highlight things changed between the editions, things I feel a Haley3 player need to realise changed to be successful.

List

First of all I'll show you the list I'm running with Haley3. I think starting off with it helps frame my thoughts and make what I'm saying about the echoes for instance more understandable later. 

This is the list I've been running since a few weeks into Mk 3, including taking it to the WTC. It was born in a discussion amongst friends when Mk 3 was released and has since then been developed cooperatively by me and a good friend, Olov Winroth. 

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]

Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord [4]

Ragman [4]

Some choices in the list are obvious. Trenchers are very good on their own and become an incredible choice with a caster who can give them Tactical Supremacy. Their Dig In ability synergises with Temporal Distortion beautifully as well. Storm Lances are equally obvious; competing for (and maybe winning) the title of the best unit in the game there's almost no Cygnar lists where they aren't a great choice. Their innate DEF 13 combine nicely with Temporal Distortion, and being high-value models means they're good targets for Revive.

Actually Storm Lances are worth expanding on anyway - positioning them is something I've had some troubles with. On the one hand you want to keep them behind the smoke to keep them safe and deliver them, especially considering you won't have Arcane Shield on them for longer than a turn. On the other hand, being stuck behind Trenchers and other models who all need to be behind the clouds, you can't make the best use out of them. What I've found works decently in most games is a combination of the two: I keep 2 storm lances up beside the cloudwall, roughly 5-8'' laterally, a third one 8-9'' behind them, a bit towards the clouds, and the last 2 behind the smokewall. This way you support two of the main workhorses of the list: the two aggressive ones can help the grenadiers and charger kill something at a distance, the two behind the clouds can help Past Haley deliver the beatdown to anything which advanced into or close to the cloudwall, and the last one ties them together CMD wise. The two hidden ones also serve as Revive anchors should your opponent have good enough shooting to punish the three ones you've left visible.

Since I quite recently started taking pictures of my games, I couldn't find a great picture to illustrate the what I'm trying to say with the Storm Lances. This is the best I can find. Two Storm Lances are protected by the clouds, and two are placed aggressively to the flank. The huge terrain piece limits where how far I can get them up though.

The battlegroup is the part of the army most people aren't sure on until they've tried it. The grenadier is an amazing warjack, only it never works out well on the table in my experience. The exception is with Haley3 - she can fuel the little focus hogs easily turn after turn, they synergise well with Temporal Distortion considering their higher DEF stat (14 compared to the typical 13 on Cygnar lights) and Dig In and you're already running Trenchers after all. The only thing getting them in trouble is order of activations if you want to maintain the cloudwall whilst getting work done out of your army. Simply put, you have to play a turn ahead when positioning the Grenadiers. I sometimes make the mistake of aiming turn 2, and keep Dig In, where I probably needed to advance so that turn 3 was less of a puzzle. A tip worth remembering is that you can somewhat alleviate the order of activation issue by Reviving a Trencher base-to-base with a grenadier. It's an expensive trick, but early-mid game you can often afford to and have Past Haley allocate.

Bombs away!

The Ironclad is the latest change to the army, 12 points which used to be two Trench Busters. Much of the time the Ironclad winds up a sponge and/or anvil unto which you lure opposing heavies. It's the only great target for heavies and ARM crackers, so they often aim for it, though it sometimes survives sporting a sexy 14/18 defensive stat line. 

I really shouldn't have to explain why Thorn is part of the list. One of Cygnar's absolute best models, for only 13 points Thorn brings A LOT to the table. Disruption and cortex damage can punish and control warjacks beautifully, threatening arced spells and the amazing synergy between dodge, set defence and Temporal Distortion makes him an auto-inclusion. He often punches out of his weight class too.

Founding member of "I'm too good for my points"-club.

The solos are rather obvious, and there's not that much to say about them. Rhupert plays Dirge of Mists for the Haleys at least 90 % of the turns, pushing the survivability up that extra bit. Similarily the journeyman casts Arcane Shield on the Haleys by turn 2 at the latest in almost all my games. Ragman is a huge help, synergising incredibly well with Past Haley in particular, but with Ragman even the shooty lights can get punching stuff reliably. To some degree you could make a case for either of the 3 solos being MVP:s of the list. Rhupert and Journeyman turn the Echoes into literal nightmares, making the list so much more durable than it looks. Ragman fits so incredibly well into the list: he's hard to get to, with the mass of models and clouds in front of him, and he turns the list really on. Without Ragman I don't think the list is even close to as strong as it is. 

All in all the list is surprisingly difficult to kill, and does WAY more damage than you expect it to do. It's one-rounding colossals reliably as long as you can get any ARM buffs off it using Repudiate. The only real exception is a Hyperion with Discordia backing it up (not even counting the possibility of the Hyperion being under Deceleration or Inviolable Resolve as well), which you probably would have to work on over multiple turns. 

I've paired the list with a Haley2 Stormwall list most of the time. I wish I could say there's that much thought behind that choice - they're just the two best casters in Cygnar in my eyes, and both lists are incredibly strong generalists with some variance in what they prefer not to have to play against. I could see a case being made for a dedicated ARM cracker as a companion to Haley3, but honestly I don't know if there's one better suited in Cygnar than Haley2 for that task anyway. Lately I have been giving Stryker2 some thought.

The Haley Unit

Wooo!

I won't go through what Haley3 does, I assume if you're interested enough to read a post like this you're invested enough in Warmachine that you can look her rules up yourself. I'll try to briefly discuss how I generally use the Haleys. 

First things first, stack all the buffs on them. While losing an echo is far from game losing, they are very important pieces for the list. Stick Arcane Shield on them as soon as you believe there's even a remote risk someone wants to kill the echoes (let alone Prime), give them Dirge of Mists or Heroic Call unless you really need to get pathfinder out on another unit. Let the echoes become literal tanks.

12 focus, is that really fair?

Focus-wise, you typically want to allocate to your jacks from the echoes. Most turns you can easily allocate three from one of the echoes, and one focus from the other echo. This will let you fill up both the grenadiers. 9/10 turns you want to fill both grenadiers (unless they're wrecked or something). You simply have to decide which of the echoes want to keep its focus the most. This is often very easy early game: for instance, there are no enemies close for Past Haley to punch, she allocates and Future either Revives or shoots something. 

Come mid-game, the choices tend to be harder. There are generally something of at least medium value close enough for Past Haley to punch, so she needs her focus suddenly. On top of that, you're generally not far enough into the game that you want to drop Tactical Supremacy, and going down to 0 camp with Prime is very scary. For me this often results in the unpleasant experience of allocating almost solely from Future Haley, which robs me of her gun. This is a bit counter-intuitive considering how you want her to be shooting stuff here, but I've yet to find a better way to do it.

Late-game all rules go out of the window. You can sometimes allocate a focus or two from Prime Haley at this point, if you have eliminated enough threats to her person. At this point it's important to remember that you always have the possibility of going all in and charging both echoes into something heavy to bring it down. 

There's a pirate's rule (remember Pirates of the Caribbean and "more of a guideline..") for allocating from the echoes though, you never allocate down to zero. An echo with arcane shield, temporal distortion and 1 camp is seriously hard to kill without investing far too much into it, but camping 0 it becomes a lot easier. 

Yarr.

There's Haleys EVERYWHERE (or "How to Give a Half-Assed Explanation of Proper Positioning")

Upside down triangle. The Breach of the Walls of Sul was an inside job. Menoth's Fury can't melt steel beams.

This is obviously a difficult concept to write about. Basically, most of the times you form a triangle with the base towards your opponent's table edge, to maximise the coverage of Temporal Distortion. Ideally you get the echoes to a scenario element each and lock that shit down. This means pushing Prime a bit further up than comfortable, but any piece of terrain typically makes this decently safe. If there's nothing LoS-blocking in a suitable position, you often want to keep two Trenchers back there to cloud up in front of Prime (even after dropping Tactical Supremacy, the only important thing is to keep Prime safe). 

An example of the triangle. I did wind up losing on scenario here, so I should've pushed the echoes further up, but for attrition this is a great position.

A little trick worth remembering versus far-threatening melee armies is that while you can't free strike while incorporeal anymore, you can still block landing spots. Removing an echo at range is often difficult, so many assassinations relying on melee can be stopped by placing an echo in the spot a warbeast/warjack/whatever would need to stand to beat down Prime. You might be able to artificially reduce the threat range of many assassinations this way. 

The Feat

Honestly, it's not that impressive. You can keep it for an assassination, to get more Focus out and allow Past Haley to boost to hit a Force Hammer on something. I usually use it turn 3 to get a big attrition swing whilst staying a bit safer than usual: Past Haley can punch something really well, Future can allocate 4 and stay safe, and Prime can cast Temporal Distortion and often a second spell while maintaining camp. That's really all you need to aim for in my experience. Turns 3 and 4 are typically when you're most vulnerable, since at that time the armies have gotten close enough to each other for Prime to be in range of things, but you haven't yet managed to kill off enough things to make her safe again. Getting 2 extra focus to allow some focus camping at such an important time can often help push a game in your favour.

The way the feat gives you the big attrition swing is two-fold: firstly, the echoes become a bit more dangerous, or they can allocate a little extra. Secondly, it allows Prime Haley to cast a second spell. Since you always cast Temporal Distortion, and sometimes upkeep Tactical Supremacy, you can very rarely get another spell out. The feat lets her boost a Repudiate, cast a Domination or something similar. That's often a big, big deal. Preferably you know the turn before that you're going to feat, so you can set up for it. What this means is different depending on what you want to achieve, but often it is things like getting the Grenadiers to a place so they can aim to what you're going to want to kill, getting Thorn disentangled to let him run and arc early in the turn, swinging out a bit with the Storm Lances to give them charge lanes.

How do I win?

Haley3 and the Scenario Game

Lacking the cool control elements of her first two iterations, Haley3 isn't a scenario caster per se. Most of the games are won on the back of strong attrition play, resulting in (most often) a caster kill or (less often) a scenario win. My strongest scenarios are the slow ones in SR2016, like Line breaker, or the central ones like Recon. 

When fighting a very aggressive list and/or a control caster I often find myself giving up 2-3 early CP to preserve my army. While this plays into a control caster's game plan a bit, they usually have to offer up something to get the points. Typically Haley3 is very strong attrition wise, while control casters generally are less so. What this means is that if you give up scenario pressure early you are definitely going to win the long game, 

UNLESS you lose the scenario game, that is. As long as you stay on top of your game, you rarely will (and as a result, I lose the scenario game every now and then, haha). Your key pieces preventing the scenario loss are the Echoes without a doubt. They're abhorrently hard to kill, to such a degree that they might be the worst balanced part of Warmachine Mk 3 (nah I'm kidding, Throw Power Attacks still exist... ). To a lesser degree Thorn is a very important contesting piece - Temporal Distortion plus Dodge and Set Defence is a patently unfair combination. 

Assassination then?

Offensively, assassination is not a huge win condition for this list. In mk 2, it absolutely was. But losing Revive in the direction assassination game really did hurt her a lot here. Had I chosen Defenders rather than Grenadiers for this list I'm sure I might have had a different experience, but the short range of the Grenadiers, the fact that the Charger generally stay a bit back pulls her ability way down here. That being said, she's not exactly bad here, a caster with Domination, Force Hammer and good output herself (or rather the unit has good output) can never be bad at assassination.

Defensively, I feel many people think Haley3 is weak to assassination. I typically disagree on that point. With Temporal Distortion, Dirge of Mist, Arcane Shield and new focus camp rules, I think Prime Haley is very hard to assassinate. Typically you will have one or two trenchers who can smoke up infront of Prime mid and late game after you have dropped Tactical Supremacy from them as well. 

The main thing to be wary of are Throw Power Attacks. This is one of the reasons the Ironclad was included in the list, being a large base he can body block many Throw assassinations. If you successfully eliminate that path of attack Haley3 rarely dies.

"Don't let them throw anything at me!"

So attrition

Yeah this is where Haley3 REALLY shines. So far I have only lost the grind once in Mk 3. Admittedly, this is partly since I haven't dropped her into very many lists that have the rare combination of traits to beat her in the long game. Versus the lists where cloud effects block LoS, keep calm and smoke up. If you have to choose between a half-bad attrition turn and just pressing two or three inches extra and getting a great turn after that, definitely go for alternative two (unless you're way behind on scenario, I guess). 

One of the reasons you do so well attrition-wise is simply that there are literally 4 points in the list which do nothing for attrition, Rhupert. He's there to keep Haley alive. Everything else is just geared to slowly (actually quite quickly) grind whatever it is you are facing to dust. List damage output is great versus heavy armour, it's great versus infantry (I guess if someone came with a Mk 2 style spam I'd have a tough time), and it's very strong defensively. Jarle of Courage of Caspia-fame (link here but honestly if you've found my blog you've know of his already) put it well: 

It baffles me how well haley3 can "receive" an alpha sometimes. I say receive and not tank because she doesn't really tank it. It feels like my opponent is punching the air. Sure he might strafe something here and there but the alpha rarely connects.

After first picking up the list, I realised the grenadiers were the work horses of the list and I was afraid to lose them. Upon actually losing both quite early, I quickly found it barely mattered. The same thing happens if your opponent somehow can shut down your echoes well a game, except for making allocating to your Grenadiers a bit more difficult, you still have enough to get shit done. Same goes for the Storm Lances, if you face someone who can get them shot off the table reliably, just focus on getting work done with the rest of your army. Whatever dies, you've got something to pick up the lost output. 

Part of the amazing attrition game is great focus redundancy - if you can't punch something with Past Haley, just allocate instead. If you can't allocate, shoot with Future and throw a Chain Blast. If you can't do that, Revive a Storm Lance or a Trencher. If you can't do that, go back to the beginning or come up with something else. You're almost never out of options. 

A drawback with a great attrition game is that you have to play long games. Six or seven turns per player isn't very uncommon for me. This leads to 2 problems in particular: 1) you get tired as fuck and the last game of the day often sucks, and more importantly, 2) Haley3 can avoid losing on scenario and assassination as long as you play well. If you're playing a 6 turn game, you have to position correctly for both scenario and assassination 6 times. If you fuck up once you typically lose, assuming a player of equal skill.

Be more aggressive than you feel comfortable with!

At least I think you should. This is probably the point I need to improve on the most myself. It sort of ties into the play style I described versus control casters with giving up scenario and board pressure for attritional advantages. Versus most lists you can probably afford to sacrifice parts of your attrition game to reduce the risk of you losing on scenario quickly. A couple of my latest losses with Haley3 came partly because I made the mistake of being too cautious.

Don't give them names, they're there to die.

The list's inherent survivability combined with some recursion and personal output from the warcaster choice means you can be most aggressive with your list than you think. Losing Trenchers doesn't hurt very much, neither does losing Storm Lances, for instance. I mean, of course, ideally you want to lose nothing, but you can afford it.

Admittedly, this principle might lead to me losing more games to assassination. There's no great counter-point to this argument, except to tell myself to position better I suppose. 

Bad match ups

Bad match ups for Haley3 would typically be lists with a high volume of very accurate attacks. On top of that, it probably needs to come together with a way to punish the army through a LoS-blocking smokewall. Contrary to some opinions, choosing a list which can reliably kill an echo per turn does not do enough to give you an advantage unless you can do it VERY trivially. Losing an echo IS a big tempo loss but the echo is coming back and whatever was spent to kill it typically won't. 

I'll try to go into some detail about some of the worse match ups for Haley3. Honestly even the bad match ups typically aren't bad per se, but maybe a bit worse than 50-50.

Lylyth3

My experience with the Lylyth3 game is that how good a match up this is for Haley3 correlates almost perfectly with how bad you can make her assassination run. The game WILL come down to Lylyth going for the kill, and sometimes she will get it. You have to build a Fort in front of Prime Haley using Storm Lances and the Ironclad. The exact formation is up to taste and availability of terrain, but at the very least you can place two large bases base-to-base, push Haley3 into the crevice created behind them to stop the Bolt Thrower from pushing anything, and maybe stick a second Storm Lance in front of that. 

Sadly you cannot just keep Haley3 far enough back to stay safe. The reason is two-fold, firstly Lylyth3 can reach you anyway, and secondly, if you do you might actually lose out on the long game. If you keep Prime back far enough, you definitely can't get the Echoes to cover anything worthwhile with Temporal Distortion. Why? Because you'll have to take your gunline and fuck the dragons up in melee. Surprisingly, this works.

Retribution of Scyrah

The problem presented by an army with Deadeye and an ability to ignore cloudwalls for a turn makes Ossyan a strong drop versus Haley3. If Ossyan runs one unit of MHSF you might be able to play it, since he has to choose between killing the Trenchers and killing the Grenadiers the turn he minifeats. If he runs two units with UA, I don't know what you'll do. Without trying it, I think the only shot you get is hoping Ossyan moves up to feat or whatever the same turn so you can kill him in return.

Still the strongest caster in Ret.

Other than Ossyan, Kaelyssa and Issyria can be problematic for Haley3, though not to the same degree. This is assuming they run Discordia and a Hyperion, if they don't I think the edge goes back to Haley3. The combination of a colossal with tons of boxes and Disco bubble (and the ability to protect said Hyperion with feat or Inviolable Resolve plus Arcane Vortex), plus the ability to attack through the cloudwall hurts our favourite Haley. 

Kara Sloan

Surprisingly not as bad as it seems. Dig In does a lot to keep your army alive and deliverable, and this is probably one of the few match ups where you want to push for a speedy scenario win. Way worse if Sloan runs Storm Lances who can run up and remove Dig In from the front ranks. For her personal safety, Haley can push her defense so high even Kara Sloan is unlikely to kill her. Somewhat similar to the Lylyth3 match up, I feel.

Madrak2

I think this is a playable match up, but I have trouble pulling it off. You have to get within 10'' to get damage onto his army, and if you do that you're pushing up close to Madrak2 with a large number of living models. This isn't great. Even so, I do think it's playable, but I have chosen to play Haley2 into Madrak2 instead.

Karchev Mad Dog Spam

This list doesn't really full-fill the same criteria as the other ones on this list. This list is simply an abomination with too quick, too cheap, too many boxes backed up by a very hard to kill warcaster. Maybe there's a game here, considering the Mad Dogs aren't great at killing high-defense targets, but they could just slam their buddies and then get work done. A better player than I might pull this off.

Topical picture.

Alternate builds

This is far from my strong suit, I'm the type of player who finds a list they like and then play the fuck out of that list (or switch factions, but I'm bad at exploring different lists for the same caster). I've seen variants with Defenders in the battle group which I think could work well; the longer range obviously helps the assassination game a fair bit. 

A more dude spam list utilising perhaps Sword Knights, with or without Trenchers could maybe work decently and take advantage of how many lists tend to skimp a bit on anti-infantry in the early days of Mk 3. 

Maaaaybe viable?

Early on I did consider changing the entire battle group out for cheap heavies, something like running 4 Ironclads or 2 Stormclads plus an Ironclad or something like that. The Ironclads in particular utilise Temporal Distortion very well, 14/18 with 30 boxes are great value for their points. Similarly to the Grenadier build that would be a rather focus heavy list, which Haley3 can pull off. I never tested the list for two reasons: I think it would be too slow, and more importantly, the grenadier build is so strong. 

Conclusion

Haley3 is the fucking bomb. If you want an incredible attrition caster with surprising durability both regarding scenario play and surviving assassinations, look no further. There are likely many more strong builds for Haley3, but this is the one I'm playing. I hope this post has given you, the reader, something worth the time investment. I'd love comments, questions and further discussion on anything Haley3, either here, a forum or privately. I'll leave you with the immortal words of Olov Winroth, fellow Swedish Cygnar player:

1. Play Haley3.

2. Summon echoes.

3. ????

4. Profit.  

WTC 2016 - Team Bofors (battles 12-17)

Hello,

the WTC has come and gone. What I focused all my warmachine-ing on for approximately 18 months has passed and I'm not too surprisingly feeling a little burnt out. The first 12 months I played Legion of Everblight for 8-9 of them, and then Cygnar 3-4. Those were the months I had to continuously place well and farm ranking points to get drafted for the team (I also had to hope we would wind up getting a third team, otherwise I had no shot), and then 6 months of preparation.

Getting chosen to represent Sweden, even though on the least significant third team, was at the time definitely my biggest accomplishment in Warmachine. I had won a couple of small tournaments, placed top 5 on bigger ones and then, finally, this. Following the decision, with me getting in as the lowest ranked member of the teams, I was anxious to prove my worth. I feel like I did that in the following months, both at tournaments and WTC practice weekends. Going into the WTC I felt good about my chances, but I did wish my team had coordinated our lists a little better. Some teams really had ball-breaking set ups - we just had 5 solid list pairs. 

This is an example of what Bofors, the company we're named after, makes. I think. I just googled.

Anyway, I'll type my lists again. They're unchanged for a long time now.

Haley2
- Stormwall
- Thorn
- Ironclad
- Squire
Min Storm Lances
Ragman
Lanyssa Ryssyl
Journeyman Warcaster
- Firefly

Haley3
- Thorn
- Grenadier
- Grenadier
- Ironclad
Max Trenchers
Max Storm Lances
Ragman
Rhupert
Journeyman Warcaster
- Charger

I spend a lot of time chatting about Cygnar and warmachine with 1) the Swedish teams and 2) a group of Cygnar players containing Jarle Svendsrud and Olov Winroth (and more). I mention those two in particular because the three of us settled for identical list pairs. 

The rest of my team was Torbjörn with Legion (Vayl2/Absylonia2), Ola with Retribution (Issyria/Vyros2), Niklas with Trollbloods (Madrak2/Borka1), and Gustav with Protectorate (Kreoss3/Harbinger). Torbjörn had the most experience from WTC and took care of our matching process, even though he wasn't formally the captain. Torbjörn did an AMAZING job with our pairings and most often got us the best possible pairings. 

Off I went to Amsterdam (after briefly celebrating my girlfriend's birthday the Friday I left) and on to the venue. Arriving there I was honestly rather disappointed: no wifi, no towels, the huts the players got weren't close to one another. I went on being disappointed, with bad food (especially lunch), expensive beer and too densely packed gaming area. I've been able to gather from more experienced WTC-goers that as far as organisation and venue went, this was far from the best one.

Nevertheless, I was hyped as FUCK to get playing. I decide to take no pictures during the event, I want to focus solely on playing. I'll try to get some other pictures in here just to break the monotony of text.

ROUND 1

We get Wales Dant as our first round, which we honestly were quite relieved by. No offense meant to Wales, but I think they would agree they're not one of the favourites for the tournament. They did however give us really good looking dice! Black with gold pips, and a Welsh Dragon for the 6. Really cool!

Torbjörn fixed the pairings, and I got to play versus Terry Slade, captain and Legion player. He had Vayl2 and something else, so we played Haley3 vs Vayl2. 

Vayl2
- Typhon
- Ravagore
- Seraph
- Nephilim Bolt Thrower
2 Strider Deathstalkers
2 Shepherds
Wrong Eye & Snapjaw
Hellmouth
Swamp Gobbers

This is a picture of my own Vayl2, from back when I was a wee dragonspawn.

The scenario was incursion. The only thing important in this game is keeping Prime Haley safely tucked away behind Storm Lances and terrain, and then grind from there. As long as you don't die, there's no way you can lose the attrition (unless maybe if he gets both echoes one turn, then he might have a shot I guess). I remember Wrongeye failed killing a storm lance or something (which did have flux so shit happens) and dying in return. 

In the end, Terry clocked out after failing an assassination run (which honestly wasn't that bad a chance, like 30-35 % I think, I should've played more defensively). I can't remember the scenario score, but I believe we were around 3-3 or something at the time. 

The rest of the team win as well, so we start the tournament off 5-0 and feeling great. Sweden Nobel actually won 5-0 versus Wales Crafanc too so Sweden is 10-0 versus Wales after round 1. 

ROUND 2

Round 1 did give us some delicious upsets! TWO USA teams are knocked out already! And the last one just barely won 3-2 versus Norway's second team. Us europeans are probably a bit too full of glee here; USA gets an undeserved amount of people cheering for their opponents. Anyway, upsets are fun I guess.

Round 2 we get paired up against one of the teams which knocked a USA team out: Denmark Jotunheim. Jotunheim means Giant's Home, pointing towards a Viking past. The Norwegians and Swedes generally find it amusing when Danes try to be Vikings, generally viewing our cousins to the South as soft weaklings. And the name has got nothing on BOFORS anyway.

I think it was Norwegian Vikings who discovered America. It might've been Danish ones, but I'd deny that vehemently.

Torbjörn again does his magic and I get paired versus Protectorate of Menoth, piloted by Simon Sörenssen (I can't make the magic happen, he gets a Swedish Ö rather than a Danish). We play Haley2 versus Severius2. 

Severius2
- Blessing of Vengeance
- Reckoner
- Vanquisher
- Repenter
- Devout
Vassal of Menoth
Wrack
Rhupert 
Max Temple Flameguard with UA
Max Choir of Menoth
Rhoven & C:o.

Haley2 isn't my comfort caster, but she's very good into Protectorate so I feel I should be fine anyway. The scenario is Recon. I get to go first and my plan is to advance as far as I can turn 1, turn 2 I'll feat and get something done, and then I'll win over the next couple of turns. He has to sing Passage every turn so I can get shooting. In theory at least. I practice, I do more damage swinging my mighty fists.

This is pretty much what happens as well. Simon's Flameguard are surprisingly resilient, binding up my storm lances as well as the Ironclad for a significant part of the game. I try scoring turn 3 but I believe I fail to clear the last two Flameguard, and do not score until turn 4 instead. What happens meanwhile though is pure beauty. 

Turn 2 I get Thorn going very far, and he disrupts Blessing of Vengeance and the Reckoner, while staying in melee afterwards. Protected by feat, all he gets damaged in return is the Reckoner whacking him once (rolling high, sadly). Turn 2 the Stormwall has only advanced and tried shooting his Flameguard and warjacks a bit, but turn 3 he crashes into the Vanquisher, Repenter and Devout, killing the heavy and half a light with the help of Ragman. Thorn fucks up Blessing and the Reckoner again.

Overpowered little fucker, this one.

Turn 4 is when I score 1 point, and I believe Thorn finally dies. By now attrition is solidly mine though. I fuck up once here, almost losing me the game, by getting a bit greedy. Until now, I've played Haley behind the smoke provided by my Fuel Cache. Now, I decide I want TA on the Ironclad before it goes in and kills the Reckoner, so I advance into the cloud. The ironclad kills the Reckoner with 2 attacks to spare (TWO). All Simon has left are some shit models and Severius, and his arc node. He get's two Hexblasts into me. First one hits and does FUCKING 16 damage before focus camp. Luckily I camp 2, so I drop that down to 11. Simon then needs a boosted 10 for the game, but doesn't get it, after which I kill the damn priest. 

So that's a nice lesson in how to almost give away a game. Team wins 4-1 I think, so we're onto round 3 undefeated.

ROUND 3

In round 3, we're starting to get down the very few teams left which you consider good draws. We get the worst possible, Australia Echidna.

I get paired versus Tom Guan of Internet Fame, playing Wurmwood. Olov Winroth has played Haley3 into the Tree a couple of times with good results, so I was going to try to repeat his success.

Wurmwood
- Cassius
- Pureblood
- Megalith
Wolf Lord Morraig
Lanyssa Ryssyl
Hutchuck, Ogrun Bounty Hunter
2 Shifting Stones
2 Sentry Stones
2 Max Wolves of Orboros with UA
Swamp Gobbers

Sadly, the scenario being Outlast isn't great for me, neither is Tom being a much stronger player than I am.

As you probably can tell from my defeataist attitude, I lost this round. I get to go first but get too scared of Cassius running into my cloudwall and arcing Hellmouths before getting ported back so I advance far too cowardly turn 2. Tom answers by clearing a zone and dominating while feating. With my entire list covered by a fucking forest, I get next to nothing done in my turn, and contest the zones best I can while maintaining a defensive position for Prime Haley. It's not enough, and since I underestimated how far he could get Morraig I not only have Tom dominate one zone, he controls the other one for an easy 5-0 scenario win. 

Losing versus a great player (in the winning team; Australia Echidna went on to take the entire tournament) isn't shameful in itself, I am however disappointed in HOW I lost. I played badly and didn't do myself or my team justice.

Apparently, this is an echidna.

Making matters worse, we lose the round 4-1. Australia Echidna has knocked out Sweden Dynamite and Sweden Bofors in two consecutive rounds, establishing themselves as Swede Slayers par excellence. I got the feeling that parts of the team were annoyed with Dylan for losing his game, haha. 14-1 after day 1 is apparently not good enough for Australia!

Still, 2-1 and losing to the eventual winners is an okay record for day 1.

The evening was spent hanging out with mostly the other Swedes, sadly, but I did get to talk to a couple of Americans and others as well.

ROUND 4

In round 4 we got paired up versus Belgium Victorious Secret. They had somehow gotten unlucky enough to be missing their television from their bungalow, with no idea how that had happened. Apparently it wasn't a drunken thing either, so who knows. For 10 minutes they were missing their 5th player as well, so we joked that he probably had taken off with the TV.

I got matched up versus Benoit van Lee (henceforth to be known as BVL), and we played Haley2 versus Magnus2. The scenario was Extraction.

Magnus2
- Sylys
- 2 Manglers
- Renegade
- Gallant
Kell Bailoch
Harlan Versh
Alten Ashley
Max Idrians with UA
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt

Extraction is a funny scenario, in that the flags are controlled and dominated for 1. As it turned out, Benoit wasn't aware of this fact, which would become apparent.

My game plan for this game was pretty simple - in the end Haley2 plays a similar game to Magnus2, but better, and with better stuff. His only edge is his ability to pump damage all the way up. Considering I shoot better than him I decided I could work for a turn or two to soften him up before going in for the kill, while controlling his warjacks meanwhile. Benoit has apparently faced Haley2 before so he shoots away his Renegade's super rocket shot turn 1 so I can't do fun Domination things with it.

I fucked up big time turn 2 though. I dared a shot at a Bullet Dodger Gallant, which wasn't the fuck up since I hit and did some damage, but I looked at the table and decided that my stormwall was fine where she was - she was within threat range of Gallant BUT I was sure an obstruction blocked Gallant's charge lane so he couldn't get there anyway.

Come BVL:s turn, he said "I think I have a charge lane here". I tilt my head and lean to the side, and yeah he definitely has one. HUGE fucking mistake. So Gallant goes into the Stormwall doing roughly half its boxes since Kiss of Lyliss was out of range. SHIT. 

After that I had to turn on my A game, which I luckily did. I boxed in Gallant with a couple of Storm Lances, and punched him down. Bad trade for a Stormwall, since HARLAN VERSH shot the other side down the turn after with some spell help, but you take what you can get. Eventually Benoit shifts to the flag on my right and starts scoring, but here's where the dominating for 1 comes in and it takes longer than he thought. Even though I gave away the stormwall I sort of take attrition here with the Ironclad and Thorn doing major work. We're at 3-3 or 4-3 or something and Benoit has a Mangler, Kell and Magnus left. 

The Mangler downs my objective, and Magnus needs to kill the journeyman warcaster who's the only model contesting. Having set up for this contest the turn before I had actually moved AS to junior herself, so even though he clocked out Junior would've lived through Kell and Magnus' spray attack anyway. 

Haley: Just run up there and tank through all they've got. You can even Arcane Shield yourself!

June(ior): ... I'm not sure about this, Major.

So even though I almost gave away my Stormwall completely unnecessarily, the match up was enough in my favour (and with good play on my part) that I could win it in the end anyway. 

ROUND 5

Round 5 we get USA White. Until round 4 they were the last undefeated USA team, but they had to play Sweden Nobel, our best team, so they were now obviously 3-1 like we were. 

I get matched versus Michael Ireland with Retribution. We wind up playing Haley3 versus Helynna. Normally I'm not happy about Retribution, but Michael runs Helynna (who I think isn't that great) and Ossyan WITHOUT strike force commander. Smoke wall is great, then.

Magister Helynna
- Sylys
- Chimera
- Discordia
- 3 Manticore
2 Arcanists
Lys Healer
Lanyssa Ryssyl
Max Sentinels with UA and 1 Soulless.

I'll not go into much detail for this game. I get a good match up, Haley3 into Helynna, and even though his covering fires fuck with my cloudwall a fair bit, I get to kill all his sentinels turn 3 and all I need to do here is not give him an easy assassination and I will win this game eventually. There's no way his 4 heavies can grind through the Temporal Flux-enhanced monstrosity that is my list. I even killbox myself on accident, and I still feel like the game was mine to lose at that point.

So what I do is form a fucking incomplete fucking cloudwall where the big hole is DIRECTLY in front of Prime Haley. He throws a god damn Discordia onto Prime, and shoots her to death.

I'm fucking pissed at myself for such an idiotic mistake. I get a good match up, I'm allowed to take his Sentinels since he doesn't feat turn 3, and I'm on a course towards winning in 5-6 more safe turns. I'm still upset thinking about this fucking game.

If by chance Michael winds up reading this, I probably acted like a douchebag after this game and I'm very sorry for being a less than ideal opponent. 

My sorry story aside, the team saves my ass. We take down USA White 3-2 and I can be a little less upset. At this point we're 4-1 and have reached the goal we set for ourselves, a 4-2 record or better. Honestly we might've gotten TOO content here.

ROUND 6

Luckily that might not have mattered much. We get paired versus Canada Goose, which is the last team we want to face in this bracket. Our match ups are simply TERRIBLE versus their lists. 

I get into Legion piloted by Chris Orr. He's got Lylyth3 and Kallus, so I know it's going to be Lylyth3. Lylyth3 wins versus Cygnar by killing the caster I've found, and I think I've got a better shot at keeping Haley3 safe than Haley2. In hindsight, after discussing this game with Jarle and Olov, I think I picked the wrong list, but such is life.

Lylyth3
- Succubus
- Naga Nightlurker
- Typhon
- Nephilim Bolt Thrower
- Carnivean
- Seraph
3 Shepherds
2 Forsaken
Striders with UA

Chris had tooled his list a little extra versus Cygnar with the Strider Scouts, but even then the long game is in my favour. This game can really only end one way, Lylyth is going to try to kill Prime Haley and I have to make it as hard as possible to pull off. Sadly I cannot just stay far back, because I need the Temporal Flux bubble up covering my army, and my army has to get far up because I can only get work done in melee. I've played this match up, though not versus this very list, a couple of times in preparation for the WTC and I'm sure it can be done. 

This time though, I don't win. I get the fort built, but since I misplace Past Haley I can only put one Storm Lance and the Ironclad blocking LoS to Prime. Getting another Storm Lance in there probably wouldn't have saved me though, since Typhon was what cleared the one horse there. After a 35 minute long turn with tons of proxy bases, Chris (with my help measuring and placing stuff) decides on a course of action. He gets Past Haley and the Storm Lance dead with Typhon, and then Lylyth goes. He needs a boosted 10 to hit, going for more boosts rather than Wraithbane. Sadly, he gets it at the first shot and feat makes me stationary. Nevertheless, with 2 camp I almost survive. His last attack, a carnivean spray, brings me down to the box. I have actually toughed the Haley unit, but even that fails me. 

Essentially, getting the boosted 10 on the first try gets him the game. Had that missed I live and I win the game considering he's given up Typhon, his feat and a turn of attrition to get here. As I said, the game comes down to him trying to kill me, I build a subpar Fort Haley and it's still around a coinflip who wins the game. I'm not saying this to take anything away from Chris - he played very well, he got the assassination mapped out where I think most people wouldn't have, and he did what he had to do in the match up.

A Canadian coin. 

In the end, I'm closest to winning my game and we get 0-5:d by the Canadians. They end up on 3rd place, meaning we lost to the 1st and 3rd placing teams. With 4-2 we get 11th out of 64 teams, which is good. We were hoping for a top 10, but it was not to be. Even at 11th we placed third out of the Swedish teams, which was another thing we were hoping to avoid, haha! But by placing 4th, 9th and 11th, Sweden proved we have a very wide base of great players.


Overall
The WTC was a great experience. The Sunday evening was amazing, I got to spend it with the winning Australians, some Americans and Brits, Norbert, some Swedes and other loose people. Hanging out with people who're really passionate about the same thing you are is the best feeling. I'm not sure if I'll get the opportunity to go again next year, both on a private basis and a "professional" basis. If Sweden only gets 2 teams next year I think it would be tough for me to win a spot, considering how good the competition is. 

All opponents I got to play were great guys, from first round to last. Pleasant to chat with, good knowledge of the rules, precise players. Very enjoyable experience.

Wow, this post really is a wall of text. If anyone made it to the end, a big thanks to you. I'll probably get a post up later this week about what I've learned about my own playing and the game after this intense period of gaming between the team selection and the WTC. 

Thanks for reading!