Tournament Report – Store Wars Opener

 Goreshade 3: Legion, Minions, Circle, Cygnar, Khador(not B3/B2), Ret, Most Cygnar, Mercs, CoC

He plays into almost all hordes. with siphon Bolt he can threaten the assassination, himself, from up to 23″ away. (speed 8, charge, Darragh Wrath, Corbeau, Siphon) That will often be enough to terrorize them to playing far back so that I can play scenario. Occulatation goes on Goreshade unless the only guns are troop killers, and then it goes on the Blackbanes. Darragh Wrathe goes along with the Soulhunters turns 1/2, but then falls back to protect the Kraken in a hordes game. The Kraken is deployed opposite a controllable zone/flag, with Goresahde 3 opposite the caster with the intention to boost over to a zone when appropriate. Scarlock casts infernal machine/scything touch as necessary, Soul trappers give souls to Soul hunters and Scarlocks to enable dumb shenanigans.

-Denny 3: Skorne (Mordikaar), Trolls (grim 1/2), Cryx, Butcher 2 and 3 (so. Khador)

I expect to play Denny 3 only once, and then into a good match up. as soon as I see it I am going to grab it. If its first round, all the better. She’s big and scary to a ton of casters, but I’ve yet to really use her correctly. Guns, High Defense, and multiple attacks are the bane of Cryx, so dropping her in there, with this specific army, seems pretty solid. Helldivers dig for assassination, Nightwretch slinks around the back looking for assassination vectors while delivering mortality. Bokur sticks by Denny 3 if Eiryss is on the board, otherwise he goes with the necrosurgeons. Midwinter makes her play wonderfully into Butcher 3. Behind her is the unit of mechanithralls looking to grow enormous by the end of the game, adding up to 6 year turn. The Scarlock will be casting ghost walk on the Blood Witches, Mechanithralls, or Grave Wind on Deneghra. Often, she will just camp and run. High defense, Highish MAT value will be useful.

Standing in the Captains position, I was paired up against Circle four our first round.Circle is not a faction I dismiss easily, as they have repeatedly given me very strong games and come out victorious. However, looking over his pairing, I didn’t find anything I thought would be particularly troublesome to my circle drop, Goreshade 3. After conferencing with my teammates, we were all at least solidly comfortable with our match-ups, We went back to our tables and started to set up.

Scenario: Recon
Initiative: Second

My List: Goreshade 3

My opponents list: Kreuger 1

I dropped the Kraken and Goreshade in the center, with Soulhunters and Bane Riders to either side, and the rest of the army in the center to support Goreshade and the Kraken. Turn one (you can see my results in the pic above) I ran forward with mostly everything, leaving only the Kraken to take a shot at the Druids, killing one. The Soulhunters fanned out wide on the flank to get deep in if my opponent decided to go too forward. He pushed forward with the Bloodwitches into the Bane Riders, though they only managed a few damage here and there, Teleported Megalith up, who, combined with a feat later on in the turn, managed to peel off every Blackbanes but one. Sadly, Blackbane himself was among the casualties. In retaliation, on my second turn, I walked the Kraken, with Infernal Machine, up into Megalith and a Druid, slew the Druid to get a kill shot which killed some bloodwitches, and then laid into Megalith with all four of my remaining attacks at straight dice, doing 11 damage. Not my Krakens best moment. The Soulhunters continued to lurk, with one of them running forward and jamming what he could, preventing Kreuger from going after the flag and holding down that flank. The Bane riders, suffering from a lack of willpower, managed to only take down the Gallows Grove on the left flank during their ride by attacks, leaving most of the Bloodwitches unscathed, later to be blown up by the Kraken. Goreshade, seeing an opportunity to score, sacrificed the 4 focus he was camping to cast Mockery of Life and ran instead, grabbing the flag and scoring a point. My center was a touch weak, but I had a flag with a full unit of Bane Riders, Darragh Wrath, and Madelyn on one side, the Kraken in the zone, and the Soulhunters holding the other side.

Sadly for me, He crushed the Kraken between the Stalker and Megalith and removed, except for one bane rider, all of the models contesting the zone, including my objective, scoring a point, and making the game 1-1. Everything else moved forward for pressure and attempted to collapse the pocket around Kreuger, who was now in the zone, ready to camp it and dominate turn after turn, once he could clear it.

Thankfully, I he had given me back arc, on Kreuger with the soulhunters. A few were engaged with the Gorax and the Stalker, but I was able to zip Darragh Wrathe almost completely across the table to tag the whole unit of Soulhunters in his Command range. 13″ move +9″ command is a significant portion of the board! Unfortunately, I was unable to get any charges off on Kreuger with them due to how I needed them to activate in the turn, and instead settled for charging into his lines with the hope of clearing out enough of a lane so that I could Light Cav into his caster. Thankfully, I was able to do exactly that. From the position I was in, I needed the Bane Riders to go first, and though I was able to clear a lane, I wasn’t able to hit a cursed Kreuger without the charge bonus or the feat, so I settled for Goreshade 3 doing the work himself. Declaring a ride by attack with his full stack of focus, popped my feat, blowing up every model in combat with Kreuger to make sure, and then started casting siphon bolts. In just a few castings, Krueger was no more, and the first round was mine!

The rest of my team took their games as well, with a Lich 2 assassination onto Caine 2 and a hail Mary Aiakos Grevious wounds assassination on Lylyth 2. The round was ours!

Having won our first round, we advanced with 3 other teams to the semi-finals. Three round tournaments are the best!

I was paired against another Cryx player, the captain of the famous Advanced Maneuvers Team. Seeing the Denny 1 and Denny 3 list he had prepped, I didn’t feel at all comfortable dropping Goreshade 3 into those lists, to many models that are supposed to be durable and an opposing caster immune to being frozen forced my hand, if I was to play him.

During our conference, we decided we wanted to use the team feat to switch my other two teammates. We won the roll off for feat-decision, forcing AM to feat first, if they wanted to. They did, and rather pleasantly put themselves in the same match-ups we had wanted to feat into, also thinking they had the better match up.  It really says something about the quality of players when we all want the same games. I went back to the table and the game was underway!

Scenario: Incoming

Initiative: Second

My List: Deneghra 3

Opponents List: Deneghra 3

Going Second again, I put Deneghra opposite his zone with the objective of pushing for it and dominating for two. The raiders and Bloodwitches, who popped their minifeat, would keep the rest of his army at bay on my side, and allow a scenario victory if necessary. The Nyss and arcnode would take the other side of the board with Deneghra and cause as many problems as possible for my opponent. The Mechanithralls would simply stay in the back and gather bodies and steam each turn as both me and my opponent ground each other into dust, filling in as a final wave.

My opponent took his second turn and pushed aggressively with his troops, but kept Deneghra back a ways, almost where she was at the start of the turn. The Soulhunters cut down a good number of the mortalitied Satyxis including the Grave Winded Sea Witch, gathering their souls as they went along. The Bloodwitches charged deep into his own zone, tying up the Nightwretch and cutting down a number of my Nyss, followed up by his Mechanithrall horde.

I knew Deneghra couldn’t stay where she was and stay safe. I tore down many of the soulhunters that were contesting my zone, and cleared a landing spot at the very back edge for Deneghra to land and start dominating. I got a single point from it. The Nyss, devastated by the charges from the now incorporeal Blood witches, went after the gears of this army, shooting down two stitch thralls and both soul trappers. It was a bloody turn, and I created 6 Mechanithralls.

His turn 3 was indicative of the whole fight, as he pushed further in on his zone, while making little inroads on mine, getting Darragh Wrath on the corner. My Nightwretch was torn down that turn, leaving only a few Nyss and a Stitch thrall contesting the zone. He and I jockeyed for position as both our clocks wound down.

Its is about this time my teammates let me know that its up to me. They’d split their games, and I needed to win this match to advance.

In my turnI both lost the Helldivers to my idiocy, forgetting to unborrow them, and was unable to take down Darragh Wrathe because I attacked with the wrong model first, dismounting him and putting him out of melee with the other one, I settled on cutting down many of his Bloodwitches, what remained of his Soulhunters, and a few Mechanithralls while camping my zone, hoping I could get some pressure on his zone. My Bokur and a Nyss Hunter charged the objective but were unable to actually destroy it

With his clock swiftly running down, Deneghra went all in. She cleared a landing zone near my Deneghra and came in, popping her feat to get 7 bites at the apple with mortality, if needed, and load up the remaining Scavenger. While it took him almost the whole stack of souls, he did indeed land mortality on me. His Bokur, Lurking all this time, charged in. Unable to stick the Charge attack, he instead hit me with the shield for some damage, but that was all it needed for the scavenger to get in there with a boosted charge attack for serious damage, leaving me at 9. He passed the turn with exactly 1:00m left on his clock.

I had about 8 minutes or so left, and figured I had enough time to take him from the table, as long as I moved swiftly. I cleared Darragh Wrath finally, freeing up the Blood Hag to hopefully get the dispel dagger to work, but I had no such luck. I spent a few activations clearing the landing zone for Deneghra, and she declared her ride by attack. Moving up with 7 focus and a soul from earlier in the turn, I boosted to hit with the mortality, cast from a soul. It connected on the first try and brought her defense and armor down to a manageable level. I then spent the entire stack buying, boosting to hit and damage, causing significant damage and leaving her at 3 HP. I was confident that the now- MAT 8 + Mortality Bokur could roll a 7 to hit. He cannot, and the charge attack goes wide. The shield, however, does not, and tags her for 2 more damage. I can hear my teammates gargling in rage as my timer continues to burn, 8 minutes slowly rolling away. Finally, with my last activations of my turn, I charge Denny with a pair of Mechanithralls. Needing 10’s to hit, I declare a combostrike on the first attack, which whiffs. Wanting two more attacks to try and hit that extremely difficult 10, I declare single attacks with the second Mechanithrall.  With a hard 10 on the dice, the charge attack takes Deneghra off the board and gives me the win.

Letting out a stress filled cheer, we advanced to the final round!

Round 3!

The final round was against some extremely good players in our local meta, with a Team of Bradigus/Kreuger 2, Sorscha 1/Butcher 3, and Apshyxious 2/Asphyxious 3. Fortuneatly, the Cryx Player had locked himself out of Asphxious 2 player had locked himself into Asphyxious 3, so we knew the matchup going in. We also thought that the Khador player had locked into Butcher 3, though he hadn’t. The player who was paired against Khador on our team, however, was locked out of his Orin Midwinter list, and I was not. We were able to feat, as they had used theirs, and put me across from the what we thought was going to be the Butcher 3 list. Sadly, he’d not locked himself, and I ended up playing into Sorcha 1. I didn’t think I was going to have the best day.

Scenario: Destruction (SO MANY ZONES!)
Initiative: First
My List: Deneghra 3
His List: Sorscha 1

I deployed fairly front and center, with the Bloodwitches on the right to run through the house, and the Nyss on the left to get LOS and a DEF bonus from the hill. Satyxis were there to jam out the center zone.

He gave me first turn, so that he could on his first turn pop his feat and take the momentum back, which he exactly did, removing my Nightwretch on the hill along with a number of Nyss and a few Satyxis. However, He ended his turn within threat range of Deneghra.

Looking at my frozen army, his perfectly fine army, all the guns and a threatening Behemoth, I figured I had to go for it now or never. The dead arc node posed a problem, though, because now I had to get in range of Alexia in order to hit Sorscha with scourge. I would clearly be unable to do that with Arcane Disjunction up, so I charged Alexia. Sadly, I was nowhere close to hitting her with an impact attack, I forgot to Feat and Mortality before the Charge attack, and didn’t feel confident, needing this attack to hit, not boosting to hit. Sadly, the damage came up short, doing 9 damage. At that point, unable to cast a single scourge to even attempt the kill, I aborted, popped feat, and went into damage control mode. Scarlock moved up and cast Grave Wind, Bokur moved up behind her, and the Satyxis that could move formed ranks. Bloodwitches tried to kill Eiryss but failed. Sure that I had lost the game in that very moment, I passed the turn.

My teammate came over to tell me he’d won. We were up 1-0, with two more to play. I hoped that my other teammate could pull out a victory.

It was all in time for Sorcha, who gave two to the Behemoth, and started his turn. I was camping 4 at Def 17, but his army seemed to not care at all. Holt took a shot early on, connecting on one and doing damage. The entire unit of Widowmakers, standing still, hit and pinged me for damage. Alexia, penned in by her thralls, sacrificed on to boost to hit and connected, doing more damage. The Nyss hunters freed up Eiryss and took pot shots, doing damage. The Widowmaker Marksman Shot and dealt damage. I’d take 8 damage, all said and done, from random crap that his army could through out. Eiryss finally took her shot, but I was able to shield guard it onto the bokur. He’d had a plan (tempest from Sorcha) but in the heat of the moment, forgot to activate her first. Behemoth, went next, penned in by Reinholdt, and boosted both attacks to hit, connecting with one. Needing 11’s is not easy. Thankfully, with no focus to boost damage, Deneghra only took 5 more damage on straight dice. dropping her to 5. With the game on the line, unable to run far enough away, Sorcha charged in with four focus, but was unable to hit on either boosted attack or her final Hail Mary.

I could feel another failed assassination in my bones, so I took every precaution I could, Starting with using the Nyss to kill a Wolf Rider so that I could use the soul from the soul trapper to mortality Sorcha without needing to knock her down first. I followed up by having the Scarlock Ghost Walk Deneghra and hopping over the models in my way – A speed of 9 is deceptively useful in that regard. It was at this time that I noticed, again, I’d forgotten to unburrow my Helldivers. Down they went! With 15 focus on Deneghra, I spent the first one boosting the attack to hit against Alexia, killing her. Now, I could cast scourge at Sorcha, less than 1″ away, without paying double. The dice were on my side, rolling boxcars to hit the poor Khadoran, and boosting damage I rolled a 6/5/5 leaving her at two, in front of my entire army, knocked down. The game was over! We won the tournament!

with no pressure on his back, our last teammate just turned his army up to 11 and crashed Skarre into Kreuger 2’s army, and thankfully ended up on top at the end of the game.

I’ve knocked team tournaments before, but I never will again. That was fun as hell.