The Necrotechs Workshop – LXIII – The Last Qualifier

Last weekend, I was able to get out and attend a tournament for the first time in a while, at least the first weekend of September. I took the pair I’ve been taking for ages, Scaverous and Asphyxious 3 9 Slayers, and had a blast! I’m going to go over each of the 4 games and the results, so strap in, this might be a long one! 

I was taking these to the first of the local Brawltimore Qualifiers, a series of 5 tournaments and an LCQfor an invitational championship in April. It was Warmachine weekend, and only 4 people have pre-registered, including me, so I was expecting a low turnout. I shouldn’t have, because every tournament last year had 18+, but its hard to have faith, and, lo and behold, 18 people showed up from all over the place to play: Pittsburgh, DC, VA, Deleware, and Baltimore were all well represented. 

I’ve used both of these lists a number of times, and was pretty confident in their usage. I had dropped the second unit of Black Ogrun in Scaverous down to a min unit to fit Saxon Orrik because I’d found terrain to be a small issue, but it was no huge change.  I was prepared to use Scaverous all day unless I came across some challenges that would make him creak, mostly armor. 

Round 1 – Ossrum

The first round I get paired against an awesome fellow (I will say this about all of them, because they are) from PA. The table is Spread the Net, and he’s playing Ossrum Hammerstrike, with a bunch of jacks and a solid presence of Infantry along with Ashlynn with a field of infantry. He decides he can’t possibly play Ashlynn into a pile of slayers, and chooses to use Ossrum, hoping to power through. I see Ossrum, and feel pretty vulnerable with Scaverous due to the armor, and decide that 9 Slayers is, actually the answer.  I win the roll, and decide to go first.

The two buildings in the center of the board are going to be a right pain for the Slayers, but I’ve got a bit of a leg up on scenario with them, I believe. I deploy a pack of 4 to my right and a pack of 5 to the left, leaving the center a bit open, because the buildings are going to constrict the field of play anyway.

Going first, I hit the mobility button and just heave up the board. His first turn he takes a few shots, dinging up a number of jacks and getting a Critical Hit on a cluster of three, two Slayers and a Nightwretch, knocking out their initial attacks. 

My second turn, I push in and grab 5 souls through Vociferon, a good start, and Shove deep into all the scenario zones, taking my right flank zone with the scavenger, but not pushing deeply into the rest, being just enough to be painful. This is the top of 2.

He’s unable to clear the zones on his side of the board. His driller misses 4 of 6 attacks, and his charging Forgeguard fail to kill any, so Ossrum pops his feat and has models contesting the center zone and his far flag, while also denying me the left zone. Unfortunately, its not enough, even under the feat, and I am able to eliminate all the contesting models taking both flags and the center zone. I don’t always like winning on the top of three, but I do like having extra time to get a bite to eat. I go up 1-0!

Round 2 – Skarre3

These guys from Pittsburg drove over 4 hours to get to the tournament, and I was impressed. It was a great to see them make the trip, but I was determined to send this guy home empty handed. 

He is playing Gaspy 3 9 Slayers and Skarre 3 Slaughterfleet. The table is Invasion.  I was unfamiliar with the Skarre 3 list, but it wasn’t anything mystifying to me – a thousand trolls and a boat to make them tougher. Fair enough. Slayers and Scaverous aren’t friends, so I decided to go with Gaspy 3, and he went with Skarre 3 to avoid an inevitable mirror match. He won the roll and I chose the side with the house to hide behind and a forest facing me. 

He runs first turn, and gets over half way on the board. I’m ok with that, as my threat is longer, and I’m going to punch as many of these bastards as I can get my hands on. I take up position, giving up a lot of ground because I’m second player and will start scoring first, staying out of charging threat of his models, but within mine. His second turn he runs everything he can to engage and bogs down a number of models, but nothing unexpected. 

On my turn, my slayers unleash a series of absurdly lethal blows, and his tough checks just turn sideways. Vociferon feeds Gaspy 13 souls, and I have jacks in each zone, bogging down his infantry and causing consternation. I’m not terribly happy because I would love to be deeper, but its just not happening with the list he has on the table. 

Over the rest of the game – it goes to the bottom of 7 -we slowly trade flanks. I manage to hold up my right flank long enough that the left completely collapses on him and I’m able to get 5 undamaged Slayers pulling around the back side of the house and into the back field. He’s taken one zone, I the other, and we are each whittling each other down and scoring away. Well, we were, until his Kraken just decides to start spiking dice and killing Slayers in two hits. At that point, the game swing a bit downhill, and I simply run out of steam on turn 6, he scores one on my turn and the bleeding can’t be stopped. It was a great game, the best of the day, and having never played into Skarre 3 before, I was a learning experience. I’m 1-1 on the day. 

Round 3 – Magnus 2

My third round opponent, having also driven 4 hours from Pittsburgh with my second round opponent, was playing mercs. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten a model at home that was worth a huge chunk of his list, so he was mainlining Magnus 2 for the day. Into a fairly armor heavy list, I was favoring 9 Slayers, But I just didn’t want to play him three games in a row, so I picked out Scaverous and got down to business. The scenario was pit II, and I lost the roll to go first but got to pick a solid side. 

He Came in fast, sending his jacks, with Escort, way up the field and getting the Steelheads right behind. He was in a pretty solid position, and I could have easily just tossed out my buffs and been done with it, but like every game with Scaverous, I can’t help but to glut myself on souls turn 1, so I toss a Feast of Worms out and grab up five Steelhead souls. He put Orin in a pretty solid spot, so I wasn’t able to – unless I wanted to pop my feat – pull out a Toro to shoot to death on the bottom of 1. I’ve been wondering if I should have anyway. 

This game goes pretty standard, with my left flank pushing through while the right collapsed. I was able to get the zone pretty solidly and start scoring a couple points here and there, and Magnus kept himself as far from the arc nodes and Croe as possible, having hired them before, he knew what was in store. Its the end of the 4th round, and we both have around 5 minutes, and my opponent states that he knows he has about 4 minutes to assassinate me because the long game for me looks better than his. Little did he know I can burn 5 minutes of clock like it’s no ones business. 

At this point, though, he does have a hail Mary on the board. He’s got a Toro in charge range of Scaverous, all he has to do is peel off one Cutthroat and Axiara. Through a number of dice, including getting Magnus in there to shotgun Axiara to death, he does manage to clear the lane, but just as time runs out and he clocks. It was an amazing game, a great, down to the wire, and if he had only known that I’m terrible at clock, he may have had me. I get up to 2-1 on the day, with only one round left I’ll be fighting for 2nd or 3rd, I hope. 

Round 4 – Syvestro

The final round of the tournament, and I am paired with another player from that Pittsburgh car! I get to fight 3 out of the 4 that made it! This is great, as I love playing against non-locals!

I’d played against this guy before, and he was a gentleman the entire time. He was playing Ret back then, but had brought Lock and Syvestro to the tournament, as one does. Once again, seeing the lists that he brought and the quantity of armor they had, I opted for Gaspy 3 again, which was no surprise. He picked Syvestro, and the table was set up for Standoff! He had the Magnum Opus Theme benefit and Anistaia Di Bray in his list for that sweet +2 tech, but I managed to roll like a king, and beat him to take first turn. 

Getting to go first and just rocket my jacks up the board helped immensely in this matchup, as I was pretty much jammed where I stood on the bottom of round 1 for the whole game, though I slowly gained ground in a few locales. 4 Jacks were pointed right at the Vulcan, which was fine with me, because I knew I would need that many to take it down, if it ever happened. The Pressgangers pushed forward into my lines, and man, with a def of 15, it was really hard to hit them. The Rocketmen on the other side of the board were a def 16 nuisance as well, holding onto the other circle zone and making it impossible for me to score it the whole game. The center, though, I was able to hold steady in and make sure I was contesting his side as strongly as I dared. Thankfully, the Vulcan just cannot put out enough damage to kill enough Slayers before the critical mass is reached and they take it down with combo strikes. 

I am really bothered with myself that I forgot about the infantry clearing role that the Nightwretches have in the list, and instead of shooting my slayers in the butt for auto POW7’s onto the Pressgangers, I just tried to flail at them the whole of the game, eventually killing most, but not all, of them. The Rocketmen were a similar problem, but I managed to get an amazing trample off and killed 8 of the remaining 9 left with that one trample, putting me way up in terms of attrition. 

Keeping him from scoring and scoring my zone each turn, I was able to take the victory on scenario, getting 6 points as I destroyed the objective and took the game. 

It was a great game, and if his initial ranged assault proven to be a bit more effective on round 1, he may have been in a better position to win as the game wound down. Instead, combining an ineffective round 1 shooting and losing the die roll to go first, it was a pretty uphill battle. 

Final Standing

Now, all I had to do was wait on the standings to come in. I was 3-1, but there were a number of good players at 3-1 as well. Thankfully, once the dust settled and the standings were calculated, I managed to sneak into the Brawltimore Tournament Circuit Invitational on the first tournament. Now to give Scaverous the stress tests to see what he can and cannot do. I heard a wise man say once that you have to know the limits of where your caster can go, and I intend to find out. 

Until next time! 

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