The Necrotechs Workshop LXI – The LCQ

This is the final month for Brawltimore, of local qualification league. There is the LCQ, giving the winner a chance to qualify for the event, and there will be the Invitational finals on 4/27. Its some of the best players from the surrounding 4 states and DC, and it’s sure to be a hell of a tournament! Let’s take a look at what happened at the LCQ just a few days ago!

Brawltimore Drives to the Finish Line

I know I’ve said it a ton, but for anyone out here who’s hearing this for the first time: Brawltimore is a 7 event qualifying league that I run and participate in from November to April each year here in the Baltimore area. We get players from MD, DE, NJ, PA, VA, NY, WV and DC come to play in games and vie for qualifying slots for the finals and the crown of King of Brawltimore. Each of the first five events qualifies the top three non-qualified people for the finals at the end of April, and the sixth event fills in the brackets with the Top Non-Qualified individual taking the last slot.

Its an event I have the privilege of running and of participating in (since the death of the press-gang…) and each year it has been a great way to keep interest up during the off season, and leading into convention season during the summer, where we have both Store Wars and King of Coins.

I, thankfully, qualified for the invitation at the first tournament, and have been tooling with lists ever since. It has been a bit of a weight off of my back not worrying about qualifying. That said, however, this is likely to be my last real set of games prior to playing in the finals, so I wanted to try and settle on a strong pair. Having played – and given up on – Scaverous since about NOVA last year, I was ready to try something different. Denny in Dark Host is really enjoyable, of course, and to go along with that I would take the tried and true Skarre 3 Slaughter Fleet awesome list. My lists are below:

The plan here is that Skarre is awesome, and Denny is awesome, so I can’t really lose!

Round 1 (Standoff)

In round 1 I got paired against a frequent opponent and good friend playing a pair of Skorne lists that didn’t include Mak 3, which is super great for me as I had a thousand infantry in both lists for him to just gobble up. He was playing Rasheth exalted, which I read as winds of War because I’m not really good at reading, and Zaadesh 2 Imperial Warhost, which I has played against a couple times. It was a good set of lists. I chose Denny, knowing that she’d have a rough time into Rasheth, but that Skarre 3 into Zaadesh as probably worse off. Denny probably scared off Zaadesh, too.

I was correct, but then I learned, a bit to my surprise, that it wasn’t winds of war, which was dumb of me to have even thought, because him and I have been talking about Rasheth Exalted for some time. I don’t know what went through my mind. I believe I went second, but I cannot honestly remember.

The game felt to turn really hard when, on my second turn, I was able to pick out, because I was super lucky he didn’t cast castigate turn 1, two UA’s and Marketh. Marketh was too far from his buddy, the brute and got shot and exploded by the Corruptor, killing a pile of support, and the other UA was the target of a pair of venoms. The game kinda spiraled from there, allowing me to be in a position to wear down the clock on my opponent as they attempted to pull themselves into a strong position. As much as it seems like it was an early pull ahead, and it was, I still managed to lose track of what I was doing and give him an excellent out, just in case. He had two Immortals who were able to get bead on Deneghra, with Carnivore, Feat, Stone Strength, and Hakaar. Thankfully, his dice abandoned him and through a serious of unexpected rolls, he was unable to free up the second of the two Immortals and only got one on me, who still took out more than half of Dennys life when he swatted her in the head with his stone stick.

Round 2 (Spread the Net)

Round two I get paired into a regional crackpot bringing a bozo list with a crazy skew: 70 mechanithralls with Deneghra 3. I wasn’t looking forward to trying to chew through that with Denny, so I figured I’d give it a go with Gerlak, Bloodgorgers, and Jussika. Turns out, even that is madness. He went first and, with two AD units and an Ambush unit, he just consumes the whole of the board space. His 9.5″ was better than my 9″ threat with the trolls against non-living models, and his spacing was excellent, making it hard to get a solid packman off. Instead, he pulled off this excellent bananas move with his Scarlock commander where he charged, stabbed a troll to death with his P+S 10 spear (with Mortality for P+S 12) and then Dark Fired Jussika to death with the poor Trolls Soul. It was awesome to watch and a bit irritating to experience. I had the perfect placement for a Kraken to sweep, getting 4 or 5 Mechanithralls, and with Magic Weapons, blasting a Pistol Wraith off the field. Sadly, He missed two Mechanithralls, and then one survived the follow-up attacks, making it so I was unable to clear the zone. Unable to even score my own zone and the flag blanketed with mechanithralls he had pushed across the field so hard, it was a fairly quick wind down to a long game of positioning that took the better part of two hours to resolve 6-0, Though I did have a shot at Deneghra with all of Skarre’s guns and the Kraken at one point, it simply wasn’t to be. It was a blast to play against, though I think I’d do much better a second time, something I never seem to get in this meta!

Round 3 (Recon 2)

Having thoroughly lost round 2 to a very good opponent and already qualified for the finals, I was ready to play Skarre 3 for the rest of the day. When my opponent showed up with Ret and a billionty guns including two tridents, I knew what I had to do.

Skarre three went down across from Issyria, and it was going to be a pretty quick game, I thought. I had to survive his initial onslaught with the Invictors and the Tridents, hoping he rolls low on his gunshots and I can roll solid with the tough rolls so that I am able to strike back with the Kraken, a Bloodgorger or two, and Gerlak. That plan went straight to hell when he was able to get a Sphinx onto the Kraken and proceeded to crush its face in, leaving it with only 11 HP before a pair of sentinels charged it to take it down, all the while with his tridents tearing into the Marauders with aplomb. However, the Bloodgorgers stood firm, having only one of their number die. My retaliation had to be swift and through, and while there was plenty of retaliation, I also had a shot on Issyria, Skarre having distance and three shots into her. Sadly, it wasn’t to be, and he dodged two, taking significant but not life-threatening damage. He definitely could not soak it again, though. Gerlak went on a tear and ate through most of the Inviolable resolved, base to base, minifeated Sentinels, which helped turn the tide. The Bloodgorgers were stopped fast by a damned wall, which shouldn’t have been as problematic if I’d have remembered their relentless charge all day, They did manage to dent a Trident and take down most of the Invictors, though, which I needed to push that side deeper down. his retaliation was blunted by a stint of 8 or 9 sequential tough rolls with no knockdown by the Bloodgorgers. I couldn’t get a save on the marauders to save my life, but those Painted Bloodgorgers were champs. However, after that as we were winding down the clock, and it started getting sloppy, but in the end, we were pretty sure I won 6-5, on deathclock, having been my first game ever into tridents, it was an educational experience. I do not want to fight that list a bunch more times, but if I do, I’m not putting the Kraken that close to the front again. Just no need.

Round 4 (Mirage)

This game was a clusterfuck for multiple reasons, but I’m just going to go over the highlights of it, and not really worry about the minutiae. He’s playing Convergence, and wants to play Lucant because he is significantly less complicated than Orion and its late. I want to play Boat, but I don’t think its going to fare well into Lucant. Deneghra has the better overall spread, so I go with her. He goes with Orion because, again, he has the better spread. Neither of us is playing the list that they want.

He goes first, and positions his 4 ground pounding assimilators aggressively next two his two fisty Conservators. I spend the vast majority of my first turn simply spreading out to make his ground pounder attacks less effective as my army just can’t withstand it. I’ve decided at this point that I’m just going to while away his time, hoping clock him with all the models I have to have him kill. It works, of a sort. there is a lot of back and forth scoring after I get pretty far ahead, but he’s able to crawl back and eventually win it on turn 7 with 5 seconds left 9-7. It really would have been nice if three times I’d ended up with a single damage point more. Darragh Wrath lowballed a damage roll on a jack, leaving it on 1, a charging bane thrall left a 5HP objective on 1 HP, and a Charging Bane Thrall UA leader wasn’t able to seal the deal against a conservator with 2 HP left. Things like that happen all the time, but its not great to have them happen all at once. Makes up for a lot of stupid dice doing great things for me year after year.

It was an awesome tournament, and I am glad that I was able to make it out. Now, to get ready for the finals on the 27th, to take the trophy home!