Rask
-Wrastler
-Wrastler
Gatorman Bokor and Swamp Shamblers
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew
Dahlia & Skaryth
Wrongeye & Snapjaw
Rorsh & Brine
Orin Midwinter
Lanyssa Ryssyl
I critically won the roll for first turn, and opted to take 2nd. Jk mk3, took first.
Turn one I did the thing. It should be noted we played the cloud on the table as permanent. I ran up, IM on the left hand Stalker cause it was near Dahlia, Occultation on the 'Hunters, VoM to extend the cloud in the middle. I overextended some Soulhunters here, woops.
Fraser sends in the big pig (which is what I wanted) but also kills a Soulhunter with the snake's spray. Big pig has Fury on him alongside Boundless so charges in and kills 2 Soulhunters. Rask feated. Otherwise stuff shimmied and the Lesser Warlocks all ran away from Stalkers, so they huddled in the centre. Orin zapped Brine and did some damage to a soulhunter, my node and killed a Raider.
So, time to counterfeat. Obviously I can't get too much back because of Rask's feat, so we keep it simple. I have Ragman walk up near Brine and Death Field. 2 Soulhunters charge in and deal a tonne of damage, taking out his Mind & Spirit before light cavving back to get in front of where my egg is going (to soak throws). Otherwise it sure was Rask's feat turn, so most of my stuff just ran to abuse my feat, I jammed in his heavies pretty hard (too hard, probably gave away too many Raiders) with my left unit of Satyxis, and the right hand unit finished off Brine and set up to be wave 2. Stalkers shimmied to threaten. The proxy bases on the right hand side are where the ball is going to end up to not killbox my witches in the following turn (except the witch on the right, she's on her proxy base, just wouldn't stand cause of terrain). I also excellently didn't put either of my Machine Wraiths on the flags, which would have forced Fraser to contest. I'm so good at Warmans.
Remember how I said I gave up too much stuff? Woops. Well, Fraser gets a pretty sweet turn here and kills pretty much everything I sent into the grinder, with the lessers huddling even closer into the middle for shelter from the Stalkers. The gobbers go up and pop down a cloud. But this is the Coven's feat turn, so much like last turn, not hellish much happens. Orin managed to kill 2 Satyxis & my Machine Wraith on the left with a Chain Lightning.
Alright, the egg goes back home, 3 focus goes to the IM stalker because Dahlia is absolutely for it. I run a node around, have the WSC put Ghostly up into some Satyxis and Puppet Master into my Witch. I pop a Shambler that's in the way with a Stygian, and put a Stygian into Dahlia, forcing a transfer but not blinding her sadly. Then the IM stalker jumps onto her and eats her. Nom. Ragman walked into my Veil and put up Death Field, before having a bunch of guys charge through him to put some damage into the left Wrastler and killing Snapjaw (Satyxis & Soulhunters together did it). The right unit of Satyxis killed the gobbers and consolidated their position. The Stalker on the right flank jumped behind Lanyssa & also a handy rock, killed her and claimed the rock for himself. My Machine Wraith finally got on the flag.
So, with Fraser super boxed in here and bleeding heavies he really needed some dice to make something happen. Thankfully, Orin Midwinter had his back. Orin hits a 7 to hit the engaged Wrastler in the back, rolls 3 bounces, kill all 3 Satyxis jamming the wrastler, one of which was the UA without boosts (cause they were all gone). Wellp, that's bad. Wrastler walks up and lobs a Soulhunter at another Soulhunter, killing both & Ragman. Also, a tonne of Shamblers came out this turn and started mopping up my frontlines. Wrongeye and some Shamblers managed to mostly cripple a Stalker, which died to a shot from Rask's gun. Rask opted to camp 4. The other Wrastler had to trample to contest. With my second wave and armour debuff decimated by that play with the Wrastler I was in big trouble. Fortunately, Fraser had had to max out the Wrastler's fury to get it there, so he only had one transfer target. I have to apologise here for the lack of photos, but I was getting nervous at this point, I felt like the game was slipping away from me because of recursion and the fact that if you take a list full of Minion models you basically end up with about 15pts more stuff than the other guy.
So, at the start of my turn I decided I had to kill Rask. So I sat in the tank for a couple of minutes to work out how. Eventually I came up with a run, and I proxy based EVERYTHING. It wasn't super complicated, but I wanted to make sure I got everything in the right order. I gave 2 to both my Stalker & the Deathripper Rask was nearby. It started with me running a node way out to the right hand side to get within 6" of my Stalker, but outwith 6" of the trampling Wrastler which had Admonition on it. I had a Witch put Ghost Walk on that Stalker and also put Curse of Shadows through my node onto Rask. I had my Combine walk up and put Ghost Walk on my unit of Satyxis Raiders, and Puppet Master on the node near rask (it was in the Veil cloud). My node activated and walked through Rask into his back arc and boosted a headbutt at him, knocking him down but dealing no damage. I bought an attack, rolled crap, rerolled and did 6 damage, he transferred (3 to go).
Then, I had my Satyxis Raiders get a run/charge order on the Admo'd Wrastler which was his only Transfer target. First one charged Rask, not triggering Admo. Second one ran to engage Rask for gang. The third charged the Wrastler in a postion that it wouldn't be able to Admonition if another charged it, so he Admo'd to deny a charge. I believe I got 3 into it after the Admo move, but without Ragman I wasn't able to do a really huge amount of damage, but I did pretty well. I also charged it in the back with a Machine Wraith, who sadly missed. Alright, gig time.
Rask has enough transfers that that I was going to have to kill him through the Wrastler, seeing as he has 3 transfers to my stalker's 4 attacks. He had I believe somewhere in the region of 20-25 boxes as the stalker came in. By the time my first two initials were gone he had 12 boxes left. I've got 2 dice minus ones. First damage roll was a 10. Needed a 4 on two dice. WTC Round 5 all over again. Not like this. Rolled a 9. Not a problem. Whew.
And with that I won the Scottish Masters for the second time. For what it's worth, I think I made more mistakes than Fraser this game, but it was still incredibly close. Even if Rask hadn't died here, Fraser is very far up, but I still have options and would be sitting on 2 CPs playing with what I had left (not much) against a Wrastler and a Bokor. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't look good, but I think I could have made something of it. Certainly with the Coven's lategame secret weapon, contesting with a super camping Egregore. Camping 9 it's basically 69 boxes of 13/17 you have to go through, which is absolutely ridiculous. Anyway, good job Fraser on once again making me work like a dog for the trophy, and congratulations on a well deserved second place.
Also mandatory hardware pics:
I'll post up some thoughts about the tournament and Cryx and the like once I've had more time to decompress. I've been writing reports for hours now, but I hope you guys enjoyed them. Cheers. (:
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