Legion of the Noob Part 5: The Problem with Lylyth......

Is that I am struggling to get enough work done on Feat turn.

Sooo sexy, yet soooo frustrating

After a couple of games with eAbsolonia, I am feeling pretty comfortable with her. As I have said before, she plays a lot like Mortenebra and I like Mortenebra. (The first tournament I ever played with Morty, I went 3-1 and played a grand total of about 40 minutes of Warmachine for the day).

Now I need to get comfortable with Lylyth. This is a whole different ball of wax. Coming from Cryx, I know nothing about running a gunline and will probably take some time to get the hang of target priority and when to pop her feat.

This has been evident in the 3 games I have had with Lylyth in the Dojo so far, all of which have felt terrible.

My list is:
eLylyth
  Ravagore
  Ravagore
  Zuriel
  Naga Nightlurker
2 x Shepherds
2 x Deathstalkers
Forsaken
Spell Martyr
Strider Blightblades
Incubus pack
Objective: Bunker

The first was against Dave, sporting Lich3 with 30 Bane Knights and Blackbanes Ghost Raiders. Going second, I feated on the bottom of turn 1, killing 12 Bane Knights and blocking thier lanes with scather templates. I moved Zuriel too far foward and he got smashed by the Bane Knights on the following turn. I ended up getting swamped by Bane Knights and with Gaspy camping at ARM 27 after his feat, there was no way to pull any sort of last ditch shenanagins and ended up losing on scenario, although he could have assassinated me just as easily.

My second game with Lylyth saw me paired against Nick and his Miserable Meat Mountain. Lylyth is NOT my troll drop, but as I am just trying to get a handle on what she does I played into what can be generously termed a pretty bad matchup. With a wall of meat running straight at me and a feat that meant that meat moved closer to me when I damaged it (Hyper-Aggressive), I decided I may as well try the long range Lylyth assassination. Nick had Grissel behind a Bomber and a Kriel Stone Scribe that were standing B2B sitting on two transfers, instead of behind the wall 2 inches to his left (I think he believed it was out of the killbox). One of the Deathstalkers sniped out the Kriel Stone Scribe to clear line of sight and Lylyth managed to arc Pin Cushion onto Grissel before punching some damage through with her bow. Then the Ravagores opened up, taking both her transfers and leaving her on a couple of boxes (1 ravagore managed to miss his second shot). Zuriel could not get close enough so it was up to the Naga to finish the job. Despite Grissel making her Tough roll after the first shot, the Nagas feat shot finished her off. And thats how Lylyth works.

My third game with Lylyth was against Peter and a standard eLich list. It was not pretty and I made a number of mistakes, the worst of which was letting the watch-machine players in the cheap seats goad me into taking an assassination run that was never on. Needless to say, I lost, badly. But this game in particular taught me a number of valuable lessons.

1. If you get to choose tablesides, make sure you take a good look at the terrain. In this game, I just went with the side I was sitting on at the time (as many of us lazy ass gamers do), gifting my opponent a convenient linear obstacle to hide his caster behind. As opposed to the side I decided to stay on, which had no cover for a caster to hide behind.
2. Remember your ambushers. This has been a major problem so far. I only deployed them this game because one of the spectators reminded me, then I forgot to move them. 
3. If you have a plan, stick to it. Don't let other people talk you into doing something you feel is less optimal. While this is not a problem I will have during a tournament game, it is one I need to remember anyway. 
4. Don't hold the feat looking for the "perfect" shot. Too ften I found myself waiting till I can get three sprays off with Zuriel under the feat. This is pointless. While the extra spray is, in theory, nice, it is a waste of the board control/delay the long range scather barrage can bring. Using the feat bottom of one/top of two gives me more time to thin out the infantry before Zuriel mops up.
5. If you have a clear shot at the caster, take it. It's what Lylyth does best. 

So, some lessons learned, we will see if we can put them to use next time. Having decided to take Legion to the upcoming Ides of March, my practice time has been drastically shortened, so my next few games will require me to make some major advances or I may end up one listing Abby all weekend instead.

Legion Record: 3-2

Legion of the Noob Part 4: Bradpocalypse Now....

Auckland Anniversary Weekend saw the most excellent Mr Stent open his house up to all and sundry for three days of Warmachine goodness. Unfortunately, work and family commitments meant I could only make one of the three days but I still managed to get a couple of games in.

My first game of the afternoon was against a fairly standard Bradigus list. I pre-organised this game, becuase I wanted to A) see what all the fuss was about and B) see if eAbsolonia had game against it.

I got first turn and we both ran at each other turn 1. On my second turn my Ravagore and Seraph managed to each break a set of Shifting Stones, while Fortify and Spiny Growth went on the Carnivean and Spiny Growth also went on the Ravagore and Scythean. The deathstalkers shot down some twigmen. On his turn, Brad feated and slid everything foward 5 inches and engaged a number of my beasts killing both the ARM22 carnivean and the Ravagore. However, the extra armour on the Carnivean meant that it took a lot more than he expected to kill it and recieved a lot of Spiny Growth damage in return. A watcher also engaged my Naga, but failed to kill it while yet another Wold destroyed my Objective.
In response, Absolonia feated and charged a stone, destroying it and triggering Conferred Rage, before teleporting back out of the way. The Scythean then flew into the gap left by the dead Carnivean and proceeded to destroy the two lights and the heavy grouped there with a fury to spare. This cleared the lane for a Rabid, Feated, Conferred Raged Shredder and the Seraph to charge Bradigus (on 4 transfers) and drop him to 1 health. Brdigus replied by killing off both the Shredder and the Seraph and a Watcher shot my Forsaken creating a forest which handily blocked LOS, stopping his Warden from using Battering Ram to push my Scythean away.  This left the Scythean just within charge range of Bradigus and after triggering conferred rage off of another stone, the Scythean finished Brad off.

So what did we learn about the Bradpocalypse?

1. Killing stones is important. Even after the recent errata nerf shut down the ridiculous triple-port assassination option, the stones are still super important to this list. With a single 'port, Brad still has a 17 inch threat BEFORE he starts to beatback. This list also runs a lot of fury on the table, which makes the stones extra important as fury management. Because Wolds don't frenzy, they keep all fury on them until it is removed by an outside source. Getting rid of the fury management drastically hinders the lists output. They are also the only way outside Brad himself to heal Wolds, which is also big.
2. While the list has a decent threat range on the alpha, the little wolds are kind of pillow fisted until the synergy chain gets going. They are also MAT 5, so if you can boost your defense in anyway, it can make it hard for them to get the Synergy chain started without boosting. If they have to charge as well, it means no Stone Form, which increases your ability to retaliate.
3. Any sort of "nickel and dime" damage you can do to the Wolds is worthwhile. Losing an aspect is huge to Wolds, as they cannot be forced to heal. Any sort of chip damage will add up and may take an aspect if you're lucky.
4. The forest wall is a problem for most factions. As a Legion player however, I give exactly zero fucks about it. Sucks to be the rest of you.

This list is hard, no doubt about it. I do feel however, that it has a steep learning curve. (Although that has been lessened with the loss of the triple-port). Things need to activate in a certain order and a certain degree of spatial awareness is required to see all the angles Brad can manage, even with only a single port available. Therefore the danger is mitigated by player skill level. In the hands of a good player however, this list will be horrendously hard to face.  I am certainly glad I am currently playing Legion, as I feel they have the most game against this list.

.

Legion Record: 2-0

From the Workbench - January

Greetings all,

January has proven to be quite a productive month in terms of painting. Having a target to work towards seems to have helped a lot, as does some vague kind of plan.

Without further ado, here is this months progress:

Lylyth 2

Absolonia 2

Forsaken

2 fully magnetized Heavy Dragonspawn kits.

And as promised last time, pics of the Shepherd and Strider Deathstalker I painted in December.

A good start to the year and I feel like I am on target so far. I still need to buy the remaining bits for my third list, but I am feeling quietly confident I will get everything done in time.

Februarys plan is: Blightblades, Incubi (x5), Zuriel, Naga, Spell Martyrs, a second Deathstalker and a second Shepherd although some of this will probably bleed over into March.

Till next time....

Legion of the Noob - Part 3: The third list conundrum.

So Auckland Open is 3 lists. This means I need to figure out a third list. Given my limited experience with the faction, this is bad.
Auckland Open is also D&C 1, which means I actually have to play the third list at some point, rather than just writing down some evil looking thing that will scare my opponents into favourable drops while never actually seeing the table. Given my even more limited budget and timeframe, this is even worse.

As discussed earlier, picking my first two casters was easy. A third list requires a little more thought. Luckily, as a truck driver, I have plenty of time to think about Warmachine and run lists in my head. A number of casters have presented themselves as options, many of them the result of conventional, internet thinking.

Saeryn: Has the obvious benifit of not needing to buy a lot more models, maybe a pair of Angelius and the caster herself. The downside is she seems at first glance kinda boring.
Vayl: Either version is super tempting, but in reality probably require more time than I currently have to even get remotely comfortable with due to thier depth.
Kallus: The "Miserable Ginger Mountain" appeals to me but probably has too much infantry to paint for the time I have available.

Having gotten exactly nowhere thinking in terms of casters, I then switched to thinking about matchups and whether my two list pairing had any obvious holes. The immediate problem list that has sprung to mind is Meat Mountain/Fist of Halaak style lists. While Absolonia has some game against MMM, it seems, in theory at least, to be restricted to using her feat to clear a lane to the caster before something vaguely dragonshaped eats said casters face. A fun and simple plan to be sure but it doesn't seem very reliable.  And poor Lylyth2 has exactly zero game against MMM. What I need is a list that can spread a decent number of high power attacks around, with a better than average chance of killing any Warder/Cetratii it makes contact with.

Enter the Blighted Ogrun Warspears. Thanks to the UA, they go to Mat 9, RAT 7, P+S15 vs thier Prey target, with effectively two attacks thanks to assault. This seems like a good place to start. Black Frost Shard adds another 2 points of damage to that equation. I still need a caster, but it seems pLylyth (Parasite) or pThagrosh (Draconic Blessing) will both turn these guys up to 11. Lylyth does have the added bonus of already being painted and I figure that the Prime and Epic versions of Lylyth play very similarly so I can play both lists and effectively double down on the learning.

To this end, I have come up with the following list:

pLylyth
  Succubus
  2 x Ravagore (because...Ravagore)
  Shredder
2 x Spell Martyrs ( to get Parasite where I need it)
Forsaken
Strider Deathstalker
Shepherd
Blackfrost Shard
Blighted Ogrun Warspear w/UA
Blighted Ogrun Warspear w/UA

Some testing is obviously in order, but luckily, the Dojo is swimming in Troll players, so finding a Mountain o' Meat to proxy this list against shouldn't be too difficult.

Now, get off my lawn.

Legion of the Noob - Part 2: This Legion Shit is Easy

Two posts in a month, truely inspiring.........

Tuesday saw me in the Dojo to play my first ever game with Legion. While Chris and Nick played a game of "who can Deathclock first" (Axis tier vs MMM), I found myself against Matt and the pThagrosh list he has been testing for Ides.

Matts list was:
pThagrosh
2 x Scythean
2 x Throne
Carnivean
Black Frost Shard
Succubus
2 x Shepherds

I decided my first game should be with Absolonia (because I had to proxy less stuff for her list). My list was:

eAbsolonia
Succubus
Shredder
Naga
Seraph
Carnivean
Scythean
Ravagore
2 x Shepherds
2 x Strider Deathstalkers
Forsaken

I won the roll to go first and everything moved up at a good clip, with the exception of Abby, who cowered behind a convenient wall. The 3 Dragonspawn finished up in B2B for some fortify goodness and they all got Spiny Growth. The Deathstalkers moved around the flanks, hoping to pop his support. Matt moved everything up aggressively, with his Carnivean stopping to spray one of my Deathstalkers.

Turn two saw me make the noobiest of noob mistakes and completely forget about the scenario and hang back out of the zone in some sort of attempt to avoid the alpha strike. The Seraph, Naga and Ravagore all put shots into one of the Scytheans doing a chunk of damage and the remaining Deathstalker failed to hit the Shepherd behind a wall. In response Matt charged my Carnivean with both Thrones, but failed to kill it (ARM 22 is a thing). The undamaged Scythean killed my objective and the damaged one ran up to engage my Scythean and generally be a pain in the ass. Thagrosh moved up into the butt crack of the two base to base Thrones to dominate the zone and go up 3-0 on CPs.

With things not looking particularly good on the CP front, I decided that the best course of action was to kill Thagrosh. To do that, I had to get rid of the damaged Scythean and at least one if not both of the thrones in order to avoid giving away freestrikes on the way to Thags. The Forsaken activated first and did a little more damage to the Scythean. Abby then popped her Feat, charged the Scythean and killed it, triggering Conferred Rage, before teleporting to the corner of the zone. Free of  Matts Scythean, my Scythean then charged the Thrones destroying both of them with a Fury to spare. From there it was pretty much academic. The Ravagore charged Thagrosh and left him on 3 boxes and one transfer before the Carnivean finished him off.

In the post game analysis Matt pointed out I probably didn't need to kill the Thrones as they have Reach and 360 LoS, meaning they wouldn't be getting free strikes as my beasts flew over them. But lets face it, killing them both was always the more enjoyable option.

In my own post game ruminations, I have quickly realised that Absolonia probably works best moving foward aggressively and presenting a strong posture. The threat of her feat is significant and anyone who knows what it does will be rightfully wary of it, which in turn will let me exert scenario pressure and force my opponent to move into my threat range. I probably don't need to keep my beasts B2B for the fortify benefits unless my opponent has things like Drag and the like.

Only having 13 models in the entire army also scares the bejeezus out of me. Coming from the dude-spam of Cryx, having such a compact force is almost a complete 180 from what I am used to and will take some adjustments in thinking to get the most work out of each model.

So one game down and lessons learnt. I am looking foward to getting a lot more games in over Auckland Anniversary weekend at the Dojo, in what Dave is calling "Not-Valleycon". Reports will be forthcoming (in theory).

Now get off my lawn......


Legion Record 1-0

Legion of the Noob - Part 1

So, New Year, same old resolution to blog more consistently. Same limited chance of success, but we will see how it goes.

My last few games of Warmachine before Christmas have seen me trying out new things, mainly with the Witch Coven in preperation for Ides of March. Unfortunately, nothing seems to have really geled for me and I find myself drifting back to my old crutches - pSkarre, eGoreshade, Mortenebra et al.. So, feeling jaded and slightly bored with Cryx I have decided to mix things up a bit by playing something completely different.

Enter the Legion of Everblight, winning friends since forever. While I was originally going to slow build a couple of Troll lists to play with this year (and in fact already own a complete 50 point eMadrak list) I quickly realised I would never get that much medium base infantry painted in time to use this year so switched to Legion instead due to their low model count armies and large amounts of model-crossover between lists. While I don't think I can get the models I need brought, assembled and fully painted in time for Ides, I feel like I probably have a shot at getting them done in time for the Auckland Open in April so that is my current goal.

Choosing my first two casters has been relatively easy: Epic Absolonia is one hella sexy biatch, turns her beasts up to 11 and seems to play a lot like Mortenebra, which I like. Epic Lylyth I like for the simple fact she makes people cry, and I am a terrible human being. And while I like the idea of Abby for her similarities to one of my favorite Cryx casters, I also like Lylyth because the whole uber-gunline thing is completely different from anything I have played in Cryx. I have no idea on a third caster yet but I have time to figure that out. First priority is to get some games in to figure out how this whole Fury thing works so I will be a regular at the Dojo in the weeks to come, as well as any other games I can squeeze in.

 Fun times ahead to be sure.

2014 Wrap Up

As 2014 draws to a close, I figure I should do a quick wrap of the last half of the year. I took part in 2 Warmachine and 2 X-wing events, all of which were an absolute blast and all taught me lessons along the way.

Lords of Ruin, in Wellington taught me not to second guess myself and play the lists that I am enjoying at the time. I had planned on taking my pSkarre Incorporeal spam list to Wellington, but ended up second guessing myself and taking a "special snowflake" pDenny list instead. I managed just 2 practice games with the Denny list before the event and even though I won both of them I went into the event with zero confidence in that list. As a result, I ended up playing eLich for all 7 games and probably not having as much fun as I could have. Looking back, there was probably at least 1 game where I should have dropped the Denny list, but didn't, due to the lack of confidence.

Choptember on the other hand, taught me that sometimes you should just pull the trigger if you get the chance. Having started the day 2-0, I went into the third round against Runes of War with a pDenny + Banes + shooting list that was designed to both attrition and play for the Scourge 'Pop-n-drop'. I had a shot at a Turn 2 assassination but was a little iffy on whether one of the two Pistol Wraiths had range to Doomshaper. After umming and ahhing for far to long I decided to play the long game and ended up clocking out.
 In hindsight I should have gone for it, recognising two key points:
   1) Against Runeshapers the Pistol Wraiths were never going to last very long anyway and throwing them foward for a possible assassination early was not going to cost me much.
  2) If I moved the iffy Pistol Wraith first and found he was out of range, I still could have redirected the second one somewhere else to do some good (like killing that trollop Jannissa). In the end they both just dithered around, did nothing particularly useful  and then got killed.

On the Xwing front, I took part in both the Auckland Regional event and the National event, both of which taught me two very separate lessons.

Auckland Regionals taught me that no plan survives contact with the enemy and complex Rube Goldberg machines tend to fall apart when your opponent starts to deny you the actions you require to fuel said machine. Nationals on the other hand taught me that spreading your firepower over multiple smaller ships is generally better than concentrating all your points into a pair of hefty ships. Having said that, the Xwing meta is constantly changing and I am not particularly good at the game so it may just be my bad read of the metastate combined with being generally bad that is my problem.

I also managed to paint a bunch of stuff so lets take a look at some awful photos shall we....

Wraith Engine: Painted it in time for Lords of Ruin, but ended up not taking it. Good chance it could make its debut at Ides of March 2015.

Bane Riders: these did make it to Lords of Ruin. Did some work, but will take some practice to get the most out of them.

Aiakos: Also made it to Wellington as part of the pDenny jank list, never saw tabletime. Greivous Wounds Kraken was some fun in practice  though..

Also made a start on my fledgling Trollblood army with Fennblades....

as well as Grim1 and everyones favourite troll solo, Jannissa Stonetide, AKA that bitch with the wall..

I have also managed to paint a couple of Legion models, a Strider Deathstalker and a Shepherd, but thier photo was even worse than the ones above so will have to wait until next time.

All in all, a productive few months to end the year. What am I looking at for next year? I really want to start playing some Legion or Trolls next year and I am targeting the Auckland Open for my first competitive Hordes outing. Unfortunately, this is a 3 list event, which will require a lot of painting for me to be ready by April, so we shall see how it goes.

Hope everyone has a safe and game filled holiday season, and until next year...

Get off my lawn.