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Friday 26 July 2013

pStryker vs Jarl Skuld

Armor 23 stormknights strike again. 

Cygnar
pStryker
-hunter
-squire

Stormblades with UA and gunners
Stormguard
Stormblade captain
Katherine Laddermore
Journeyman Warcaster
Alain Runewood

Trollbloods
Jarl Skuld
-Impaler
-Earthborn Diretroll
-Runebearer

Min Longriders
Horthol
Kriel warriors with UA and weapon attachments


He wins deployment and goes first. I've realised this list kind of needs to be the one to go first because they're usually out-threatranged by almost everything. That and their speed is really really slow. Another factor to note is that due to Stryker's feat as well as the SBCs abilities, I tend to clump them all together which means I have issues contesting 2 areas. This can probably be solved if I added a heavy warjack instead of hunter or took 2 lights. That or I need to split up, which is theoretically doable since the SBCs abilities are passive, so I could put him near  one unit first, have that unit activate, gain relentless charge etc, then have him run over to the other unit and have that unit activate, gain relentless charge.

Turn 1
-Krielwarriors pray swift foot and run up the left flank, towards my objective.  Dire troll runs up the center, just behind the forest. Impaler follows behind it. Runebearer activates, gives Jarl the minus one to spell cost benefit. Jarl casts quicken on the Long riders, bringing them to SPD 9! They then run 18" up the left flank, past their own objective. Man, that's intimidating to see. Horthol follows behind them. 
+2 focus to hunter.  Journeyman casts arcane shield on the stormguard. Stormguard run up towards the left flag in a sort of 60degree angle. Originally, I had placed my units very close to the right edge of the board cause I was intending to hit his objective but seeing the long riders at SPD 9 made me change my mind. Stormblades run up towards the left as well. pStryker moves up, casts snipe on Hunter and arcane shield on Stormblades. Hunter moves a bit, shoots the nearest long rider which is withing 18", boost to hit and boost the damage and it's left with 2 hp. SBC runs up to within the pile of stormblades. Alain runewood runs up to the left of the SBs. Katherine runs all the way up the left as well.

Turn 2
-So far, the only things that can reach me are the Long Riders. He upkeeps quicken on them and weald secrets on the Kriel warriors. Kriel warriors pray swiftfoot and run up again. Impaler walks up and casts farsight on Jarl. Runebearer activates and gives Jarl the bonus on casting spells again. Jarl casts magic bullet, walks up and shoots at a stormguard. First attack hits and he kills it. The magic bullet bounces off to a stormblade nearby but he fails to kill it. He casts magic bullet again but this time his shot misses. Jarl feats, covering the entire front in smoke clouds so I can not see any of his units at all. This isn't good. His earthborn moves up to behind the smoke clouds. His long riders declare run while one tries to slam a stormguard. Apparently slams don't have to end base to base but he thought they had to so he thought he failed his slam.
+My turn to retaliate. I can't see any of his units; or even his objective, at all through the clouds. I upkeep both shields, drop snipe since he's within 14" anyway. 1 focus goes to the hunter. Stormblades activate first, declaring run/charge. They finish off the wounded Long rider while assaulting the rest and also, those who ran instead of charging spread out so that they're spread in a line. Alain gives stormguard pathfinder. My stormguard activate next and charge/run through the stormblades. 3 of them finish off another long rider with a charge while the rest run in front to block charge lanes and tie up models. Stryker moves up to a hill and feats. He could try to shoot me to death but it would be very unlikely. My SBC runs up to behind Stryker. Hunter stands still for the aiming bonus, shoots the last long rider, boosts to kill and does so. All the long riders are now off the table. I have to sit back and wait for the counter charge now. 

Turn 3
-And it comes. The kriel warriors order a charge onto the objective and my stormguard. They bounce off most of them but do kill a few. However, he spaces his kriel warriors wrongly and although he kills the objective, he can't score a point this turn due to the fact that his whole unit isn't within 4" of the flag. A cabal thrower slams a stormguard into another stormguard and knocks the both of them down, killing the first one. Earthborn activates, kills some stormguards. Impaler casts farsight onto Jarl again and he tries to snipe me again. Kind of a really hard proposition at armor 23. Horthol charges into contact with my stormguard. Somehow he fails to kill any of them at all though he does knock one down. End result, he's up by one point. 
+Upkeep both arcane shields. 1 focus to Hunter, draw 1 from squire. Hunter stands still and shoots the diretroll. Hits. Boosts damage, do a bit of damage to it. Stormblades activate and assault/charge the dire troll. You'd think a full unit would be able to bring it down, especially since I hit it with most assault shots. Somehow, no, it's still alive -_- Um...wth. Alain moves up and shouts at the stormguards to stand up and they do. Stormguards order charge and charge the diretroll and Horthol. I CMA with the guards at Horthol since only one has the charge bonus and I use that one to initiate the attack. Nope, Horthol still has 3 hp left in his dragoon form. I do finish off the pesky diretroll though. Journey recasts shield onto Katherine Laddermore and sends her up front, shooting people with her gunlance but that fails to hit. Stryker camps the rest of the focus and runs towards the objective. I know Katherine probably can't take the sheer amount of damage the kriel warriors will dish out and I'm hoping he will get tempted into hitting Stryker instead since I can probably survive. Probably. Either way, I don't want them to score another point. SBC runs upso that the stormknights are within his cmd. 
Turn 4
-He goes for the assassination. He drops quicken and weald secrets. Impaler casts farsight on Jarl. Kriel warriors activate. He then charges his own kriel warrior next to me with his cabal warriors while some others charge me. He hits his kriel warrior, slams it over me, knocking Stryker down and killing his warrior. It also impacts into another kriel warrior since they're pretty much all surrounding me at this point but since the kriel warriors can not be KDed and this is their own activation, they don't lose their activation. They then proceed to hit Stryker with charge attacks. Jarl moves up with snipe on and shoots at me, boosting to hit. End result, I'm left with 4hp. He casts weald secrets on himself.  That was really close since his last attack bounced off me completely. Horthol kills some stormguards. 
+I'm very badly damaged and I'm not sure I can survive another assault like that.Otoh, Jarl is right next to me. Draw 1 more focus from Squire. 2 focus goes onto Hunter.  I drop stryker's arcane shield but upkeep the Journeymans. Hunter stands stills and shoots Jarl, boosts to hit, hits, boosts to damage, hits. Right now I need to kill off that damn kriel warrior in my way. Journeyman walks up, shoots the kriel warrior. Boosts to hit, hits, boosts damage, kills. It makes its damn tough. Wth. Stormguard walks up to hit it. Still makes its tough >_< Finally, SBC charges up and kills it. It dies finally. Sheesh. Damn tough rolls. I thought this was going to be another repeat of the time my opponent made 6 tough rolls on his troll in a row. Anyway, Alain runewood gives the stormblades +2 to charge attack rolls and they're off. I make a mistake here and choose to assault with Stormblades. NEVER, EVER do that when the opponent has evasiveness and weald secrets up. End result, I miss all my assault shots and while I initially had 5 guys in melee with him, he moves out so that he's only engaged by 4. Ugh. Luckily he can't move any further because his own kriel warrior is blocking him. They roll to hit at Mat9 and almost all of them hit. He transfers damage 2x and then my last stormblade rolls to hit. His impaler is almost dead from the transferred damage but Jarl still has at least 10 life left. It's flat damage and I roll....6,6,6. Goodbye Jarl. He fails his tough check as well.

Thoughts on game
I forgive my dice for all the horrible rolls they gave me earlier, including not being able to kill the earthborn -_-
Ideally, even if I hadn't managed to kill him, I would have tried to hit him with Katherine who hadn't activated yet and thanks to the SBC, would have been able to charge all the way up to his back arc; past my stormblades and beat him. If he somehow managed to survive that, I would have to try and tough the next turn out because he would have no warbeasts, he couldn't walk away from the stormblades engaging him. He also can't shoot out with gunfighter. I would kill the kriel next to me, camp focus and send the squire to block the cabal attachment. This would stop him from charging me and force him to either walk around to try that same tactic of slamming a guy past me, and then pray his  unboosted damage rolls somehow exceeded my armor. But yeah, a lot of this game came down to luck. Also, for this type of scenario, I should just go dominate my own flag/objective. 
Once again, SBC was the key to my victory. I definitely need to get the model now. 

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