BATTLE!
Well another week and another Journeyman battle. Last
night I took the wiley Ossyan against Tyrant Mithras deadshot pLylyth. We
are playing the second battle of week 3, 25pts must include all models from
starting battle box. Last match ended with Ossyan admonition moving
around the side of a charging Carnivean and out of LOS, and Tyrant Mithras
surrendering the match as a rather wounded pLyls was standing with her
proverbial delicates mere inches from Ossyan, 2 angry jacks and a half strength
unit of Invictors with no fury for transfers.
Last night was a rematch. Again I looked across the
table at the pLyls and her small cohort feeling decidedly outmatched by what
she brought. We roll for scenario and come up with two fronts.
Bugger, I am not a fan already as I really want all my stuff central and trying
to hold/contest isn’t going to be all that easy.
My Ossyan List for 25pts
Lord Arcanist Ossyan
Banshee
Sphinx
10 Dawnguard Invictors + UA
Mage Hunter Assassin
TyrantM’s pLyls hunting party
Lylyth, Herald of Everblight
Carnivean
Shredder x 4
Full Ogrun Warspears + UA
Strider Deathstalker
Zeiju placed the terrain and I am not a fan of my
options. TyrantM and I roll off for first and I win rolling a 5 to his
3. I elect to go first thinking of all the times I have gone second and
regretted not having the initiative or being that much further up the field on
turn 2. On hindsight, given the scenario and the terrain it might have
been better to go second and try to get the first scenario points by dominating
my objective and blowing up his fuel supply.
Map Key
Green splodges are forest
Light brown rectangles are the control zones
Dark circles are the objectives
Brown splodge is a hill.
Right up I feel most of the terrain helps him. He
can see through forests, most of his stuff has or can get pathfinder. The
central forest even shelters his army. My side of the board feels bare
with only a forest on the outer flank of the friendly control zone.
Well I deploy centrally for the most part. I put
the left with the idea that I would use them to contest my control zone, not
sure why I decided on that as I could have just parked the MHA there as a
headache and supported her with a jack as necessary. Ossy and the jacks
were put in the middle so I could run up and take advantage of the ‘Fuel’ rule
on the objectives.
I am surprised when TyrantM deploys his army skewed to
his flank with pLyls mostly in the middle with her beasts. I deploy the
MHA in the middle as I can’t see her being effective on my right flank against
a whole unit of Warspears, not to mention how easy she might be to snipe out by
Lylyth. TyrantM advance deploys the Deathstalker on my left flank,
presumably to cause a nuisance for the Invictors. Banshee is selected as
the Warspears prey target.
Ret First Turn
Not much to say here. I allocate a focus to each
jack. I cast quicken on the Invictors, Admonition on the Sphinx and move
Ossyan up to chill with the MHA. I run the Invictors towards and onto my
zone, Banshee and Sphinx run and awkwardly swap places to move the Banshee away
from the Ogruns who want to stab her with their pointy sticks.
Rather stupidly, I forget to activate the MHA so she just stood their twirling her chains around.
Everblight Turn 1
TyrantM ran everything up. Warspears kind of spread out. pLyls hugged the back of the forest next to the Carnivean. he left a couple of the Shredders back, presumeably as transfer targets. Deathstalker moves up, shoots an Invictor and swift hunters back being out of range to take a second shot.
Ret Second Turn
I upkept quicken and admonition. Allocate 2 focus to the Banshee forgetting I
can’t hurt his objective this turn.
Invictors move up
further onto the zone to retaliate against the stalker. A 2 man CRA at the
stalker and its dead. I declare shooting at the shredder in the trees but
not one of my models is in range. Banshee can’t get into a position where
I can see far enough through the forest at the shredder, so it and the sphinx
just chill near the objective. I toy with the notion of using Ossy to
shoot a the shredder in the trees, realise that would be dumb and move him on
to the zone, again half forgetting I can’t score points this round. The
MHA runs up behind the invictors to my zone so if necessary I can send her to
deal with something jamming the invictors or to hold the zone in case I need to
charge off it with the Invictors.
Everblight Second Turn
First Shredder activates, goes rabid, charges an Invictor and kills it. Second Shredder activates charges the Sphinx and does a wopping 8 damage to it. No systems destroyed but finally some good luck for Mithras.
Ret Third Turn
I just can’t believe the amount of bad luck Mithras
had last turn, well except for the amazing roll on the shredder taking off 8pts
from the Sphinx. Still it could have scrapped the Sphinx and I would
still have counted myself lucky. Still I shouldn’t have blown admonition
to engage the Carnivean, not sure what I was thinking.
Well, my go and I have escaped with minimal casualties on
Lylyth’s feat turn. I allocate 2 focus to each jack and letting quicken
fall off. I start by scooting Ossyan the Slippery Gypsy up, feat and shoot at
the Ogrun not trusting Ossyan to roll 12 of 3 dice to hit Lylyth in the woods
and figure she will get caught in the AoE and have her defense dropped by 2
anyway. I shoot, hit and… kill the ogrun (dammit), the one time I don’t
want to outright kill I do and now the defence debuff AoE is gone.
Next I activate the MHA, she charges the shredder
engaging the Invictor and easily one shots him, doing 24 damage after
armour. Silly move, Lylyth is now able to take his fury, putting her up
to 3. I activate the Banshee next, scooting just enough to shoot at the
shredder in front of Lylyth with an angle knowing the slam will know her down.
A decent roll by me sees the shredder almost dead and both of them knocked down
(hah take that stupidly high defence!). She transfers the damage to the
shredder, it dies and Lylyth take a few left over points. But hey what
are shredders for if not for cheap transfer targets. Sphinx
activates, moves out of the shredders melee range so it can shoot accepting the
free strike which does a measily 3 points of damage. He shoots Lylyth and
boosts damage, Lylyth transfers to shredder at the back as all of her other
beasts are on full fury, leaving her on 1 fury and the shredder at the back
looking almost dead. Next I activate the invictors and shoot at the now
rather easy to hit knocked down Lylyth. The transfers some of the damage
from the first shot but is out of options. The third Invictor to shoot
kills her and its game over.
Battle Post Mortem.
Well I won, can’t say that I deserved to win as I don’t
think I had a good battle plan. I missed moving the MHA, didn’t make a
good play at going for scenario, totally brain farted moving the admonitioned
Sphinx into threat range of the shredder. I think I more won because the
Dice Gods decided to be unusually cruel to Tyrant Mithras whilst overlooking
me. I think I only missed one roll all game.
