Hutt Valley Fisting; Post Valleycon (2)

I've had this stuck in my head for the past two days, not really sure why. I guess Eurovision is coming up again within a few months though. Can't wait.

But YES. Day two of Valleycon rolled round on yet another beautiful sunny day in Wellington. The whole week was actually stunning, I may have even gotten a bit of a tan on the walk to the dairy.

Anyways, my first game was against Jarrod Carmichael's Cygnar. As I mentioned in the last post, I ended up running the Fist of Halaak for the whole event. Largely this was due to familiarity, but at times I tried to consider what would work best against my opponent's pairing. Jarrod brought a Siege list with multiple juniors, and eNemo, making things interesting; Siege is known to crack armour, and all the Stormsmiths with eNemo means death for massed single wound infantry. I shouldn't have bothered thinking baout it too much, because Jarrod was going with whatever anyways, and decided on his Nemo list. I dropped Xerxis thinking I had enough beef that Siege would struggle to get through, but facing eNemo made me dance a little inside. I wasn't entirely sure how Nemo worked, but I assumed that he would struggle against moi.

As it was, I got greedy in this game, thinking I could finish two of Jarrod's 'jacks with Molik under feat, to get the attrition advantage. I only got one, and scraped the paint on the Centurion. The correct play here would have been to just waste one jack and fatewalk back to safety behind my Cetratii. I had to just count on the Cetratii giving Molik the ARM boost from the feat to help him enough to survive, and make it to Nemo. Jarrod was still surprised though, not expecting Molik to have the distance to either of his jacks with polarity shield on them.

I took a couple of shots of the game, so here are things part way into his following turn.

My gladiator is pretty close to the action again, and paid for it, again. The Ironclad just off shot a bit got clear of the Arcuarii I sent to jam him, and put what was essentially an 8pt animus 6ft under. Several of the shots from the Stormcallers did a real number on me actually, taking off Incindiarii and Acuarii all over the show. Conversly, Molik barely got tickled by the Centurion and one of the light jacks. He was jammed away from Nemo, but still alive and kicking.

The following turn, and Cetratii bunkered up and stuck their spears into the light jack, before Xerxis ended it with a boosted combo-smite, allowing Molik to side-step around to Nemo, and finish him in two hits.

RIP in peace Nemo. In all this fuzzy photo glory

Jarrod was a great opponent and guy, and this game definitely gave me a lesson in over-extension. It also further deepened my love for the Xerxis combo-smite and Molik combo. That shit has so much legs, either to setup Molik to begin a whack-a-mole on fools, or to clear guys off MK.

The following game was against Mitch Cowan, a guy who I've seen around at previous events, but I don't think we had ever really taken the time to get to know one another proper. He's done well at this game in the past, and I was looking forward to facing his eVyros Griffon spam, and give him a good game. Instead I clear went and derped the hardest I have done in a while. Playing Incursion, I didn't bother to contest any flags some how thinking I had turns to burn, and gave him the win essentially on my turn two.

I honestly am at a bit of a loss how this happen. At the time I was saying I forgot the scenario, and that I had thought scoring started the following turn. But thinking back I remember clearly sizing up whether to contest the flags, but then deciding against it? Fucking shoot me now. Apart from that, it was a silly idea to go second with such a slow list as mine - I was trying to avoid getting the table side that had a big obstruction bang smack in the middle of my path up the table. Instead, I got jammed and barely left my deployment zone. The main thing I can take from this though is that I sure as shit will never do that again. While I should know to go first with the type of list I had in the type of scenario played, this was purely academic knowledge, not first hand experience.

EDIT: I don't mean this to discount Mitch's ability to play well either - on my second turn I had a line to Vyros with Molik, and attempted to clear a path to him. Mitch's skill with the feat was on point and successfully closed all avenues to assassinate his caster. I've only just now thought of a way around it now, so chalk up another lesson learnt, but also bravo to Mitch for thoroughly out-playing me.

I just hope that next time I can give you a better showing Mitch. You may still get a decent fisting yet.

Sitting on a 3-2 record, meant I was going to be fishing around the midfield for my final game. My last opponent for the event was one Jamie Steer;

I tried to get him to make a war-face with Butcher, but my antiquated iphone couldn't handle it.

Jamie dropped a pButcher list with various Man-o-wars, a Juggernaut, Devastator, Berserker, and widowmakers and man hunters for flavour. Xerxis definitely liked seeing a bunch of low-DEF/high ARM targets across the table from, but we still had a game where we jockeyed back ad forth, trading pieces and chatting away. Actually, that'll be Jamie's best tactic, he's got a good grasp on the game and is keen to discuss it. Almost to the point where I ran my clock run down. If he cultivates this skill, he'll be deathclocking opponents left, right and center. I managed to combo smite Butcher out of existence however, and avoided that loss.

So all in all, a 4-2 result was not too bad at all. Being objectively critical about my performance, I don't think I've advanced all that much overall - I made really silly mistakes when it truly mattered, and did not have the oversight to forsee such eventualities. That's a skill I'm definitely going to have to develop. also in terms of list construction, I'm going to seriously rethink my inclusion of the Gladiator. That guy was essentially a whole lot of wasted points, and I barely cast Rush over the course of the event. Skorne players usually swear by the guy, but I'm now beginning to think I can leave him at home. This is particularly so because my lists are increasingly relying on my troops for the start and mid part of my games, where the beasts end up being late-game pieces. By which time, the added range of the Gladiator's animus is hardly needed.

But all-in-all a fantastic weekend. Adam Oakson from Christchurch ended up taking first place, the only other Skorne player, with a Fist and Zaal pairing. Mike Thorn was on second place, having used eDenny's Body and Soul tier all weekend. I'll be looking into getting the pieces for that list, it seems like so much fun :3... And finally, Nikola came 3rd overall, being the undisputed queen of Legion, using eVayl to jank fools. Special mention to him tanking a Rhyas assassination with Vayl, while she was sitting on no camp. Nikola likes to live dangerously.

Once again, thanks to Chris and crew, as well as Charlie and his family, for another great experience in Wellington. I'll definitely endeavour to make it down for Lords of Ruin later in the year, and there was someone mumbling about running a potential masters event; Active Duty Roster FTW. In the meantime, in Auckland there's Battlecry to prepare for, and then Ides of March.

And no more tier restrictions ^_^

Hutt Valley Fisting; Post Valleycon (1)

First and foremost, shoutouts to Chris Otton for being a TO of most awesomeness, Charlie St Clair for housing and hosting my yellow ass, my opponents over the weekend, and the crew from my own little shitty Shed club in Auckland. I had a fantastic time, and I hope I will have the chance to repay you all one way or another. Quick note; I'm an easy lay, so if you're that way inclined then wink wink nudge nudge *smooches* etc

Results for the event are over at Thrallblacks, so spoiler alert; I placed 10th out of 32. While I initially hoped for higher, I'm actually still happy with how things unfolded. Part of that is probably the sledging I copped for playing Skorne and not my better faction (Cryx). While this was all in jest, it did make me realise I was still trying to over-analyse my game, and that there is little point to stress in these circumstances. I want to push myself, sure, but anything beyond that is a waste of energy. As such, I've told myself that I should not hold as strict a criteria for my gaming year as restricting myself to Skorne. I'm happy to renege my initial 'Skorne 2015' stance, and play Cryx again if I so happen to feel like it. At this moment, I'm still having a tonne of fun developing lists and playing my Skorne, but I won't force things if it starts to feel like I'm pushing shit up hill.

Within the context of playing my games over the weekend, I stuck with pXerxis and the Fist of Halaak. It was just the easiest choice to make, in a lot of cases the strongest drop, and once you're in the middle of an event where you don't have D&C conditions, I felt I just wanted to keep with him out of habit. Also, I got to say fist a lot. The games I had over the weekend were a real mixed bag in terms of the results and how they unfolded. My first round was against Tim Ward and his mercs, and he drew Ashlynn. I tried to get photos of all my opponents for the blog and posterity's sake, but forgot to do that with him.

So here's a photo of another Tim Ward:

With Ashlynn, Tim brought along a bunch of light jacks, some heavy jacks marshalled to Gun-mage units, Devil Dogs, and a bunch of misc solos. The match up against Fist was about as one-sided as you can get, and I think Tim admitted not really knowing what my force did. Getting the drop on his gun mages with my Incindiarii really started things off badly for him, with rockets hitting their targets and gutting the units. Shit just kept dying on his side, with very few loses on mine. A Beast Handler even managed to cap Anastasia Di Bray when she tried to ambush into my back field. When Ashlynn blew her stack trying to shank a single Cetratii (and failing), Tim called it. I'd like to say I gave a Tim a decent game, but I know what its like to go under the bus, and its sure as heck not pleasant.

My next game was against David 'Hooch' Brown from Christchurch, playing Legion.

He used his Rhyas tier to fan-fucking-tastic effect, pushing way into my side of the table and jamming me out of the scenario. That was the scariest thing for me, where I started to traffic jam myself in trying to sand paper away at his infantry, and he was up 3 CPs by the third turn. I started feeding troops into the zone, and hack my way through swordsmen, hex hunters and incubii, and made crucial mistakes in being too cagey with my warbeasts. They needed to push up into the zone to contest and tie up Dave's Scythean. Instead I held back and both Rhyas and her beast were able to find gaps to Xerxis to finish him. To date, Hooch and I have played two games against one another at events and he's won them both. I'll get him one day Hoochie boy *fist shaking etc*

While I couldn't fist David, Adam Oakson successfully fisted him the following round.

The following game saw me attempt to not be so timid against Peter Williamson's eKaya list.

The Tharn in that list pack way more of a punch than you'd be led to believe, as does a Feral with Forced Evo on it. Being braver with my Gladiator meant losing him top of 2. Doh. This game was a real grind, with the two of us swinging up opposing flanks to score in each other's zones, and sending in chaff to contest. The crux of the game came down to Peter being unable to finish off a Cetratii stopping him from scoring. I was able to pop his objective and score his zone after clearing it. From there he tried to keep me from scoring further with his Pureblood, a couple of Tharn, and jamming my own beast handlers, but Xerxis put the kaibosh on that by combo-smiting the Pureblood over some models before putting Fury onto Molik and letting him finish off the remainders. It was the closest and most hard fought game I had all weekend. And the one that firmly put to bed my doubts about including Molik Karn with Xerxis. His sheer damage output and his flexibility with side-step makes my loins tingle.

Day one came to an end, Nikola berated the rest of us for scoring 2-1 over BBQ, and I was feeling quite happy about things. Day 2 write up will be incoming soon.

Stats! Break it down

Chris Otton, the magnanimous organiser of the Warmachine event at Valleycon, has graciously posted graphs and charts to illustrate the breakdown of the player field for this weekend. To view his original post just follow the link here: http://www.thrallblacks.com/2015/01/moar-stats.html

I otherwise wanted to examine a few things that I thought was worthy of note, with consideration of what a meta in New Zealand may look like. I won't post Chris' graphs as I'm sure everyone will be have no problems viewing them on thrallblacks, but also because I haven't asked for permission.  I will instead post my own graphs in reference to the ones at that other blog.

First up the pie chart on the factions present at Valleycon;

Looking at the actual chart on thrallblacks, first thing that surprised me-

No.

Fucking.

Trolls.

What the heck? I like to harass players of the faction for using the most boring batshit unit in the game (Warders), but I actually really like that faction. I am thoroughly surprised that there would be no showing from the Runes of War, or Calandra's tier. I was under the impression also that Trolls were a rather popular faction in NZ, but I guess most of the regular Trollblood tournie regulars weren't able to make it.

There's otherwise a pretty nice spread of people across all the factions, bar Minions, but I guess that's to be expected (someone build that Arkadius tier already), with a heavier presence towards Legion. There also looks to be a tally of 32 players, which I reckon is a fantastic showing. Especially as this is an incomplete account of all the players, so there may be a few more to include. Good shit.

Next thing I want to look at is Chris' bar graph showing the frequency of the different Warcasters/Warlocks people used:

Ha ha.

Next surprise for me though: no Bradigus! Hot damn. I guess this is just early days, so there's no doubt of seeing him at other events soon. People just need to prepare all their wolds and shifting stones, and NZ being tucked away round the butthole of the world, it takes time for people's orders to arrive from Discount Games Incorporated Registered Trademarked.

The spread of casters/locks allows me to consider who I will drop in the face of each matchup: there's actually a lack of weaponmaster spam as I was preparing for, with no shows from either Goreshade2 or Butcher2. This means I have to rethink how I manage my Makeda drop, obviously. I built the list with specific matchups in mind, and I now have to consider what casters here will still fit within that bracket or skew I prepared for. Siege looks to be an obvious one, and probably Butcher1 and Sorscha2 as well.

This is what I've found interesting over the past day as I've had this info to digest; tier restrictions have meant I can predict the shape of prople's lists with greater accuracy.... Unless I'm fooling myself and I don't actually know the game and my local community as well as I think I do. But this lends itself to me feeling a bit more confident about how I will approach the match making process. Looking at these stats also makes me contemplate what the New Zealand meta even looks like; certainly not this, the range of casters and forces do t seem to represent what is typical. Where I think kudos is due to Chris Ooton, as I think that was one of his mission statements in restricting this to a tier event.

But then, what is 'typical'? I'm struggling to pin down what can be used to describe the meta of NZ at this point of time, and I keep coming up short. People seemed determined to keep trying new things, casters, forces, and lists, and though there is a sort of consistency with who podiums at events, these players never seem to skew in any particular way, or stick to any warlock/warcaster for any notable length of time. And beyond that, this doesn't seem to translate to other players mimicking their lists. Sure, there's the occasional person who rolls with a net-decked eGaspy list, but that's the exception not the norm here, as it seems to be overseas. Almost like we're a nation of snowflakes, all trying to shine in our own special little way?

That aside I'm also going to have to do some homework- time to brush up on what a nemo3 tier even looks like. Yeesh.

Dance partners redux: The pre-Valleycon list shakedown

I was hesitant about whether I should post my lists here, whether I'd give away any sort of 'dark-horse' advantage I may have by springing something unexpected on my opponents. But then I checked myself; out of those few readers who actually scan this blog, who would actually try to tech for me? And for Skorne in general?... yeesh.

So here are my two tier lists for Valleycon,  giving Skorne a good go at the first WM/H event on NZ's calender year:

List 1

Tyrant Xerxis 
- Molik Karn 
- Titan Gladiator 
Max Cataphract Cetrati 
Min Cataphract Incindiarii 

Min Cataphract Incindiarii 
Min Cataphract Arcuarii 
Min Cataphract Arcuarii 

Tyrant Commander & Standard Bearer 

Max Paingiver Beast Handlers 

OBJECTIVE: Arcane Wonder

THEME: The Fist of Halaak - Tier 2

List 2

Archdomina Makeda 
- Molik Karn 
- Basilisk Krea 
Saxon Orrik 
Max Cataphract Cetrati 
Max Praetorian Swordsmen with UA
Max Venator Slingers 
Max Praetorian Keltarii 
Min Paingiver Beast Handlers 
Tyrant Commander & Standard Bearer

OBJECTIVE: Arcane Wonder

THEME: Army of the Western Reaches - Tier 1

As explained over past posts, Xerxis will be my main drop, possessing the armour and wounds that opponents may have difficulty chewing through, and providing one heck of a counter punch. Again, I can't WAIT to play pXerxis out of tier, if only to get Aptimus Marketh into the mix. Cycling Fury has been a big part of my game, and has led to issues with activations, when a wee 3pt solo with Spell Slave would make life so much easier. As it stands, I often get Xerxis in rather exposed positions, camping only one or two transfers. Several games recently have either left him assassinated, or me with a puckered sphincter after Xerxis barely survives. This will be a case of me not weighing up the risk and reward of particular situations all that well, a skill that would admittedly be valuable to master... I'd rather just not have to think about it and chuck Marketh in there.

Oh ok then.

The Makeda list has only been played a couple of times, but I'm pretty happy with it. It really does set up the Swordsmen and Keltarii as sacrificial pawns, to be bullied and resurrected back via the feat. I'm developing a real fondness for pMak - I've finally clicked onto Savagery being a thing. Cetratii advancing 12" with that and Press Forward into Shield Wall is neat, and to then cycle it onto the Keltarii who can then advance 13" into odd areas is something I want to do more of. Because of the cycling of upkeeps by my Warlocks, I've chosen the Arcane Wonder objective, where I hope to bunker up around it with my force and Warlock, and use the cost discount to get Defenders Ward, Savagery, and Fury around a lot more efficiently. Most of the objectives are positioned pretty close to the center of the board too, where both my armies want to be.

Upon discussion both my lists do pretty much the same overall thing; take a punch and then swing back harder. The pMak list does this with weaker attacks, but the whole idea of that list was to drop it versus pairings that had mass infantry weapon masters; where their damage output is wasted on single wound infantry, and they are still vulnerable to the low P+S of my dudes. I'll have to be mindful if the opponent's other list comprises of armour skews that will render pMak's own infantry swarm useless. Molik Karn has been key in the counter-punch aspect of my games, but I think I've got it to the point where I have been to precious about him. Because he has been so vital, I've often held him back farther than he needs to be, and that needs to change. 

It feels weird to have my lists locked in. There's things I guess I would still want to change about the lists, where I should have tried using Tiberion instead of Molik in the Xerxis list at least once to see how it goes. But apart from that I'm confident that I can give my opponents a game in Wellington this weekend. I am feeling the pinch that my faction probably suffers against several of the other factions out there, and I'm pretty positive I'll have my shit pushed in for several matchups, particularly against Bradigus. I have hopes of doing well, which are some what tempered by how I keep placing around the 10th place spot. I reckon this time I have a far better expectation of how I'll do, and will endeavour to just have fun with my games, while making my opponents work or it.

We'll just have to see how it all goes, right?

Shifty play, switching factions, and how to segue seamlessly between topics

It's been a wee while since my last blog post, and I think I'm about hitting that point where the enjoyment and novelty of writing is starting to fade, and things are starting to feel some what tedious. I want to remind myself that writing is also fun only so far as I persist and be mindful of what interests me, and the recent trend I've had of simply rehashing games is starting to wear thin. So until something truly interesting happens, (like the upcoming Valleycon tournament next week fuuuuuuuuu) I'll just gather a few thoughts here that I've been mulling over.

Mind you, there's been plenty of progress on the hobby front beyond games, I've built another cluster/flock/murder of Legion models for Nikola, and along with that is the last couple of Incindiarii I needed for my own Fist of Halaak force. I've been rushing to at least get basecoats, washes and arcs marked on all my models, and I've successfully done that to all but my Slingers, who are halfway there. I managed to get everything I needed assembled amidst gaming at Chas's pre-new years, and an over-night shift at my work provided a good chunk of time to get my Keltarii and Swordsmen up to the bare tabletop standard.

I've also been playing a lot of Dark Souls II.

<3

Yeah, the holidays have been pretty darn decent.

What isn't decent, and one of the things I've been thinking about (mean segue), is cheating. Cheating within the warmahordes game was a hot topic of discussion recently, on various podcasts and across forums, due to the perceived actions of a certain person1 during the World Team Championships in Poland last year. There were a few places where discussion focused on what the boundaries of cheating actually were, and what constituted a mistake, and much talk on whether the player in question was actually guilty of what he was being accused of. I know when I first heard about it I got excited about the prospect of a bit of drama in the upper echelons of wm/h tournament play.

So shocking! Yet so enticing

I'm now ashamed at my initial eagerness for scandal, particularly upon hearing that people started getting quite nasty over the interwebs towards the player in question. to me there's no excuse for that at all. Discussion has made convincing arguments that there are so many more factors you have to take into account when gauging a player's conduct throughout a game, that seeing naught but their arms and models does not necessarily constitute damning evidence.

But further to that I don't think the point has been made that players of a game will develop their own set of conventions between them, to dictate how they will resolve the particular grey areas that inevitably crop up in a tabletop game like Warmachine. As great a game as Privateer Press has developed, there are still areas where the players themselves have to resolve certain things; what to do with cocked dice, whether to allow take-backs, accuracy of measurement, and so on. I'd like to think I am developing my play to a point where I have as clean a game as possible. But there will be instances where my opponent just doesn't care. That is something that I will have to work so we both feel we're getting the game-state we desire.

So in considering the above, the player in question wrote an open letter addressing the accusations and arguing for his innocence. More telling I find, is that his opponent from the game in question (who has had time to review the footage and had first hand experience of the game itself) vouched for the other's innocence, and accepts that what was played was a fair game. To me there's no accusation of foul-play that has any footing , when both players whole-heartedly accept the end-game state.

It is a pity that there was as much fallout from these events as there was, and I'm now a bit worried that it's remiss of me to even drag up this discussion again. It does seem that the majority of the community globally has already moved on from this though, and I feel sounding off on these topics to make sure people communicate openly and honestly, will allow for better games in general. Something I will endeavour to remain mindful of.

something something segue etc

Something else that popped to mind recently was the issue of changing faction in warmahordes. Some of this came to mind when listening to the Ozmachine podcast (episode 21 for those interested), and how Trent Denison is having issues with his recent shift to Menoth. The discussion reminded me of some of the teething pains I had playing Skorne; while this blog has chronicled my recent exploits in that faction, I did make the shift from Cryx. 2014 was meant to be my year of Skorne, and I lasted till February. So far I think I'm doing a better job of it, but I guess Valleycon will be the first test of my resolve. I'm constantly tempted to do more faction jumping however. I keep getting ideas to invest in some Mercs, and see about conjuring up some sort of list pairing with Ashlynn, Magnus, or Shae. There's just so much room to play around with in that faction, and they are criminally under-used in the current New Zealand meta.

But for now, I think I keep getting a better handle of how I like to play and what I like within the Skorne faction. Being more reflective about my own process is helping me way better in list creation and picking up the mistakes that I make within my games. This is all helping me stick with the faction and should also improve my game with Cryx.

I'm all about them smooth transitions

There's also been more development into my tier lists for Valleycon. I've taken the pMakeda list that I wrote about in the last post out for a spin, and it did ok. I flubbed things a bit, getting too sketchy and feating far too early, thinking two Doom Reavers would wipe me out. I really should have held on to the feat, pushed for the alpha, and used the feat to recycle dudes to apply more hurt - I'll work on that some more. The list did have layers though; having Swordsmen and Keltarii as a first wave, to then have Cetratii and Molik coming up the rear is pretty damn sweet.

However a further thought has made me doubt again whether infantry spam with pMak is really the best pairing for Xerxis; I totally forgot that Inhospitable Ground can help mitigate the amount of weapon masters that can get to my lines. Doh. I suppose there are still Bane Knights I have to worry about, and there are plenty of Pathfinder fixes out there. And beyond that, if someone brings their armour cracking list, it may still be worth it to drop pMak. But this just further highlights the amount of game Xerxis actually has. I'm loving that guy more and more, I just can't wait to pull him out of tier and really put him to work.


1 I won't name him as several people seemed to shy away from even discussing the topic out of respect to the player in question who seemed to cop a fair amount of shit from random internet harassers. That, and I'm lazy enough to not bother looking up how to spell his name correctly.

Happy Spew Years

Ahhh new year, new beginnings. The end of 2014 closed with the typical festive eating and lazing. The last two posts I wrote whilst spending time with my parents, and away from all my hobby stuff. I'm a bit complacent about carting stuff around to paint, especially when I'm usually fishing or chopping wood or doing other manly man things, so I typically don't have the time.

And time is running out, there's three weeks and change till Valleycon, and recent events mean I have a shitload of stuff to paint. But let's rewind a it.

Prior to new years eve Remuera's own Adonis, Chas, opened his house for a couple of days of warmachine and general chillaxing. This gave me the chance to test my pMorghul tier list to see if it would actually cut the mustard. I dropped it against the minions of Lord Regent JS Imbeau, the local minion master and salt factory. The guy really loves Cryx, you should ask him about them sometime. He also has a fantastic blog on his experiences running minions and analysis of the game here.

Rot n Roll graphical representation

JS ran a Rask list, and I guess things went as well as they could. JS quite competently took my army apart, but it was still a bit of a game, when he neglected the scenario a bit and I ended up going up 4 control points. It took a Bullsnapper with Fury on it to one-shot Morghul and give JS the win. Note to self: don't position your warlock in base to base with other models where there is no space to admonition away. Another important lesson was that I had never considered before the importance of anticipating how I will score control points in an efficient manner; I had the option to score my first 2 points with Morghul but opted instead to charge a Gatorman, thinking he could kill him comfortably and sprint into the zone. Instead I barely tickled the fucker and was left only scoring the one point. Had I instead just moved Morgs into the zone, my win would have been assured by just dominating a second turn. Instead I scrambled for points the next turn to get to 4, and needed a third turn to bring home the win.

At least now I've come to the realisation of how to force scenario pressure through scoring; The steamroller pack makes scoring wins a two turn affair - meaning that at the first opportunity to score 2 or 3 points, its generally a good idea, because you can then score the difference in the following round, usually by clearing a zone/flag(s) and/or killing an objective. I guess this is an obvious point to make, and redundant to most people, but this is the game where the point clicked for me.

Right before a Bullsnapper ended me

Beyond that, the following discussion helped me a lot to consider the options for the sort of list I wanted to pair with my pXerxis list. It was considered that the Fist of Halaak would struggle against weapon master spam lists, the sort seen with eGoreshade and eButcher. At first I thought that FoH wouldn't struggle too much, particularly with multiple Incindiarii dropping fire everywhere, but talking more with JS led to conceptualising a list about spamming single-wound Skorne guys to counter the weapon-masters.

This list was born:

Archdomina Makeda 
- Molik Karn
- Basilisk Krea 
Saxon Orrik 
Max Cataphract Cetrati 
Max Praetorian Swordsmen with UA
Max Venator Slingers
Max Praetorian Keltarii 
Min Paingiver Beast Handlers 
Tyrant Commander & Standard Bearer

This list only hits tier one and does not provide any in-game benefits, but does allow me the most choice for selecting a broad range of units. Basic idea; run up the Swordsmen and Keltarii followed closely by the Cetratii and Slingers. Feat, and let them eat a charge if I can't get the alpha. Bring dudes back and go to town with Swordsmen auto-plinking for a point of damage and Keltarii advancing and getting into all sorts of odd places. I'm excited about this list, with all the range I can get out of Savagery for the Cetratii and Keltarii, but also to have Molik there to yo-yo around with. Thankfully Valleycon has lifted the character restrictions, so long as character pieces can fit within the tier lists. I'll probably be looking at having Molik in both my lists, as I love what the guy can do with Xerxis too.

Running the list also has motivated me to assemble the box of Slingers that has been sitting in my cupboard for the past year and a bit. And now I've got a shit load more models to paint than I had originally thought I had.

Balls.