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 ^_^