Apologies to those I played, I'm racking my brains to remember the names of everyone, and the names of teams, so I'm likely to get some wrong. I should really have taken a photos of the score sheets at the end.
The final list I decided on was:
Pirate Queen Skarre - WJ: +6
- Skarlock Thrall
- Helldiver - PC: 3
- Cankerworm - PC: 5
Satyxis Raider Captain - PC: 2
Bane Lord Tartarus - PC: 4
Saxon Orrik - PC: 2
Satyxis Raiders - Leader & 9 Grunts: 8
- Satyxis Raider Sea Witch - Satyxis Raider Sea Witch 2
Satyxis Blood Witches - Leader & 9 Grunts: 6
- Satyxis Blood Hag - Satyxis Blood Hag 2
Necrosurgeon & Stitch Thralls - Necrosurgeon & 3 Grunts: 2
Necrosurgeon & Stitch Thralls - Necrosurgeon & 3 Grunts: 2
Bane Knights - Leader & 9 Grunts: 10
Mechanithralls - Leader & 9 Grunts: 5
- Skarlock Commander - PC: 1
The main reasoning behind this list, as discussed in the last post, was to have something that I could push into armour skews, beast and jack heavy lists, multi-wound infantry, colossals, that kind of bag.
ROUND 1: we faced a team that featured Rahn, Haley3 and Severius1; so no armour skews to roflstomp. We let them choose the first match because we figured that we'd be able to arrange the last two choices to guarantee at least two favourable games. In the end, they put their Menoth player into Greg's pHaley, and I elected to push Luke into Rahn, wanting to avoid any janky assassnations.
My opponent Mike didn't seem to have too much experience playing against Skarre, so I was able to bump and grind to an assassination on Haley. Luke also won his game, and Greg closed things out on the Severius player when he apparently accidentally started to kill him with blasts and electro leaps.
ROUND DOS: was against Dan, the organiser's Bye-team that consisted of himself and one other player, meaning one of us had to sit out. With Dan running a Lucant list, and his buddy sporting the new Legion twins, I elected Greg cheerlead us from the bench as I pushed into Lucant, and Luke into Legion. I ended my game on a scenario win in Incursion even despite my best efforts to fail, trying to out attrition Lucant on his feat turn. Luke seemed to also comfortably push Runes into the Legion force, allowing us to advance.
Ol' Dan Shaky Hands. The vibrating maestro
ROUND TROIS: saw us play into another team of Hamilton locals - I recall Luke got to face Jason running an eXerxis list with gun bugs and drakes, whereas I got put into Brendon running eLylyth. Greg rounded things off going into Casey's Rask list, so I believe we all got the match ups we wanted In my mind, I didn't particularly want to go into Lylyth, but I spent the first couple of turns squatting in my own deployment zone so it wasn't like it mattered. My Satyxis Raiders tied up his Ravagores, knocking them down and wiping out their spirits. Brendon had a good go at untying himself in the bind I put him in, but accidentally kill boxed himself to keep Lylyth out of engagement, and vaped one of his knocked-down Ravagores by accident, trying to shake off the raiders. From there, Skarre decided to make her presence known by tenderly moving up to score and close the game for me. Luke was having some trouble playing into Jason, with a stray shot nabbing Janissa early into the game. In particular, a cheeky feralgheist was doing the rounds, jumping in and out of Troll beasts, and while Luke was up on attrition, he was starting to get low on the clock. In the end Xerxis himself was sent in to do some work, and was subsequently squashed. Over on Greg's table, things weren't shaping out that well; Casey had done a great job of grinding Greg's list down, and won in scenario with seconds to spare after Greg ran out of things to contest with.
I neglected to take many more photos at this point because I am scum.
But we got the wins we needed to win the round, and advanced to face on o the other 3-and-oh teams, Finding Nemo; a team consisting of Mitch Cowan, Nikola Jaksic and Joshua Warne, all sporting one of the Nemos. Their approach to the event and the way things played out for them was both inspiring and hilarious; and also the reason why I've rambled so much about practice and preparation. Here you have three guys playing the same faction with a caster that is hardly considered worthy in competitive circles, and with little-to-no practice; just a quick and rough idea of how to make Nemos 1, 2, and 3 work with particular lists, and with very little practice beforehand. And then you have us, Team Ninja, trying to pick a combination of the most broke-ass casters out there, drawing up little charts detailing match ups, guessing and second guessing what people will bring.
ROUND QUAD: Anyways, we elected to choose the first matchup, and I pushed Nikola's Nemo2 into Luke's Trolls. I had played against his list prior to the event, and he was able to tear my force to shreds with ease. I figured I wanted to make sure we had something to take out his Stormwall, as that was the only colossal in the three lists. I ended up facing Mitch with Nemo1, and got a sharp lesson in getting my shit handed to me again; the opening rounds he was able to drop heaps of my supporting pieces. I was feeling pretty crap about my chances at that point, but switched gears to push hard towards his objective and feat defensively. This created this high-armour lump parked right up on Nemo's doorstep, and it may have won me the game too... if I had the foresight to clear one cheeky Risen that was stopping me from scoring on his flag. From there, Mitch switched things up himself, protecting Nemo and bleeding my army till I had nothing left. In the end he had to race to remove a contesting Cankerworm, but was able to do this and score enough CPs to win. This game was a real nail-biter, and easily my favourite game of the weekend with how huge the swings were in terms of trying to get one up on one another. Love your work Mitch.
Luke finished up Nikola with little trouble, but Josh being the more experienced Cygnar player ground out Greg. We finished the first day with a score of 3-1, feeling rather battered after that last round. Nemo = OP.
ROUND CINQ: Rolling onto Sunday, we paired against a fair group of Wellingtonians hell bent on achieving the fastest assassinations possible; Mike Snook with Mortenebra, Chris Ford with Lylyth2, and someone else with Rahn. Luke was the first to drop, getting assassinated by an Overrun Nightmare on the 2nd round. Blimey. I ground Chris down, with the same tactic I employed above, of Skarre runs away while the rest of her army runs forward. Worked a treat a second time. That meant the round rested on Greg's lofty shoulders; we figured he'd be ok time with a greater number of shots going into the Ret army, and Arcane Vortex serving to protect her from any nasty Rahn surprises. The actual match ended up being a real grind, with the Ret army edging up on attrition. In the closing minutes however, with everyone watching, the Ret player pushed Rahn out into the open to sling spells and clear the zones. Greg sauntered Haley up for an assassination run, banking on two boosted Arcane Bolts to finish Rahn. Casually, he decided to roll the hard 11 needed to smack Rahn with her hand cannon. The following Arcane Bolt also landed and that was game, with a scant few minutes to spare. My anus was puckered to hell I tells you.
It was interesting to see teams members pounce onto both the players of that game to figure out what the heck was going on through their minds in those closing moments.
ROOND 6: We were matched against familiar faces from my lil gaming Shed, Robert Power, Chas Roberts, and Dan Lister, making up Team: Why So Serious? It was meant to be Why So Issyria, but nah lol. Winning the roll off, we elected to pitch Greg into Chas who was running Scaverous, thinking that no matter where the next two match ups went, we'd be able to squeak out another win. Rob was running Issyria and Dan Lylyth2 and upon reflection this was a hard choice for them to make; Rob could potentially go into Runes and Dan go into me, to give themselves a couple of yellow match-ups. It wasn't a choice guaranteed to produce a win, but I feel it would have been the best one to wrangle two wins if Chas was going to go down to pHaley. Instead, Rob elected to face me giving him a safe game. He proceeded to tear my army to shreds, with Halberdiers and two squads of Invictors reaching out and touching me in all the wrong places, and a Hyperion that wouldn't quit producing crit-consumes. There were a couple of tense moments, particularly as I overheard Dan exclaiming about some quad-sixes he rolled on damage, but ultimately Luke closed his game. Greg did as well, sniping Scaverous with Eiryss and assassinating the Cryxian head-librarian. At this point, I threw caution to the wind, feated with Skarre, and sent her into he Hyperion to finish it off for lols. After cutting herself down to 2 boxes to finish off the Colossal, Rob finished her off with an 8 man CRA to her face. RIP Skarre.
Which brings us to our seventh and FINAL ROUND. Revenge match v Finding Nemo. We got stung once, twice shy. How will we possibly manage to beat all 3 Nemos? This is bullshit. Well, we used our team feat at this point to choose the match ups: we again plopped Luke into Nikola (much groaning) to deal to that pesky Stormwall, and I chose to face Josh this time after the butt-whuppin' Mitch gave me. Josh's list was far more friendly to me; Thunderhead and Dynamo with that battle engine swanning around. Very little massed, long ranged infantry clearing. Josh went first in our game, and with the scenario being Destruction I pushed hard at the bottom of two to go up 3 CPs. Josh's response was to try to kill Skarre sitting around ARM24. And he got damned close to it too - after the dust had settled Skarre was left on 1 box, after which Josh conceded. Unraveling my tightened butt for the second time that day I checked on the other two and finally remembered to snag a photo
Greg's looking a little too casual. Mitch pretty much had things well in hand, grinding down Greg's force, and chasing Haley around the board with his Blazers. Things were pretty hairy over on Nikola and Luke's table, where Nikola was going for an assassination on Doomy with various shots and angles and whatnot, but it was pretty much a foregone conclusion; Mulg hit Nemo, and Team Ninja won Rallypoint. Nikola seemed miffed at having to play into Runes twice over the weekend, and to be honest I was being way too wary of his list. Not knowing what the other lists could do, his Stormwall was the focus of my match-up decisions. In discussion with him afterwards, he stated we should have tried to arrange the match-ups by aiming to put me into Josh. This was a green match for me that I didn't recognise, and Luke could comfortably go into any of the other two lists. Just goes to show how much I can get railroaded into a particular way of thinking and completely miss other opportunities and options. We got there in the end though, and I'd like to think it wasn't purely through luck or the strength of our lists/casters.
Its still hilarious to consider the amount of close calls we encountered, and times where we got thoroughly out-played, whilst running arguably some of the strongest warcasters/locks in the game. But my thoughts on this will have to wait. I've been siting on this post for almost two weeks as it is :)
NEMO BABAY!
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