Two Games: Cryx vs. Cygnar

Hello again! Time for another battle report (Two, actually!), this time Cryx vs. Cygnar. It has been a while since I have brought my Cryx out, but I'm ready to get back in on some undead action and hopefully win some games! My biggest problem with Cryx has always been getting my whole army wiped off of the table. This time, I decided to try out some lists that I thought would stand a better chance against the average gun line.

I had been giving some thought to ADR, and figured that I would try out a Scaverous list with specialists swapped in to be what I though would have a good chance against Cygnar. The list looked like this:

Lord Exhumator Scaverous (*5pts)
* Deathripper (4pts)
* Deathripper (4pts)
* Skarlock Thrall (2pts)
Bane Riders (Leader and 4 Grunts) (11pts)
Bane Thralls (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
* Bane Thrall Officer & Standard (3pts)
The Withershadow Combine (5pts)
Aiakos, Scourge of Meredius (3pts)
Bane Lord Tartarus (4pts)
Warwitch Siren (2pts)
Wrong Eye & Snapjaw (9pts)

The general idea being thralls + death ward will survive pow 10 shooting (or electrical damage) much more often then usual, the riders can shrug off most of it and Snapjaw can just submerge. Aiakos is there as just a power solo, smacking things that need to be smacked and Scaverous is assisting where he can with telekenisis and his debuffs.

Now, of course, some of that might have actually been true against a normal gun line. But Dave, my Cygnar opponent, was testing out one of his SOO lists, which happened to be Nemo 3.... who eats Cryx for breakfast. Still, I was hoping that the list could pull through against his list which consisted of the following:

Artificier General Nemo (*3pts)
* Stormwall (19pts)
Storm Strider (9pts)
Storm Lances (Leader and 4 Grunts) (11pts)
Major Katherine Laddermore (5pts)
Stormblade Captain (2pts)
Stormsmith Stormcaller (1pts)
Stormsmith Stormcaller (1pts)
Stormsmith Stormcaller (1pts)
Journeyman Warcaster (3pts)
Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator (1pts)

Well then... pow 10 damage rolls are bad, boosted pow 10s are terrible, and I knew that this was probably not going to go well. We rolled for scenario and got recon, the new scenario for 2015. I won the roll off and decided to go first, hoping to get up the board before getting shot to death.

Thanks to a four hour game from last week we have decided to start playing on a clock to speed up our game times. So I set my clock to an hour and started my deployment.

Cryx Deployment:
I deployed everything fairly centrally on the board, getting ready to run up the field. Scaverous went right in the middle, with the bane thralls on his left and the riders on his right. Wrong Eye, Snapjaw and BLT went on the left side, with the withershadow combine and Aiakos on the right. An arcnode went down each flank to get spells where I needed them, and it Dave's turn to deploy.

Cygnar Deployment:

On the Cygnar side, the two huge bases went on the left. Nemo and his support staff went in the middle, the cavalry went to the right, and the storm callers spread throughout the lines for maximum coverage.

Cryx Turn 1:

As per usual, everything ran. The bane thralls got death ward, as I was hoping it would save them from some lighting, and everything else ran as far forward as they could to try and get in a good position for next turn.

Cygnar turn 1:

On the Cygnar side things were a bit more exciting. The storm strider walked forward, shot at my front most bane rider and managed to kill it. The stormwall walked forward and put down covering fire and a storm pod, as the storm wall tends to do. 

Nemo put fail safe on the storm wall, the journeyman put arcane shield on the storm strider, and everything else ran forward.

Cryx Turn 2:

Unfortunately, as things were standing, nothing was in my charge range. This meant that I had to either advance in range of his guns or give up a ton of scenario presence, so I guess it was time to see just how much of a beating the list could take.

The combine upkeeps deathward for free and the bane thralls activate, running forward. I tried to spread them out to lower the amount of casualties, but it is almost impossible to avoid the 4" lightening leaps. Scaverous advanced forward and cast telekenisis onto one of the bane riders to move it forward two inches. It then ran up into the face of the two huge bases, hoping to hold at least one of them up on Dave's turn. Aiakos advanced in the back, camping all of his focus, while on the other flank WE&S both advanced and cast submerge in order to avoid being shot. Everything else advanced cautiously the back, trying to stay out of range of the guns, and that was the end of the turn.

Cygnar Turn 2:

Now, I don't remember exactly what models killed what, but I do remember a lot of things dying. Nemo activated first, moved up and popped his feat. He then shot with his gun and bought two chain lighting spells, frying a bunch of bane thralls (hopping leaps off of non-stealthed things to hit them). The storm wall and the storm strider wiped out the bane riders, Aiakos and the arcnode on that flank. The storm callers moved up and used triangulations to kill more bane thralls.

The cavalry charged in and did a bunch of damage, leaving Wrong eye on 4 boxes, snapjaw with two systems down, and killing BLT.

Cryx Turn 3:

Well, things were looking pretty bleak from the Cryx side of the table, but I still wanted to see what I could do.

Wrong eye activates first, using two fury to heal snapjaw and then taking a swing at the storm lance in front of him, not killing it. Scaverous activates and feats this turn, as there is no reason to hold onto it. He uses telekinisis to bring Wrong eye back behind the wall to keep him protected, and buys a second one on the storm lance that wrong eye attacked. He misses, so he buys another one and hits, moving the model out of the way and rotating it so that my banes won't take free strikes.

Snapjaw activates and clears out the two storm lances in front of him, healing up a few points of damage. The bane thralls activate and charge killing another two storm lances. The WCS move up and use their shots to kill the stormblade captain, and the siren moves up but misses it's attack on the storm caller.

Cygnar Turn 3:

And this turn, everything else in my army gets shot to death. Lots of lighting leaps, the last storm lance killed wrongeye, taking both gators off of the table. The stormwall had to punch a storm pod that was in front of it as it was blocking its path, so it didn't move this turn. 

After the clean up, Scaverous, the war witch siren and a disrupted arcnode was all that was left on the Cryx side of the table.

Cryx Turn 4:

Scaverous charges over and kills the last storm blade. The warwitch sprays down the storm callers killing one, and the arc node tries a bite on Laddermore but misses.

Cygnar Turn 4:

The stormwall charges into my objective, killing it. The storm strider moves forward to make a wall for Nemo. My jack gets disrupted and damaged, and the warwitch siren is killed. With nothing on my side to contest, and no way to kill Nemo, Dave scores 3 points on his turn and 2 on my turn for a scenario win.

Thoughts on the game:

Well, that could have gone better. I have yet to find a Cryx list that I can drop into Nemo and still have a list left after his feat turn, but I'm going to keep looking. I think that I definitely need a Kraken in the list, as something that won't die to lighting leaps and something that can't be disrupted, but other than that I'm not too sure. 

Game 2:

We still had quite a bit of time after this game, since playing on the clock sped us up a lot, so we decided to play again. We used the same scenario, but this game was eSkarre vs. Seige. I wanted to try a jack heavy list to see how that fared against Cygnar, and Dave wanted to see if his Seige list would be able to deal with Cryx. This ended up not being a super long game, so the report will be pretty quick.

The list I played:

Skarre, Queen of the Broken Coast (*6pts)
* Deathripper (4pts)
* Deathjack (12pts)
* Nightmare (10pts)
Bane Thralls (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
* Bane Thrall Officer & Standard (3pts)
Satyxis Raiders (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
* Satyxis Raider Sea Witch (2pts)
The Withershadow Combine (5pts)
Satyxis Raider Captain (2pts)
Warwitch Siren (2pts)

The list that Dave played:

Major Markus 'Siege' Brisbane (*5pts)
* Stormwall (19pts)
* Squire (2pts)
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt (4pts)
Rangers (5pts)
Tempest Blazers (Leader and 4 Grunts) (10pts)
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution (3pts)
Journeyman Warcaster (3pts)
Lieutnant Allison Jakes (3pts)
* Charger (4pts)
Stormsmith Stormcaller (1pts)
Stormsmith Stormcaller (1pts)

Dave won the roll and decided to go first, and I just stayed on the side that I was already on.

Cygnar Deployment:
Siege deployed right in the middle, with the Stormwall on his right, as well as Jakes and her warjack. The rest of the army went on the left side of Siege, with the rangers advance deploying in the center of the table.

Cryx Deployment:

Skarre went in the middle, with her battlegroup on her left, lined up with the stormwall. The banes went to her right, with the Satyxis raiders in front of them, hoping to jam the guns and keep the banes alive. Nightmare puts prey up on Siege.

Cygnar Turn 1:

Everything runs forward, arcane shield goes up on the stormwall from the journeyman and Jakes casts sidekick onto her jack.

Cryx Turn 1:

Again, everything runs forward. Skarre puts death ward onto Nightmare and Admonition onto Deathjack. The raiders move forward, getting ready to jam, and the banes move up behind them.

Cygnar Turn 2:

The rangers move forward to give their +2 to hit bonus out to their army. A few of them shoot and kill one or two raiders. The Stormwall and the charger both shoot at nightmare, putting a ton of damage into him but not killing him (and only crippling one arm, thanks to deathward), and the stormwall also drops a pod into the zone. The blazers and A&H move up and kill the raider captain, the UA and most of the raider unit.

Cryx Turn 2:

Well most of my raiders are dead, but I'm pretty sure I can end the game here. I drop death ward on Nightmare, upkeeping admonition for free. Three focus goes to Nightmare, Deathjack gets his two plus Skarre gives him one more, and she keeps the rest. Skarre activates first, and pops her feat in case my plan doesn't work, putting it on herself, DJ, Nightmare and the arcnode. 

She casts perdition onto the ranger in the front, hitting without boosting (although she had a focus to boost if needed), killing the ranger and letting nightmare make a full advance.

Deathjack moves up and casts perdition as well to kill the stormpod that is in the way. With that done Nightmare makes a full advance (thanks to the speed bonus from prey) getting in range of Siege and with the prey bonus is easily able to kill him.

Thoughts on the game:

Well, this didn't really test either of our lists much. If the rolls had gone a little bit differently, or if I had decided to switch the upkeeps between DJ and Nightmare, Nightmare could have easily died and this would have been a longer game. I still don't know what I can bring to really counter Cygnar, but having some big jacks that could take a hit really helped. 

That's all I've got for now, and there probably won't be another report up for at least two weeks as I am going into exams right now. But I'll try to get another one up when my exams are done.

Riven Bonds League Game 7: Mordikaar vs Issyria

Hello again! It is time for another report. It's been a while, but we're back with another game for the league, and another trial game with Skorne this time against Mat's forces of Retribution. I finally put together the models I needed for a solid 50 point list, in this case a Mordikaar list that I am really excited to try out. The only models from this list that I have used before are the nihilators and the beast handlers (Well and I guess the Swamp Gobbers from when I owned Circle a few years ago) so this was going to be a fun trial!

Void Seer Mordikaar (*5pts)
* Basilisk Drake (4pts)
* Basilisk Krea (4pts)
* Tiberion (11pts)
Cataphract Cetrati (Leader and 5 Grunts) (11pts)
* Tyrant Vorkesh (3pts)
Cataphract Incindiarii (Leader and 5 Grunts) (9pts)
Nihilators (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
Paingiver Beast Handlers (Leader and 3 Grunts) (2pts)
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew (Leader and 1 Grunt) (1pts)
Agonizer (2pts)

I think the list seems very strong against a lot of drops, and I think I am going to have a lot of fun playing it. It is very heavily borrowed from Martin Hornacek, because he is a very strong player that I have a lot of respect for, and I am still very new to Skorne so borrowing lists is very helpful. With that being said, I have Incindiarii in the list which he does not, which I think makes the list a bit more diverse giving it some ranged presence, but I'm sure he has a good reason for not taking them in his main list.

This list struggles against upkeep removal, remove from play and heavy armor. The first two because it messes with Mordikaar's attrition game, and it has issues with heavy armor because nothing in the list hits extremely hard, except for the Cetrati (of which there are only 7, with a small threat range) and Tiberion. While I definitely feel like Tiberion can handle a heavy without a problem, he might have issues with say.... a character heavy and a colossal.... theoretically...

 Issyria, Sibyl of Dawn (*6pts)
* Hyperion (18pts)
* Imperatus (12pts)
Houseguard Halberdiers (Leader and 9 Grunts) (7pts)
* Houseguard Halberdiers Officer & Standard (2pts)
Mage Hunter Strikeforce (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
* Mage Hunter Commander (2pts)
Arcanist (1pts)
Arcanist (1pts)
Dawnguard Destor Thane (4pts)
Houseguard Thane (2pts)
Mage Hunter Assassin (2pts)

Oh look, a character heavy and a colossal! Who saw that coming?

I am always worried when I see Issyria on the other side of the table. I know that she generally dies off after her feat turn, but damn it's a good feat turn, and I usually end up not having an army left after it is done. This is of course speaking from Cryx and Merc experience, so I am hoping Skorne will be able to whether (weather? whatever) the feat better, but we will see how it goes.

We rolled off for scenario and ended up with two fronts. Mat won the initiative roll and chose to go first.

Retribution Deployment:
Hyperion pre-deployed slightly to the right side of the table (Mat's left side), with Imperatus and Issyria going in the middle. The halberdiers went to Imperatus' right, with the thane beside them and an arcanist beside each warjack. The destor thane when to the left of Hyperion, with the MHA deploying in front of him and the strike force deploying in front of the halbs.

Skorne Deployment:

I deployed with my battle group right in the middle. The cetrati went on the right side to try and contest my zone, while the nihilators and incindiarii went to the left side of the table to deal with the halbs that would be coming towards me, as they wouldn't be much help on the other side against the hyperion. The beast handlers went in the back, as support units do, and the agonizer went off to the right side so it could try and deny some focus allocation to the hyperion.

Retribution Turn 1:

As expected in warmachine turn ones, there was a lot of running. Basically everything ran forward except the thane which gave desperate pace to the halbs, the arcanists which each gave a focus to their warjack and Issyria who cast admonition on Imperatus and inviolable resolve onto the hyperion.

Skorne Turn 1:

Again, nothing super exciting, a lot of things ran. I considered taking some shots with my incindiarii but decided that it would probably better if I got them into a stronger position for next turn. The krea but up its animus and charged, the nihilators and cetrati ran. At this point Mat (and some on lookers) was giving me raised eyebrows, since I just moved my whole army into his threat range, but I had a plan! (Sort of). Mordikaar activates, walks forward and casts hollow onto the nihilators and dumped the rest of his fury onto the agonizer. Then he popped his feat, giving everything in my control area (which was everything except the incindiarii on the far left) +3 defense and poltergeist. The support staff ran forward, and I was done. (For the record the two empty bases on the field are a nihilator and a cetrati that fell off of their bases as I was unpacking them).

Retribution Turn 2:

Mat spent some time deciding if he should back up and let my feat drop, or if he should counter feat and try to get some work done. In the end he decided to counter feat, and started his turn by activating Issyria floating over to the left and popping her feat. She then cast crusader's call and gave Impy an ancillary attack, which he used to shoot a nihilator, hitting and killing it. The strike force activates, with a few of them standing still and the rest moving forward to take some shots at the nihilators. The feat helped them hit, and they ended up killing a few of the nihilators.

Next the halberdiers receive desperate pace from the thane, pop their mini feat, and charge my incindiarii. Thanks to the feat and some good rolling, they manage to kill all but one of the models in the unit, and the last one only survived because the halbs couldn't get a line to charge it. Then the halberdiers used reform to back up a bit and contest the zone, while a couple of them moved farther forward to jam my remaining models.

Imperatus and the hyperion both move forward and take some shots, but neither of them did anything game changing (I think the hyperion just put a couple of points of damage on the drake, but I don't remember exactly), although Imperatus did light Tiberion and a nihilator on fire after killing another nihilator. The mage hunter assassin charged one of my cetrati, easily killing it, and the destor thane moved forward and used its gun to kill a nihilator or two.

In total by the end of the turn I had lost 6 nihilators, giving Mordikaar 6 souls, as well as 5 incindiarii and a cetrati. I wasn't expecting to loose as many incindiarii as I did, but one lived which the most important part, and it was time for some payback.

Skorne Turn 2:

Neither of the fires go out, but the nihilator makes his tough roll and Tiberion takes no damage. Mordikaar leeches in his fury, upkeeps hollow and the turn begins. Mordikaar activates first, and uses all 12 of his fury to cast revives. He brings back three of the incindiarii that died, as well as the one cetrati that was killed by the mage hunter. The incindiarii activate, and take some shots. The one in melee takes a swing at the halb in front of him, hitting and killing it, and the rest of them shoot into the blob of halbs in the middle of the table, killing a few of them and lighting a few more on fire. The nihilators activate and shuffle around to make sure they don't have any friendly models in their melee range, and then they kill the three halberdiers in front of them.

The cetrati go next, receiving a shield wall order and shuffling forward. The revived cetrati takes a big hit on the destor, bringing him down to two boxes, and then Vorkesh proceeds to miss his attack. Two of the cetrati in front of the mage hunter try a CMA on her and miss, and another one swings by itself and misses as well (the fourth one couldn't get in melee range).

The drake walks forward, staying out of melee with the destor, and sprays a line down the strike force. He catches two grunts and the UA, boosts to hit on all three, and misses all three attacks. Next the agonizer starts screaming and running around in a way that only an agonizer can, ending up in the middle of the board and hopefully in range to deny focus allocation to both Imperatus and the hyperion. Tiberion and the krea both move forward to get in a better position for next turn, and both use their animi to try and help survive through the next turn. The beast handlers move forward but don't do anything, because I'm right where I need to be for fury, and the gobbers move up and drop a cloud to try and block LoS to Mordikaar.

Retribution Turn 3:

Issyria upkeeps both of her spells, and then we do some measuring to see if he can allocate focus or not. Both warjacks are within the agonizer's bubble, so there is no focus allocation this turn. Mat wants to get rid of the agonizer, so Imperatus activates first, and walks forward to kill the agonizer. He kills it easily, and then sidesteps backwards to get back into the zone, and to get away from Tiberion. With that out of the way an arcanist activates and gives hyperion a point of focus. 

Hyperion activates and charges forward (with a free charge from Mat's fuel cache objective), easily killing three cetrati with it's initials and a purchased attack. The mage hunter swings at a cetrati, but doesn't manage to kill it. The strike force moves forward, use some shots to clear out a few beast handlers, and take a few swings on the drakes, doing some light damage. The thane also takes a swing, hitting the krea but not crippling any systems.

The halbs move forward and kill two of the incindiarri. Finally Issyria activates, ancilliary attacks Imperatus, getting him to kill a nihilator, and then uses her spell that lets her move to fly away and hide.

Sorry for the dark picture here.

Skorne Turn 3:

Mordikaar leeches in his fury and upkeeps hollow again. He moves forward an casts ghost walk on the drake, as well as casting a revive to bring back a cetrati.

The krea activates and shuffles around the thane, staying in it's melee range and also getting in the way of hyperion (and contesting the zone). Using the flank bonus from the drake, the krea is able to easily kill the thane, and takes a swing at hyperion as well but doesn't do any damage. Next the nihilators move up and take some swings, killing a mage hunter or two and clearing a bit of room. The drake backs up (not taking free strikes thanks to ghost walk) and lines up another spray. Boosting to hit again, this one manages to kill the UA and two strike force members. 

Tiberion moves forward and uses his bump animus, while the incindiarii try to kill the halbs engaging them but both wiff their melee attacks. Two of the cetrati CMA the mage hunter assassin, finally killing it, and the other two charge the hyperion, doing a bit of damage to it. Finally, the gobbers move forward an pop a cloud (which happened after the picture below) and the turn moves over to Ret.

Retribution Turn 4:

On the retribution turn both warjacks get loaded with focus and the turn begins. The arcanists move forward and give their jacks concentrated power, and then Hyperion activates and squishes all four cetrati. He missed one attack, so he couldn't swing at the krea at all, but some strike force members charge it in the back, doing some more damage but not managing to kill it.

The other strike force take some swings in melee, and along with the halb standard bearer, try to make a bit of a wall for Imperatus. The other halb members manage to kill a nihilator and an incidiarii, and then Imperatus actiavtes. He walks forward into melee range of Tiberion, with a model behind him to prevent being bumped away, and begins swinging. 

In the end he did a ton of damage to Tiberion, and crippled two aspects, but is unable to kill him. With nothing else to attack Tibbers, Mat ends his turn and it's time for some revenge.

Skorne Turn 4:

At this point, things are looking pretty bleak for the forces of Skorne. Looking at the board, I'm thinking that my best bet at this point is to try and clear the zone on the left and then sprint Mordikaar over there. With that in mind, Mordikaar leaches his fury, drops hollow, and begins the turn.

Since I wanted to be able to run Mordikaar to the zone, I needed to have the beast handler heal Tiberion. Unfortunately this meant no enrage, but I would have to hope for the best. The handler moves up and brings Tiberion back to full functionality, and then Tibbers activates and goes to town on Imperatus. After taking all my attacks and filling up on fury, Imperatus was still alive, but my final hit was a crit. Using this I slammed Imperatus backwards, killing the standard bearer, and knocking down Imperatus. My nihilator moves forward and kills the strike force member in front of my drake, freeing him up. The drake then moves forward and sprays Imperatus, catching him and the thane in the spray. With some boosts I manage to kill both the thane and Impy, but then Imperatus uses his once per game ability to regenerate. Man I hate that ability.

Since I won't be able to clear the zone this turn, I go back into spell casting mode with Mordikaar, casting two revives to bring back some incidiarii. They kill one of the halbs and get ready to take some shots next turn. The krea kills a strike force member, leaving a fury spot open for transfers, and the gobbers back up and pop a cloud. 

Retribution Turn 5:

Nothing Super surprising happens this turn. Hyperion and Imperatus both recieve focus, and begin clean up duty.

Imperatus moves forward and kills Tiberion, while the hyperion moves forward and kills both basilisks. The remaining strike force members move forward and kill the gobbers, and a halberdier kills the last beast handler.

Skorne Turn 5:

On my turn, I'm down to a last ditch play to try and pull out a win. Mordikaar buys two revives, bringing back two more incindiarii, and they move forward as far as they can. One of them kills an arcanist that was in the way of drawing a line to Issyria, and then I begin lobbing AoEs at Issyria. None of them are able to drift the right way, so my turn ends and Imperatus walks up to Mordikaar, easily putting him into the ground.

Victory to Retribution!

Thoughts on the game:

Well, I am happy with the way the list performed. It definitely doesn't have the hitting power to deal with Imperatus and a Hyperion, but it was able to grind it out anyways. Revive is an amazing spell, especially with hollow, and I really enjoy being able to bring models back to whichever side of the battle field needs the support.

I'm looking forward to playing some more games with Mordikaar, and hopefully next time I can pull out the win!

As a side note, this game ended up taking over four hours, due to some distracting conversations going on throughout the game. After this I think we are going to start playing our games on the clock. Not only will in reduce game time, allowing us to get in extra matches, but it will also start preparing us for the death clock we will be seeing at the Southern Ontario Open.