My lists can be found Here:
Morghoul
eMakeda
eHexeris
(the actual lists are near the bottom of each of those articles. still easier to link than fill up space with all three lists here)
Round 1
in the first round I got paired up with Eric from the Texas Renegades, who had barely missed winning the Hardcore tournament the day before. He was playing Cryx, and the scenario was outfight, outflank, outlast. I ended up going with my Morghoul list, partly because I wanted a whole unit of swordsmen coming into one of the zones, and partly because I wasn't feeling too good about my chances on this one and didn't want to waste using one of my lists I was looking forward to playing. Probably not the best attitude, but whatever.
he ended up choosing pDenny:
Denegra
* 2 arc nodes
* skarlock thrall
full soul hunters
Darrage Wrathe
full bane thralls + UA
2 pistol wraiths
nyss hunters
(5 more points?)
Reinforcements - full bile thralls and another arc node
I was on the defensive for most of this game, even with the first turn. turn 1 everything moved up. turn 2 I brought in my swordsmen and void spirit and they flooded the right zone. the void spirit missed his attack on a pistol wraith in that zone, which ended up being big. had he hit, he would have probably killed the wraith, making an ash cloud that would prevent the banes from getting to a lot of my stuff in the zone.
on his bottom of turn 2, denergra moved up and feated. I lost one heavy to feat + crippling grasp + banes, and lost almost all of my swordsmen to banes and soulhunters. two of the soul hunters parked in front of denny, along with a bunch of nyss hunters to protect her for a turn. he scored a point on this turn
I killed what I could, but was under the feat turn, which meant not much happened. I killed some banes with swordsmen and my brute, put some stuff in the zone but couldn't run so it was really just some swordsmen and the shaman. the rhinodon got a few movement buffs and moved up, taking out a few nyss and two soul hunters. he was just out of reach range on denny, but MAT 3 would have had trouble doing anything to her anyways.
on his turn he pulled denny back and wrapped her with nyss. banes killed my remaining swordsmen, nyss killed my rhinodon. his reinforcements came on, but I didn't have any infantry over there so they didn't do much. He scored point #2 this turn.
On my turn I ran everything I could into the zone. I had no way of getting to denegra, and my shaman was gone, meaning I couldn't remove crippling grasp from the gladiator to trample to her. I killed most of the banes, but it wasn't enough. on his turn he cleared my zone and won.
Victory Cryx
Denegra is a tough caster to beat. I didn't have many options for most of the game. Denegra was well protected, and the feat meant I had very few options to prevent a point. then I was down 2 points and had no path to Denny. I held out longer than I did last time I fought Eric's pDenegra at Clash for the Cure, where I killboxed on turn 2. the one thing I might have done differently in hindsight was play a different caster. I went into the match with a defeated attitude, and lost. I might have done better if I had used Makeda and gone for the caster kill on turn 3 or 4. it would have been a long shot, but it would have at least been a shot.
round 2
for my next round, the scenario was incursion. eMakeda is very strong on this scenario, so I was basically set in my caster choice before I even saw my opponent. He was playing trolls, and ended up picking eMadrak.
eMadrak
* Bomber
* Axer
* Impaler
* Pyre Troll
Horthol
3 Long riders
min kriel warriors with UA
 |
| end of my 2. swordsmen jam! |
I got the first turn, and moved up the field. with Road to war, my stuff was almost to the flags on turn 1. everything but Makeda ran. on his turn, everything ran except the bomber, who tried for some long shots at my swordsmen. I think he clipped one, but didn't kill it with the blast damage. His fennblades were heading towards my right flank, horthol and the long riders were on the left, beasts and support down the middle. Madrak was in the back surrounded by a sea of kriel warriors. at the end of his turn, the flag on my left got removed.
on my turn 2, Makeda put up road to war, and the swordsmen ran to engage. they tied up the front rank of fennblades and the long riders. the master tormentor ran to base the middle flag to force him to send something up on his turn. the archidon got in position to threaten either flag, the bronzeback hid behind a wall right next to the middle flag. Molik and makeda sat on the hill just to my side of the middle flag, and everything else moved up a bit. I would be out of range of any charges, but had plenty of stuff that could go into either zone next turn.
on his turn 2, the fennblades and long riders killed most fo my swordsmen, but weren't able to advance very far. his pyre troll killed the swordsmen near the middle flag, leaving only one swordsman alive. the bomber shot twice at Makeda with Far Strike on him. one hit, and got transferred to the gladiator (9 damage or so), the other one scattered to the master tormentor. I used my last fury point to use stay death on her. he had played his beasts too far back and din't run them up to contest the flag that had the tormentor. when she survived the bomb blast, he had to send somethign in to contest but was almost out of activations. he ended up running Horthol over to contest. At the end of his turn, he had fennblades touching the right flag, but a couple of them had been tied up more than 4" away from the flag, so no points were scored.
On my turn 3, I looked at the board and saw that there wasn't too much that I needed to clear for 2 points this turn. on the middle flag, he only had Horthol in contesting range, and on the right he had 7 fennblades and a fell caller. I often use makedas feat for my first scoring turn to get in and make sure I clear zones, but this time I decided I could save it. I started on the easier side, with the bronzeback moving up and smashing Horthol. I had beat back up on him to make sure he could get in another attack after dismoutning horthol. he dismounted horthol with his second swing, then used smash and grab to hit him again. horthol made his tough roll, but failed the one for the initial tusk attack.
next I started working on the right objective. makeda put up road to war and moved to where her contorl range would cover the flag and put Sprint on the archidon. the archidon got enraged and killed the fell caller and one fennblade, then pulled back. next the master tormentor charged across and caught 4 in her thresher, killing 3 and toughing one. she ran away, and based the right flag. then Molik moved in, killing all but one of the remaining fennblades in range to contest. He put up Fate Walker with his last 2 fury. finally, the shaman moved up and shot the last fennblade, clearing the zone. the soulward (full of souls at this point) based the center flag. 2 points for me!
on his turn 3, he quickly realized he needed to jam the zones. the remaining fennblades moved in on the right, killing the master tormentor and crowding the zone. on the other side, the long riders (with blood fury) charged the bronzeback, but rolled poorly, leaving him with about half his boxes left. with nothing else able to charge the bronzeback, he ended up using his feat to try to kill it. still no luck, as the bronzeback was left with 4 boxes after the feat. the axer and pyre troll both moved up to contest the flag, and the pyre tried to kill the soulward. Makeda ended up needing to use stay death on her when the pyre got a direct hit.
Very little of mine died during his turn, so now all I had to do was clear one zone for the win. the right flag had less enemies near it, but I had less to send after it. I thought it out, and realized that if he made 2 out of his 8 tough rolls, I wouldn't be able to take that flag this turn. so I turned to the other flag. the feat went up, and I started working on the flag. Molik charged the pyre troll (across a wall) and killed him with 2 attacks, then killed the whelp that spawned and the impaler with bought attacks. the bronzeback got beatback and smashed through the 3 long riders and the axer. the soulward shot the whelp that popped out to contest. the flag was clear and I ended my turn and the game
Victory Skorne
Makeda is a tough opponent for a scenario like this. you have to try to contest the zone, but she can put out so much damage on feat turn that it is hard to have enough in there to prevent her from scoring. Stay Death was also great this game, keeping my scoring models alive. My opponent did have his share of bad luck, not being able to kill a bronzeback on feat turn. not having the big titan would have made it impossible to get that flag, and I would have had to try a long shot at taking the other one.
Round 3
the next round was another flank scenario, where you had to try to take the zone away from your deployment zone. I was facing another troll player, and decided to go with Morghoul even though I was kind of tired of using him at this point. he just does better against trolls than either of my other lists.
opponent picked eDoomshaper:
Doomie
* EBDT
* Mulg
* Pyre Troll
* Axer
krielstone
Champion hero
max champs with skaldi
his reinforcements was a full unti of fennblades with ua
 |
| Pretty much all I had left at the end of the game |
I unfortunately didn't take many notes on this one, so the report will be quick. My opponent almost gave up a point early because he was confused about the scenario, and was trying to contest the one he was supposed to take, and almost didn't put anything in the other zone where my reinforcements were coming in. as it was, he ended up putting the Earthborn in the zone, which was going to be very hard for me to clear with swordsmen.
Morghoul had a rough game this time. his control area isn't big enough to focus on two zones that are that far apart, and I was being overrun on the left with fennblades and champions. so I had to focus everything on the left just to avoid being swept up by all those trolls. the right side had him kill off all my swordsmen, but then he was stuck sitting in that zone. I had a void spirit just sitting dead center in the zone with nothing over there to hurt it, so if he left I would score. that effectively took the EBDT out of the fight.
the other side went poorly for me. he made a ton of tough rolls, threshers from my tormentor and rhinodon together only killed 3 or 4 models. Skaldi made 5 tough rolls in a row. he ended up killing most of my models by the end of the game, but took a long time to do it. on his last turn, Mulg charged morghoul, but couldn't quite finish him off with 2 transfers. to get to morghoul he had charged the brute, taking 2 free strikes from paingivers who loaded him up with fury. then he had to goad after killing the brute, leaving him with 2 fury left. he bought 2 attacks, one got transferred to the cannoneer taking half of his health, the other one rolling real low but still doing a chunk of damage. his free attack missed, even with wild aggression up. At this point, he only had 30 second left on deathclock, so morghoul ran like a girl and put admonition up. my opponent then deathclocked himself.
Victory Skorne
I definitely did not deserve this win. I had lost most of my models, and he still had 2 heavies and doomshaper was in no danger at all. he had spent a ton of time on his early turns trying to decide what to do in a long shot charge on my bronzeback. at the end of the game, I had about 10 minutes left and he ran out. if he had used his clock better, I would have had no way of winning this one
Round 4
Round 4 was probably my favorite round of the entire weekend. Unfortunately, I didn't end up taking pictures! by this point in the weekend, I was starting to get worn out, and was forgetting to take pictures... next round I would forget a whole lot more, but this round it actually made the game very chill.
I honestly don't even remember what the scenario was. it was one of the ones with zones in the middle that ended up not mattering since neither of us tried for points during the game. My opponent was playing a strange Karchev list. I had briefly looked at his lists and saw irusk, sorcha and karchev without looking too closely. I picked eHexeris since I consider him our best answer to Khador in general, though he wouldn't be great against Karchev bricks. He pulled out Karchev and I got worried. but then he started pulling out... kayazy? with Karchev? I looked at his list again:
Karchev
* Beast 09
battle mechanics
pEiryss
Fenris
Great Bears
max Kayazy + Underboss
Kayazy eliminators
Koldun Lord
Aiyana And Holt + Valachev
Man-o-war Drakhun
Manhunter
Huh. Never seen anything like it. Not just as a Karchev list, but for Khador in general. It was a strange mix of models, but it looked intimidating across the table. He set up with Karchev and beast 09 a little to my left of center, with mechanics behind them. Eiryss and the kayazy were to my far left. Fenris, the koldun Lord, the eliminators and the great bears spread right. Ayanna and Holt were in front of Karchev with the Drakhun.
I had my Cannoneer, Krea, and agonizer across from the kayazy, followed by the Bronzeback, Hexeris, the Shaman, the Gladiator, and Marketh, followed by the void spirit to the far right. swordsmen formed a giant screen in front of it all.
Turn 1 everything moved up for Kahdor. I moved the void spirit into a forest, put ashen veil on the swordsmen, and everything else moved up. the cannoneer took a shot at Valachev, hitting him and both Ayanna and holt in the blast. all three died.
on his turn 2, some stuff charged in. Fenris made short work of the void spirit. the kayazy eliminators killed off 3 or 4 swordsmen, the manhunter missed due to ashen veil. the Drakhun charged something, probably another swordsman and killed it. the Koldun Lord sprayed across the swordsmen, soulward and agonizer, but was within 2" of a guy with ashen veil and missed all his shots. everything else positioned.
On my turn, I got ot try out a combo I have been planning for months, and finally got to see realized. the Krea moved up to the incoming Kayazy and sat within 2" of a few of them without getting engaged. he popped animus, dropping their defense to 12. then he shot one with his paralysis shot, boosting the hit and getting it. the bronzeback moved up, and Hexeris arced a black spot onto the now-def-5 kayazy. then he shot an ashes to ashes, killing that kayazy and 3 more. the cannoneer took out one more with a scatter, then took his free shot at Beast 09, barely scratching its paint.
Elsewhere, the soulward aimed and shot the Drakhun, killing him in one shot! the Gladiator charged Fenris, dismounting him but had no way of getting to the dismounted guy. the swordsmen failed to kill anything, then got in the way with their ashen veil all over some important models. Marketh boosted a hellfire into one of the eliminators, killing it. the remaining one failed a cmd check.
On his turn 3, he tried to take out the Bronzeback and the Krea. the remaining Kayazy all charged the krea to try to prevent that from happening again this turn. they got him down to 2 boxes. the great bears charged the bronzeback, knocking him down to about 7 boxes. fenris ran to engage several support models, the manhunter killed a guy, and the eliminator rallied.
On my turn, I upkept black spot and dropped ashen veil. then I killed a ton of stuff. My Cannoneer shot my krea in the back, hitting and killing him, but also killing all 5 kayazy around him. the second shot killed a couple of mechanics. the bronzeback beatback his way through the last kayazy and all 3 great bears. the swordsmen killed 2 or 3 more mechanics and the last eliminator. somebody killed Fenris. with all of those kills, the Bronzeback healed back to over half health.
On turn 4, he was running low on models. he had to bring in Karchev to finish off the bronzeback (which he did, camping 1 after the fact). Beast 09 couldn't get any focus, but still killed a number of models with his ice axe thresher, including my Shaman. his remaining models all crowded the scenario zone.
On my turn, I sent everything to try to kill Karchev. first up was my soulward. Karchev is still a living model even in his big suit. the Soulward rolled a huge damage roll, knocking off 12 boxes. The gladiator tried to slam Beast09 into Karchev, who was about 5" away. even with the +2 on distance, I didn't roll high enough. I enraged the cannoneer and he charged Karchev. He barely hit with his mace, but that was enough to knock out movement on Karchev. his other attacks rolled fairly low, but knocked Karchev down to about 8 boxes. eHexeris moved in for the kill. He still had all 7 Fury. he charged, hit, and rolled triple 6s, killing Karchev.
Victory Skorne
This was a fun round. it was a very different army, but the dice were on my side. Hexeris showed how well he can do vs high def infantry, and will likely be my main anti-khador caster now. the MVP of the match was the soulward, one-shotting a drakhun and doing a huge chunk of damage to Karchev.
Round 5
going in to the last round, I was exhausted. I ended up playing a very sloppy game. it was still fun, but I wasn't happy with how I did. I went into it wanting to play Makeda (knowing that this would be the last round, as they had to cut to the final 2 to get the evening tournament started). I drew another Skorne player who had eMakeda and Zaal left. I really didn't want a Makeda mirror match (his was VERY similar to mine), so I went with Hexy. He picked Zaal, which was actually a pretty good matchup for me. We played another flank scenario, with square zones to capture. He had:
Zaal
* Gladiator
* Bronzeback
* Krea
Marketh
3 Ancestral Guardians
Hakaar
Soulward
min Nihilators
max swordsmen + UA
min paingivers
Reinforcements were an Archidon and Totem Hunter
I didn't take pictures of this round, and my notes are very sparse. I'll recount what I can though.
he had first turn and ran everything up. inviolable resolve went on the swordsmen. I moved everything up, sending the void spirit up the flank towards his nihilators, everything else up centrally, swordsmen up front. there was a big forest on my left flank that slowed my stuff down a lot.
his reinforcements came on, both ran towards me flank, where I had Marketh, a gladiator, and the void spirit. everything else moved up, not in range to do much yet.
My reinforcements came on and ran in as well, but had no targets. I got black spot on his swordsmen, and got them down to 5 with my own swordsmen. also killed one nihilator and got some damage on his gladiator. the void spirit ran up behind his nihilators.
on his turn, Marketh tried to kill my void spirit, but left him with 2 boxes. he killed a lot of my sowrdsmen, but ashen veil kept him from doing as much as he wanted. his archidon did some damage to my gladiator, but didn't cripple anything.
My next turn was pretty aggressive. I killed his last remaining swordsmen, and cycled black spot to the nihilators. the void spirit killed one, exploding him and toughing one more. My gladiator did a ton of damage to his archidon but didn't kill it. my flank force just moved up, with no targets still. my krea moved up and shot his bronzeback, keeping it from charging for a round. my bronzeback then charged, killing his Gladiator and Hakaar. the Kovass popped out with 3 souls on it. Hexeris went next, using hellfire to kill the Kovass. he feated, stealing 7 out of 9 souls from his remaining AGs. he then shot one with a hellfire, not quite killing it. Also killed 2 nihilators with ashes to ashes and put ashen veil on Hexeris.
On his turn, we apparently forgot that the Archidon had two crippled aspects, and was in the Agonizer aura. the archidon killed my gladiator, which shouldn't have been possible (though if we had thought about it he probably would have just healed with Zaal first. still I should have thought about it). his bronzeback walked up to my bronzeback and killed him. Zaal hid behind a wall of paingivers and the krea. the nihilators killed the void spirit and started coming towards Hexeris. Totem hunter killed the agonizer.
On my turn, the krea shot the bronzeback again. my Archidon finally got to charge. he got enraged and rolled hot on damage, killing the bronzeback in one activation. I killed another AG popping a Kovass. almost killed the kovass with the shaman but left him with 1 box.
At this point, I want to point out where I made my big mistakes for the game. not only did I forget about my agonizer aura (possibly saving my gladiator and that flank), but I forgot all about Vampiric Harvest. In killing 5 nihilators, 12 swordsmen, some paingivers and 2 beasts, I only healed twice. and the biggest mistake I made in the game was being a nice guy. At one point in the game, he had passed the turn to me but somehow forgot to push the button on the chess clock. halfway through my turn, I noticed that it was still running his time. at this point, his side read 24 minutes and mine was a little over 30. Like I said we were all tired. I figured with the amount of damage that had been done already, there wasn't much chance of going to deathclock. but it would be very hard on him with 2 whole turns coming out of his clock instead of 1. So, to let him keep playing (I was enjoying the game) I told him we could just switch clocks. I would use his remaining time, and he could use mine.
Anyways, back to the game. at this point, we're both running low on time, though I'm a little lower than him (thanks to my idiot idea of switching time...) He played his turn defensively, pulling zaal back behind a screen and jamming with AGs. I only had a minute left, so I had to try for a long assassination. I failed to kill one of his paingivers in the way with one of mine (would have opened a hellfire lane). my krea then walked to the side for a chance to drop his Def, but took a free strike. he lost his Mind aspect, which made it impossible to get Zaal. then the Archidon charged him, taking a free strike from a krea. which exactly crippled his Body... I did a few points of damage, but not near enough. Hexeris dropped an ashes to ashes on one of the screening models, and hit Zaal. boosted damage but it wasn't enough.
His turn, and he tried to kill Hexeris. he left me on about 5 or 6 boxes, though. and my time ran out. His clock only had 1:30 left on it. If I hadn't offered to switch time with him, I would have easily won on time... but of course at this point, he wasn't going to offer to give me time for another turn from his clock to try for a kill or anything. Oh well, it is what it is.
Victory Skorne (the other Skorne...)
lessons learned: don't try to be too nice to your opponent. and don't forget your special rules! otherwise I feel like I had this game in the bag. I was doing very well against his army, and stealing all his souls after his infantry were already dead was huge. but in the end I lost on time.
And that brought us to the end of the Masters tournament. I ended up scoring higher than any of the other austin folks, but I was still only in the middle of the pack. I had met my goal of winning half my rounds, so I was happy. I was slightly less happy when I saw the rankings the other day and saw that if I had won my last round I would have been 7th overall... ah well.
Sorry for the lack of pics at the end. it's hard to remember that during a long weekend.
Still have one more event to go. I'll try to have the Team event written up this weekend.
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