50 Pt. Tieranny Tournament @ Games N' Stuff

On Sunday I played in the Games N' Stuff 50 Pt. Tieranny tournament. After spending a few hours in the days leading up to the event waffling on lists, I decided that my current faction (Circle Orboros) simply lacked quality tiers that also differentiated themselves from each other. Too many of them relied on a two full units of Druids and a few heavy warbeasts, with the usual assortment of support (e.g. Shifting Stones, Wilder, etc.).

With this lack of diversity, and the realization I might play Circle for the next month for the Journeyman League, I decided to break out one of the other factions for play. Since the driving reason for choosing a different faction was the lack of differentiated tiers to choose from, I decided to pull out my Legion from cold storage. Legion has a number of competitive tier lists with different flavors of play.

After reviewing the tier options, I decided I'd run eLylyth's "Ravens of War" to give me an assassination list not based on spell casting -- a ton of Circle lists rely on spell assassinations to win and the rule today was "not like Circle". For the second list, I wanted to bring a beast driven melee list that could handle a Colossal or two, so I chose pThagrosh. I've been curious to try this list for a while now, and this seemed liked an excellent opportunity to do so. The lists and battle reports are after the break.

Epic Lylyth
Ravagore
Nephilim Bolt Thrower x 2
Striders + UA x 2
Strider Deathstalker x 2
Raptors (5)
Annyssa

Thagrosh the Prophet
Carnivean x 2
Scythean
Harrier
Spawning Vessel (7)
Warmongers (5)
Warspears (5)
Warmonger Chieftain x 2

The tournament ended up having 15 folks participating which meant there was an almost guaranteed fourth round. In the first round, I was fortunate enough to avoid the bye, which went to one of our local Retribution players. Instead I got to play the scenario "Restoration" versus a rough eSorscha tier 4 list run by one of the Khadoran locals, Jeremy. This would be a relatively quick win.

The lead up to the assassination involved placing my Ravagore at the front of the center field, hoping to draw either the Decimator or Conquest into the center field. After the Decimator charged the Ravagore, I had a wide open shot at eSorscha hiding in the back field. A squad of Striders flanked on either side of her,and Annyssa has preyed eSorscha while positioned within advance range to deliver a poison bow shot. Jeremy opened himself to these options early in the game by trying to send his Winterguard through the forest to meet Striders, and sending his War Wagon a long way around the house at the top of the photo, costing him a turn of shooting.

As you can see from the photo of the game's end state, the War Wagon and Conquest are standing in relative isolation, having under delivered on offensive firepower for most of the game. The rest of my army is on the other side of a forest, tying up the Winterguard effectively. To the left of the Moai stands eLylyth, who simply walked around the Ravagore-Decimator battle royale, popped her feat and unloaded a pair of shots into eSorscha. Next to her is a loyal Nephilim Bolt Thrower, who landed a fully boosted POW 14 on eSorscha to end the game.

Onward to Game 2. In this round I was happily matched against someone I had watched play at NoVA Open, but never got a chance to play. I always enjoy facing new opponents who know how to play the game. Even better, Danny was running Legion with a tier 4 Epic Vayl list. The large number of heavy warbeasts would provide an interesting matchup for pThagrosh to cut his teeth on. I figured Draconic Blessing on the blighted Ogres would give me a bit of clearing power against the beasts. It did not, but it turns out it wouldn't matter.

The big issue of pThagrosh's tier list became apparent to me this game. The ogrun rely heavily on line of sight to their Chieftains to improve their MAT. In spite of their impressive damage with Draconic Blessing, needing a 6 to hit on 2d6 can really hinder your game -- let alone if you need 10 or more because you're attacking an Angelius over a wall. The saving grace was that the list was wonderful on attrition, as the passive STR debuff from pThagrosh and plentiful use of Spiny Growth meant my heavies were effectively ARM 22 most of the game.

The photo shows the end state of the game. The Carnivean in the lower left is not really there; it's standing behind the Angelius on the right, as represented by the wood coin. At this point, Epic Vayl has retreated after losing half her beasts and failing to deal any damage to pThagrosh on her feat. Danny's Legionnaires are completely dead, eaten in two turns by berserking Warmongers, and his Spawning Vessel only has one Acolyte remaining. His Scythean and Angelius are nearly dead, which hamstrung his final attempt to go for an assassination run. Danny clocked out trying to cut his beasts free and open a hole to pThagrosh.

Overall, Danny acquitted himself well though in this game, played the terrain and scenario to his advantage, and never hesitated to throw Ravagore shots into my back field to scare up some damage on Thagrosh or the Spawning Vessel. If I had made a slip in positioning in many of the rounds, he'd have likely found a slot for eVayl to slip an Oraculus and boosted Obliterations through. Another game, another day, he might get me. Today, though it was on to Game 3.

Game 3 would turn into a massive slug fest between Xerxis, run by the same Gary I had met at NoVA Open's Hardcore, and pThagrosh. This would also be the most entertaining and amusing game of the day for me. Gary is a very good strategic player whose only weakness is time management. Given a friendly game where time was no issue, I'm sure he'd easily and consistently give me a run for my money. The scenario was largely irrelevant, but the setup is shown in the photo here.

As in our Hardcore match up, Gary had two units of Karax deployed at 20", starting in Shield Wall. I placed my Carniveans together on one flank, and Warspears on the other, hoping to assault away most of the Karax in round 1. Gary advanced the rest of his army up conservatively, keeping his Cetrati and Xerxis behind his wall. I only managed to take out out a few of the Karax from each unit however, as a couple of the Ogrun were just out of range, and I decided to leave one Carnivean back as a counter punch for the other.

Round 2, Gary popped feat and juggled Fury on the Karax, using Marketh to reach one of the units. He sent his reinforcement, a Bronzeback around the forest to line up comfortably for a charge the next turn.  The Warspears made up for their failures in the game versus Danny, and proceeded to kill the remaining Karax with help from their Chief. The photo shows right before I  brought my reinforcing Ravagore up the field to  incinerate one Karax, before the rest were wiped out with an assaulting Carnivean. I moved up my War Mongers to screen Thagrosh, and even managed to put a couple points of damage on a Cetrati under Defender's Ward, Xerxis' feat and Shield Wall. Note the placement of the white Scythean in the photo. It will save me in the following turn and win me the game.

Round 3, and neither I or Gary were close to scoring any scenario points. He had a half wounded Titan on my reinforcement flank, and I had a unit of nearly dead Warspears on his flank. At this point, Gary still had nearly 10 minutes on his clock going into this turn, a down right luxurious time to take a leisurely assassination run against me. Gary however, put too much emphasis on the leisurely, and misjudged the effect a wall can have on a large base trying to move into assassination range.

The photo shows the end state of the game. The Scythean I mentioned earlier didn't leave a wide enough gap for a Titan to fit through, forcing the beasts to try and clear the wall. Further complicating the charge, Thagrosh was in reach of the wall, which meant a large base wouldn't fit directly in between the two. Thus, Gary had to try to move through a narrow corridor to land his base both in melee range of Thagrosh and without colliding with either the Scythean or Hakaar (the wooden coin next to the wall). After burning nearly 8 minutes of time clearing Ogrun to get to this point, Gary loaded up Enrage and Rush on Tiberion, and made the charge declaration on Thagrosh.

Mindful of his time, I threw down a wooden coin, and laid down my tape measure. Tiberion was a 1/4" short of clearing the wall. If Gary were a faster player, he'd have realized his failure to clear the wall on this attempt, banked his 2 minutes remaining, and quickly ended his turn to try again -- he had a strong defensive position that would of required work on my part to crack, and was by no means a certain loss for Xerxis. Instead, after doing the measurements for him, in full sight of our judge (Hi Mike!) and the crowd (this game was running long), Gary decided to remeasure himself. Gary pulled out a plastic base, rejected the 50mm wood token, and insisted on slowly and precisely measuring his own tape. All was for naught though, as his own measurements still left the full rim of a large base well on top of the wall. With all that care and diligence, Gary had also burnt through the rest of his time, costing him the game.

The final game round came down to Chris Dunn, who was running a pair of hard hitting Menite lists. One was a classic eKreoss + Exemplar spam. The other was eSeverius with double Reckoners and filler. I ended up selecting eLylyth, hoping for a quick kill on a squishy caster, while Chris clearly wanted to play attrition as he picked eKreoss.

I would go on to lose this game on scenario, and the problem all began right in deployment, depicted in the photo. I wasn't paying attention to Chris' strategy as he selected his eKreoss list, and prepared to rush my zone with Knights Exemplar. I was suffering from classic target blindness - I wanted to assassinate Chris' caster and end this game quickly, so I let myself ignore the rest of the happenings on the field. I deployed most of my forces hard on one flank opposite his caster, and hoped to punch through his line of infantry quickly.

Instead of a rapid assassination, the game would turn into a heavier attrition game than the Game 2 versus Danny. On turn 1, I barely moved out my deployment zone to throw arrow after arrow into the advancing Exemplars. By the end of turn 2, I marginally moved Lylyth outside the kill box, and my Raptors with Annyssa had taken out the Sunburster in Chris' backfield, shifting Prey to eKreoss. Most of his Knights Exemplar were dead, including two Seneschals, as were a third of his Exemplar. He managed to take my Ravagore from me though, after clearing the way for Fire of Salvation to charge in. In turn 3, I continued to pick at his army, and narrowly avoided losing my first CP to Chris.

Finally, on turn 4, Chris scored his first CP, clearing the first of my Bolt Throwers from the field. I knew I was racing against the scenario now, and had to make my run on eKreoss. Anticipating that eKreoss was my immediate target, Chris had upkept Inviolable Resolve, and kept most of his focus. I unloaded 2 Raptors and Annyssa, eLylyth, the Striders in a full CRA, and the Nephilim Bolt Thrower to no avail. eKreoss was still standing with 6 health remaining. My window quickly closed on finishing eKreoss however, as he ran across the field to hide in my zone. Chris threw Gravus at my Striders and Raptors to prevent them from easily closing, and eLylyth and Annyssa were insufficient to finish the jobs themselves. After clearing my chaff from his zone two turns in a row, Chris scored his 3rd CP and won the game.

Another day, another tournament lost.

This tournament served to reinforce two important lessons to me. The first was asymmetric warfare strategies work as well on the tabletop as they do in the field. If I can remember to hit first, hit hard, and outmanuever my opponents' heavy hitters to avoid damage, I can win games very easily. If I attempt to get into a war of attrition against a heavier target though, I'm doomed to failure.  This is a routine lesson for me when playing Legion, but it was helpful to recall it as I'm playing another guerilla warfighting faction, Circle, for the Journeyman League.

I'm sure Che would have run Legion if he were around today.

The second lesson of this tournament would be "don't use War Room for damage tracking in timed games." In round 2 of Game 1, a Decimator was being softened up by eLylyth's battle group. The first attack from a fully boosted Ravagore shot dealt significant damage, and happened to be the first tracked damage of the game. It was at that time my opponent began fumbling for his tablet trying to mark damage. War Room was being uncooperative however, and eventually, after wasting precious seconds on my own clock, I switched the clock over to Jeremy. He continued to frantically search first for the Decimator in his list, then try to trigger the damage tracking feature. Finally he grew frustrated, and simply defaulted to using a card...it turns out though, that he didn't have his cards ready to track damage, which cost him more time - approximately 4-5 minutes in all to mark one attack.

The Decimator incident was followed up in Game 3 with a similar issue, as I watched Gary take his time marking damage on a Titan Gladiator. Click - pause- click - pause - click, "hey, it makes you accept each damage," he said in his genteel, Southern accent for the first damage roll. Again, click --- click --- click for the next damage roll. Each roll of a Carnivean's mighty maw chomping on the Titan produced a 10-15 second delay in the game, one which I happily slapped over to my opponent's clock after it became clear he had little ability to speed up the damage marking based on how he was using the application.

When playing in NoVA Open two weeks ago, I had to be mindful of taking time out of other people's turns with Tough rolls, and usually had a die handy to roll before the first hit was even delivered against a Trollkin. In several games that weekend, I watched multiple players repeatedly Deathclock themselves in very close games where literally both people were activating all of their models by repeating "activate [x], runs" and slapping the clock to try and force the other person to time out first. If either opponent in those games had wasted minutes marking damage, they would have easily surrendered their wins.

I certainly would have thought it very embaressing to lose a game because an over-hyped application was too slow, especially when players have perfectly legitimate cards available to them. On the flip side, if this War Room timing becomes a problem in the future, I can see a very viable strategy forming with Khador -- take a bunch of models with "Sniper" and deliver single points of damage at a time. The overhead from managing War Room might give you plenty of extra time to plot your next moves, and potentially even give you the win. I'm sure other factions might find other ways to punish War Room players in similar fashion...