Battle Report: Force Wall mkII vs Cephalyx

This week I got to face off against the new Cephalyx contract with the second edition of my Force Wall list. I've felt that my previous list was performing pretty well, but wanted to try and see if using a Hyperion would help add some armor cracking and also make the list less reliant on rough terrain slowing down my opponent's forces.

Force Wall, Tier 4

Kaelyssa, Night's Whisper

-Hyperion

-Manticore x 3

Paid Arcanist x 2

Free Arcanist x 4

House Shyeel Artificer

House Shyeel Battle Mages x 2

My opponent dropped the following list of creepy Hellraisers:

Exulon Thexis

-Warden

-Wrecker x 2

Cephalyx Agitator x 3

Pistol Wraith x 2

Machine Wraith

Cephalyx Mind Bender and Drudges

Cephalyx Mind Slaver and Drudges

Cephalyx Overlords

Cephalyx Dominator and Alexia and the Risen

We rolled up the Two Fronts scenario, my opponent choosing to go second. I've never run Force Wall in a two zone scenario so was not exactly sure how to handle it. My initial thought was to go for dominating his zone and leave some token contestors in my zone, but quickly discounted that idea when I realized exactly how many bodies he had brought with him. So instead I decided to still go heavy on the enemy zone but leave my caster and Mages to handle my zone… but for some reason decided to keep one Manticore on my side of the field.

He deployed with most of his forces lined up for his zone with just the Warden, his 'caster and the Overlords across from mine. Apparently the Dominator gives Advanced Deploy to its attached unit, which meant that the Risen would be contesting early. Fun!

Retribution turn 1:

Everything except for Kaelyssa runs, getting me up to mid field. One unit of Battle Mages, Kaelyssa and a Manticore go to my zone while the rest of the army advances towards my opponent's.

Cephalyx turn 1:

I remind Andy about Force Wall's tier 3 bonus and he curses, taking back the focus that he had allocated. The Dominator and its Alexia and Risen move into his zone with the Pistol Wraiths and Machine Wraith hanging out along the back edge.

The only models that he moves towards my zone are the Overlords (which hang out in a woods), Exulon Thexis and the Subduer. Everything else shuffles over towards his zone. Exulon Thexis put up his/her

Retribution turn 2:

The Cephalyx were still hanging back fairly far, so the plan this turn was to take what pot shots I could while getting Kaelyssa into a scoring position. He had too many bodies for me to consider my original plan of scoring on his zone to be reasonable, but I figured it would be good to blast a few fools anyway.

The Battle Mages advanced and failed to get any hits on the Overlords, so the left Manticore put down some covering fire to make their movement options awkward. Kaelyssa entered my zone and took two Phantom Hunter powered shots to take out a single Risen. She then popped her feat to prevent any of those helmet wearing nutjobs from charging the Hyperion. This might have been a mistake as few models were in charge range and most of my opponent's models have Eyeless Sight, but whatevs.

My Arcanists gave the Hyperion three focus, allowing it to advance and fire a boosted Starburst cannon at the Risen. I rolled a critical consume and removed the four models that I hit from play sans Tough checks. Its Thresher cannons then sprayed about missing the Risen but hitting once on the Dominator and boosted the damage. The Dominator used Sacrificial Pawn to send the damage over to Alexia, who took two and burned through the rest of her Risen. My right Battle Mages then activated and killed the Dominator, causing Alexia to lose Fearless and immediately break ranks.

I ended my turn by trying to prevent the Pistol Wraiths from advancing and tagging my jacks on the right side by throwing down some covering fire, but was informed by my opponent that even though it was from a magical gun it didn't count as magical damage. I have since discovered an infernal ruling that refutes this, but at the time I just swore and moved the second covering fire template over a bit to help prevent the unwashed hordes from getting too far up.

Cephalyx turn 2:

Almost losing Alexia was bad news for my opponent, so he took a bit to figure out his plan this turn. Eventually he decided to do All Of The Movement Shenanigans ™ and activated Exulon first after allocating 1 to both of the Wreckers. He/she/it TK'ed the Overlord that was stuck behind my covering fire out of the forest, advanced and used his/her/it's feat to push all non-warcaster models that were in its control area 2" in any direction, shoving my battle mages closer and in perfect spray lines and sticking my jacks into inconvenient positions. To finish things off Exulon cast Deceleration. At the end of activation Exulon was hiding behind the house in the middle of the board camping one focus.

Then the sprays started. My left battle mages were annihilated by the Overlords' sprays while the right battle mages were almost wiped out by the Mind Slaver's drudges channeling sprays. The Artificer also took six points of damage but Kaelyssa escaped harm. The one remaining Battle Mage decided to freak out and failed its command check.

With my infantry annihilated now it was time to focus on the jacks. The Pistol Wraiths activated, one getting the Chain Attack: Death Chill (affected model must sacrifice either its movement or action) on the Hyperion while the second missed its first shot at one of my Manticores. The Machine Wraith was a little out of range to use its possession ability so instead ran into b2b with the lead Manticore.

Everything else in the army ran up and into his zone, the Wreckers leading the pack and setting up threatening positions on my Hyperion. The one exception was the Subduer which stood dutifully behind Thexis, ready to take on any damage that its master might incur.

Retribution turn 3:

Well, that hurt. I seriously underestimated Thexis' feat and now felt like I had to end this game quickly. Fortunately my opponent had left a sliver of Thexis' base hanging out around the house which would allow Kaelyssa to charge him/her/it. I also examined what options I had at range, but Sacrificial Pawn is no joke. So melee assassination it is!

The first thing I needed to do was get an Overlord out of Kae's charge path. Kaelyssa let Phantom Hunter drop. One of my Arcanists gave the left Manticore a focus which it used fire a boosted and aimed shot at the Overlord but failed to kill it. The Artificer then charged it, missing its charge attack but splattering the Overlord with its second attack.

With the lane now open Kaelyssa charged in, swinging Vengeance with a boosted attack roll that put 11 points of damage on Thexis and sucked off the one point of focus on him/her/it. Buy and boost to hit… miss. Buy and boost to hit again, still needing 8s… miss. Buy and boost a final time for an actual hit, then used the focus that I stole from Thexis to boost damage for the assassination.

Victory for the Retribution!

After Thoughts:

I got lucky this game. If Thexis hadn't been open for a charge I don't know if I would have had enough firepower to win the day. The problem is that any of Andy's models would have been at least a threat to my jacks on the right side of the board- Wreckers or Drudges can get up to P+S 19 in this army thanks to Adrenal Flood and the Agitator's Instigate spell.

This was complicated by the fact that Hyperion could only move or attack this turn, restricting it to ranged attacks. The Manticores probably could have taken out one of the Wreckers with melee attacks, but the second Wrecker would have had free reign and Def 12/Arm 19 (thank you, Deceleration) is a tough nut to crack at range.

If I were to do this battle over again I would likely stack all of the jacks onto one side of the field, preferably my opponent's zone, and leave the Battle Mages and Artificer to tank my zone. The reasoning behind this is if I give one unit of Mages Banishing Ward and keep all of the other models out of LoS they are effectively immune to magical sprays and can easily out melee or shoot any of the models on my opponent's side of the board.

Meanwhile on the right side the Manticores could put up a fairly impenetrable wall of covering fire while the Hyperion and Kaelyssa knocked out as much infantry as possible and started softening up the Monstrosities. Kaelyssa's feat would be saved till the third turn as really only the can't charge part of the feat was going to be relevant this game.

In general, though, I need to keep the three Manticores together. They can work with the Hyperion or apart from it but having three covering fires close in together is key for any zone denial to work.

This game also brought up the question of how should this list tackle multiple zone scenarios. Currently I'm leaning towards contesting my zone and going full bore for my opponent's, not only because it's quicker to score my way to victory on the other half of the field but also because it should be easier to contest with fewer models on my half of the board. I also need to include objective destruction as one of my primary goals, probably sacrificing one of my covering fires and/or some Hyperion shots to put boosted hand cannons into it.

Anyway, hopefully with these lessons learned I'll be better prepared for my next outing. I definitely miss the rough terrain templates from my first list but I believe that this list should be pretty effective once I get used to it. And until next time, shank a round ear for me!