Steam Rollin': 7/5 Tournament Battle Report part II

Welcome back! Last time we left off with the Angry Elves going 1 and 1 with hard fought games against Circle and a double Colossal list. Time to see what we can do with the other two games.

Game 3: vs Minions (Rick), Fire Support

Another game against one of my regular Madison opponents, Rick was running his Piggies instead of his usual Khador. He had Lord Carver BMMD Esq III as his other list but chose to run the following Midas list against me:

Midas, Tier 4

-Boneswarm x 2

-Road Hog x 2

-Destroyed War Hog

Targ

Slaughterhousers x 2

Brigands

Bone Grinders x 2

Razor Back

Looking at the lists I saw a lot of dudes and especially Slaughterhousers, which would eat damaged Griffons for lunch. So, I made the only logical choice and took Ossyan.

I once again won the roll off and decided to go first, allowing my opponent to select the side of the board with a bunch of walls. This was a poor decision due to all of my shooting, but oh well.

Retribution turn 1:

Ze classic Run! turn, but Ossyan actually threw out a bunch of his upkeeps. Shatterstorm went on the Riflemen, Quicken on the Halberdiers and Admonition on himself. He and A+H huddled behind the AFG while the Halberdiers Shield Walled up the board.

Thornfall turn 1:

Again pretty much everything ran. The right Road Hog decided to get a speed boost and Assault my Halberdiers, catching four in its flame, but a combination of Quicken and Shield Wall kept all but one elf alive. The Bone Swarms advanced and put their animus up.

Retribution turn 2:

The plan this turn was to kill the right Road Hog and Boneswarm and try to kill off the Slaughterhousers on my left. I also wanted to use Shatterstorm on the Halberdiers to prevent the beasts from being returned with Midas' feat, and should have had enough speed left from just Desperate Pace to get in the Road Hog's grill and eat it.

I activated my Riflemen first. Four aimed and the rest advanced to draw beads on the left Slaughterhousers, who I was surprised to hear were ARM 16. Thanks to that, the wall that they were hiding behind and some pretty good Tough checks I only managed to kill one and knock down another two. The left Stormfalls added their barrage but failed to do any damage due to poor scatters.

And of course, I began to make mistakes. The AFG activated next, advanced 4" and instead of firing at the Slaughterhousers to prevent them from reaching my Riflemen I fired a Broken Earth shot at the Brigands in the center. I managed to catch four in the blast but only killed one due to Tough.

It was about this time that I realized that Ossyan was slight more than 6" away from getting out of Kill Box, and that I had foolishly placed him behind  a large amount of rough terrain. I tested out a few options to charge my own models and still be able to cycle Shatterstorm onto the Halberdiers, but eventually decided to just run up behind the AFG and just out of Kill Box.

Finally the right flank activated. My Arcanist was frustratingly just out of power booster range for the Banshee, so the Banshee advanced and luckily nailed the Road Hog with its knock down shot. In hind sight this should have been aimed at the Bone Swarm if I had had focus, but whaddya gonna do. The Stormfalls fired Brutals into it taking it down to about half and the Halberdiers got a Run/Charge order. Five smashed into the Road Hog and put it down, four attempted to CMA the Boneswarm but failed to hit, and the other two ran to jam up his lines. All Reformed for some more jammage. I decided not to use my mini feat this turn in the hope that I'd be able to use it as a counterattack, but clearly I was being exceedingly optimistic given the following turn.

Thornfall turn 2:

Rick felt like he'd been hit in the gut after this turn and needed to stabilize. So, through some combination of Brigand and Slaughterhouser activations killed most of the Halberdiers on the right flank. His left Slaughterhousers ran to engage my Riflemen on the left flank after his Razorback Crew fired a boosted damage shot that killed three of their number. His Road Hog got into position to do some damage the following turn. Towards the end of his activation he had Midas advance to the wall on the right flank and put the Bone Swarm's animus on himself and… do something else with three Fury, not sure what, but leaving him on one.

Retribution turn 3:

With my Halberdiers pretty much dead and my Riflemen engaged I felt like my back was against the wall  and that I didn't have enough firepower to clear out all of the infantry that was arrayed against me. Fortunately Carver was positioned right next to a Slaughterhouser along my AFG's line of fire, so the plan this turn was assassination. Ossyan dropped all of his upkeeps and allocated two to the Banshee.

Aiyanna and Holt activated to get out of Ossyan's way, cast Kiss of Lyliss on the right Slaughterhousers and gunned down two Brigands. Ossyan then activated, advanced to within 12" and LoS of Midas, popped his feat and fired a boosted Chronophage Cannon shot at the warlock, needing 12s to hit. I managed to do so and put 8 damage on Midas, but more importantly got the "Cone of Shame" covering the Slaughterhouser, lowering his defense from 16 to 14.

From here it was mostly just rote. The AFG aimed and slammed the Slaughterhouser into Midas knocking him down and Brutal shots from the Stormfalls finished him off. I forgot to use my other Stormfalls to smash his objective and therefore didn't get any control points, but on the plus side apparently the destroyed War Hog counts for army points destroyed if you assassinate Midas!

Victory to the Retribution!

After thoughts:

I got fairly lucky on the assassination run. If my opponent hadn't advanced with Midas I would have been in a bit of a bad place as I didn't really have the resources to keep on fighting the attrition battle. I probably could have removed the Boneswarms on my feat turn plus a swath of infantry, but with Midas' feat they'd be coming back sooner or later to be annoying and I'd probably be Road Hog bait.

I also really, really need to stop choosing the incorrect side/going first, especially if I just played on this table the previous round! Walls would have been great for preventing charges and denying them to my opponent and then I also wouldn't have had to deal with the stupid lake on my side of the board.

On the plus side, this list can assassinate pretty easily if you leave your caster exposed and it did its job perfectly there.

Game 4: vs Mercs (Eddie), Destruction

Last game of the tournament was once against a player from the Chicagoland area who normally plays Legion. At this tourney he was borrowing a friend's Merc army that contained Damiano and Durgen, so I repeated my choice from earlier to play Ossyan. He chose to use the following Durgen list:

Durgen Madhammer

-Ghordson Earthbreaker

Gastonne Cross

Ragman

Gorman "The Wolf" di Wulfe

Master Gunner Dougal McNaile

Thor Steinhammer

Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios

Lady Aiyanna and Master Holt

Cylena Rafael and the Nyss Hunters

Sea Dog shanghai dude guy things

I somehow won the roll again and decided to go first. We predeployed our huge bases across from one another.

This game was over fairly quickly so I'll just do a quick recap. I used the Banshee and the AFG to create a large LoS blocking wall to Ossyan for the entire game and kept him on full camp for most of it as well so my opponent had no opportunity to use Durgen, Eiryss or the Earthbreaker to perform an assassination. My opponent ran his Redlined Earthbreaker straight up the middle on the first turn, so Ossyan's feat plus the Banshee, half of the Stormfalls and Halberdiers worked together to bring it down. My other Stormfalls and the Riflemen managed to clear out almost the entirety of the Nyss Hunters on the left side of the field while the rest of my Halberdiers jammed or killed his pirates on the right flank.

From there it was all down hill for my opponent. Turn three I destroyed my objective, cleared the zone and dominate for 3 control points, then cleared off his few contesting models on turn 4 thanks to the AFG, a fully loaded Banshee and a 10 man Firing Solution-enhanced CRA from the Riflemen on Eiryss to dominate for the win.

Victory for the Retribution!

Tourney Results and After Thoughts:

With my 3-1 result I managed to come in 5th place, which made me pleased as punch. I haven't been playing Retribution for that long but I feel like I'm getting the hang of them and this helps prove it.

Murder of Griffons: Rockin' it since Colossals

Vyros and the Murder of Griffons was pretty amazing at dealing with his intended target and working out how to build up the Synergy chain each turn for the big attack made for a very entertaining mini game. I'm still not sure if I'd drop him against anything except Legion and Circle though- Cygnar might be the other faction that I'd use him for simply because there's way too much armor on the field for them to deal with. I'm curious to see how using the two Aspis' fairs vs having the Sphinx on the field. My guess is that at the very least I'll be more willing to drop Vyros against shootier opponents like Cygnar or the Earthbreaker/Galleon list as two Shield Guards can be tough to chew through.

Stone Cold Killer

Ossyan performed as Ossyan does- smashing everything he comes across to pieces. I feel like he has the tools to handle pretty much any match up, though obviously Legion and Circle are some of his weaker options. I will say that I was relieved that there weren't any Cryx players at this tournament as I still haven't tried that match up yet, though I'm hopefull that Stormfalls and Riflemen will help push it to my favor.

That being said, the one piece of the Ossyan list that I'm still debating is the AFG. It does great work, but I'm never sure if it's doing enough to justify its 10 points. The RAT 9 slam gun has proven invaluable time and time again, but the rapid fire and rough terrain shots have seemed to be a bit underwhelming, particularly when I'm behind on attrition. That being said, one of my new favorite tactics vs shooty opponents is now to use the AFG as an ARM 19 walking wall, as Ossyan's 15/15 stats are a little on the squishy side. Throw in the Banshee if necessary to get even more LoS coverage, albeit with fewer slam angles.

 My next question for these lists is how they will change when moving to a three list format. I suspect that Vyros' list will stay roughly the same, but I might use it as an opportunity to switch out the Riflemen for the Mage Hunter Strike Force depending on who I select to be my third caster. But that's for another time…

Anyway, thanks for reading! And until next time, shank a round ear for me!