Battle Report: Doubling Down on Vyros2

Since I have the Dice Dojo Warmachine Weekend qualifier coming up this Saturday I've felt the need to practice all of my lists. Recently I've had a fair bit of experience with Ossyan and several variations on Force Wall, but my Vyros2 match ups haven't been played through all that often. So I attempted to rectify that by getting in games against a couple of folks at Pegasus.

My list for both games was the same:

Incissar Vyros of the Dawnguard

• Phoenix

• Griffon x 5

• Aspis x 2

Arcanist x 2

Max Invictors + UA

Eiryss, Angel of Retribution

The list that I'm using for VyHorse is pretty darn cookie cutter, the only real difference between it and the more popular tournament variations being the lack of Imperatus and running two Aspises instead of one. It has a limited amount of game against infantry thanks to the Invictors and the Phoenix, but since it will be dropped most often vs Circle and Legion (with the potential to drop against Cygnar) I feel like the little that I have is plenty enough.

The first game was against my perennial opponent Josh and his damnable Earthbreaker in a game of Outflank. He brought the following list:

Durgen Madhammer

• Earthbreaker

Thor Steinhammer

Reinholdt

Master Gunner Dougal McNaile

Saxon Orrick
EDIT: Gobber Tinker

Max Boomhowler and Co.

Max Kayazy Assassins + Underboss

Cylena Rafael and the Nyss Hunters (Max)

Pretty standard fare for Durgen. Normally I'd lean towards taking Ossyan or even Force Wall against this list, but bad match ups do happen and I can use all of the practice that I can get.

As usual I lost the deployment roll and was forced to go second, choosing the side that had some more spread out forest cover. He deployed his Earthbreaker on the left with the Boomhowlers and his Assassins and Nyss Hunters over on my right flank. I counter deployed by putting Vyros in the center behind my Invictors, the Aspises flanking him, the Phoenix on my right flank (to theoretically flame some fools) and assorted Griffons tossed around. Eiryss, having little to do this game because I somehow keep on forgetting about Arcane Interference, deployed on the right to snipe Primed off a unit.

Round 1:

Durgen gets Redline out on the Earthbreaker and Primed on the Kayazy. His units run up, the trolls with some help from Saxon.

On my turn I allocate all but two of my focus. Looking at the board I feel like he has too much infantry on the right flank for anything to handle it properly, so I feel that my best bet is to go hard on the left flank and either smash the Earthbreaker or break through it and go for his caster. The Invictors run forwards in a "don't blast me bro!" pattern (though, thinking about it now, Vics are pretty tough to crack in defensive line even with boosted blast damage… hrm. Eh, probably still the correct move.) while most of my jacks fade to the left. Vyros wanders over, pops his feat and casts Synergy while toeing into a forest and flanked by the Aspises at max shield guard range. A couple of Griffons aren't able to run this turn and shamble over towards the left flank or are left behind on purpose to contest the right zone.

Round 2:

Durgen upkeeps both of his spells and allocates nothing to the Earthbreaker. His trollkin run to the edge of the left zone to jam me out and Thor tunes up hitting power on the big guy. The Earthbreaker decides to smash my Invictors, killing most of them in the process but not before granting almost all of the jacks in Vyros' control area an advance. The Nyss Hunters continue the prosecution, leaving only three of the Dawnguard alive and causing me to move the rest of my Myrmidons. My advances were targeted towards getting a Griffon or two within charging distance of his colossal or his 'caster while building up the Synergy chain. To help mitigate this the primed Kayazy ran into fill up the gaps.

On my turn I upkept Synergy and allocated one to the Phoenix and three to my farthest forward Griffon. The plan was to build up the synergy chain by beating on the trolls and also murder most of them with Phoenix fire. Once high enough I would be able to clean out the Kayazy blocking the way and charge either the big guy or his caster.

And, wouldn't you know it, it went mostly according to plan. I cleared out almost all of the trolls except for two that were knocked down, getting even Boomhowler himself in the crossfire. However, here's where I also made a couple of mistakes that would cost me. The first was committing my Aspises without checking their positioning to get some additional chain. The second was saying "fuck it" and charging Vyros in to get an additional point of Synergy and get the chain up to +6. I checked my charge lanes and figured that I didn't have the distance to get to Gorten, so I instead charged the Earthbreaker and took out the left side.

Round 3:

And this is where it all ended. Unbeknownst to me knocked models apparently don't contribute to your defense, so Vyros was pretty much a sitting duck. And since I had placed my Aspises poorly I could only tank one of the Earthbreaker's shots and placed one of them close enough to Vyros that the knock down torpedoes could clip him. Double powder rations, a successful repair from the Goblin Tinker and many boosted shots later, Vyros was dead.

A defeat for the brave heroes of the Retribution.

Lesson learned: When facing factions with good shooting, DON'T LEAVE VYROS IN THE WIND.

• He needs to always, always, always have both Aspises covering him and when facing enemies with knock down AOEs or other nasty effects they need to be outside of the splash zone, generally at exactly 2" away.

• I also need to work on leaving focus on him, as the Griffons can still get a fair bit of work done without any at all.
• I also need to only commit Vyros if there's a tangible benefit to doing so and there's little risk to his person.

My second game was against David, who's recently arrived in Madison, and his very well painted blue Circle. Since this is one of the match ups I'm running Vyros2 for in the first place I was very happy to get in the practice.

His list:

Morvahna the Dawnshadow

• Warpwolf Stalker
• Riphorn Satyr
• Gorax
• Druid Wilder

Reeve Hunter

War Wolf x 2

Shifting Stones + UA

Shifting Stones

Max Reeves

Max Skinwalkers + UA

We once again rolled up Outflank and I once again lost the deployment roll. He chose to go second and chose the side with a hill. I deployed with the Invictors in the center with Vyros and flanked by my jacks. He deployed the Reeves across from the hill, the Skinwalkers on my left flank and his other models in the center.

Round 1:

I once again allocated all but two focus and most things ran forwards. I decided to run the Invictors towards my left flank because they had a wider area to run through and would be in less danger for Reeve bolts, but I think this was a mistake as we will later see. Instead the Phoenix ran into the gap along with half of my light jacks while the other half moved to support the Invictors on the left flank. Vyros cast Synergy and charged forwards.

On his turn the Reeves ran onto the hill, the Skinwalkers behind their forest and his beasts positioned themselves inside both sets of Shifting Stones.

Round 2:

My goal this round was simple- break one Stone from each unit to eliminate his teleporting shenanigans. Vyros upkept synergy and allocated two to the lead Griffon on my right flank.

The first part of this plan went exceedingly well. I moved Eiryss into the forest and used her to judge the distance to the non-Stealthed stones, and based on that positioned my Phoenix exactly 10" away from it. This was important because his Riphorn was positioned slightly behind the lead Stone and I didn't want to get charged. The Phoenix fired off its Halo Cannon and boosted damage to smash the stone, killing a War Wolf with the splash damage. To follow this up my Griffon got Concentrated Power from an Arcanist and with Fleet and a charge managed to get in on the stone and smash it to little pieces.

I then made a few mistakes. First was having the Invictors mini feat to kill a single Skinwalker. Not only was this not needed, it made the Skinwalkers faster and also wasted the range boost when it could have been used later. I also clumped them up as I didn't expect any AOEs to come raining down on their heads.

Second, when I activated Vyros I looked at the board and thought that the Circle player wouldn't be able to get much on me. The charging Griffon was going to die, but the only other applicable targets would be my Invictors (which couldn't be charged by the vast majority of the Skinwalkers or any of his beasts) and my Phoenix (which, as previously mentioned, I had measured to be exactly out of charge range). So I didn't feat.

Yeah, bout that. Couple of pointers to remember in the future about this turn:

• Push is a power attack that can get you exactly 1" of extra movement! Which is exactly what his Stalker did to his Riphorn.

• The Stone UA has a knock down attack. Sure it needed an 8 to hit my Phoenix in the forest, but when it rains, it pours. It also knocked down a nearby Aspis.

• Lightning Strike allows his beasts to hit my jacks and then Sprint away. And since I didn't have my feat up I couldn't even position a good counter attack.

• Morvahna is speed 8 and has a light cav movement, meaning that she can move up, cast Death Knell on my bunched up Invictors, murder 8 of them, and then move back out of range.

On the plus side my Griffon survived some how. Yay! Though Eiryss got engaged by a War Wolf. Boo!

Round 3:

Well, last round was painful, but I figured I could still pull this out. I looked at the board and realized that I could probably build towards a scenario victory as I could probably score 3 points this turn. To do so I needed to kill two stones, a Reeve, and remove three Skinwalkers (two in the left zone, one in the right), which seemed eminently doable.

So, Vyros upkept Synergy and used 1 focus to stand the knocked down Aspis up, allocated it another focus and gave another two to one of my Griffons. My brave, wounded, far up the field Griffon started off the chain by hitting a stone. The Aspis (with Concentrated Power) then charged the Stone, smashed it, Beat Back to the Skinwalker and Beat Back it out of the right zone. I then charged in a Griffon to smash the second stone. I unfortunately miscalculated the charge angle and came up a hair's breadth from engaging the Reeve, so it had to content itself with smashing the stone. I attempted to move Eiryss to kill the Reeve but the engaging War Wolf managed to roll an 8 to hit and kill her.

The plan was going off the rails at this point, but I could still clear the left zone and dominate it for 2 points. The Invictors killed one Skinwalker while one of my Griffons on the left flank killed the second. However in doing this I had inadvertantly placed an Arcanist in exactly the position that I needed Vyros to go to dominate… and then instead of killing the fool with a Ride By attack I decided to run to dominate, which meant no feat again.

This turned out, unsurprisingly, to be a poor decision. Morvahna feated to bring back all of the Skinwalkers and the dead War Wolf and threw them all into the left zone while the Riphorn killed one of my Griffons and Sprinted into combat with a second one. On the opposite flank the Stalker got Primaled and ripped the Aspis in half while the Gorax continued to beat on the damaged Griffon. The Skinwalkers got Carnivore cast on them and proceeded to bring Morvahna back to almost full health.

Remaining Rounds:

This one dragged on for a while, but it was pretty much over at this point. I kept on attempting the scenario plan for far too long and definitely lost the attrition war, leading to Vyros, surrounded by wolves but still unbowed and unbroken, losing on scenario.

Lesson learned: Feat early, feat often. The feat is all about setting up an advantageous "alpha" strike, letting the opponent take a few models but allowing you to set up for a game ending counter attack. Ya kinda need to use it to win.

Hopefully these experiences will help me prevail on Saturday, or at least not get beaten quite so badly. Until then, shank a round ear for me!