Battle Report: Guardians vs Fist

Got in another game against my perennial opponent Russell in preparation for the Blood, Sweat and Tiers tournament that I signed up for at Adepticon. During our last bout my Vyros2 list got very close to beating Fist on scenario, and I wanted to see if I could get it the rest of the way.

We rolled up Incoming and brought the following lists:

Vyros2, Guardians of the Gate tier 2

• Griffon x 5

• Aspis x 2

Arcanist x 2

Max Dawnguard Sentinels + Soulless Escort

*Fuel Objective

Xerxis, Fist of Halaak tier 2

• Aradus Sentinel (proxied by a Gladiator)

Min Paingiver Beast Handlers

Max Cataphract Cetratii

Min Cataphract Arcurarii x 2

Min Cataphract Incendiarii x 2

*Arcane Wonder Objective

He won the roll and chose to go first, deploying his Cataphracts evenly across the center line. I weighted my deployment to the left side so that I could advance on the further away zone and dominate. He AD'ed the Aradus on my right, I AD'ed my Sentinels heavily on the left side.

Round 1:

 

Russell ran his forces up, like you do. Defender's Ward gets cast on the Cetrati, like you do.

Whenever I face Fist with Vyros the question is always "do I feat turn 1 or turn 2?" Russell has a lot of fire AOEs that get around the feat, but if I save it to turn 2 I lose the alpha strike and positioning opportunities that I need to seize the zone. In the end I decide that my goal this turn is to set up for strikes on turn 2, so feat turn it is.

To this end Vyros allocates out four of this focus, and with Arcanist assistance I get four of my jacks ready to take free charges from the Fuel objective, two ready to push into the enemy zone, with Sentinels running to get into striking position without themselves getting charged or too severely burned. Vyros himself casts Synergy, feats on everything, and positions himself to get into the enemy zone.

Round 2:

For a society that specializes in melee combat, the Skorne sure do have a lot of guns. The Incendiarii open up on my infantry, killing or setting on fire all of the Sentinels except for four plus the soulless escort. While I didn't get a ton of feat moves I did use them to get an Aspis into charge range even with Desperate Ground up, tie up some of the Incendiarii and get some other charges lined up.

On my turn I upkept Synergy and allocated three to one of my left Griffons. Russell had left 7 arcuarii/incendiarii in the left zone, so my goal this turn was to clear it out and dominate it with Vyros while contesting the right zone. The Arcanists Concentrated Power'ed the Griffon with 3 focus and handed out a focus to my charging Aspis.

Thanks to the Fuel objective two of my Griffons started off the Synergy chain by killing an Arcuari. The Sentinels charged in and put some damage on the guys in the zone but failed to kill quite as many as I was hoping. Two more free charges, a walking strike on the left and a Vyros charge (spending a focus to kill a Cataphract) got my chain up to +6 by the time my 3 focus Griffon wandered into the fray and removed the final Cataphracts in the zone. I dominated for 2 with Vyros fairly well shielded by jacks and camping 1.

Round 3:

As I expected this round hurt quite a bit. Russell dropped Defender's Ward, moved it to Xerxis, cast Fury on the Cetrati , feated and combo smited a Griffon down. His Cataphracts smashed into my lines, killing my entire right flank (3 Griffons and an Aspis) and setting my Sentinels on fire. He ended the turn controlling the right zone, taking the score to 2-1, and had two Cetrati and an Arcuari in my zone.

While I had lost a large, large portion of my forces I felt I could still win this on scenario. I upkept Synergy and debated allocation. I didn't need a lot to kill the Arcuari (+2 Synergy and concentrated power would get it done), and a similar situation existed for the Cetrati with three focus. I debated holding back some focus to get some damage in on the objective. This would have been the correct move, but I instead went with two focus on my other Griffon.

The Aspis started things off and got Synergy to +1. The Griffon with two focus murdered the Arcuari and a paingiver easily, while the second Griffon easily mowed through the Cetrati with its first three attacks. Here I made another mistake- instead of just trying to get some damage into Xerxis, I wasted an attack on a paingiver, then put some damage through to the Pillar of Halaak. Finally an Arcanist charged one of the Arcuari in the right zone to contest it. I dominated at the end of the turn with Vyros safely in the rear of the zone, taking the score to 4-1.

Round 4:

I was in a bind and Russell knew it. The remaining Cetrati murdered two of my myrmidons while Xerxis cast Fury on himself and beat my last jack to death. My contesting Arcanist was also murdered, though it took about half of Russell's activations to do so due to poor dice rolls. The score went to 4-2.

On my turn I had no way to clear out the 3 cataphracts and two paingivers in my zone, but fortunately Xerxis was within Vyros' threat range. I dropped Synergy and walked on in to deliver the beat down. Thanks to Fury I only missed once, but that was enough to leave Xerxis on one box after Vyros' 7 attacks. Russell scored again to take it to 4-3, then cleared out my remaining Arcanist to dominate for the win on the following turn.

A tragic loss for the brave heroes of the Retribution.

After thoughts:

Man, every time I play this matchup it gets so close to victory but I just can't pull in that final CP. It's always such a weird thought train in my head- Vyros has the damage dealing ability to break the Fist and can weather the Incediari better than most other Retribution lists can, but the Fist can easily break his jacks right back.

In general I think there are two ways around this:

• I can be more cagey when committing my 'jacks. The only way to win this one is to limit the counterattack as much as possible, so commit heavily to one side and kill as much as I can while limiting the amount of counterattack that can reach them. This is pretty damn difficult to do with Press Forward and reach on most everything, not to mention the Arcuarii drags.

• I can add more, faster infantry to my Vyros2 list. The Sentinels are mincemeat, but something like Infiltrators or Halberdiers might give me the edge I need while either still getting the same scenario presence that AD Sentinels give me. This isn't really an option for this particular tournament, but something to think about in the future.
• I can take more advantage of ranged presence. So long as I can kill the objective I feel that I can win the scenario game, but the question is doing that. Potentially swapping out the Sentinels for Invictors might be the ticket, but points are tight in the list at the moment. I could also swap out an Aspis and two Griffons for Imperatus, who is both very survivable and has a gun.
• Or I can just have a more dude swarmy list take on Skorne in the future. I think this might be the preferred way to go, as my potential Issyria list has a lot of hard hitting Infantry that can smash through his Cataphracts. Plus it will deliver more guns, which is always useful. Plus Blinding Light can help shut down the Incendiari at least until I'm engaged. The list I'm thinking of is below:

Issyria, Dawnbringers tier 4

• Chimera

• Aspis

Houseguard Thane

Arcanist

Max Dawnguard Sentinels

Max Dawnguard Invictors + free UA

Max Houseguard Halberdiers + UA

Anyway, thanks for reading, and until next time shank a round (or desiccated pointy) ear for me!