Game 13: Helynna vs Twins

Game 13 – Vs Paul North – Legion of Everblight – 23/04/17

My list:

Helynna (Forges of War)

-Sylys

-Helios

-Helios

-Hyperion

Arcanist

Arcanist

Artificer

His List:

Saeryn & Rhyas, Talons of Everblight

-Blightbringer

-Seraph

-Nephilim Protector

-Naga Nightlurker

Annyssa Ryvaal

Blighted Nyss Shepherd

Blighted Nyss Shepherd

Spell Martyr

Max Blighted Nyss Raptors

Game 2 of the steamroller saw me paired against Paul North, England WTC captain, using Legion. The tournament was a 2 or 3 list event so he had a few options, but as I knew that I didn’t know Garryth well enough to play into a top opponent I was always going to use Helynna. Paul dropped the Twins and gave me first turn. I had never played against the twins before due to their being a terrible Cygnar drop, so whilst I knew some of the tricks they had I didn’t know how they worked in practice. If nothing else this would be an excellent learning experience.

I kept my Colossals close together and ran up under Deflection, and he responded by advancing behind his clouds and flanking hard with the Raptors. They were going to be a problem but with Occultation on them there wasn’t a great deal I could do about it.

With nothing in range to do particular damage to I just advanced up and took board position. The Hyperion shot its gun into the Blightbringer and took out its Spirit with a dice spike.

In Paul’s turn the Blightbringer moves up to put down the strength aura, and Rhyas charges into the Hyperion, doing decent damage and being in an extremely threatening position. The Raptors flank so hard that they are out of the next picture, and the Nephilim Protector moves up to provide Rhyas Guard Dog.

Rhyas’ position, along with the inclusion of Killbox in the scenario put me in an extremely difficult position. With as few models as I had I just didn’t know where I could put my caster to be safe. Without a decent plan I decided to just get up on attrition and hope that his assassination would fail. This wasn’t helped by my then forgetting to Feat, but things were looking rough even if I had. The left Helios killed Annyssa and the Spell Martyr, scoring a point on the left flag, whilst the right Helios killed the Blightbringer with help from Hand of Destruction. Hyperion puts his attacks into Rhyas (once the Helios had moved the Guard Dog away) and some damage was transferred onto the Naga.

Rhyas charged over the Hyperion, Saeryn channelled Marked for Death into Helynna, followed by a Razor Wind, and Rhyas’ melee attacks killed her comfortably, and with enough left in the tank that my forgetting to feat was not relevant.

DEFEAT

Not my best performance against a top player but games like this are how we get better. Reversing back up to my last turn we discussed afterwards some of the things that I could have done differently. The right play would probably have been to kill the Blightbringer on the right as I did, moving the Guard Dog away in the process. Hyperion should then have performed a Head Butt or Two Handed Throw Power Attack on Rhyas (needing a 10 to hit so by no means guaranteed) before using the left Helios to move her either out of threat range, or into melee with it and out of 10 inches of beasts to transfer to. This wouldn’t necessarily have won me the game, as the Raptors were still a huge problem, but it would certainly have prolonged the match.

At least I was into the “fun bracket” where I vowed to play Garryth at least a bit