Game 39: Helynna vs Ossrum (CID)

Game 39 – Vs Mark Ellis – Mercenaries – 07/06/17

CID – 2017 Steamroller Pack used

My list:

Magister Helynna (Forges of War)

-Sylys Wyshnaylrr, The Seeker

-Hyperion

-Hydra

-Chimera

-Manticore

-Manticore

-Manticore

Arcanist Mechanik

Arcanist Mechanik

Arcanist Mechanik

House Shyeel Artificer

House Shyeel Magister

His List:

General Ossrum

-Sylys Wyshnaylrr, The Seeker

-Ghordson Driller

-Ghordson Driller

-Ghordson Driller

-Wroughthammer Rockram

-Grundback Blaster

-Grundback Blaster

-Grundback Blaster

Anastacia di Bray

Gobber Tinker

Gobber Tinker

Ragman

Thor Steinhammer

Max Horgenhold Forge Guard

Horgenhold Artillery Corps

Having twice played against a heavy-spam Helynna list at the weekend I wanted to put my own twist on the list. The weakness I felt of the list is that in wide scenarios that are going to become more prevalent in SR2017 it has nothing to anchor a flank and stop Control Points slipping away. Because of this I wanted a Colossal in the list and ended up picking the Hyperion, partly because with Helios I would only be spending 99 points on Jacks, and partly because adding to an already strong and mobile shooting force could lead to difficulties for my opponents. My first game with the list was against regular opponent Mark, who himself was using a rework of his Ossrum list. Despite him having Anastacia I still won the roll to go first and got moving.

Due to the theme benefit I started with Rhythm of War in play, so Helynna simply fuelled up the Hydra ready for later turns, cast Deceleration in case of errant shots, and ran up the board with her jacks. With Rhythm of War moves the Retribution heavies are in theory able to get to 2 inches from the half way line, but I held back from this to give myself more time for shooting.

Mark runs his forces up with Snipe on Rockram and Fire For Effect on the Artillery. He keeps the Forge Guard out of 15 inches of the Hyperion to avoid Critical Consume and keeps the rest of his forces out of 10 inches of my jacks.

With Mark outside of my melee threat but his jacks far out-threating mine with Ossrum’s feat I spent my turn shooting away and then feating to take the Alpha. Hand of Destruction went on the Forge Guard and after Hyperion and 2 of the Manticores had shot into them the front 6 were dead, with the back 4 well out of threat range. The Hydra and the big Hyperion shot both went into the closest left Driller, taking out it’s right arm, and the last Manticore rolled well to do significant damage to Rockram. In order to stay out of threat ranges I had nothing contesting the right zone, so it was very likely that he would start scoring on his turn.

With my feat up Mark can’t see a good way to get a great amount of work done with his heavies. He repairs his jacks with Thor and the Gobbers and moves the heavies into aggressive positions before jamming with the Blasters and feating. A mispositioning on my part means that the Artillery is able to shoot the Magister off the table (I forgot about Arcing Fire so she wasn’t in Shield Guard range). Mark scores on the right zone to lead 1-0.

A slight misplacement from Mark means that I have an assassination run on Ossrum. The run involves the left Manticore killing the left Blaster, Helynna moving round to cast Hand of Destruction on Ossrum, before pushing him with her gun into charge range of Hyperion. We dice the run out without moving models and everything works out, killing Ossrum.

We back up to play out the attrition game. The left Manticore kills the middle Blaster, a second kills the right Blaster, freeing the right Manticore up to charge the Driller in the right zone, dealing significant damage but not taking out any systems. The Hydra shoots into the Rockram, dealing further damage, and the Hyperion puts it’s firepower into the central Driller, with the Critical Consume triggering and removing the Artillery from play.

Mark looks at his position at the start of the turn. Between his heavies, 2 are almost completely destroyed, one has it’s cortex out and the leftmost is out of his control. With no way to kill my heavies, much less Hyperion, Mark shakes my hand and calls it a day.

VICTORY

Whilst a lot of Mark’s list didn’t really have any targets and so were pretty worthless I thought this was a good start for this list. It can put out a whole lot of mid to high power shooting that really started to take its toll on the Rhulic jacks, so that by the time my feat was gone and they were ready to engage there just wasn’t enough to get work done. I need further testing but at the moment I am really liking this list as a pair to the Kaelyssa Sentinels list.