Game 138: Kaelyssa vs Venethrax

Game 138 – Vs Brian Russell – Cryx – 01/02/18

My list:

Kaelyssa, The Night’s Whisper (Legions of Dawn)

-Helios

Arcanist Mechanik

Arcanist Mechanik

Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios

Dawnguard Sentinel Scyir

Max Dawnguard Sentinels

-Dawnguard Sentinel Officer and Standard Bearer

-Soulless Escort

Max Dawnguard Sentinels

-Dawnguard Sentinel Officer and Standard Bearer

-Soulless Escort

Min Dawnguard Destors

Min Dawnguard Destors

His List:

Lich Lord Venethrax (Black Industries)

-Kraken

-Deathjack

-Slayer

-Slayer

-Leviathan

-Ripjaw

-Ripjaw

-Ripjaw

Soul Trapper

Soul Trapper

Warwitch Siren

Unfortunately with real life getting in my way I have had to drop out of the event in York that I was planning for, so instead I am focussing on 2 February Steamrollers in the short term, and the Welsh Open Masters in the long term. The Welsh is 3 list with ADR, and taking Elara, Helynna and Rahn is a really tempting proposition, but for the time being I’m going to carry on grinding out games with my Kaelyssa/Vyros2 pairing. A couple of practice games on club night first saw me up against Brian, our rapidly learning Cryx player, playing Venethrax in Black Industries. He got the first turn and we got going.

Lamentation isn’t such a big deal against me as Kaelyssa tends to do her “Spellcasting” with her bow, but Brian puts it up anyway before running up his forces. With both our theme lists giving us 2” of extra deployment we start very close, so Brian is correctly careful with Deathjack as any real advance will leave it in range of Helios’ gun and potential doom.

Kaelyssa puts out Blur on Helios and Refuge on herself before running her forces up. Relistically Blur should probably have been on a unit of Sentinels, but habits are hard to break. Destors move hard on each flank and I push up the Soulless escorts into a position where they could easily be clipped by an errant AOE.

Brian attempts to start getting some damage into my forces. Mortality is cast onto the right unit of Sentinels, before the Kraken starts shooting into them, thankfully rolling fairly badly on blast damage and only killing 2 and the Soulless. Most of the other Cryx forces get into position in the zones, with Deathjack behind the central building to hopefully keep him safe.

With no shooting presence and predictable threat ranges I am in a position to get into a strong attrition position and then feat. I want to deal with as much as possible this turn with the priority being Deathjack and the guys in the right zone. Kaelyssa makes DJ and the Slayer Stationary with Phantom Hunter powered guns. The Destors and Vengeance attacks deal with the forward Ripjaw, allowing Sentinels to charge through and destroy the Slayer. On the left Helios advances and uses his gun to push Deathjack around the building into melee range, before destroying it with melee attacks. I score twice to take a 2-0 lead.

With my Feat and Iron Zeal up I don’t expect to lose too much this turn, but end up taking a lot of hurt. A Blood Rain corrodes my 3 Sentinels on the leaft and Venethrax clears out the Soulless blocking in the Kraken before casting Terminal Velocity. The Kraken walks up to the Sentinels and performs a 4” Sweep attack, killing 9 of them. Jacks on the left walk up to Helios and put a decent hole in it, removing just over half the boxes. We both score our zones to move to 3-1.

3 CPs will win me the game which boils down to clearing the left or right zone and destroying the objective. Kaelyssa aims and makes the Slayer Stationary, before the left Destors Assasult and destroy the Ripjaw. Helios destroys the Slayer before 5 Sentinels charge and destroy the objective, allowing me to win 6-1 on scenario.

VICTORY

A very strong matchup for Kaelyssa here as she is able to neuter the vast majority of Venethrax’s tricks. Countercharge is ruined by her feat and having Stationary on demand makes the relatively high jacks’ defence irrelevant. Always good to get reps in though as I’m starting to feel really comfortable with this list. As stated above I’m not sure I had the upkeeps in the right places so need to focus on that going forward.