115 Ashlynn1 FitD vs Syvestro1 MO
03.10.2021
Lately I have been worrying a lot about Crucible Guard Rocketmen and how to deal with them in Mercs. I have had a vague idea that Ashlynn1 could spend the feat turn to just go ham and kill the entire unit before they get a chance to jam me up to badly. With the buff to Thamarite Archons I have an excellent opportunity to test out the theory even though the nerfs to the Morrowan Archon and Battle Priests hit this list pretty hard.
Mercenaries
Flame in the Darkness
Ashlynn1
- Gallant
- 2x Charger (Proxy: Gun bunnies)
2x Thamarite Archon
Morrowan Archon
Stonecold Bella (Proxy: Marie from Ashlynn2)
Acosta
Hermit
Gabriel Throne
Precursor Knights + UA + 3x Battle Priest
vs
Crucible Guard
Magnum Opus
Syvestro1
- Alyce
- Vindicator
- Suppressor
2x Railless Interceptor
Rocketmen + UA
Min Failed Experiments
4x Trancers
2x Rocketmen Ace
2x Mentalist
Deployment
I lose the roll off and Crucible Guard takes first turn. I have the choice between quicksand and forest or obstruction and rubble, and decide that the forest is quite good for me since my opponent is almost forced to put the Railless Interceptors over on my right side. Besides, I have some flying models to get over the quicksand.
Turn 1A
I always get surprised when I see how far Syvestro is able to push up if he gets first turn and doesn’t have to worry about getting shot. My opponent was testing out a trick where he deployed the Mentalist in the pocket between the two Railless, but I think he shelved the idea because it caused the trains to have to run around the Mentalist.
Turn 1B
My original plan had been to hide the Precursor Knights behind the forest. But with the trains getting so far up I can now see that they would easily be able to walk deep enough into it to see 3” out and that wouldn’t have ended well if I was bunched up. The lesson is that I can measure this before the game starts so I can make the correct choice of sides and deployment. He starts at 7” then runs 16” and can walk another 8”, so 31” from the far table edge. As a visual reference that’s 1” past my edge of the circular zone. This is also something to think about when setting up tables that we need some defensive terrain in the back field.
For whatever reason I decide to shoot the two Chargers at a Railless, but at dice off 9 this is completely pointless and I am just giving away easy targets for my opponent to shoot. As a minimum I should have made sure that both Chargers had a Battle Priest within 3” so that I could have made sure to trigger Vengeance on the PKs.
Turn 2A
Opponent stays back with the battle engines and jacks, just firing off the long range shots. The Charger on the right cripples his gun arm. The Rocketmen continue their journey forward to contest my flag.
Turn 2B
Ashlynn feats and takes an aggressive position in the trench. I bring the PKs back closer towards Ashlynn and try to spread out as much as I can. I kill a total of 7 Rocketmen plus the Ace who was standing on the enemy flag. This was a decent number and probably around that I should expect, but it was not all 11 and I fear that many of them will come back over the next couple of rounds (though some are RFP’ed).
Score 1-0
Turn 3A
Syvestro Purifies and Revives, but does not feat. The battle engines and jacks are easilty to back off outside of 12” from Ahlynn and get a lot of attrition work done. The circular zone is cleared and a Trancer runs up to claim the flag. The Failed Experiments run up to block some charge lanes to the Railless.
Score 1-3
Turn 3B
The Thamarite arhon on in the center tries to shoot off the Trancer in the zone, but misses all his attacks. I charge in all the PKs to try and kill off the Failed Experiments to clear the lane for some Thralls to charge the rightmost Railless. I also get two PKs in directly on the Railless, but I need to give them Pathfinder instead of +2 STR. They do a poor job at clearing the Failed Experiments so I have to send the Thralls in on the experiments too. They finish the unit. The Morrowan archon and last PK tries to clear the two Rocketmen over by the obstruction, but all miss. Gallant kills one of the Rocketmen who was contesting my flag and Stonecold Bella kills the other one over by my objective.
The leftmost Thamarite Archon moves over to contest the flag. He Death drivers the Ace on the flag and he walks over and dogfights the Mentalist to death. I have never been so happy before in my entire life!
Score 2-3
Turn 4A
While I enjoyed my little victories last turn we both know that the game is practically over I needed to use my feat to get a solid lead either on scenario or attrition and failing to do so means that Syvestro can now feat and kill my entire army.
So that’s what happens and when everything is said and done I am left with a Charger and some of my solos. During this turn I did forget that I had re-cast Quicken on the PKs so there were a handful of attack rolls which should have missed, but truth be told I don’t think it would have mattered. The last Railless did basically nothing because he ran out of targets, which I guess is a pretty good problem to have in this game.
My opponent loses track of how much the Railless have healed. They should probably have been back to full by now, but my opponent just did a quick estimate and put them to 28 since it wouldn’t decide the outcome of the game anyway.
Score 2-6
Turn 4B
To win I need to kill the Railless in the center with Alexia’s Thralls and then shoot Syvestro to death with the Charger. He is in cover and camping two Focus, so it should be near impossible. Clearly the plan fails and my opponent wins on CP.
Sadly, a loss for the Mercenaries
:: Evaluation ::
It is safe to say that this plan failed miserably. Sure I did kill a lot of Rocketmen on my feat turn. I didn’t kill the entire unit so they were still able to contest my flag, but at least they didn’t manage to completely jam me up and stop me from scoring on my own turn. But the biggest issue, which I should have foreseen, was that I got completely shot to pieces by his battle engines, jacks and even the Mentalist sprays. Ashlynn has always been weak to shooting because it is so easy to work around her feat. The Battle Priests and other Shield Guards in Flame in the Darkness help, but Crucible Guard has so many sprays that they can easily get around this. So I need to call this a failed concept and it is back to the drawing board.