025 Fiona Flame vs. Cyrenia FM
ConQuest 2020 Masters – Round 4
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Mercenaries
[Theme] Flame in the Darkness
[Fiona 1] Fiona the Black [+27]
– Charger [9]
– Gallant [17]
– Toro [13]
Alexia, Mistress of the Witchfire [7]
Grand Master Gabriel Throne [7]
Hermit of Henge Hold [0(5)]
Morrowan Archon [8]
Morrowan Archon [8]
Ragman [0(4)]
Savio Montero Acosta [0(6)]
Thamarite Archon [8]
Thamarite Archon [8]
Order of Illumination Vigilants (max) [10]
The Devil’s Shadow Mutineers [7]
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Protectorate
[Theme] The Faithful Masses
[Cyrenia 1] High Exemplar Cyrenia [+28]
– Dervish [7]
– Dervish [7]
– Sanctifier [14]
– Hierophant [3]
Avatar of Menoth [18]
Allegiant of the Order of the Fist [3]
Allegiant of the Order of the Fist [3]
Champion of the Order of the Wall [8]
Champion of the Order of the Wall [8]
Menite Archon [8]
Menite Archon [8]
The Covenant of Menoth [4]
Vassal Mechanik [1]
Vassal of Menoth [3]
Vassal of Menoth [3]
Wrack [1]
Choir of Menoth (min) [4]
Initiates of the Wall [0(7)]
Initiates of the Wall [0(7)]
Initiates of the Wall [0(7)]PAGE_BREAK: PageBreak
Turn 1A
I won the roll off and chose to take first turn. Having already lost to Cyrenia before in the tournament and now facing a considerably more optimised list, I am not very optimistic about this game. But it actually turned out to be a very good game, which is a rare occurrence when facing Faithful masses (at least for me).
Top of 1 starts badly for my opponent as I kill both monks with soul fire. It is dicy since it costs my two Vigilants and he has tough. Furthermore one of them was in cover, so I needed a re-rollable 11 to hit. Lucky for me they both went down. I’ve done this trick a couple of times before in practice games and it is normally not something you get to do twice against the same opponent, but I will take any advantage I get in this matchup.
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Turn 1B
Interesting lighting on this picture where it seems like the Avatar is truly radiating some sort of Divine energy. My opponent is running up keeping mostly compact, but fanning out with the Cav models. Both archons are inside the forest. The rock wall is placed in front of the Avatar. I think he also put IR on the avatar. Choir sings no spells, obviously.
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Turn 2A
I notice that there is nothing blocking the archons from being pulled out by a Befuddle. It is probably to try and get advantage out of Rigeous Vengeance, but in this matchup it would be better to pack them in. I go for the Befuddle play and also stick on Curse. There are still some shield guards in range so I can’t shoot the Archon, but the Morrowan is able to charge in with both his attacks. With Stir the blood and Curse he hits at dice damage, plus a pow 12 shield attack. It feels like a pretty safe kill and OddsMachine agrees giving it an 88% chance. Since Vengeance has already been triggered I go ahead and kill HoS with my Charger and Thamarite archon.
I am not super happy with placing the red Thamarite on the flag, but my thinking is that the Champion can reach him anyway, and this way I can mess up his order activation if he wants to avoid the -2 to hit from the Morrowan. It also allows me to place the Charger within contesting range of the flag. I disagree with my assessment here since this menoth army has no problem hitting a def 18 archon. As a minimum I definitely could have paid more attention to his facing, but my opponent ended up charging in my front anyway. Had I stayed back it would have been easier to retaliate since he would be closer to my army and possibly out of a potential Cyrenia feat.
Another mistake I make is exposing the green Thamarite. I get too excited by the Champion standing just outside his shield guards, but realistically I will never do enough damage anyway so it would have been better to just stay in the forest.
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Turn 2B
As mentioned the Archon and the Champion have no problems clearing out the Thamarite and Morrowan on the right hand side. On the left side the Champion does punish my mistake and hits his charge attack. He only needs to roll and 11 to kill so I have to spend my Hermit minifeat here to save the Thamarite.
Score 1-1
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Turn 3A
I Befuddle in the last Menite Archon, but Mar, Morland and Toro fail to kill mostly because of difficulty to hit. With Cyrenia feat the Mutineers are excused since they need 8’s in the back with no rerolls available. The Toro is not living so he “only” needs 7’s, but this is the problem I find with Mat 6 warjacks that they can’t be trusted to kill kill Def 13 targets. I kill the horse off the left side Champion with shooting and Fiona feats.
II suspect the plan was to have the Charger shoot the Champion, but then ended up trying to hit the Menite archon in combat after failing to kill. Including the Charger shots into combat it should be an 82% chance to kill. Without the Charger it would be 65%. Had the Charger shot first the chance only goes to 87%, so I don’t think it was a mistake by me to hold his attacks until after DSM and Toro had gone in.
Score 2-2
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Turn 3B
Luckily it is Fiona’s feat turn against an all melee army, so not much happens in return. His heavies do some damage to Toro and Gallant, and it looks like Mar has been killed. Avatar does not Gays of Menoth this turn. I think my opponent should have kept the Sanctifier out of Gallant’s reach, Gaze’ed and tried to make a fortress with Rockwall and Initiates in front of Avatar.
Score 3-3
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Turn 4A
Gallant removes the Sanctifier with some help from Ragman and Hermit. Morland actually finishes off the Menite archon and the Charger somehow manages to shoot out the Champion by himself. This is quite extraordinary, but it is possible that the Chamption had already taken some damage from before (though my opponent is using damage tracker tokens, so it doesn’t look like it had taken any. Maybe he forgot to deply the de-horsed model?) The Toro and Throne do some chip damage to the Avatar (looks like about ⅓ from my opponent’s iPad). I should probably have killed the book instead.
I forgot that Throne has blessed weapons, but it doesn’t really change anything. The better play would be to not send him in at all. Not sure why I did it to be honest.
Score 4-4
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Turn 4B
Avatar easily kills Toro and Throne. The grey Dervish deals a good chunk of damage to my Gallant with some help from my own Hermit. Some Initiates are sent in to contest my zone.
Score 4-5
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Turn 5A
I go ahead and Master of Ruins here with the Hermit. This is probably a bit too conservative since it mostly debuffs my own stuff, but I am afraid that the Charger and Zira will fail to clear the zone. They do succeed, but they do leave the last dude on 1 box.
Gallant clears the grey Dervish and Alexia runs to score the left flag. The thamarite archon contests his zone and kills a bunch of support models.
Score 6-5
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Turn 5B
It is getting a bit hectic at this stage, but we are pausing between the turns to count up points and for me to take pictures. The remaining Dervish kills the Charger and the book scores the right hand flag (I knew I should have killed that damned thing when I had the chance).
The Avatar finally kills my yellow archon who has been holding the center all game. The Initiate with one box left steps into my zone to contest it. My opponent is not able to get a contesting model into the left flag, and the thamarite archon luckily survives.
Score 7-6
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Turn 6A
It is clear that this game is going to turn 7 and I am starting to run very low on time. My playing is suffering from it for sure. I have a golden opportunity to bring Mar back by shooting the initiate with Zira. If I position correctly I can even put her in a position where she contests the right flag. Instead I completely forget to activate the DSM in my rush to finish the turn and end up not even contesting.
Everything starts with me blocking my charge lane with my Hermit. This means that only two Vigilants can charge the Avatar instead of three. This is why I send one Vigilant into the Initiates, and probably why I forget the DSM. The Vigilants are effective pow 17 and blessed (which I forget), so I have high hopes that they can kill the Avatar. They don’t, of course, mostly due to me messing up the activations.
What I do right this turn is not start to swing Gallant back around to deal with the Avatar. It is far more important to threaten the objective or even contest his zone for a turn.
Score 9-7
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Turn 6B
The Dervish kills Zira, but is unable to side step over to finish off the unit. Avatar kills the remaining Vigilants and the book steps into my zone. Again my opponent is unable to get anything in to contest the left flag.
Score 10-7
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Turn 7A
I only have a few seconds to complete my last turn, so I just run Morland up to contest his flag and run Fiona to safety behind the forest. Alexia still scores her flag and my opponent scores nothing. When I clock over I am down to three seconds left.
This gives me a three point lead, but my opponent is up on army points and still has a couple of minutes left on his clock.
Score 11-8
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Turn 7B
So my opponent needs to find a way to score three points and contest my flag to win by army points. He does score the three points he needs, but unfortunately forgets to run anything in to contest my flag – giving me the point that I needed to win the game.
It was truly an epic game! I almost gave it away by forgetting to contest his flag with Zira on turn 6, but then my opponent does the exact same thing on the last turn of the game securing me the victory.
Score 12-11
Victory for the Mercenaries!