098 Damiano1 SoF vs Ghyrrshyld4 DoI
05.09.2021
2d6 BrawlMachine #1 – Game 3
For the last game of the tournament I face a Ret player with a Garryth2 and Goreshade4 pairing. The prospect of facing either ARM 23 Wardens or Garryth2’s feat meant that I would need to drop Damiano since I would need some extra punch and number of bodies. My opponent opts to drop Gorshade4 simply for the reason that he has played Garryth for the two previous rounds. In my eyes a perfectly valid reason and I think it will be a pretty even matchup anyway.
Mercenaries
[Theme] Soldiers of Fortune
[Damiano 1] Captain Damiano [+28]
– Nomad [12]
– Rocinante [16]
Alexia, Mistress of the Witchfire [0(7)]
Sergeant Nicolas Verendrye [4]
Steelhead Arcanist [4]
Steelhead Cannon Crew [6]
Steelhead Halberdiers (max) [11]
Retribution
[Theme] Defenders of Ios
[Goreshade 4] Lord Ghyrrshyld, the Forgiven [+28]
– Chimera [8]
– Siren [8]
– Sphinx [13]
House Ellowuyr Wardens [14]
Arcanist Mechanik [2]
Scythe [0(6)]
Void Archon [8]
Deployment
I lose the roll off and my opponent chooses first turn. I want to avoid getting trapped behind terrain like the previous game and choose the side which is more open. Even though there is a windswept quicksand centrally in the circular zone I believe I should be able to maneuver around it.
Looking at my opponent’s deployment I notice that he has put both Scythe and the Void Archon on my right side, so I decide to keep the Halbs on the far left to avoid them getting completely shot to pieces in the early turns. The Cannon is way too far over on the right side. I have no idea what I was thinking there.
Turn 1A
Wardens run up and Chimera takes an aggressive position in the zone. Schythe and the Void Archon moves over towards my left side to threaten my infantry. Goreshade puts up two clouds to complete the wall off. Dauntless Resolve goes up on the Wardens – obviously.
Turn 1B
My priorities for the turn is to avoid giving my opponent any value plays with Scythe or the Void Archon. I therefore place everything except Damiano and the jacks either in a trench or in a squall, and outside of 16” of both the void and Scythe. I have to say I like some of the new terrain pieces and it is really nice in Brawl that you are able to put everything in meaningful terrain.
Turn 2A
Goreshade feats and puts up some cloud in annoying spots. Scythe and the Void archon hangs back while the Wardens push up. The Sphinx stays outside of my Nomad’s 13” threat taking into account RtW.
Turn 2B
My opriginal plan is to charge in on the rightmost Warden with Rocinante and make a kill shot at the Void Archon. But my opponent is kind enough to point out that Goreshade’s feat triggers immediately after the attack is resolved, which would mean that I would be stationary. I therefore use the cannon to shoot out the Warden and use RtW to get Rocinante into position to make the shot. Again Rocinante rolls hot and gets another archon kill on his resume.
I remove the nearest cloud using the Arcanist and make some speculative Halb charges for inconsequential damage.
Score 0-0
Turn 3A
The Sphinx and a Warden kills off Rocinante. Scythe is able to get rang to the cannon in the squall, but not to the crew members. I decide to not use the Take Up ability and let the Cannon die, leaving the crew alive (assuming that Scythe will hit the next two 5s to finish off the unit). In the end one Halberdier is left alive in the zone, leaving my opponent with scoring only one point. My opponent pointed out the the Siren could easily have made its way over to shoot the last remaining Halb.
Score 0-1
Turn 3B
The Cannon crew run up to contest the flag and central zone. Damiano feats and shoots out one Warden. The Nomad and Halberdiers kill the Chimera and deal some solid damage to the Siren. I run up a Thrall Warrior behind the squall for contesting the flag next turn.
Score 2-1
Turn 4A
The Siren comes in to contest the zone. There is supposed to be a cloud right in front of it, but we skip the AOE ring since there area is currently full of models.
Scythe manages to roll snake eyes to hit, so the Sphinx needs to stay back and clear the flag. My opponent is unable to contest the flag in the square zone.
Score 3-3
Turn 4B
The Nomad clears the Siren and stuff runs up to contest.
Score 5-3
Turn 5A
My opponent makes good use of Ghost Walk to sneak in some Wardens into my flag and zone. Unfortunately for my opponent the two charging Wardens who stayed back managed to miss their charge attacks on the Halberdier contesting the circular zone.
Score 5-4
Turn 5B
I clear the Warden who was contesting my flag, but fail to clear the rectangle zone. Arcanist runs up to contest the opposite flag. It would probably have been possible to clear the zone had I played this turn optimally, but I was a bit low on time and would only need to contest to win the game.
Score 6-4
Victory to the Mercenaries!
::Evaluation::
This game I got to benefit from terrain while my opponent had to deal with getting blocked out from the zones. Attrition wise it was quite even, but with me controlling the left side with more compact scoring elements it was much easier to double score and still contest.
I ended up taking 2nd place in the tournament due to scoring a lot of CP. The 1st and 3rd places were both taken by Crucible Guard players utilizing Rocketmen with Syvestro and the new Mentalist solo. This Def skew turned out to create a lot of problems for their opponents and I was lucky not to run into any of the CG players.
On a more important note I also managed to win the Best Sportsman award with 4 out of 3 possible votes. I suspect that some troll I didn’t play voted on me just to make it look like I voted on myself… 😀