099 Irusk2 LoS vs Lukas1 PM
07.09.2021
I arranged a game against the player who won the BrawlMachine tournament I attended. He wanted to play at another club than the regular venue where I have a lot of my models, so I decided to brush some dust off some old school Khador. With my opponent bringing Lukas I figured Irusk2 would be a decent match-up.
Khador – Irusk2
Theme: Legion of Steel
Supreme Kommandant Irusk – WJ: +27
– Greylord Adjunct – PC: 4
– Marauder – PC: 11
– Victor – PC: 34 (Battlegroup Points Used: 27)
Uhlan Kovnik Markov – PC: 7
Kapitan Sofya Skirova – PC: 0
Iron Fang Kovnik – PC: 4
Great Bears of the Gallowswood – Volkov, Kolsk, & Yarovich: 9
Iron Fang Pikemen – Leader & 9 Grunts: 15
– Iron Fang Pikemen Officer & Standard – Officer & Standard: 0
Iron Fang Pikemen – Leader & 9 Grunts: 15
– Iron Fang Pikemen Officer & Standard – Officer & Standard: 0
Battle Mechaniks – Leader & 3 Grunts: 3
Crucible Guard – Lukas
Theme: Prima Materia
Aurum Legate Lukas di Morray – WJ: +29
– Aurum Ominus Alyce Marc – PC: 0
– Aurum Ominus Alyce Marc (Big Alyce)
– Vindicator – PC: 15 (Battlegroup Points Used: 15)
– Vindicator – PC: 15 (Battlegroup Points Used: 14)
– Liberator – PC: 10
Railless Interceptor – PC: 16
Railless Interceptor – PC: 16
Ascendant Mentalist – PC: 0
Ascendant Mentalist – PC: 0
Death Archon – PC: 8
Death Archon – PC: 8
Crucible Guard Mechanik – PC: 2
Failed Experiments – Leader & 4 Grunts: 14
Deployment
I lose the roll off and opponent chooses first turn. The two sides look pretty much identical, but I choose the side with the wall because I can place Victor there and be protected against 1” reach troops.
Turn 1A
Everything runs max up. Iron Flesh on the Failed Experiments.
Turn 1B
Solid Ground goes up and Fire For Effect up on Victor. I walk Victor up to shoot the mortar shot on the rightmost Railless and the nipple guns at the front failed experiment. This is a big mistake. I have a Rng 20 gun and this is the one turn when the Mentalist is “only” Def 15. This means that I can hit with an 11 on four dice. Alternatively I could stay outside of 19” of the Vindicator and still shoot the Railless. Yes, this is a central scenario, but the whole point of bringing a Victor is to be able to out-range anyone and I don’t have any defensive tech available for him in this list.
Turn 2A
With my relatively limited threat ranges my opponent decides to just stay back and shoot everything he has at the Victor. With the debuff from Disintegration Victor takes a huge amount of damage and is already half-dead. The Railless on the left side deals a couple of points of damage to Malakov. The Mentalists both put up Force Aura.
Turn 2B
I try to be clever this turn and continue to advance Victor up in a way where the wall and objective would block most charge lanes. I go within 12” and continue to shoot everything the Railless, but leave him on 5 boxes. I admittedly had some bad rolls, but this was ultimately a mistake because Lukas and the Vindicator alone are quite likely to kill my Victor next turn even if the Railless goes down.
In another attempt to be clever I place Sofya behind the wall within contesting range of both the flag and the zone, hoping that she can lock down scenario for the turn. This is of course just a stupid thing to do against a TK caster, so she should have been within 2” of the flag.
Score 1-0
Turn 3A
Lukas TKs Sofya out of the zone. The Railless goes up and sprays out two of the Pikemen near the flag, but fails to clear the last remaining dude behind the crates. Victor goes down and the last Vindicator deals 8 damage to my objective. Lucky for my my opponent does not have any available solos to grab the flag. He may have been able to do it with a run from the Mechanic, but from the pictures it looks a bit tight. With a TK it should be doable at least.
Score 1-1
Turn 3B
This is the turn I need to go in. The king of the hill type of scenarios have always been about winning the middle, and if I manage to do a lot of damage in the center there is a chance that I can take over in later turns. My hope is to kill the Liberator, Mentalist and all the Failed Experiments. It starts off pretty bad with me forgetting that Sofya has Rigeous vengence. This is pretty bad because she was TKed and turned around, so she will now be unable to charge.
Markov starts off great and gets a crit warhead knocking down a bunch of the Failed experiments. Irusk gives both the Green IFP and Great bears Battle Lust. I opt to not feat because I don’t need the pathfinder at this point and the Red IFP on the right can still see the Railless over the forest.
Unfortunately the Great bears and IFP completely fluff their attack rolls and I end up only killing three Failed experiments, two of which were due to Malakov being a hero and knocking them down, plus a couple of boxes to the Liberator. The Great bears are Mat 11 with flank and Veteran leader, but still need 8s to hit because of the -6 debuff between the Mentalist, Ashen veil and set defence (/cover for the Liberator). It could have been a -8 if my opponent had put up a couple of clouds in strategic spots.
On the right side I do a bit better and manage to kill the Railless Interceptor with three charging IFP.
I think this was the turn where losing Victor early really cost me a lot. With him available I could have shot out the Mentalist before going in, shifting the dice math significantly by going from 8s to 6s to hit. If the Great Bears then can clear the Liberator my IFP are suddenly also their charge attacks on 6s (MAT 7 + 1 for vet leader – 2 for set defence). If he can survive though another turn of shooting the nipple guns would be valuable against the Death Archons with the additional dice to hit vs flying models.
Score 2-1
Turn 4A
The one thing I actually did well on my previous turn was setting up for counter charge. This meant that my opponent had to mostly stay in place and try to clear the stuff right in front of them. I am further rewarded as I kill the Death archons with two (lucky) charges. But a lot of stuff still dies, for example through a well placed Force Hammer from Lukas. On the right side the Death Archon clears out forward IFP and contests the zone. The Vindicator blasts out the remaining 7 boxes on the objective.
Score 3-2
Turn 4B
Irusk feats and the Marauder walks up through the forest and tries a Combo smite attack on the Death archon. The hope is that the slam reach the Mentalist for a sweet two-for-one. Unfortunately the boosted 7 misses. The bought attack hits and i deal some chip damage (unboosted because I only allocated 1 focus). This means that the IFP need to charge in and a 3 man CMA fortunately does the job.
In the center I try a charge from Sofya on the Mentalist. She needs a 9 to hit so in hindsight it would probably have been better to just try and go directly for the Vindicator instead. I am highly unlikely to clear the zone anytime soon and need to deal damage wherever I can. The IFP received Battle lust and try to deal with the Liberator, but they also miss their attacks.
Score 3-3
Turn 5A
The Railless clears the left zone and the right side Vindicator goes in on my Marauder, but only manages to cripple one arm. In the center I mess up a bit where the Liberator takes out Sofya and which we assume leaves the Vindicator and Failed Experiment un-engaged. However, checking the rule for Inhuman Resolve again it seems like the way it interacts with Solid Ground is that I am still engaging even though I am disabled.
Score 4-3
Turn 5B
The Adjunct runs to contest the left zone. The Marauder walks a bit further into the forest and starts punching the Vindicator in the zone. After three charges from Battle Lusted IFP I leave it on one box. This means that I will not even score my zone to get even points. We have been playing without a chess clock and it is getting late, so we call the game here. I am pretty sure I would lose the game even if I had scored the right zone since my opponent is likely to take over the center the following turn. This means that he will probably be able to score 3 points in his turns 6 and 7 while I probably just score one. Depending on how attrition goes I will start to run out of models to contest with too.
Sadly, a loss for the Mercenaries
:: Evaluation ::
Losing the Victor early probably lost the game for me in combination with not prioritising the scalpel out the Metalists early. I must admit that I hadn’t realised just how hard this Lukas list is able to skew Defence, so my expectations going in on bottom of round 3 was quite unrealistic. I am of course aware that there is a bit of a power level difference between the new hot CG and Legion of Skill, but Irusk2 has some decent counters against this list and I believe I should have been able to pull of a closer game if I had made some better choices in the early turns. My opponent commented after the game that my biggest mistake was not keeping Victor out of range of the Vindicators. In hindsight I agree with this comment.