104 Thexus1 OT vs Lukas1 PM
17.09.2021
The reader may have asked themself why this blog has been named after Exulon Thexus’ feat, but there are no Thexus games to be seen. The answer is that while he has been my absolute favourite and most played caster over the years the meta recently hasn’t exactly favoured lists with wave after wave of single wound infantry models. The addition of Gaspy4 and the Void archons to Operating Theater makes the prospect of playing a drudge-less Thexus list quite interesting.
Mercenaries
Operating Theater
Exulon Thexus
- 2x Wrecker
- Warden
Asphyxious4
- Blockader
Stygious
Agitator
2x Pistol Wraith
vs
Crucible Guard
Prima Materia
Lukas1
- 2x Liberator
- 2x Vindicator
- Alyce
Failed Experiments
Railless Interceptor
4x Trancer
2x Death Archon
2x Mentalist
Deployment
I win the roll-off. Again. I have been winning a lot of roll-offs lately. This means I get to go first. My opponent takes the best side.
Turn 1A
I run everything up more or less max. There are some theoretical angles with running up the Liberator and TK for example a wrecker, but I am not too concerned because my opponent is never going to trade his arcnode and potentially put the Vindicators in harm’s way.
Thexus allocates all his focus and runs up too. Stygius tops up the Monstrosities so they are all full on focus.
Turn 1B
Opponent runs up cautiously and stays outside of max melee and TK range of my monstrosities and Blockader. Lucas puts up some clouds on the left side to protect the Trancer and Death Archon. A drift from the Vindicators kills two of Gaspy’s Murder bots.
Turn 2A
Remembering how effective Lucas’ Vindicators can be vs. colossals I decide to move the Blockader backwards. My opponent and I discuss a bit back and forward if I should keep out of TK, walk & shoot range (19”) or just TK and aim range (18”). Ultimately converge on that 18” inches is good enough since he is not going to put his Vindicators 7” forward where I charge them easily.
I put the Pistol Wraith in the far corner of the rectangular zone to prevent my opponent from nuking the objective and swoop in to score the zone. I also put a random Murder bot up to contest. The other Pistol Wraith goes up to contest the left side flag and hidden by the forest. I have also put a Wrecker up to contest the flag.
I spend a lot of time setting up in the center using the clouds to hide the Monstrosities from any TK angles. The cloud on the left is far enough back that my opponent cannot run the Liberator up to touch it. He can always give the Liberator Eyeless sight with Alyce, but this will not clear the zone since the Agitator has Stealth. But I fail to measure the distance from the Liberator to the right cloud, so in theory there is a chance for my opponent to cast three TKs to clear the central zone.
Turn 2B
My opponent notes that he has the tools to score any of the six scenario elements this turn, but he does not have the resources to go up to 5-0 for the win. It comes a bit too close to comfort and we figure out that it all comes down to Alyce needing to use Guidance instead of Harmoneous Exaltation. I am not entirely sure how we reach this conclusion because Lukas should at this point have three Juice tokens after feat. This should be enough for four TKs. Maybe Lukas had already paid upkeep for Iron Flesh at that point or we accounted for a boosted TK on the Pistol Wraith.
Other than that my opponent walks up one Failed Experiment and one Death archon to contest the central zone. He also shoots off my objective and Pistol wraith.
Score 0-3
Turn 3A
I think long and hard about how to kill the Death Archon without risking Gaspy4. I want to run up a Murder bot in order to trigger Death Shroud and keep Gaspy base to base with the Blockader for additional boosts. What decides it for me is that I need to keep Gaspy quite far forward anyway if I want to contest my opponent’s flag. Fortunately the Blockader finishes off the Death Archon relatively easily so Gaspy gets to camp 3 focus.
To clear the zone I decide to TK the Warden and charge the remaining Failed Experiment. Thexus needs to toe into the zone to score, which means that I feel that I need to body block with a Wreacker just to avoid getting charged by the failed experiments. In hindsight I could have tried to kill it with a boosted Hex blast needing a 7 on two dice. Had the Hex Blast failed I could have just abandoned the point – no big deal. If it succeded I would have had the Warden body blocking and could have set up the Wrecker behind the forest to retaliate.
Score 3-3
Turn 3B
Opponent TKs out the Wrecker and charges in with the Liberator and Failed experiments to kill it and the Warden, probably assisted by a Disintegration or two. The Railless and two Vindicators shot the Blockader, dealing a healthy chunk of damage. Luckily my opponent is unable to kill the Pistol Wraith with the Mentalist. This means that he doesn’t trigger Battle Wizard to activate Force Aura.
Score 3-4
Turn 4A
I TK Thexus up and feat aggressively. This lets me gather the Failed Experiments before the sprays. I get a bit too cautious on the left and push the Death Archon out of contesting range instead of into the Wrecker’s threat range. I do this because I am worried that the Blockader will be unable to do too much damage with one of its arms out of order. However I roll hot and get to remove all but one failed experiment with the Blockader and one of the Voids. The Void archon even kills the objective. This was of course a bit lucky, but I see that I could have Hex Blasted once and all but guaranteed the same outcome. This way I could have used the Wrecker to kill the Death Archon. As a semi desperate move I try to use the Pistol Wraith to stationary the Archon, but miss one attack – as expected in the front arc.
Another learning point is that I should have put a Murder Bot or two in my rectangular zone for some additional contests.
Looking back at the pictures it seems that I have forgotten to feat-move the Liberator in my opponent’s zone. Had I remembered I could have scored his zone with the Wrecker near my flag to get a good three point lead, which would be quite welcome since I am falling behind on attrition.
Score 6-4
Turn 4B
Lukas TKs the Wrecker closer in and walks up the Death archon. He one-shots my void archon and deals a good amount of damage on the monstrosity. A Disintegration from Lukas one-shots the other void archon and the Trancer kills the Pistol Wraith in the zone. Somehow the Blockader survives another round of shooting, but he is now pretty beat up.
Score 6-6
Turn 5A
I am running out of pieces and I know the Blockader is going down next turn. But he still has cortex and left arm remaining and is lucky enough to remove both the Trancer in my zone and the one on my opponent’s flag. With that I have a chance to grab three points if the Wrecker can clear the Death Archon on the flag and if Gaspy can remove the Liberator and the Failed Experiment in the Central zone. Unfortunately because the Agitator needs to run instead of Instigating the Wrecker misses all but one of his attacks and fails to kill the Archon. This means that Thexus needs to charge in and spends all his focus to finish it off instead of TKing the Liberator. There is still a chance that Gaspy can charge in, kill the Liberator and then flicker over to the Failed Experiment. Unfortunately he spends three focus killing the Liberator which means that he can flicker, but not buy any additional attacks on the Failed X. Close, but no cigar!
Score 8-6
Turn 5B
From this point on my opponent is obviously going to win the game. He has a pretty much guaranteed assassination run, but if he can keep Lukas safe he has a equally guaranteed scenario win too. We will not have time for another game anyway so we keep on playing. The Gaspy unit goes down quite easily and my opponent runs in to score and contest.
Score 8-9
Turn 6A
I go for a silly assassination attempt which fails and my opponent kills me the following turn.
Sadly, a loss for the Mercenaries
:: Evaluation ::
We discussed the list a bit after the game and I realised that I never took advantage of the Warden’s Shield Guard ability. Realising that Wardens are only 10 points my opponent asked me why I don’t run three of them instead of the two Wreckers. The honest answer is that I did try that variant with the old drudge list, but found that I needed the extra armour cracking from the Wreckers because the Drudges capped out at POW 16. With Gaspy4, Void Archons and a Blockader in the list this is no longer an issue, so three Wardens will clearly be a better option. Plus I free up 8 points which can be spent on a unit of Overlords. With only Gaspy and Thexus being able to score the circular zone I felt really unsafe. Getting Thexus killed has been sort of a tradition for me so I want to keep him as safe as possible.
But even with the changes and some better in-game decisions I am not convinced that this is a list that I will ever feel confident playing into Lukas. Thexus is way too vulnerable to getting TKed out of Sac pawn range and killed and the Blockader feels like it just has a huge target painted on its back. I could of course replace the Blockader with a Stalker or Shrike, but then I need to fill the list with something else. Croe’s Cutthroats are always a classic option with Thexus, but that just feels bad against Crucible Guard with two Death Archons. I don’t think the Monstrosities are good enough to spam in any meaningful quantities above what is needed for arc nodes and Sac pawn targets.
All that being said I liked the core of the list and it may become my main list going forward. Then I will just need to find an off list which solves this list’s biggest issues, such as Lukas.