Ides 2014 batrep and stuff.

How much I sucked.

So I came 21st out of 40 players. Not to discredit any one of the 19 players below me but 21st is pretty terrible and I'm totally unhappy with my performance.

The tournament was great, the tables were great, the players were great. My dice were pretty good and everything was pretty great. I had some real bad turns tactics wise and my Issyria list was pretty awful.

The Meta

I think this is the first time I really truly felt how much my garage gaming meta effected the construction of my lists and deeply effected my games. Prior to Ides I had been playing loads against Skorne and a little Legion. I built both of my lists to give me good game against hordes and I specifically skewed Issyria against the high armor high model count kind of Skorne, Gators, Trolls lists.

I kept telling myself that she was my anti Cryx drop. (Fun fact#1 I didn't play against any Cryx!) As it was I went 2/2 with Ossyan and 1/2 with Issyria. Thats 3 wins 4 losses folks. Yes I suck. (Fun fact#2 Issyria was not even my Trolls or Gators drop as the Ossyan list performed better)

There was however a majority War Machine over Hordes and I managed to play bad enough that I didnt play against any Cryx yet not play bad enough to play against one of the 3 Skorne lists.

Vengace (Yes Vengace not vengance.)

There were a couple of ironies and a  few sad facts.

My practice game VS eHaley Stormwall was a horrifying rape as I did my best to save face. My real game VS a eHaley stormwall list was lolertastic.

I lost my game to my awesome arch rival nemesis Chris F (3rd Ret player who is a Chris) While our personal score is currently 2/3 in my favor I believe he won mostly on the fact that his Issyria list was great while mine was a steaming pile of baboon semen. Sadly Chris F didn't take best rest, some other guy did and I came last of all the Ret players. /uninstall.
Still I call vendetta and I seriously need to make it out of Auckland (not Hamilton) for a tourney this year. (Fun fact#3 Issyria with Hyperion is as sweet as you think it is)

My 2 best games were against 2 of my worst match ups (excluding gators) The a fore mentioned Cygnar game, where I held out for 2 turns not assassinating Haley who was kiting my army around. I needed to score max CP. And against a Grissell list that was so full of grind I had no fingernails at the end of the game. (2 lights, loads of tuffalo, warders, champs whatever) Again for 3 turns I chased Grissell around the table while scoring max CP. After grinding through 90% of her army.

The Haley game was kind of farcical, he had blazers zooming up my flank threatening Ossyan, who somehow gave no fucks about them. Haley feated catching most of my army, I mostly just stood around and shot at whatever I could. My Halberds ran the flank taking out 2/3 of Black 13th and killing his Journeyman. One also charged a squire late game and rolled 1,1,1 on damage with mini feat up. Good work Halberdier. Anyway at the end of Haleys feat Ossyan had counter feated. Cygnar turn he did nothing as all of his guns were useless and I somehow brought the Stormwall down with Hypnos, Skarath and a 1/4 unit of charging non feated Halberdiers. That's right, void lock is amazing.

Both of these wins were Ossyan, the list performed admirably and I'm super stoked about it. The first loss with Ossyan was against a Kallus list with 2 Ravagores. I mostly put this down to splitting my fire on feat turn between each of his beasts leaving each of them on 2 or 3 hit points. It was pretty terrible play on my behalf and I suffered for it. Still I came out with 1cp and did a sweet move where Ossyan died to a Shredder free strike just so I could deny him scoring further points that game.

The one Issyria win was an assassination where I really didn't want to play the game. My opponent was new to Ret and was throwing down an eVyros Griffon spam list. As disgusted as I am about eVyros Griffon spam there were 2 things that made me want to end this game fast.
1: He gave me a pretty sweet assassination run.
2: He was seriously nitpicking every single 1/4inch move I was making.
Now I know we can all get a bit sleepy some times when it comes to accuracy but I felt like someone told him I was a horrible cheat and he was trying to keep tabs on me. (I may have horribly cheated some things in some of those games I'm sure shouldn't have happened.)
Anyway he sat Vyros on the edge of a hill with 0 focus. So Sylys gave her butt love and she floated up feated and cast a double psuedo boosted blinding light at Vman needing like an 8 to hit (it was also boosted) I rolled 3,2,2,1,1. SO that didn't work. SO I cast it again boosted with feat boost also and got him the second time.
Then the artificer came up and Magno blasted a Griffon that he was near, pulling him off the hill. Vyros was now 13/18. The Destor thanes shot him down with 7 shots as one was shield guarded.

Lessons learned

I had a pretty sweet idea for the Issyria list which I immediately dropped for retarded reasons. I really need to go with what I know is good rather than build around 30 games v Skorne.
Ossyan is a boss, Dahlia Hallyr and Skarath are fundamental to Rets attrition capabilities.
Issyria is as average as I suspected she is. She will sadly only have any real game in lists with models that can take a hit or 3 which limits her effective list builds.

The bad stuff

I had a game against Durgen and the Dwarf colossal. There were 3 giant pieces of immobile impassable terrain which basically funneled the entire game into an 8" corridor down the middle of the table. Not so bad except this corridor also had a 5" shallow pond right in the middle of my side. With the Giga pooper scooper throwing rough terrain and aoe knock downs at my sentinel brick I barely advanced past 20". I did ok killing his Nyss and Gun Mages but one Thane died to primed Nyss as he charged one, impacted one and shot another.
He ended up with Aiyanna and Holt in a zone that I killed the objective for. I tried to clear them out with Discordia, was using a Black Oiled Sentinel as my target so Holt couldnt quick draw me, then completely forgot to declare my sentinel as the target and got quick drawed anyway.
Painful game, nice guy but I'm pretty sure at the end of it he must have been wondering how I could suck so bad.

I had to play against my most feared and respected Gator opponent in the last round. This was the round which would decide which one of us had a higher placing on the tables. There was the "Pieces of shit" half (I quoted) and the "not so bad" top half. If I won the game it would have put me in 11th place knocking him to 12th. But it was Rask v Ossyan and he was doing it for a Mug (Fun fact#4 His 4th mug I have never won a mug, I have only got a pity mug someone gave me because they had no more room for mugs) (Fun fact#5 Pity mugs are 100% worse than a winning mug) (Fun fact#6 all of the tournaments I go to where I place high, win or get best faction or assassin or something, there are no mugs) (Fun fact#7 if real life were Team Fortress, mugs would be hats.)

The good stuff

Even though I had to play against JS's gators and THE BLACK JEW FISH in the last round, it was a pretty darn close game, best game I had against Old Gregg and he got to win a Mug and therefore is morally obliged not to rage quiet warmachine for another year.

I got to play against a load of out of towners and while they all probably thought I was a bit of a drop kick douche try hard, I really enjoyed the games and thought they were all super swell guys.

I got to see my most feared and respected Gator opponent fail a greated than 95% chance roll and get smashed by pink Rahn. (Go pink Rahn) (Fun fact#8 The complacency of that Rahn player like it was such a forgone conclusion that he would win was like smearing batter over and deep frying Rasks fish dick before being served with a side of creme de humiliation tartare.)

I dodged thunder dome.

Who won you say?

Some monster playing 3Butcher went 7-0 with 28 out of 35 cps for the event. Thats pretty batshit insane. Was everyone so worried about the Cryx match up they forgot about the Axe match up?

Butcher needs no army!

 Thank fuck there are no Blink Daggers in Khador.

This is one of the 3Butcher games vs Gators that was recorded in thunder dome. Where the lady on the cat is the players hope and the spider is his dark dark soul. See how they all die to the whirling Axe of the Butcher.

Its that time of year again!

Thats right its time for the bi annual blog post. Retribution of Scyrah has had loads of sweet releases and Ides is just around the corner. its time for me to make factless statements(aka opinions) about the new stuff, complain about my inability to write lists and rag on Will Pagani a little more.

First off.

The House Gaurd Thane :
Kneejerk reaction - omg wtf amazeballs lets a ret unit see through stealth broken -

Later assessment - Still dont want to buy riflemen -

Ok so hes a pretty decent solo, wont go around killing gators by himself but does 2 things. As mentioned he lets riflemen see through stealth or he lets Halberdiers move an additional 2 inches on an advance. Technically he lets Halberdiers see through stealth or Riflemen move 2 more inches. The latter being sweeter than the former.

So for an additional 2 points he makes Halberdiers stupid fast, bat-shit-amazing fast with other speed buffs like Mirage, Crusaders call, Hunters mark or Quicken. This is great. I cant argue with it Halberdiers are our "Jam" unit, except they are more like our speed bump unit. They will still die fast and in droves. And for equivalent points spend on the unit UA and Thane you could get full sentinels with UA.

This points out to a well designed solo, god damned Retribution being the most balanced faction. I mean, horray most balanced faction, well done PP.

Conclusion:
I'll take the thane halberdier combo in lists that can make the Halberdiers even faster. Seeing your opponents reaction when they motor across the board 18" or 13" in shield wall is pretty amusing.


Issyria Sybil of Dawn :
Kneejerk reaction - omg wtf amazeballs lets everything see through stealth and Signs and Portents v2.0 on feat broken as shit in Ret 5 stars new top faction -

Later Assessment - well balanced caster -

There was a lot of hubub about the new caster having signs and portents and how broken this would be. How game changing op signs and portents would be in Retribution and loads of maths arguing both for and against it.
So in the end she didn't have signs and portents she had her feat. Which was signs and portents 2.0 + more. For one turn your army is game changing op broken, but after that you go back to being ret with as minimal caster support as it gets.  This is starting to develop a trend in Retribution where caster feats require you to optimize the use of your army during feat turn or suffer a loss by attrition. Ok many factions have feats like that but then they also have lame ass casters that will still vapourise your army  or at least kill your caster with some good dice.

What I thought I saw with her was a sweet attrition caster. Maximise a strong feat turn and press the advantage late game. Unfortunately she has no late game. None. So unless your opponent presents his army to you on a platter your going to be struggling. What I think I see now is a fairly solid assassination caster with varied options for getting the job done. This fits into Retributions theme of caster assassination.


Unfortunately I picked Issyria as one of my casters for Ides because I was working on Kneejerk reaction rather than Latter Assessment. So my list is built to deal with the hard stealth heavy match ups while providing me good attrition and attempting to supplement late game where Issyria goes to have a lie down and let the troops battle on.

Some of this I put down to the Skorne effect of playing against lots of skorne and none of the normal stupid as shit no Really I'm Cygnar (4 units of mercs) armies and MC Hammer (cant touch this) Menoth. I ran Issyria against 2 of the mentioned list types and got soundly walloped. This might also just be because I'm bad at the game. Judging by how Will Pagani won a masters with her, I'm going for bad at the game

The Pagani Protocol.  - A criticism on the anti net decking policy of tournament organizers -

Retribution is many things. Some of which is a collection of unique and special snowflakes trying to prove their unique specialness over each other. Another thing is its a faction of players who are constantly looking for justification or validation. "Issyria makes us good, the Thane completes us. Pagani won a tournament with us so now we are on the map."

If factions were countries in the world Retribution of Scyrah would be New Zealand. While not a nation of xenophobic genocidal political parties (excluding the New Zealand First political party...) We do suffer from little brother syndrome. If we get a medal in anything the country celebrates. If we win any competition in anything albeit maybe even a game which only Australia and India play and we get second, we still want to feel special. We constantly seek recognition on the world stage.

Unfortunately the Olympic games are as not a defining factor for nations as Lock and Load masters is for factions. And while Jon Fucking Keys wont be winning any medals except for douche-baggery Will Pagani (self asserted douche bag) did win medals. He put Ret on the map and now our un elected leader of the faction (who plays whatever he feels like on the day) has been taken as the comprehensive last word on whats what in the faction.

While its fair to say that this deification on the forums irks me its only from a deep seated jealousy that I am upset. While I am trying my darndest to be the most unique and special snowflake like a self conscious retard with a van full of window lickers in a beauty pagent, what really gets me is... most of the time I agree with everything he says, and I think he makes good lists.

Here is the kernel of the problem, he wins masters with them, I dont, I couldnt if I wanted to. This is not Americaland and my local meta is its own beast where my strange and squewey lists work for me until I come up against other validated factions net decks.

Yet the New Zealand tournament scene seems to want to resist the net decking by giving us janky points systems. Where we end up with net decks with weird additions and the same old shit. Next tournament I run will be a Netdeck Machine, where you have to come with 2 lists that at least have either been in top tier play or have been pre approved by no less than 5 other forum users.

So here I am straining to look like I'm not trying to emulate Pagani while admitting that if we had normal sized tournaments I would probably take lists just like his. Untill I saw that they were the same as his anyway. As soon as I see him make something I even remotely though of doing myself I must go out of my way to be as different as possible so I don't look like a Net Decker.

In conclusion I'm not net decking I'm just obviously making good lists at pre approved good points values to play balanced games of Warmachine!

I also that I should never check out list builds on the forums because then I will go about my way to make mine different.

WFI  -wfp-

well he has been spoiled. Here is our "Apotheosis size" jack. With about 36 boxes and auto healing d6 a turn on shields + spending to heal shields and being reparied by an Arcanist he is sweet tanky, and even more so with Pheonix Protocol.

There has been no card yet but from memory he is 11 or 12 points which gets into the average points value. Its still a mat 7 rat 6 beasty however. 2 Reach attacks at P+S 17 is also sweet, side step is pretty cool. Might kill a caster, maybe... if we knock it down first cause mat 7 still wont kill a caster. It also wont chew up a load of infantry as well as  Pheonix could.

Negativity aside its still a super sweet jack and i will probably find ways to run him. He is at last one of our few true attrition pieces and for that I am genuinely happy.