Welsh master ! It’s the biggest single warmachine tournament in Europa, and I heard it was pretty swell from a french pressganger. I guess I wasn’t alone to be interested since France sent more than 10 player in total.

Lists

I played the Morghoul and Zaadesh lists detailed in preceding blog spots, and since it’s a three list event, I also brought my current experimentation :

[Theme] The Exalted

• Tyrant Xerxis [+28]
  • Archidon [10]
  • Tiberion [22]
  • Titan Gladiator [15]
• Ancestral Guardian [0(5)]
• Ancestral Guardian [5]
• Ancestral Guardian [5]
• Extoller Soulward [3]
• Hakaar the Destroyer [0(7)]
• Void Spirit [4]
• Immortals (max) [15]
  • Extoller Advocate [4]
• Immortals (max) [15]
• Paingiver Beast Handlers (min) [5]

I love Xerxis 1 a lot, and have used him in Master of war as a brick breaker for a long time. His MAT problem and the fact that infantry have come back hard mean I no longer can regulary fit him in a two list pairing. That Immortal version isn’t polished yet, but is an answer to thoses problem, by using four MAT 9 quasi-warbeast to deal with infantry and jack alike. Note that Xerxis hand out Pathfinder, which is big for the solos who often have trouble moving around.

The specific Morghoul 2 list I played was :

[Theme] Masters of War

• Lord Assassin Morghoul [+29]
• Archidon [10]
• Archidon [10]
• Titan Gladiator [15]
• Aptimus Marketh [5]
• Extoller Soulward [3]
• Extoller Soulward [3]
• Cataphract Incindiarii (min) [11]
• Croak Raiders (min) [10]
• Paingiver Beast Handlers (min) [5]
• Praetorian Ferox (min) [12]
• Praetorian Ferox (max) [20]
• Tyrant Commander & Standard Bearer [0(6)]
• Tyrant Commander & Standard Bearer [0(6)]

In retrospect, I am not sure why there is a min unit of cat instead of Tyrant Radheim. It still is a reasonable list. The highlight was putting on fire almost a full unit of immortals … Before killing one with a direct hit, which lead to vengeance. Still, Continuous fire is a good way to kill any kind of infantry.

Before the tournament

the travel was uneventful (I prefer trains to plane just for that : much less stress about what can go wrong at the airport, and also it’s usually more comfortable during the travel). Turn out it wasn’t that easy for a bunch of other french, who were hit by various delay. A France vs Welsh team match was scheduled ; because of thoses delay, the french team coach asked me to replace one of the players. I take Zaadesh 2 and Morghoul 2 as pairing, since it’s only 2 lists

Match-up selection

I don’t remember the entire welsh team roster, but only a troll player looked like trouble to me, since he played Kolgrimma. I wasn’t alone, and nobody wanted to see him. Because of that, Julien asked if someone was willing to try it still, and I answered “yes, I can try to bait him and if it work it will be winnable”.

Zaadesh 2 vs Kolgrimma

Going into the match, I was super anxious. In France, Kolgrimma in storm of the north is one of the most feared list. I though the welsh player played the same list as my usual sparring partner, but I understood mid match that actually, he played neither the northkin stone nor fire eaters, making the match much easier than I thought. In addition to that, I was one of the “least” good player in the team, and I didn’t want to make the team lose, adding to my anxiety.

My opponent had two units of champions, and two units of bears that I needed to draw out of ambush as soon as possible. I ran the hydra in range of 2 champions, 2 more with Hunter mark (but I have Orin with 3” of the hydra), and within 13” of the border so that the bear could come in. It was a bait because, actually, they can’t really hope to kill the hydra in one round, and she can kill the attacker back relatively easily. My opponent took the bait, ambushed both unit into the hydra, and did not put a cloud under the hydra to make her less deadly. That allowed me to feat for full effect, with the hydra killing both bear unit and two champions, healing to full in the process ; on the other side, two champions died to a rhinodon.

After that, it was mostly me mopping up the table and making real sure I wouldn’t die to Kolgrimma, by camping at least 1 with Spiny Growth every turn. I learned later my opponent would be the main tournament judge, oops (no hard feeling for the bait, I hope ?). The french team won the match overall.

Main tournament

First round - Xerxis vs The Heretic (win)

My opponent is an awesome-looking tatooed viking. He play The Heretic with troops, Dreamer with the beast theme, and another full beast list (Old Witch 3 I think). I don’t try to guess what my opponent will play, and instead try to play the list whose worst match up is the less worse. Here, it mean that Zaadesh is out (he can’t deal with the gremlin swarms in two of the three lists), and Morghoul 2 is iffy (he have trouble killing the Dreamer list because he can’t really land Mortality on his beasts). That lead me to take Xerxis 1, who feel awesome into the beast brick lists, and still pretty decent into infantry spam. My opponent take Heretic. His list have two units of Hollowmen, two units of Neigh Slayer, and some solos.

The immortals, with help from Defensive Ward, go into his Hollowmen and relatively efficiently deal with them (armor 17/19 and vengeance is great into shooter, even unjammable shooters). Tiberion advance as much as he can, and serve as a bait ; he very quickly threaten the Heretic (threat range 14” and he have run in the middle of the table on turn 1), which allowed my Ancestral Guardian to mop up his cavalry and solo afterward. At the fifth turn, I have killed his entire army, and Hakaar finish the Heretic, scoring my fifth points after killing everyone.

While that may make the match look easy, it wasn’t. Xerxis have a seriously limited 10” control area, and he can die fairly quickly if he isn’t careful. Still, the match up is much better than I thought, mostly off my army being pretty hard to kill in practice ; he don’t have anything efficient to deal with AGs or immortals, really.

Second round - Morghoul vs Asphyxious 3 (loss)

He is an english WTC players, and his lists look pretty mean. I see Skarre, and Asphyxious 3 and a third list that I don’t remember (Skarre 3 ? Something that is bad into Skorne). In my pairing, only Morghoul can deal with Skarre. So I take Morghoul. Doubly so since I want to train the match vs Asphyxious 3. He choose Asphyxious 3, which is actually a somewhat risky choice in my opinion, since Asphyxious die hard to Xerxis and Zaadesh. Then again, he correctly guessed that Morghoul was my choice.

I only had theorized the match up before that game. So I apply the basic plan : everything run forward, including my caster who drop 3 and run 14” + apparition to be almost in his table half on top of 1. On the following turn, I kill one slayers with ranged attack and an archidon, and two slayers with Morghoul who sprint behind a forest. But I misplanned my turn, and left two archidon in his threat range, and also forgot to deal with the cephalyx spraybots. That cost me the game in the long run, even if I actually killed 6 slayers before going down. The fact I actually forgot to deploy Marketh certainly didn’t help -_-

The matchup is pretty decent for morghoul in the end, but I would need to train it like five or six more game to be sure. Croak raider + Incendiariis are pretty great even into carapace slayers because they can combine for high POW shots, and the fire is on armor 17. I think the french versions, who have only 3-4 slayers but also Deathjack and some other bigger, meaner jacks are more threatening to me.

Third round - Zaadesh vs Kara Sloan (win)

I see his list, who are three gunlines, and know he can’t deal with Zaadesh at all. He take Kara Sloan, he feat and put litteraly every shot of his army into the hydra, and the hydra have only lost 1/3 of her life. The hydra can then charge Kara under Zaadesh feat, and easily kill her. Zaadesh is made to destroy gunlines, but the game was still a bit sad.

Fourth round - Zaadesh vs Harbinger (loss)

It’s a french WTC player, that I have only played against once (and won in a Zaadesh vs Amon match up where he forgot just how good counter charge can be). He have Amon, Harbinger, and Testament. I have loads of RFP for living in two of my list, so testament isn’t a consideration. But Zaadesh into Harbinger look like trouble (I don’t have that many attacks), while Morghoul into Amon look like a bad idea (there is some armor 21 sacred ward jack here). I choose Zaadesh because it’s the list I have played the most. He choose Harbinger.

The scenario is Spread the Net, with a rather big central house. On my right I have put the hydra with the idea of contesting his flag with a colossal ; the rest is on the left. He put his unit of forgeguard, one paladin, and the rocket infantry in front of the hydra ; the rest including an unit of Idrian is in front of the rest, with the harby helping them.

On the hydra side, the hydra prove invincible and kill the entire unit of dwarve, one paladins, and some other stuff without any problem, proving to me once again that she is a strong choice into most infantry. (they weren’t in Martyrdom range). On the other side, things are a lot hairier, in no small part because I mistook a sanctifier for a crusader ! (I am accustomated to the sanctifier to not be white, while his one was). He slowly take control of that side, and while the hydra contest the other half of the table, she can’t score because of a solo hiding on a corner of the rectangular zone.

The match up is a lot better than I would have thought (I expected to be an easy win for him), since the hydra actually cause lot of trouble to infantry. I did not try to deploy the hydra to threaten the Harbinger herself, which may have been a mistake ; but Purification is the thing that make attrition difficult for Zaadesh. I hope to find a way to test Morghoul into Amon, to better see if I can do something despite the unkillable jacks.

Fifth round - Morghoul vs Kreoss 3 (win)

My opponent dropped the tournament, but the opponent of another player dropped too ; so there is still a match ! He have the Harbinger, Kreoss 3, and Testament ; three infantry lists who all are bad into Morghoul, so my choice is easy. He take Kreoss 3, with two full unit of vengers and a Revelator, which is a logical choice since he more or less have an auto-win against Zaadesh and he isn’t significantly worse than the other into Morghoul.

I deploy the two unit of cats on the left, and the shooters on the other side, keeping my battlegroup around me. He try to refuse the left flank, running his cavalry on the left, but cats are too fast for that to work. The vengers die rather quickly, the revelator kill some croak and incendiarii but isn’t good at killing them and is kept far away by the threat of mortality + my battlegroup. (he chanted Passage because else the croak + incendiarii could shoot him to death in two or three turn). In the end, I do a scenario win because I score on every of my turn on my flag and the left zone, while he only inconsistently score on his flag.

It’s a bit of a no-match for him ; it’s pretty hard to fight Morghoul without a big battlegroup. I didn’t even needed to feat to win, which mean his caster alway was in danger of an assassination if too close to Morghoul.

Sixth round - Zaadesh vs Vyros 2 (loss)

My opponent did a BR : Ghyrrshyld’s Return

I see Vyros 2, and two lists who have trouble killing armored stuff, including Kaelyssa. I think Zaadesh is my best bet ; his version of Vyros 2 (no Imperatus but two Manticore) is softer to Morghoul 2 than to Zaadesh, but I don’t want to risk the awkward match up Kaelyssa - Morghoul. Xerxis feel too soft to the guns to be worth it.

I put the hydra on the right and the rest on the left. The hydra, as usual, take over her flank without much problems, but a mix of very good dice from him and some error from me allow him to win by scenario. It’s one of thoses match up where threat range can be extremely important, as highlighted by how the hydra (threat 12”) fared much better than the titans (threat 10” or 11”). But there were also some errors I shouldn’t do in a match up I have done half a dozen time, even in Vyros 2 is much less popular now. (partly because people like me have very strong anti-Vyros list, granted).

The turning point was both a risky countercharge (it allowed my opponent to attack my gladiator without a charge, making it more likely to die, which he did), and forgetting that you need to be within 1” of a house to get cover. But for the most part, the Hydra took over her flank because my opponent could not get the alpha on her nor absorbing her alpha.

Seventh round - Morghoul 2 vs Zaal 2 (loss)

He have three infantry list, and ask me to choose his list. I think his best choice is Zaal 2, because all three of his list hate Morghoul (he deny soul to Zaal, deny healing to Makeda 2, and blind battle engine to Rasheth). Also, I want to see the match up at least once, both because I want to train Zaal 2 in the future, and because it’s a strong list.

My opponent jam me with all his immortal under feat ; I am able to put 7 of them on fire (but one die on the application, which annoy me because of vengeance), and blind more than twenty immortal, which in other word mean I quickly see that I indeed have a good matchup. My opponent don’t know he can shake blind, and do some other minute errors. I allow him some take backs, which end up killing me because of my placement errors, which annoyed me tremendously. (I am easily annoyed). In general, I didn’t played it safe enough in a good match up, which is a common error of me that I try to work on. The immortals die so quickly to the Morghoul list that I should have kept my caster as back as possible after the feat, instead of trying to kill some additional model with him.

Conclusion

The tournament is good and fun but my result bad, which annoyed me a lot at the end of the tournament. In retrospect, I still think my pairing is good and one of the strongest possible in Skorne, but it’s not particulary easy to play either, and I need to be a bit less anxious about it. Anyway, kudos to the organizers, since the tournament was smooth, the tables had a decent amount of 3D decors, and the venue was big enough. The food wasn’t particulary good, but I guess it had to the english experience to see why exactly people mock english cooking :p.

While I only played Xerxis once, I think the base list (~40 points of immortal + 40 points of beast) have a lot of promises. 60 points of immortal is good for the Zaals, but it’s a bit too many fragile single wounders for most casters ; and once you think of the Ancestral Guardians as super cheap warbeasts that don’t have fury management problem, everything work better. Their MAT 8/9 really make them amazing infantry thresher, even more so when you can buff their damage.