UK Masters 2012 Postscript: Day Two Game Reports

Game Five: Calandra vs Fiona the Black
Opponent: Rich Loxam
Scenario: Diversion
Artifice: Radial Scenario
Result: Win

Amongst Warmachine and Hordes players, Rich Loxam is a true gentleman.

My MVP in this game was easily the Axer.  I do not know how exactly it happened but that Axer did incredible things.  It destroyed a Nomad and Rocinante, it also killed a bunch of Boomhowler & Co, but that was after a couple of turns of utter fail against the Trollkin.  It did everything the Earthborn could not (before the Earthborn died horribly because it couldn't hit anything other than 4+ Tough Trollkin models).

Eventually I managed to score a scenario point just before dice down through the ingenious use of my Feralgeist and a rushed Impaler.  This did put Calandra in a drastically vulnerable position, something I was gravely concerned about, but with dice down potentially coming (there were a LOT of players standing around at this point, always a sign of impending dice down) it was a risk that I felt I had to make.  Luckily for me Rich wasn't quite within assassination range with Fiona - I had forgotten that Fiona's weapon has Grievous Wounds, and Fiona had to take a free strike from the Axer on her way in.  As I mentioned above, my MVP pulled through once again and all was happiness and sunshine in the land of trolls.

I thought I might have to drop out of the tournament about halfway through this game, as my ribs were really hurting and speaking was getting difficult at times, but it seemed to sort itself out by the end of the game.

---

Game Six: eDoomshaper vs Garryth
Opponent: David Flynn
Scenario: Incursion
Artifice: None
Result: Win

David also needs to work on his movement.  Badly.  Models cannot move through other models, and if I had my PG shirt on there would have been words.  However, after calling him on it a few times as a player, you just feel like such a douchebag and you can feel the enjoyment of the game starting to drain so I just let it go and got on with the game.

I was definitely on the back foot for a good part of the game, since many of my models were stuck in a forest on my side of the board, and David was butchering my heavies with his Sentinels.  Eventually however, the strength of my warbeasts began to shine through, as my Mauler and Axer managed to kill pretty much all the Sentinels near the end of the game (granted I didn't have much of a battlegroup left at this point).

On the right flank my Bog Trogs and Bomber were clearing up the board, though I missed out on a control point early on by forgetting my Refuge movement (BLARG!).  That combo was really awesome, they cleared out an incredible amount of David's army there.

Eventually Garryth was forced to commit himself in an attempt to take down the Dire Troll Mauler, but at ARM 20 it pretty much shrugged off all his attacks.  The following turn the Mauler with Wild Aggression ate Garryth.

---

Game Seven: pDoomshaper vs eVayl
Opponent: Steven McConnachie
Scenario: A Flag Too Far
Artifice: Reinforcements
Result: Win

I didn't realise I'd played Steven before until he mentioned it, and I remembered I'd played him at one of the Livingston tournaments, where he took a very unusual eLylyth list filled with Blighted Ogrun Warspears.  Clearly Steven's invested in making more robust lists.

This is probably the game where I played my best, and pDoomshaper is probably a horrific match-up for eVayl.  She has a lot of upkeeps and relies heavily on three key spells: Admonition, Refuge, and Obliteration.  I made a mistake early on that very nearly cost me the game by not putting Banishing Ward on pDoomshaper as soon as I could, as once I had eVayl on the backfoot she promptly dropped some Obliterations on pDoomshaper.  Needless to say, next turn I put Banishing Ward up.

Eventually Steven conceded once I'd killed all his warbeasts except a Ravagore and had a possessed Angelius of my own running around (it did horrific things to a Ravagore).  I can see why eVayl is regarded as such a powerful caster now, but I think I found a hard counter for her.

---

My last game appears to have been entered wrongly into the final standings, which places me somewhere in the top 20 - as I mentioned in one of the earlier posts, I *think* I'm 18th.  Overall, quite happy with my performance.  I'm ecstatic that I didn't have to play Cryx once during the tournament - unlike Matt Oakley who had to play against eDeneghra four times.