350-point 1-1-1-1 Tournament Report

On September 5th we held a 350-point 1-1-1-1 event at one of the local gaming stores.   As the event approached, I didn’t think I’d be able to make it.   When I wound up with the day free at the last minute I threw together some lists and headed up for some  good ole’ fashion heretic burning.

I don’t play a lot of 1-1-1-1 events, so I didn’t have any stand-by lists to bring out for the event.   I decided to build my first list around Feora running as a super-solo, camping on her focus to increase her survivability and let her function as a beat-stick caster as necessary.   For my warjack I went with the Avatar of Menoth for a couple of reasons.   First was the fact that he wouldn’t be a focus drain on Feora, and second was that I could use Gaze of Menoth as a form of crowd control to corral my opponents.

Even though Feora’s feat does a great job of infantry thinning, I decided to go with the Holy Zealots and Monolith Bearer as my unit of choice.   Their strengths almost go without saying at this point – they’re such a strong addition in this format.   They can throw down hard hits, they can clear infantry with their bombs, and Greater Destiny lets them weather almost any assault unfazed.   Finally, I threw in the Vassal of Menoth to support the Avatar.   Ancillary Attack would let me throw down another P+S 19 sword attack but my main plan was to use Enliven to keep the Avatar alive.   With ARM 21, he could take a single hit from almost anything then slide back and away out of reach and position himself for the counterattack on my next turn.

The caster of choice for my second list was Severius, primarily because I don’t play him much.   I knew right away that the old man wanted an arc node in his list but I wasn’t sure I wanted to give up my beat-stick warjack slot to a light.   The Blessing of Vengeance is good, but I knew I’d be seeing heavies all day, and so decided to risk the additional system and bring a Guardian.   Reach was nice, and I might be able to use some of Severius’ ample focus to power it’s Ward of Retribution.

Initially I added the Vassal (primarily for Enliven again) and Idrians and their unit attachment but I decided to back them out and re-arrange the list around some less competitive models to see what kind of results I could get with them.   I added a full 10-man unit of Flameguard Cleansers and with the left over points added High Exemplar Gravus to the list, primarily for his mobility and threat range from a flank.

Round 1: Randy’s Trollbloods

My first game was against a new Trollblood player who was out for his first tournament.     There was a forest a little ahead of my deployment zone just left of center, so I put the Cleansers on my left flank, the Guardian in the center with Severius and the Vassal behind, then Gravus right beside them.   My plan was to run the Cleansers forward, then run the Guardian where at least one Cleanser was blocking charge lanes to him and arc Holy Vigil on the Cleansers to slow down the Champions.   Meanwhile Gravus ran first turn around the right of the forest to come in from the flank turns 2-3.

In the end the Cleansers did their job of spraying the Champions on the way in, holding them up with Holy Vigil-boosted DEF 16, then stabbing themselves in the back to light up the Champions.   Gravus and the Guardian were able to get the  drop on the Mauler, which left Madrak with just his Fellcaller and a couple Champions.   It took a couple rounds to tie him down and get through his armor and scroll but in the end I was able to take him down.

Round 2: Peter’s Cygnar

Peter’s other list featured Longgunners as his unit choice, so I was relieved he went with the closer combat option.   The game started out with the same opening moves as round 1, then Peter used Arcane Shield, his feat, and the Sword Knights’ Defensive Line ability to engage my front line with uber-armor models and start killing my Cleansers.

I retaliated by moving them to tie up as much as possible, cast Holy Vigil on them, and feating to deny him focus on the next turn.   A few lucky sprays killed some of the Sword Knights but not many.   On his turn he split his Sword Knights, sending a chunk of them to go deal with Gravus, which left me an opening to go for the assassination on the following turn.

That turn the Guardian was allocated a full three focus (in case he had to trample into place), Severius threw two Immolations at Stryker for decent damage, and the Cleansers walked around (tempting free strikes, but being near enough to Stryker that that would have been bad) and stabbed each other in the back to catch Coleman in the explosions and finish him off.

Round 3: Stu’s Cryx

When I saw Stu’s list, I knew I needed to switch over to my Feora list.   I was going to need as much anti-infantry capability as possible to deal with the what was effectively two units of Weapon Masters that would be coming at me.

My strategy switched slightly… without Holy Vigil to increase my defenses, I had to use the Avatar with Enliven and the impending triggering of Holy Monolith on the Zealots as bait to set up a counterattack.   Feora threw down a Wall of Fire to block charge lanes from some of the Bane Knights to help minimize my losses.

Stu countered by trampling Nightmare into the middle of my Zealots and hitting the Avatar with Tartarus.   He Cursed my Zealots as well and the Bane Knights and feat-produced Bane Thralls started hacking into the Zealots.   Fortunately, I was able to use the Avatar to wreck Nightmare, and the resulting explosion lit up almost all of his Banes.   Feora stepped back just out of Mageblight range and feated, catching almost everything else on fire.

From there Stu kept using Mage Blight to prevent me from pulling any tricks and we started whittling down what little remained of each others’ forces.   When time was called, the only things left alive were Feora, Goreshade, and a Deathwalker, which squeaked me by on VPs.   It was a very close, well fought game.

Round 4: Brakus’ Cryx

For the finals I sat down unsure how I was feeling about facing Brakus’ list.   I felt I had enough anti-infantry in my Feora list to deal with the Bile Thralls, but if one of them got through it meant wiping out my troops and leaving me without anything to slow down Terminus and the Deathjack.

Brakus got first turn and ran forward, so I advanced my Zealots in response. It was  an attempt to put just a couple in Purge range to try and draw them in close enough to kill the remainder, before they got to the heart of my Zealots.

In short,  a lucky deviation caught Rengrave and that an Enlivened Avatar kept running forward to tie Terminus back, while Feora charged the Deathjack with Engine of Destruction up.   After ripping an arm and the cortex off on her charge attack, she missed two more attacks and failed to break armor once, so couldn’t finish him off.   The Deathjack received Ravager next turn, managed to kill a DEF 16 Zealot, regrew it’s missing arm, and then was able to roll high enough to hit Feora a few times and eat her. NomNomNom.

Concluding Thoughts

I wound up picking up a unit of Bastions with the gift certificate I received for second place.   I’ve broken them out and have started cleaning and assembly but there are  a few pieces ahead of them in my painting queue.   They seem to be roughly the same quality as the rest of the Protectorate line, so I’m satisfied with them so far. Will report again on how they paint up.

It was good to see all of the new players out for the tournament – of the 13 player,s I’d say roughly half were people who I don’t see at the table on a regular basis and a few were up for their first tournament ever.   The vets and rookies alike were courteous and every game was fun.   The 1-1-1-1 format isn’t my favorite but the event was still a great time.