Elemental My Dear Arun - Round 4: Corrupted Leylines

 

Round 4! We’re doing another GG All strategy with Corrupted Ley Lines. You have a Lodestone Token you are trying to end the round in contact with a strategy marker – one in the middle of each table quarter and one in the centre. Models with the Lodestone can’t be placed (but can be pushed). The schemes and my initial thoughts are as follows:

 

Catch and Release – You need a minion to get within 1” of the enemy Master and then run away to survive the game. I am very sceptical of the ability of most Bayou minions (at least in the keywords I have) to survive to the end of the game when the opponent knows that killing them will deny a point.

Load ‘em Up – Again, this looks okay for marker crews. Both Mah and Angler can put out a silly amount of markers.

Sabotage – Two scheme markers near a chosen terrain piece with no enemy models nearby during the game, then one near it with no enemy scheme markers at the end. There’s a lot of terrain that you can try and score this with and it feels like a soulstone miner could be really annoying with the Big Brain Brin bury and unbury round one trick.

Set the Trap – This one looks really interesting. Remove any number of scheme markers which have 3 or more enemies near them during the game, and either kill all enemy henchmen/masters or have a scheme marker near one of them at half health at the end. You’re encouraged to group your models up a little bit to have people to pass the Lodestone off to in the event of their death, and quite a few crews have a good ability to put down scheme markers incidentally.

Leave Your Mark – You need a scheme marker within 1” of the centre point with no enemy scheme markers nearby during the game, and then three of them within 4” at the end of the game. There are a few crews with really good access to scheme marker removal and placement at range, so this could be a good call.

 

Kin have been a topic of conversation lately (which is great because my girl Ophelia rarely seems to come up most of the time) and I was pointed at some Radek games on YouTube which really made me reappraise my entire approach to the master. In my early games, Raiders just died very quickly, and it felt like the most useful thing the Young can do is move your pieces around and accept their fate. It was interesting to see a far better player than I use those same models in ways I hadn’t considered.

The short summary is that if you protect the Young LaCroix and use them to give out upgrades you don't have to resummon them much (if at all) so you can concentrate on card draw. Use the Raiders for Equality of Fate or Risky Manoeuvre in the Sammy aura and use Beau Peep's Reckless or The Race is On there too and you can draw a lot of cards. Inferiority Complex on Sammy and Ophelia kept them nicely focused and the Trash Cannon, Hooch Igniter, Tar Bomb put out a ton of damage.

Of all those card draw tricks the only one I was really using was Beau Peep and I've been using Squish and Squash (who wasn't out yet but also plays into the same gameplan). Beau and Bo allow enough healing though that you really don't mind about pinging your own stuff if you're careful. Which I’ve been trying to do just, not very successfully.

I know Kin are a niche pick (… maybe even just not a ‘good’ pick anywhere …) but they are also the keyword I know best, more forgiving than a lot of other Bayou keywords and, importantly, I love the lore and look of the crew. So, for the foreseeable, I’m going to be sticking with them.

With that in mind I thought something like this could be an interesting team for the mission.

Ophelia Be Shopping (Bayou)

Size: 50 - Pool: 6

Leader:

  Ophelia LaCroix, Overloaded

    Inferiority Complex

Totem(s):

  Young LaCroix

  Young LaCroix 2

  Young LaCroix 3

Hires:

  Sammy LaCroix

  Bo Peep

  Lucky Emissary

  Beau Fishbocker

  LaCroix Raider

  LaCroix Raider 2

The Emissary seems like a good call for running the strategy. I’m going into Guild so I may have to watch out for armour piercing if my opponent brings the Peacekeeper or the Expert Marksman upgrade… but I don’t think many people are expecting armour when looking at Kin. If Beau and Bo can keep him topped up he may be able to do the whole thing for me, moving from place to place each round, unimpeded and not caring about engagement thanks to steamroller. His ability to inflict movement duels whilst doing so seems potentially useful too, as I’m expecting the Nightcrawler Network and camerabots just die unless they flip (or cheat) 13 or higher. If he does die, I’ve still got Bo, Beau and Sammy to run the strat who are all very fast.

I’m very curious to see if the Raiders can do more for me now I’ve seen them used to great effect.

My opponent – Joewelcome – chose to bring Dashel2 with a list that looked like this:

Butcher 1mg (Guild)

Size: 50 - Pool: 6

Leader:

  Dashel Barker, Butcher

    Lead-Lined Coat

Totem(s):

  The Dispatcher

Hires:

  Nightcrawler Network

  Disease Containment Unit

  Camerabot

  Camerabot 2

  Mounted Guard

  Sergeant

  Executioner

Couple of things I noticed right away. With no henchmen in the crew, if I want to score the second point of Set the Trap I’ll need to deal with Dashel himself. The Disease Containment Unit has a lot of blasting for the middle, the Executioner and Dashel also both remove scheme markers so I reckon Joe going for Leave Your Mark is a safe bet.

I was correct that there was no armour piercing, so that’s nice! And that the Nightcrawler Network would show up, which is less so. Dashel’s ability to move up to 21 inches charging all over the place is wild, so whilst I suspect the Mounted Guard is the first lodestone carrier even if I take that out he can still get around very quickly, and the camerabots can just chuck the stone around for him anyway.

With the ability to farm stones and everyone to use stones within 8” of Dashel I don’t want to fight over the middle of the board. I was put in the bottom right so I think going for Sabotage on the big metal structure at the top or the rocks on the left depending on where my opponent’s forces are concentrated is the best bet, alongside Set the Trap. As funny as it would be to try and Load ‘em Up with corpse markers, I don’t think that’s the play.

My minions would definitely die trying to score Catch and Release, and having us all fight for Leave Your Mark in the middle plays to Dashel’s strengths a lot more than mine. If I can set him on fire, maybe we can bomb him to death, and whilst stopping the first point of Leave Your Mark might be challenging, I do have a lot of vectors for Firecracker Flingshot to try and burn out the schemes for the second point. I really wish I had Merris to drop some schemes at range myself but… the plan here is to try and test the raiders and I don’t know what else I would have dropped to make room for her. The Guard crew also has very little healing, so if I can get damage to stick hopefully I can make it count.

Round one proceeded more or less as I expected. From the way Joe deployed I figured he was going to advance to the right, and that was correct. There were a lot of movement shenanigans employed to move the Executioner and Dashel up without activating. I was able to draw a decent amount of cards, and Sammy drew a bead on the oncoming Executioner with the Trash Cannon to put three points of damage on and, importantly, drain some stones. What I was not expecting was just how far he could get turn one. See the dramatic reconstruction below.

Thankfully I had Beau on emergency extract duty and the Raider was able to survive the first hit on 3 health thanks to shielded and a cheated 10 to put the Executioner on a negative flip. Beau’s Lost in the Bayou turns out to be really good!

I then proceeded with my plan to have the Lucky Emissary, moved up a little by Bo’s The Race is On, to steamroller as my final activation and go sit on the far point. Dashel was in range but my thought was that if I could secure that point now and bring him back the top of turn 2, it wouldn’t matter so much if he died after that point – almost everything (barring the Nightcrawler Network) – had advanced towards that point and the middle, stealing that objective would then let me run around the rest of the map and refuse to fight. The Emissary is (literally and figuratively) Hard to Kill, so lets do it now and not have to fear.

So anyway, Joe flipped nothing but severes to hit and the Lucky Emissary was not so lucky. Over 5 attacks he did in fact die. Whoops.

Round 2 became a fighting retreat away from the oncoming horde of Guard. I pulled the Raider back and had Beau heal him up and nestle him back on my home point. Sammy took another three shots (thanks to the mask trigger) into the Executioner and got him to four health. Bo ran towards the rocks preparing to score Sabotage there next turn because there were no enemies anywhere close to it – that did mean sacrificing the heal aura but I thought that was worth it.

The Guard continued to summon dogs, Camerabots and Guard Patrol, solidify their hold on the centre and used the Camerabots and Nightcrawler Network to give Dashel the lodestone. Probably the key moment for this turn for me was moving Ophelia up twice to get into range of the Executioner, and committing the Red Joker I had in hand to staggering him as I’d failed to kill him with trash. That made it impossible to get him back and swinging into the Raider so my home point was secure. My opponent also made a slight tactical error – part of his kit was to summon enemy scheme markers which he can use for various effects. He left one right in the middle of a cluster of his models, so he scored my first Set the Trap for me, though he was also able to score the first point of Sabotage on the fountain and the first point of Leave Your Mark. I didn’t have anything that could get into Firecracker range without immediately dying to retaliation.

Turn three I opened with Ophelia who used the Hooch Igniter to target the Sergeant who was standing close to a Guard Patrol, a very injured Executioner and within 2 blast of the Dispatcher. The Inferiority Complex really paid off here as I was able to cheat in severe damage thanks to the focus. After two attacks she was able to kill the Guard Patrol and Executioner, leave the Dispatcher to burn to death, and have the Sergeant on 2 wounds and 2 burning. He tried to shoot her back and did a couple of points of damage, but the Young LaCroix were able to evacuate her back to my lines before anything else could make her pay.

I was pretty happy with how I was recovering from the early loss of the Emissary at this point. Most of my forces were out of range of easy retaliation without walking back into my gunline, the extra 3” push from Risky Manouevre, the fact they are Unimpeded and the ability to drag the Raiders around with Young LaCroix meant that they were easily able to team up to get the Lodestone onto the second point, and Sammy continued to threaten from afar with her Trash Cannon. Nothing wanted to advance into firing range and whilst there were a lot of things being summoned, they weren’t able to contribute much to the overall gameplan.

Unfortunately my opponent ran out of time just before Dashel’s activation. I let him finish the turn out to put Dashel on the middle objective and score his third strategy point, but from there I had two full turns to run around unopposed so scoring the final 2 scheme and strategy points was not difficult.

Final Score: 8-5 (Win)

It’s unfortunate that this came down to time. I had started to pull the game back around after the difficult first turn, Joe was out of stones and from here the real question was whether I could pick the fight with Dashel I wanted and whether I could get the Lodestone onto the middle at the end of the game. I think there was a good chance I could do both, but it was far from a sure thing.

Overall though I came away very impressed with the Raiders, still loving the Beau and Bo combo (combeau?) and with a whole new respect for the humble Hooch Igniter. The Guard ability to just swarm the board was very scary, and I can’t help but think that if Dashel had been more aggressive I would’ve had a harder time retreating to pick my battles later.

But! I’ve won my very first tournament game and I’m pretty darn happy with that!

Now on to the final round! HONK!