What went wrong? Need advice

[trencher7]

Alright, I do need some feedback about a match I played yesterday.
Although the game got exciting to the end this was only due to the fact that my opponent felt so sure about his victory that he forgot to upkeep spells and allocate focus (it was a friendly match so I offered him to allocate and upkeep afterwards but he must have felt pity and refused to do so).
As you might have guessed by now I got my *** kicked right from the beginning and now I want to know why.
We played the scenario where the battlefield is divided into 6 squares and you have to hold at least 2 squares on your side und 1 square on your opponent´s.
Our table was only 48? x 36? becuase we had to do 2 matches on 6 plates.

I had:
eStryker
- Rowdy (can´t be bonded, can he?)
- Stormclad
- Squire
Reinholdt
B13
Stormblades
- UA
Arlan
Stormsmith x2
JWC

He ran:
nIrusk
- Behemoth
- Devestator
- War Dog
Battlemechanics
Manhunter x2
Yuri
Widowmaker
- Marksman
nEyriss

On my left flank (next to the table edge) there was a wood about 4? x 8? lengthways roughly in the middle of the table. One wood about 4-5? in diameter was more or less in the middle of the table and another wood about the same size was on the right side halfway between the middle of the table and the right edge. The rest of the terrain is more or less not worth mentioning for the match.

He began after my Stormblades advanced.
The widowmaker and Eyriss ran forward on my right side, scattered and threatened a large part of the table. One Manhunter ran to the wood on my right side and Yuri and the other Manhunter ran into the large wood on my left side.
Irusk cast Superiority on the Devestator and Iron Flesh on the widowmaker. The Devestator ran to the middle of the table roughly on the left side (next to the wood with Yuri). The Behemoth advanced. The marksman hid behind the wood in the middle of the table.

The B13 could no longer advance to the wood on the left side (Yuri and Manhunter) and had to hide behind a wall. Both Stormsmith got LoS to the two Manhunter but due to their nice fur caps the were immune to lightning damage (rolled both times 4 for damage...)
My army advanced, the Stormclad ran towards the widowmakers but could not reach them. Rowdy ran und the stormblades assaulted the widowmakers (I had to learn the hard way that they do not automatically have AoE3 templates due to Eye of the storm). I missed all of them and was 6? away from them.
Stryker cast Deflection and hid behind a wall. Then he tried to disrupt the devestator and hit.
Then the slaughter started. Both manhunter killed the stormsmiths, the widowmaker shot 4 stormblades, eyriss a fifth one. The bombards of the Behemoth killed Reinholdt and the squire due to very lucky deviation. The same is true for Ryan of the B13.
Then Irusk cast Inhospitable Ground and to make it short I could not get into close combat with his models because of the rough terrain. Rowdy tried to get after the Devastator, the Stormclad tried to get to the Behemoth, the rest of the Stormblades killed one Manhunter due to lack of a better target. Yuri was killed by the JWC in melee (Huzzah!).
After his round without focus allocation, upkeep etc. Rowdy killed the Devastator and Stryker charged the remaining 2 widowmaker and eyriss (the other 2 widowmaker died when they got free strikes from the stormclad who engaged them in turn 3 or so) but at this time my army was reduced to Stryker, JWC and Rowdy. Rowdy got killed by the Devastator, the Devastator was killed by Stryker but then Irusk killed Stryker because Stryker was weakened by his overload damage...
The main problems were the widowmaker (shooting everything on the board) and the manhunters who all controlled the board without me being able to draw LoS to them (while they CAN draw LoS through the wood) and the Inhospitable Ground which slowed and by this crippled my army.
Did I have the wrong army, did I oversee anything or have I been too stupid?
What would you have done?

[BlackSwan2276]

First off, Rowdy CAN be bonded to stryker because he has affinity with him.... thorn, for example, could not.

Second, you know your biggest weakness already: board control. You say time and again that the enemy controlled the board with the widowmakers and the manhunters.
How to fix this issue... well you did attempt to do so. Blades by themselves without a boost will have a hard time shooting widowmakers, you learned that the hard way. without knowing who set up first it would be difficult to give specific tactical advise on the subject.

Another thing I noticed (details were a little fuzzy towards the end of your recap) is that you put a weakened stryker within harms distance of the enemy warcaster.... this is never a good idea, but I understand you were down to very few models by that point. When you have only a couple models left its time to look for a way to assassinate and stryker is great at this.

Your list is not well equipped to handle a list that prevents moving and getting into melee. You are very melee focused and dont really have any speed buffs or shooting debuffs to protect yourself.

Any of these things should be taken into consideration.... I am by no means a championship level player, but these are my personal observations based on what I could discern from your report.

Also, it seemed as though there were a couple of luck factors involved - stormsmiths not damaging, good deviation by the enemy, etc. These cant be helped

[sanj]

pIrusk is one of the worst match ups for eStryker unless you have a way to grant your models path finder.
Rhupert would have been worth his weight in gold to allow your infantry to ignore inhospitable ground.
Possibley drop a stormsmith and reinholdt for rhupert.

Widow makers are stormblade's worst enemy.
The only thing you can do is get the drop on them.
Unfortunately the stormblade's AOE's are useless vs. widowmakers but Ryan's mage storm is fantastic.
The widowmakers have a 20" threat range vs. 16" for Ryan using mage storm but the widowmakers will need to roll 8's hit Ryan if they move.

You can't do much about him getting lucky deviations on his AOE's.

Basically pIrusk is alwasy going to give eStryker a hard time plus you had some bad luck and he had some good luck, so don't sweat it too much.

[mrhuettel]

first: were there really 3" of wood between the manhunters and you? if not: lynch's fire beacon usually takes care of anything benefiting from stealth or camouflage and ryan and watts then pewpewpew them away.

your general army lineup: looks like a solid list apart from the fact that estryker does not really need reinholt (his weapon already is rof 2 and he seldomly uses it).

if your stormsmiths had hit the manhunters, the whole game would've gone differently, disruption is worth a lot in games with only a few jacks (two smiths means two disruptions for the two khador jacks, and while irusk is a dangerous man with his foucs, a behemoth without is not that terrible any more (apart from his bombard, of course).

the general outline of your army was supposed to give stryker that one charge to irusk - slam the jacks away (and box some mechaniks with it), velocity on stryker giving him an threat range of 17" for the charge (remember, in mkII, you can charge across rough terrain, no matter what irusk does), giving you 9.5" on inhospitable ground.

my approach would have been:

- arcane shield on rowdy/stormclad
- b13 to take out widowmakers/manhunters and after that threat irusk (maybe crossing the battlefield to get away from eyriss and the widowmakers if they're nigh-invulnerable), remember their special attacks: fire beacon and mage storm make a tough combination, even after deviation!
- stormblades hiding behind the stormclad, together with arlan (additional focus machine), approaching to finish any jack the stormclad started beating on
- protect stryker until he has a charge lane to irusk, never overload him until that final showdown or the urgent need to kill something (was it really necessary to charge that devastator?)
- engage irusk's jacks early enough to not give him the focus to cast inhospitable ground; make sure that your opponent uses his precious iron flesh from only 6" away of the unit / model intended (most forget the low range of the spell)
- use stryker's lightning storm as a means of offense and protection - you don't hit a widowmaker? roll deviation and hit a widowmaker AND eiryss instead, killing both due to their tremendously low ARM stats, boost damage on eyriss, if you feel the need to have her out at 100%.

oh, and it seems that your opponent was quite glad to have forgotten his upkeeps and focus allocation - otherwise no inhospitable ground and open field towards his caster ;)

for the scenario: maybe a different choice of troops and jacks would've been a little more helpful: on field control scenarios, would be:
1. take gun mages! pushing stuff around is fun, especially when pushing out of control zones
2. take a centurion. i know, i know, terribly slow jack, but with his magno-shield, it's unchargeable, unslammable and has an ARM stat of 21 and due to its spear, it covers a huge range of impassible terrain. (roughly 6"!)
3. estryker is all 'bout the killing (sword to face). not the best choice in a scenario against a faction that has loads of abilities to deny charge lanes and block LOS (tempest, fog of war, inhospitable ground, artifice of deviation, eruption, murder of crows...)

still, i cannot see any mistakes in your list. your opponent just had the perfect means to counter your strategy and small things didn't work out like intended - that sometimes happens.

next time you play against him, try a list with brisbane and one or two defenders and some gun mages or simply put any one of the caines on the board to have him freak out. or just play the same list again and break his neck after that double-manhunter-kill has happened and half of the widowmakers died due to AOEs and that one lucky shot - 'cause then it's irusk and two jacks and some mechaniks against the best of the best of the cygnus.

*edit: completely forgot: take rhupert!

[Ysthrall]

Were Arlan and Reinholt useful in that list? Cos I'd have gone for a Charger if possible. A bit of flexibility would have been good, and a single focus will have it running into the widowmakers, or charging at Yuri.

Sounds like you got unlucky with the stormsmiths there. It's situational, but faced with a selection of stealthed solos and shooty guys, maybe a GMCA? (Or, as I'm sure someoen will respond, any number of mercs that excel in shooting annoying solos).

Was the Stormcald marshalled by the SBs, or run by eStryker?

As mentioned above, not a good matchup, Melee monsters vs Inhospitable ground shooty.

[trencher7]

Thank you,
that helps a lot. I got really frustrated but after a good night´s sleep and your comments I feel a lot better.

Oh, I mixed this one up:
Rowdy got killed by the Behemoth and the Behemoth was killed by Stryker (I had to do this for my ego).

As you asked:
My opponent set up first but only Irusk, the Dog, the Mechanics an the two Jacks, all more or less in the middle of his deployment zone. The AD troops followed, of course, after I deployed.

There were really more than 3" of wood between the B13 and the manhunter. This is the same wood that made me sweat against a Retribution army (first time I encountered them) and hid his Mage Hunter Assassins so that I could not see them but they were shooting at me. You know, I really came to hate this wood. Next time I see it on the board, I burn it down and throw the remains out of the window ;-)

Arlan and Reinholdt did nothing usefull in this game.

The Stormclad was marshalled.

His Widowmakers were scattered more than 2" away from each other so that an AoE hit only one model.
My concern ist that the B13 can´t wipe out a unit of Widowmakers. Or am I getting this wrong? I mean they are DEF 17 with Iron Flesh so even the B13 has a hard time hitting them...

[sanj]

Arlan and Reinholdt did nothing usefull in this game.

The Stormclad was marshalled.

I would recommend keeping Arlan, he's very good support for your letting your stormclad run fully loaded.
Alran uses power booster to give stormclad a focus.
Stormclad activates and gets a focus from being 3" from the stormblades
Stormclad can also use the marshal bonus to basically count as a 3rd focus.

As for the widowmakers, def 17 is very nasty to crack.
The only AOE's available to you in this list are Ryan's magestorm or Strykers' lightening storm but like you said they were spread out.

If you're desperate Stormclad could move 5" then boost to hit when shooting 8" and tag a second widowmaker with the electroleap.

Your best bet for dealing with widowmakers are probably the stormsmiths, they are great for bypassing high defence.
Then you could send the black 13th after the manhunters/yuri instead using Lynch's fire beacon.

Playing with a large forest is always going to give widowmakers a huge advantage.
If you win the roll at the start of the game, go first and choose the side with the forest just to keep it out of Khardorian hands.
Otherwise 5"x8" is roughly the largest forests my gaming club plays with.

p.s buy him ---> http://privateerpress.com/files/products/mercenaries/solos/rhupert-carvolo-piper-of-ord.png

[Rosencrantz]

I know I'm a couple months slow on posting here, but thought I'd throw in my $0.02 worth.

During the terrain placement phase of the game think about your weaknesses and why your opponent just set out his piece of terrain where he did. If you have an army that can't handle forrest, counter that forest that was just placed by placing a large, impassable wall that blocks LOS as close to it as you can, usually that means about 3 to 5 inches away. Set it up in a way that if it had Widow Makers in the woods that it would make them not be able to shoot anything. When I don't have pathfinder or ranged options in my army I set out a lot of Impassable, LOS blocking terrain. On that same note, when I do have Pathfinder, or lots of range I try to set out woods or even deep water splotches to block charge lanes to buy me more shooting time.

Never underestimate the advantage that good terrain placement can give you.

And I agree with everyone else, The Piper is the man at defeating woods and rough terrain.