How to win with Hydras!

[DesertsPower]

After many months of lurking I thought I'd share this marvellously fun Steamroller list I've run in a couple of tournaments. I've had the ability to field 3 Hydras for a little while now, and Vyros turns them into something silly with his second tier list.

THE LIST (25pts)

pVyros - Tier 2 Dawn's Talon (Heavy 'jacks cost 1 point less)
Hydra
Hydra
Hydra

Min Sentinels
Arcanist

(for 35pts, max sentinels and add a UA, add another Arcanist, add min Halberdiers - this will also give one Hydra Advance Move. And reinforcements? A whole Manticore )


THE RECIPE

Deployment: You can probably see where this is going. Choose to go second if you can and deploy all 3 Hydras opposite his caster. Screen with Sentinels if you like, else send them off to the further objective to stab things. Vyros and Arcanist chill out behind the Hydras.
Turn one: Give 3 focus to one hydra, 1 focus to another and 1 to the third via the Arcanist. Cast Mobility with your remaining 2 focus and walk Vyros and your jacks straight towards the enemy caster. Run your Sentinels. Or something. They're really not that important. Their best use is probably to screen the Hydras from melee attackers, so do that.
Turn two: Fill up the remaining two Hydras (4 focus). If your enemy is less than 21" away from your Hydra line (Hint: if they're half the table away, they're in range.), cast Inviolable resolve on the Sentinels or Vyros. If you're not sure about the range, cast Mobility again instead. Walk Hydras up, shoot the enemy Warcaster. Is he being screened by 'jacks? Infantry? Forest? Who cares?! Boost to hit. If you hit, boost to damage. Have you won yet? If not, that's unlucky. Proceed to turn 3...
Turn 3: Refill the focus, shoot the warcaster again. Aim if possible.
Turn 4: What turn 4?


THOUGHTS

If you haven't killed the enemy caster by now something has gone horribly wrong. There's not many casters that can take 6 boosted POW 15s, and your threat range should be sufficiently high enough that he can't escape without abandoning his jacks/beasts (particularly if he didn't see it coming) and you shouldn't be in melee range of his troops (if you're using those sentinels to screen properly!).
Warlocks are tougher to assassinate but tend to have such low stats that their beasts will fall apart around them if you keep shooting. And no beasts = dead warlock! That said, my second lists have always been tailored to fight Hordes so that this one wouldn't have to.

I've lost with this list once and even then it was a really fun game - I mainly lost because I forgot to upkeep Inviolable Resolve and my Sentinels all died (herp derp). He had pCaine and upkept Blur on him and hid him behind cover all game, so there was no ranged assassination prospects for me against a whopping DEF 24! Then again my opponent had played and lost to this list in the previous tournament, so his cowardly behaviour was to be expected I guess

[Rogue Sun]

People have known about this trick for ages. Here's the problem, one piece of cover ruins this army's plan in one fell swoop. At which point you're left with 3 pretty useless jacks and a good unit of infantry that is too slow to get the alpha strike off against similarly dangerous infantry.