Giving tiered eVayl a try at 35 points

[Karnstein]

I finally managed to pin eVayls cloak and my second angelus some minutes ago, so I'm eager to give eVayl a try tomorrow at the local WM/H gaming night. Most matches are played at 35pt.

I do want to run her tier list, but I'm not sure how to reach the 3 flying beasts requirement (2xangel+seraph vs 2xangel+harrier) and what kind of infantry I want to run.

I played around with the list builder and came up with the following lists:

a)

Faction: epic Vayl - Machinations of Shadow
Points: 35/35
Tiers: 4
Vayl, Consul of Everblight (*6pts)
* Shredder (2pts)
* Angelius (8pts)
* Angelius (8pts)
* Scythean (8pts)
* Seraph (7pts)
Blighted Nyss Legionnaires (Leader and 6 Grunts) (4ts)
Spawning Vessel (Leader and 2 Grunts) (2pts)
Blighted Nyss Shepherd (1pts)
Blighted Nyss Shepherd (1pts)


b)

Faction: epic Vayl - Machinations of Shadow
Points: 35/35
Tiers: 4
Vayl, Consul of Everblight (*6pts)
* Harrier (2pts)
* Shredder (2pts)
* Angelius (8pts)
* Angelius (8pts)
* Scythean (8pts)
Blighted Nyss Hex Hunters (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
Spawning Vessel (Leader and 5 Grunts) (3pts)
Blighted Nyss Shepherd (1pts)
Blighted Nyss Shepherd (1pts)

What do you think folks? I'm also not sure if I want to start with a shredder or just drop it and spawn it with the pot, using the 2 points to upgrade the scythean to a ravagore and either turn the legios from list a) into hex hunters or add a spell martyr.

[Necra-Chi]

Change scythean and shredder to carnivean instead, spiny growth spam is easy for her and very effective. If you have two angels she doesn't need the seraph as much so can save five points by taking harrier instead. That will allow you to fill out your legionnaires and vessel. Maybe get another lesser, some martyrs or take hex hunters instead of legionnaires.

[Karnstein]

Change scythean and shredder to carnivean instead, spiny growth spam is easy for her and very effective.

Run that variant last week against a player from my club running a coven list with Deathjack, Reaper+Leviathan, two defiler arc nodes a warwitch and a skarlock.

We played on a winter themed table with a forest in the center of the table (big terrain pieces formed a X). I won the roll off and moved my forces up with one angel hidding behind the forest, while the other one clipped it on the left side shadowed by the carnivean. The hex hunters ran into the forest and the pot moved behind them. eVayl put Occultation on herself, Refuge on the angel behind the forest and admonition on the one on the flank. Carni put SG on the admonition-angel.

In his first turn he tried to hit the angel on the left with a boosted Stygian Abyss hoping for a crit. While he hit and managed to put some damage on the angel, he failed to score a crit and thus didn't shadowbind it. His levi moved the combined damage to roughly 9 points and the arc node on the right sprayed down a hex hunter. He also used his feat, denying my angels and the hex hunter a charge.

On my second turn after checking my control range and dropping admonition I moved the angel with refuge on it toward the DJ, boosted both the hit and damage rolls and moved back right into the forest after scoring ~20 damage on the DJ. Then I activated eVayl, moved her a bit closer to the forest (big mistake!), cycled refuge on the other angel and wiped the DJ off the board. The harrier activated, used his animus and attacked the defiler, wrecking both the head and the cortex. Then I moved the pot, killed 2 grunts and spawned a shredder, who sadly failed to hit both of his rapid-infused attacks against the defiler. To top that achievement, I botched up my hex hunters move. Instead of running some of them into contact with his models and denying his damaged arc node a clean road around the forest towards my warlock, I simply moved them and tried to hit his models with blight bolts. Think I managed to hit the reaper, but some damage on the other defiler and killed his warwitch siren. At the end of my second turn eVayl camped with 2 fury pretty close to the forest.

He started his second turn with the skarlock putting ghost walk on his damaged defiler. The chicken then moved through the gap between my hunters and lesser beasts, ending up ~4.5" away from evayl. After that he activated his coven, trying to kill eVayl with channeled spells hitting on average dice. The first spell scored pretty low, so I didn't use a fury to transfer it. And then he failed to hit with his second spell, which ended his assassination attempt (still had those 2 transfers and his focus allowed for only two more spells). He killed some more hex hunters, bringing the unit down to ~half size.

On my third turn my carnivean charged his levi (6+ to hit). The spray hit and scored some damage points, but after that I managed to fumble most of my 7 claws&maw attacks and ended up with a still living leviathan. My harrier killed the damaged arc node, the shredder frenzied and my angels scrapped the already damaged reaper (blight bolts) and the second arc node. The one with refuge moved in contact with his coven, while the remaining hunters split up and engaged both the coven and his skarlock (only killed the skarlock).

He then used ghost walk to move his levi out of cc range of my carni and tried to kill at least one of my heavies, which he failed to do. After that he conceded, since it was getting late and he couldn't get off another assassination attempt with no remaining nodes and eVayl still hiding behind the forest. At that moment my only losses accounted to 2 self-sacrificed pot grunts and half of the hex hunters. I didn't lost a single beast and would have scrapped his remaining heavy next turn with the carnivean and then charged both angels into Egregore and then repulsed the coven out of b2b with eregore. And I still had my feat.


Bottomline: While I wouldn't try to run her in a time restricted setting, bringing her for casual games was pretty funny and I intend to play her tier list again in the near future. Think I'm going to drop the carni, not sure if I will replace him with a ravagore (adding one spell martyr) or a scythean (+proxy succubus). I do liked the hex hunters, but I'm going to give legios a try too after I managed to assemble them.

[Necra-Chi]

Good report. Why do you feel that she doesn't handle timed turns well? I have had no problem.

Don't be afraid to chuck occultation on Vayl herself, to make it a bit harder for spell and ranged assassins to deal with her.

[Karnstein]

I do think someone could play her without running into problems with timed turns, as long as he is an experienced player and spends a lot of time practicing with her (thus creating activation patterns/strategies ).

But I'm still new to LoE (and WM/H in general), with less than a couple of games running Legion and only a single game with eVayl so far. That means I'm prone to spend a lot of time of stuff like thinking, checking her control are and asking my opponent some questions. I don't have any "automated" strategies or activation patterns so far, since I haven't had the time to practice a lot with her (and the other warlocks I like). Right now I would rather pick other more straight forward warlocks if I had to play with timed turns, esp. ones that stick with solos and beasts and thus have a double digit lower body count on the table.

And yeah, Occultation on her is quite nice. I used it in that battle rep and it would have totally saved me from the assassination attempt if I had kept my distance from his arc node. One of the reason why I picked the hex hunters (besides not having my legios assembled yet).