Battle Report: Captain Shae vs. The Witch Coven of Garlghast

Played a game today at Dark Sphere London vs the mighty Geektoast, running Coven. This was a semi casual game, no timer, as he wanted to try out Coven for the first time. I decided not to bring Lilith3 and be that guy, instead bringing the pirates. On seeing the rest of his list, I decided to drop Shae.

He had:
-Coven
-- Arc Node
-- Deathjack
-- Barathrum

Maxy Satyxis Raiders + UA
Min Bane warriors
Max soulhunters

Skarlock thrall
Siren

You can find my list here: http://countingcroes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/mercenary-two-list-pair.html

I won the deployment roll and elected to go first. Deployment was fairly standard, though I think I put the pirate solos too far to the right as I ended up trying to focus the pirates on the left hand side of the board later. Not much I could have done about this, it's a fairly typical pirate problem. I pushed forward, spread out and expected the worst.

End of Turn 1

 He came forward a lot, the Egregore going front and centre behind the two heavy jacks and a bunch of clouds (objective, veil of mists x2). The banes held back with the witches and their support, the soulhunters and satyxis spread out on the flanks. Scary stuff.

Turn 2 Cloud Fortress

 My turn two I pulled some sweet pirate jank. Shae activates, scoots to the side his full 6" (I had to go around the Bosun as seen in picture one) and feats. Everybody comes forward, including crucially, Eiryss. Pirates activate and press forward, killing two Soulhunters, and one runs to engage Barathrum (prevents his countercharge), and one stands 1.5 inches in front of the Deathjack in the cloud. The Commodore gets a bead on the unfortunate pirate and slams him into the Deathjack like a large, meaty beanbag. This let Eiryss get exactly 5" from the Egregore and tag it with a disruption bolt. Goodnight floaty metal eye monster! I then craft a thrall rune for an extra charge, which chunks some damage off the witches, and then the mariner aims, hits the thrall in the back and boosts the blast on Egregore. The witches are left with about 8 hit points between them.

Cryx 2 becomes damage control, attempting to remove as many pirates as possible without any focus. The two heavy jacks get a lot of work done, and because I'd thrown the pirates really far forward I had to advance the support solos right up, the second picture up there is at the end of my turn 2. He removes a large amount of my support points and jams me up fairly heavily, revenge killing Eiryss and scoring 1 CP for controlling the central zone.

He feats and trusts his safety to everything being ~8" or more away from the Egregore, which is about 1" back from the zone, behind a cloud. Unfortunately, it's exactly 10" away from the Freebooter that's halfway up the board in picture 2.

I try to throw Barathrum (with the other Freebooter) to free up the Booter with distance on the Egregore but miss because of the feat, so I suck it up and tank the free strike, luckily not loosing any systems. Coup de Main and Jury Rig gives him a cool 9" advance and he's got 3 focus on him. One boost to hit and one boost to damage is all I need however, since I spike the roll and do 10 damage and he had no chance to replenish focus.

Freebooter destroys proxy base Egregore

Very enjoyable game, with a very fun opponent. Both of us learned some lessons, and another unlucky player is caught by janky pirate plays. Do your bit to prevent this happening on a game table near you by spreading this blog to everyone you know, for their own good.