Milton Kenyes Tournament Report (35pts)

So lets see how this goes. I'm a bit behind on writing my reports and this tournament happened about a month ago. I took Asphyxious3 and Deneghra1 as my casters. Gaspy with both Satyxis, Nightmare and the mechanithralls for support. Deneghra was running Boomhowlers, Nyss and mechanithralls as well. But I'm very happy with Asphyxious and the Satyxis so I was mostly going to be running him that day.

Wargames Workshop is a great little place with two shops and I try to attend their monthly tournaments as much as I can. This month it was in Milton Kenyes, a modern shop with a rather large Tesco nearby. Great for free parking. But enough about that, let's go through the games.

Game 1, Incursion, vs Niell Sherry, Protectorate of Menoth

I'm guessing that it was Niell's first tournament but as he played I realised he knows the game very well. Hopefully he'll keep going and I can see him beating some big names. Today he was using Reznik and Kreoss2. I think Kreoss wasn't running his theme list and I went for the easy choice of Gaspy as Niell choose Kreoss with two knight exemplars, bastions, errants, vanquisher and Eiryss1.




I took first turn and the raiders claimed the centre area with Nightmare running behind with the blood witches. Niell sent exemplars up both flanks, bastions centre left and the vanquisher centre right as the left hand flag disappeared.




Time to jam up the errants with Ashen Veiled raiders so I can score on the right flag then. Blood witches went left to sort out Eiryss, they missed but she was engaged by two incorporeal witches so not much hope for escape there. The raiders started killing as many errants as possible while engaging the vanquisher and blocking the right exemplars from much of the board. Neill attempted to clear off the raiders from the vanquisher and mostly succeeded apart from one stopping the large pie plate of fire from landing nearby. Everything attacked what it could reach as a few of the blood witches exploded from the exemplars on that side.

My third turn and I decided to be aggressive. Gaspy gets up to the right hand flag to dominate as the raiders on that side attempted to deal with the exemplars over there. All but one were killed so I was quite happy with that though the last guy was contesting the flag. On my left the blood witches attack as much as they can and deal out a bit of damage to Niell's troops. Finally, Nightmare takes down the vanquisher and prey switches to Kreoss.

Niell takes the opportunity and Kreoss feats and charges Nightmare. With his armour piercing attack and a couple of follow-ups Nightmare is scrap and the rest of his troops start killing. Errants take care of the blocking raiders and the blood witches are decimated by bastions and exemplars. Then the last remaining right hand errant moves up to gaspy, taking two free strikes and surviving. He then swings and as he was under Kreoss' feat he had two, automatically hitting weapon master attacks. On perfectly average dice I think Gaspy dies. However, I lived on 3 boxes. (Barrie, the organiser was amused to see my panicked face at this moment.)

Anyways, my turn and I instantly take care of the errant with Gaspy and consolidate my position with mechanithralls coming from my back lines to do more damage. At this point Neill realises he can't get anything to contest the flag and we call the game there.




Things learnt: Don't rely on criticals or free strikes to save me. I was also slightly too far up. The pictures will show that I was actually on the far side of the flag. I shouldn't have been there.

Game 2, Process of Elimination, vs Hamish Chisholm-Brown, Legion of Everblight

Ever since going to Wargames Workshop tournaments I've mostly seen Hamish there as well. Great guy to chat to and play games against (even when he's been out the night before). This time around he had Thagrosh1 and Vayl1 to bring against me and I thought Vayl1 was out of the question (no beasts and the scenario is fairly active). Out came Gaspy again and Hamish took Thags (warspears, legionnaires (min), spawning vessel (max), scythian, and Ravagore).




He took first turn and legionaires took cover behind a wall on the right while the warspears took the left zone. The pot (spawning vessel) had position behind the legionaires and the ravagore was hanging at the back in the centre as the scythian went on an extreme flanking maneuver. I clarified if the legionaires had pathfinder and as they didn't the raiders went quite far up the table to bring them out. Blood witches were slightly restrained as they moved left and Nightmare swung out right to force the preyed ravagore to the left as well.




Hamish ran the legionaires into the raiders to jam them up and the pot took up the wall position. The warspears gathered around his end of the left zone and possibly threw a stick or two at the blood witches. Thags with his ravagore moved up to that zone as well. My second turn and it was time to turn up the pressure for scenario. Nightmare took care of the objective (needing a full focus load). The right hand necrosurgeon unit moved heavily up to surround the legionaires as the raiders took care of most of them. This lead to my necrosurgeon being full of corpse tokens as the pot stood there empty (closest model takes the corpse). The blood witches went incorporeal and flooded the left zone while Gaspy hung back to be safe.




Hamish decides to do something similar and with the warspears moving to clear a path, Thagrosh charged into the objective and smashed it to the ground while creating a couple of clouds from nearby blood witches. The pot moves into the zone as the remaining legionnaires take out a couple of raiders. The Scythian comes into the zone from the left and the ravagore stays at the back.


Time to clear the zone then. The raiders do their best to kill legionnaires but a couple remain. So instead of walking to the pot, nightmare tramples and after two purchased attacks the pot is done and the zone is empty. Three control points for me then. The blood witches attack the Scythian and block up the left hand zone.




But Hamish clears the left zone. After being told I was on three CPs he wanted to keep in the game so ran a couple of warspears across to the right zone and used the scythian and Thagrosh to clear the left. From the pictures I can see the ravagore in the right zone before this turn but I can't see it at the end game stage. So I think the ravagore also got into the zone. So to win all I had to do was clear the right zone. If the ravagore was in there I used nightmare to get rid of him. Wounded the warspears with raiders then finished them off with Gaspy himself. Win via scenario.

 
Things learnt:

Hamish was a great opponent and even graciously let me move a contesting model into the left zone after I had forgotten to do so. When I took down the pot Hamish hadn't realised that I only needed to destroy the vessel and not the acolytes. So I should have pointed that out at the beginning of the turn to give him the time to check the back of the card. But that's a minor thing.


Game 3, Close Quarters, vs Daniel Bearup, Cygnar

Another regular at the Wargames Workshop tournaments and another great guy. Don't know what they are doing there but keep at it. Anyways, last time I faced Daniel he was playing Siege vs Gaspy3 (same list). This time around he also had Haley2. I stuck to my plan and Daniel chose Haley2, with a couple of jack marshelled fireflies, sword knights, bonded stormclad and three stormcallers. Bye bye infantry.



Daniel had first turn and  gets the Fireflies up the table with Pronto and running. I'd better attempt to deal with them. The sword knights follow and Haley with her stormcall take the left side. My raiders take the right flag but cautiously. Blood witches go towards the enemy's flag and Nightmare and Gaspy are slightly right but not too far due to the killbox and Anistasia De Bray.


And here Daniel's plan comes to the fore, the fireflies get to either side of my lines and the stormcallers deal very easily with my front line of troops. Haley takes position behind her flag and the sword knights take cover behind the walls. I know I can't take too long dealing with the light warjacks but I can see a route to Haley. A sword knight might block my way so I deal with him via the handcannons on my satyxis raiders. Nightmare is fully loaded with focus and goes in under Carnage to kill Haley. Charge attack hits as do all but one of the three normal claw attacks. But, by the end of it, Haley is left with one wound. Bugger. Because of the needing to deal with the sword knight and keep the charge lane clear the raiders are now slightly out of position and giving ground to Haley. All the blood witches can do is attack the left hand firefly putting some damage down there. Gaspy has feated though so should be fairly safe from assassination attempts.




The stormcallers do their best to kill a few more of my front line and then the sword knights jam me out of contest range for Daniel's flag. The stormclad deals with Nightmare so Haley scores a control point, and she has feated. So I've feated on the wrong turn. Daniel controls my turn fairly well and I kill as much as possible but Daniel is still able to score a control point. The reason I say I feated on the wrong turn is that I gained some focus from the feat but with Vociferon being outside Haley's control area I couldn't get an arc node to Haley to use it. At least I'm safe camping away.




Now the turns get slightly blurry as I try my best to get that last damage box from Haley but Gaspy cannot get anywhere close and I stupidly had Vociferon engaged by a stormcaller and can't risk the free strike. Handcannon shots and blood witches try to get to Haley but nothing works. Dice down is called a little bit later and though my mechanithralls had started to come through and kill a few things Daniel won four control points to nil.







Things learnt:


The major mistake was not keeping Vociferon free, and it's only after writing this report that I've realised this. Daniel had built a very good list and later I learned that he had designed the list to defeat mine in particular. It did it's job but I think I can see a way to deal with something similar now.


Game 4, Rally Point, vs Pete Boyce, Protectorate of Menoth


First time meeting Pete and another good guy. I know I enjoyed the friendly atmosphere, which is something I worry about giving back as a dirty Cryx player. Anyways, Pete had Kreoss1 and Feora2. Knowing how badly Feora can deal with infantry and having brought infantry heavy lists I thought I was buggered so I kept on playing Gaspy :) Pete chose Kreoss though, with zealots, errants, redeemer, a heavy jack (reckoner I think) and some support.


He had first turn and the zealots took the right side and the errants the left with the jacks and Kreoss in the centre. I run the raiders to my edge of the right zone and the blood witches to the edge of the left zone. Nightmare and Gaspy in the centre but I move my objective forwards so next turn I can move it into either zone yet still hide behind it. The raider captain also hides behind the objective, for no real reason at all :D

Pete shoots at a couple of blood witches with the errants while moving into the centre of the zone. The jacks hang back as the Zealots use their invulnerability to run and engage some of the raiders. My turn and I'd better deal with those two units first. Blood witches also use their mini-feat and kill a few of the errants as the blood hag dispelled Defender's Ward. The raiders have Ashen Veil put upon them, move into the right zone and engage as many of the zealots as possible to stop bombs. I also send in Nightmare into the reckoner but he only cripples it.


Nightmare gets killed by Kreoss and the reckoner as errants try to deal with engaging blood witches as best they can. The zealots also try their best to kill raiders but I think at the end of Pete's turn I still had 8-9 raiders and 4-6 blood witches. Having had the major threat to Gaspy crippled I moved him into the left zone and feated for some extra protection. The blood witches deal with the last of the errants in the zone and that zone is clear for me to score. At this point the raiders suffer a major failure and they only kill a couple of the zealots. Oh well, at least I have scored ahead of Pete.


Kreoss feats this turn but most of the satyxis were under the captain's protection and the ones who weren't were outside of Kreoss' control range. Gaspy was protected by the objectives as well so I wasn't in much danger of assassination. The reckoner moves into the zone but that's about it on the left side. Finally, the raiders kept dodging the zealots and again only 1-2 died. Unfortunately the raiders had a similar hard time of killing the zealots so only 3 or so of them were whipped to the ground. Gaspy camped everything he could and sent in the blood witches to deal with the reckoner some more.


Then around that time dice down was called. I win via my one control point. 


Things learnt:


Not many people seem to use the rally point objectives as moveable cover. So I need to keep doing that to annoy my opponent. Other than that, maybe a bit better usage of combined melee to deal with those zealots.

After those four games Gav had played well enough to be the overall winner of the tournament so we stopped there. I came in second with a reasonable strength of schedule and a load of CPs. All the guys there were great and I hope to see them around elsewhere as well.

Oh and the next tournament there will be on the 16th of November. 

European Masters

I've written about my lists for the European Masters. I've written about my practice for the tournament. Now let's see how well I did at the event.

I didn't win it. In fact I came 44 out of 69.

So, if you wanted top notch commentary of the best games this isn't what you are looking for. It will be about how I saw the games going and hopefully why I made the mistakes I did and the successful plans I carried out.

Game 1, Destruction, vs Cees Jan Stam, Retribution of Scyrah

So the first game I get drawn against Retribution. Not a bad match up mostly but they can do plenty of tricks. Fortunately one of my major tournament buddies used to play Retribution a lot so I know what stuff can do at the very least. CJ had Kaelyssa, Ossyan and Vyros2 for his selection and I was fairly certain he would pick Kaelyssa. I went for Deneghra1 as the pirate boat can cause plenty of issues for the unprepared. He did take Kaelyssa with banshee, pheonix, Sylys Wyshnalyrr, sentinels, strike force, Skeryth Issyen, Lanyssa Ryssyl, assassins, arcanists and a soulless.

As written above the scenario was destruction so four objectives covered the entire middle of the board and left no space for terrain. After the normal movement shenanigans (run forward) we started shooting at each other. CJ feated first and protected himself rather well with the assassins on either flank and the dragoon running up my left. The strike force were in the centre and the sentinels centre left. My shooting was going to be heavily restricted by Kaelyssa's feat but pirates are fairly fast so I just moved up and shot up as much as I could with Crippling Grasp and feat helping out on the strike force. The dust settled and only 3-4 strike force remained. I ignored the sentinels on my left and just let my feat protect me from the counter-attack.

At this point the details get hazy and I can't quite remember exactly how things happened. The strike force and sentinels came at me and killed most of the pirate units over a couple of turns whilst I killed them back. Skeryth Issyen had an extreme flanking manoeuvre and managed to engage a few of the mechanithralls in my back line and a Necrosurgeon. Using ghost walk I charged the pheonix supporting the dragoon and at a similar time I killed the banshee as well. Now that took place over a few turns and to be honest I took far too long over one or two of my goes. Pretty soon CJ had Kaelyssa Skeryth Issyen and a sentinel or two whilst I had Dougal MacNaile, Rockbottom, Deneghra and a few mechanithralls. With my last couple of turns I killed the two enemy objectives and the sentinels but Skeryth Issyen lived. I ended my last turn with 7 seconds and gave CJ the game.

Why? Because I didn't want to play so loosely that I was moving things too far or mis-measuring this and that. I messed up with my time so I decided to end it there.

Things learnt:

Deathclock allows that extra time during the important turns but I really should have kept a timed turns ideal in my head and not wasted too much time during the game. So keep playing fast even with the flexibility that deathclock allows.

Game 2, Close Quarters, vs Klaas Luyckx, Cryx

Game two and I am facing the mirror match. Well, mirror of a sorts as Klass had Asphyxious3, Mortenebra and the Witch Coven. Some lovely lists and when I saw Mortenebra I exclaimed that I loved playing her and started to chat with Klaas a little bit about that. He decided to play her so I asked if he wanted to select my list in return. A little bit of thought later and Deneghra was facing off against Mortenebra's theme list. Must be a collaboration to collect those pirate souls or something.

I believe that Klaas had first turn and ran pretty much into my face. I advanced to a level with my flag, slightly lagging with my sea dogs on my left and forwards with the press gangers on my right. I put an arc node on a hill on my right close to the press gangers and ended my turn there.

Klass then took advantage of Terminal Velocity to get Deathjack into combat with the arc node (charging a press ganger) and wrecked it. So now I had Deathjack in my lines, on a hill and in a wreck, with a harrower following up the other flank and a bloat thrall shooting 5" pie plates into my lines. At this point my brain didn't think in the best way and I feated with Deneghra but only covered Deathjack and a reaper on the right flank. The Sea dogs guns did well to damage Klaas' jacks on the left flank but nothing died, especially as they were not under Deneghra's feat. The press gangers did charge into Deathjack to try to damage them but Hawk was out of position and they failed their command check (Hawk makes them fearless in her command range).

Klaas send in a Harrower to kill a few models on my left flank with a slayer in support. Mortenebra hangs out behind a wall for protection and the Deathjack eats a few press gangers to devour their souls. His bloat thrall gets off another shot and corrodes a few more pirates. My turn and again I have a major brain fart. The sea dogs and press gangers do their best to damage the nearest jacks but very little happens. I take out most of the harrower but it's still standing and the Deathjack takes one or two damage at most. Deneghra moves closer to the centre of the table and some of the pirates move up to cover slight lines to her but that's about all I do. I don't even check Deneghra's distance to the Deathjack and that's where my major mistake was.

To end this battle report slightly quickly, Klaas shoots the bloat thrall one more time into the pirates between Deneghra and Deathjack killing the ones blocking a trample end spot. Mortenebra feats and sends in the Deathjack to eat Deneghra. A few rolls later (and one re-roll) I've lost, taking away 0 control points and 0 army points killed. But I have enjoyed every single second of the game.

Things learnt:

Why did I have such a brain fart on two separate turns? I've no idea but I made some major mistakes there. The Deathjack should have been killed by Mechanithralls rather than press gangers and scourge followed by crippling grasp would have help massively in that. I should have given Klass more space on my left so I could sweep into my right flank shooting all the time with the Sea Dogs. My feat turn was effectively wasted as well I just got terrified by the Deathjack screaming across the table at me. Something I've done to others just never happened to me. In my previous game I lost partly because I thought too long about what to do, here I didn't think things through at all. Both resulted in a loss.

Game 3, Outflank, vs Sergi Pons, Retribution of Scyrah

So the tournament isn't going that well and I get my second Retribution player of the day. No worries, Sergi is a fun guy with Kaelyssa, Ossyan and Rahn. I pick Deneghra again whilst Kaelyssa is chosen again. Slight rematch it seems. This time around Kaelyssa had infiltrators, stormfall archers, sentinels, banshee and a pheonix.

The sentinels went on my left moving behind a forest and the infiltrators ran to just within the right zone. Sergi is slightly cautious it seems. I ran my press gangers into the right zone, just enough to tempt in the infiltrators and the sea dogs moved up the centre. I think that I took first turn but Sergi feated as he moved up.

So Sergi has used his feat in the previous turn and charged the infiltrators into the press gangers taking them all out with the mass of attacks. The sentinels moved up with the pheonix in support, all the while the stormfall archers were taking pot shots into my lines. So I responded with Deneghra's feat, sprayed a venom across the nice line of infiltrators and killed most of them. The press gangers finished them off (except one) while the sea dogs killed the sentinel officer then as many of the grunts as possible.

Sergi now has very little he can do as I made sure that my feat covered his warjacks and Kaelyssa herself. The banshee on my right moves back slightly and probably takes a shot at my troops while the pheonix engaged the arc node on that side. A bit more shooting from the stormfall and it's my turn again. The way is clear, Sergi doesn't have enough left to effectively fight back so I cast Crippling Grasp on the banshee, move into the zone and clear it to dominate. Mechanithralls charge into the banshee but fail to cripple it in any real matter thanks to the wailing (no orders within 5").

Sergi clears off Crippling Grasp thanks to Banishing Ward and tramples the Banshee into the zone and moves the pheonix out of the left hand zone. That's about it though, so I manoeuvre the mechanithralls around so that a load can charge from outside 5" and rust the banshee before scrapping it. Then I clear the left hand zone of sentinels and score three control points to take my total to five.

Thing learnt:

One thing I haven't talked about in this game is that fact that we screwed up the deathclock. A bit into one of my turns and it turns out that I've been using up Sergi's clock. We called over a judge who modified the clocks by taking off ten minutes from my clock and adding ten to Sergi's. Not the best solution but it seemed to work. Though the game is long gone by now, if it had ended with Sergi clocking out I would have given him the game as we were in a bad situation.

So the thing that was learnt is pay attention to the clock. Amazing how the first three games have involved something like that. Maybe I could do with a wee bit more practice or something.

Game 4, Incursion, vs Marvin Desmet, Protectorate of Menoth

Ok, Menoth. Something that can be difficult to deal with. Marvin had Harbinger, Feora2 and Severus1. I'm expecting Feora2 so choose Skarre1 to deal with any armour issues. Instead, out comes Severus1 with a guardian, reckoner, Blessing of Vengeance, zealots and errants with their respective UAs.

I took first turn and ran forwards with everything leaving one or two Bane Knights out ahead. Zealots (on the right) and jacks (centre) run forward as well. The errants move forward (on the left, in to a forest) and one shot later they have killed off a bane knight from my left hand unit. Wrong move there. Oh, and of course the middle flag disappears.

My second turn and it isn't quite right for a feat. It would mostly be defensive but with Eye of Menoth around my feat isn't going to be a total place of safety and I can only attack the errants. So I vengeance forward on the left, move up the Kraken to be threatening in the centre and cast Dark Guidance to cover the errants. A few of them die from charging Bane Knights and most of the rest are engaged. The right hand unit spread out to avoid zealot bombs and thats about it.

Marvin gets the Blessing of Vengeance to the right hand knights and six die to an Ashes To Ashes cast from Severus while the zealots claim the right flag for a control point. On the left the errants kill a few knights but I'm still contesting the flag. In the centre the jacks move slightly closer to me.

Third turn and I'm going to wreck as much as I can. Skarre powers up the kraken, feats, casts Dark Guidance and charges to get to the left flag. The kraken wreaks the reckoner, takes out cortex & right arm of the guardian and kills the nearby vassal to allow a hellblaster shot into the hierophant killing him as well. The left hand unit of knights take out all but one of the errants in the forest and the right hand unit with Tartarus take out the zealots, Blessing of Vengeance and claim a control point over there as well. 3-1

Marvin's turn didn't do that much to me. In the photo below you'll see that the right hand unit of knights has been heavily reduced by Ashes To Ashes. Unfortunately he didn't move the last errant into 4" of the left-hand flag so I won at the end of his turn with 5 control points.

Things learnt:

First game where the death clock worked perfectly so I was learning throughout the tournament. For all my potential opponents out there can I suggest not just shooting one bane knight a turn. It doesn't end well that often.

Game 5, Into the Breach, vs Laurens Tanguy, Retribution of Scyrah

Okaaaay. Third retribution player of the tournament and he's packing Ossyan, Kaelyssa and Ravyn. Let's see how Deneghra does this time around. Of course Laurens picks Kaelyssa. Game on.

Right, I'm sorry about this but this game is pretty much gone from my head. I think Kaelyssa feated first and myself second. I charged the halberdiers as they were out of the feat but they were fairly resilient and Laurens had placed his models well to protect them. Strike force were killed via the Sea Dogs' guns as I let the sentinels manouver around the forest just behind the flag on the left.

After all that initial fighting I came out of it fairly well. Pirates still fighting and plenty of mechanithralls backing them up. I can't remember which turn it was but I made a major mistake. Kaelyssa was in walk and shoot range of Deneghra. As the attrition/scenario fight wasn't going to go Laurens way he took the assassination and succeeded.

Things learnt:

Oh dear. The major thing I did wrong was not moving Deneghra further back. It should have been an easy choice yet I have a major history of this. Hopefully one day I'll learn but not just yet it seems.

Game 6, Process of Elimination, vs Hennrik Vrielink, Retribution of Scyrah

Something funky is going on here. Hennrik had Ossyan, Rahn an, finally, Kaelyssa of course. Though I should have been locked into Gaspy3 the organisers had said that as this was planned to be a seven round tournament I didn't have to play each list once. Sod that. I've played Kaelyssa verses Deneghra three times now and I'm not having it a forth time. Asphyxious3 was my pick and Kaelyssa was Hennrik's.

Hennrik was running the following; pheonix, sentinels, strike force, 2x destor thanes, Skeryth Issyen, Eiryss2, 2x ghost sniper, Lady Aiyana & Master Holt and a mage hunter assassin.

I took the first turn and moved up cautiously. My raiders were on the field in front of them, Deathjack to the right and Erebus to the left with their toes in the zones. Everything else kinda moved forward to cover the field behind them.

Hennrik then moves his strike force in a line and takes a lot of shots at the Deathjack, giving out a fair amount of damage. The ghost snipers take on Erebus and take out a column easily as well. At this point I'm really happy as he's concentrating on the wrong targets for this game. Kaelyssa feats and that's about it. My second turn and it's time to take out the strike force. My raiders get desperate pace and Ashen Veil to go screaming into the strike force's line engaging every last one of them. Erebus hides behind the left objective and Deathjack eyes up the right objective for next turn. The blood witches go incorporeal and as Eiryss had taken a shot at the right hand raider captain she decided to get the sniper, then sprint behind the assassin.

The strike force fails at the raiders but Ashen Veil makes them DEF 16 (effectively) and the only way he can kill a couple is via CMA. The sentinels try to clear out a couple but have been jammed behind the strike force so miss the two they could target. Ghost snipers shoot at Erebus again and the assassin takes care of the captain.

My turn and Carnage gets cast to help the raiders. The Deathjack takes out the objective on the right while the raiders clear out the strike force in the zone. A thane had ran around the raiders so the blood witches took care of him as well as the assassin. After casting Carnage I had also moved Gaspy into the right zone so I score three control points.

Hennrik is in a really bad situation here but manages to get rid of a few of the raiders. Enough to shoot the Pheonix at Gaspy. He got the needed critical to set Gaspy on fire but the Bokur shielded the shot to take the fire on himself. At that point a ghost sniper took out the last box on the Bokur and Kaelyssa shot at Gaspy doing very little. I relax a little more as he didn't take out the left hand objective making winning a lot easier.

So I go for a scenario win. Erebus takes out the left hand objective taking me to four and Gaspy gets Carnage up again. The raiders dismount Skeryth Issyen and kill the last thane. I had also moved them slightly to make space for the Deathjack. He charges in and takes out the dragoon who was the last model in the zone. Scenario win.

Things learnt:

Taking the non-obvious caster can sometimes work wonders. Admittedly if Hennrik hadn't allowed me to engage all the strike force at once this could have gone slightly differently, but so it goes.