Doubleheader Battle Report!

How I learned what Chosen of Death Do

I got to test my new City States list twice last night after work. Now, disclaimer. This was after 30 hours of work in 36 hours of time. But my friend was nice enough to stay up late so I could get some games in as I haven’t been able to regularly go to our FLGS game night in a while. He was playing his Wadrhun and I was throwing down with my City States. We are both pretty quick players that know our armies and we ended up being able to sneak in two games in about 3 hours.

Game 1

This is the game where I learned what chosen of death do. It’s a tough lesson that we all have to learn at some point. I will carry the pain to my grave 😀 Also I learned what blocks of hoplites can and cannot do, one thing that they super cannot do, is line up in front of a Tontorr. I will condense the battle reports due to their being two.

Here we see the quatl in his natural environment. My side of the board tying up my units. I REALLY wanted to get that objective before tontorr could as I was already behind in scenario.

I used my supremacy and thankfully won the priority. Inquisitors kill tontorr and the chariot strategic stack activated to do a wound. Finally my companion cavalry finished off the objective with a charge clash.

Annnnnnnnnnnd then I died. There is nothing really else to say about it. I took 9 damage from a chosen of death and scion of death who were broken on my Talos. Hoplites melted fast, and I was very out of position in a lot of key units and I was behind in scenario. My opponent did this awesome play where he would use the raptor riders and adaptability mastery to insta kill objectives and he was then able to threaten my objective because of the speed available. Being so behind on scenario did make me play a bit more recklessly to try and catch up, I need to be a bit more calm and collected. Some key moments for me to learn from were playing my companion cavalry much differently. They are the definition of glass cannon. They MELT things. Especially in this high evasion meta that conquest is morphing into. Also, putting units that can handle tontorr and chosen of death in front of the tontorr and chosen of death 😀

Game 2

We looked at the time and said screw it we go again! Quick scenario and terrain swap and we were off.

I brought my companion cavalry and hoplites in round two.. I wanted the companion cavalry to threaten a bit of the board and give me a bit of breathing room from the fast raptor riders. My opponent again did some objective killing and I really wanted to stop that from happening.

Companion cavalry with Ipparchos melted his raptor riders and in turn were melted by the chosen of death. My second unit of Companion cavalry made the march charge needing a 4 and tied down those chosen, also crucially stealing the objective. I played MUCH more with scenario in mind this game and it was noticeable how it changed the tempo and pace of the game.

Another crucial supremacy win lets me melt some of those chosen of death before they activate. Really collapsing the left side of things. There is a quatl on the extreme left flank who became hunted by my Eidolon.

I kept playing the game of, march-charge-steal the objective. At this point I had multiple rounds of scoring 9 points and I was doing decently on attrition. I don’t have a real way to kill tontorr but I had locked down and nearly killed both Chosen of Death and I wasn’t too worried about the vets. Here’s where I want to talk about skorpios, cause holy cow. They’re so good. They pump out so much damage and scenario pressure round after round after round. I currently play them split up but talking to my opponent, he says lots of his best CS opponents in major tournaments play them together death star style. Definitely something I want to try!

Always always toe the zone so they can’t kill you and control it. The Inquistors on the top left small zone clashed marched so they killed the chosen of death and kept the veterans off the zone for another turn. Talos…Here’s the thing…Talos should’ve been where the hoplites are and hoplites should’ve been where Talos is. Lessons learned. But boy is Talos a BAMF, just slicing through that apex.

Talos got squished between those vets, but after this picture was taken I killed both veteran units, had two MSU inquisitors and a chariot left. Even though tontorr was fat enough to control both zones on the right side. I was far enough ahead on scenario and still controlling the two left zones that we could call it there.

What to change, what I learned

I instantly swapped the hoplites for a Phalangites block. I lose a stand in the process but the aristarch gets to take the blades of Eakides relic now and I get the much deadlier unit and aux stand. While I enjoyed the defensive relics and tanky tarpit style I tried to implement with the hoplites, I found implementing it to be difficult, so much of the tankiness for the hoplites were tied to the aristarchs draw and activations were too tight and too necessary to sneak the aristarch in early enough in the round for it to matter. I decided to swap to a still moderately tanky, but much more murder-y phalangites block that I think gels much better with the style of my list.

I need to counter deploy better, that’s the key thing I learned from this experience. Now I don’t think there is much in the game that can line up across from the Murder chieftan/tontorr combo and feel excited about it but I could’ve made it a much better fight. Secondly. Don’t line talos up across from units with flawless strikes. They will spike and you will be sad. Ask questions about your opponents rules and make a rough draft of what from your list, needs to be fighting what from his list!

All in all. Going 1 – 1 against my buddy is an accomplishment and I felt really good about the night and I am happy to review the games and remember some of the key lessons to play better.

Thanks again for reading! Let me know if you have any questions or want to throw down a TTS game! I am arrest on discord and arrest_paints on instagram.

This is already a double battle report and a lengthy read so I’ll skip the narrative recap this time but they will return ASAP!