New Update Battle Report!

City States vs Sorcerer Kings

I had the chance yesterday to throw down a game of conquest with my locals at the game store after a long time away and only being able to play games in the evening at friends houses. It was great to get back together and shoot the breeze while playing some of the new update of conquest.

Keen eyed readers will notice I’m a filthy cheater playing with 2020 points, but that’s because Haspists and the eidolon are 10 points cheaper and the army builder has not been updated yet.

Ohhh boy here comes the wind. It’s a gunline through and through and he was testing that out. There is a terrifying amount of shooting and I’m quite new to city states, let alone city states after the update.

Round 1

Stuff happens, not on the board, but IRL we caught up on life and hooted and/or hollered

Round 2

Each of us rolled ZERO reinforcements so Steve got his forward force and auto and I got my hoplites

No that’s not just my hoplites next to the board edge waiting to come on. That’s just how slow they are. Thankfully the next round they will have some mobility. The mahabarati are on the right zone. Ghols and some windborne coming down the left.

Round 3

The Rakshasa is the ranged trinvarta. My opponent sent the ghols forward to keep me off the zone because I had activated the mobility draw event on my hoplites. Due to the strategic stack and having a few more cards I was able to use that draw event without any negative consequences and get the big blob further up the field.

Round 4-5

Sorry! I forgot a picture for round 4, but snagged this one on round five. The hoplites, combined with fight in the sun from the polemarch, have weathered a truly ridiculous amount of shooting. Eidolon has been able to hunt effective targets and is holding the right flank admirably but dang is the trinvarta brutal! He had multiple rounds of Shoot, Clash, Damage spell due to clever ritual activation. Importantly at this point it is only a difference of 2 points in our score. I have to make good attrition plays or I am done for.

I also used my polemarch supremacy round 4 to get a solid charge clash into the mahut and do a bunch of damage. I LOVE this supremacy and I found it to be CRAZY fun and very impactful. I don’t think I can leave home without a polemarch warlord for a long time. So many things hinge on key supremacy rolls in the midgame and being able to position knowing that your polemarch block is going to do something terrible and get to go first is amazing.

Round 6-7

Dangit. My failures at picture taking are unacceptable and I am being reassigned to become an inquisitor as punishment. Anyway. Attrition runs a bit off the rails in my direction when the companion cavalry are able to reform charge and do the last wounds to the Trinvarta. It was definitely a spike, but within reason. The hoplites finally get cleaned up by the sorcerer in the dhanur disciples behind the mahut. They were a MONSTER this game and I had so much fun with them. I got to live the Blades of Eakides dream where I rolled 7 hits on 5 dice thanks to the relentless blows. At this point we call it as the thyreans have (FINALLY) gotten to the battle and started to chew things up.

A solid victory for the CS army but as always an excellent game played by my opponent and a terrifyingly close game as attrition was a razors edge.

Update thoughts

Alrighty. Time for some spicy takes. I don’t mean to start drama, heck I was one who heard the dreaded “There is no major rework coming for CS” and moaned and groaned at poor Rhys about it. I think CS is super cool. I think there are units that need some looks and touch ups. But I think the faction is awesome. When they do the rework of relics and give things keywords I think the faction will be fantastic. I think strat stack FINALLY feels cool. The ability to entourage into it and have these officers and abilities finally mean something is SO nice. During this game there were multiple times that I was able to use the strategic stack to avoid penalties and get the always inspired buff, ignoring dread and terrain in equal measure. Haspists felt really good. Thyreans are still….I dunno. 7 Wounds is a TON of beef and I took 2 MSU units of thyreans this game to stress tests them a little. I found them to be too slow and too fragile for what they are. Standouts for me are definitely the Inquisitors and eidolon. I think they are some of our better units. Companion cav are a close runner up for the “Dang this unit is nice” award. I like the skeleton of this list and want to iterate on it as I play a few months of CS. I think the Thyreans are going back on the shelf sadly, but the giants are becoming priced to move and I like the ideas of maybe even upping my card count with some bow goats. Not sure. I will start tweaking the list whenever the army builder/app gets updated.

As always thank you so much for reading! Feel free to reach out and talk shop. I love conquest and enjoy talking about it immensely. Let me know if you would like me to do a rundown of the September updates in another article!