City States Vs. Spires

City States Battle Report 3

I was able to throw down a game of Conquest against my local vanguard Brent a few days ago and it is always a blast. Spires have been his only faction since day one and he is a true believer. It is nice to play some different factions every once in a while and I don’t see spires too much now a days. I’m glad they’re getting some love, hopefully soon, but Brent made an awesome list and the game was a VERY close one.

Round 1

I can’t decide if it hurt Brent or not, but he rolled VERY well on reinforcements. Taking a bunch of board space and getting scoring options rolling thanks to the Biomancers. I used this free round of Brent pushing wardollies around to plan out my scenario. Looking at his list I am fairly confident my Sacred band can just hold a flank. So my main goals (My GHOLS huehuehue) are, kill the center objective with Flogobollons and deny points, overload the rest of my army left and collapse that flank towards the right side to connect with my polemarch/sacred band.

Last game I made the firm rule I would go into games with a plan for scenario and attrition and adapt from there. And I would look at the opponents list and try to figure out their plans.

Round 2

Here we see the reinforcment rolls continue to be VERY good for Brent and VERY poor for me. As I said earlier, it may not have turned out in his favor? he’s done a very even deployment with a slight favoring of my right side. But that’s where I was planning on throwing the big sacred band so it might be in my favor.

Some chip damage is done to the objectives and some sort of weird spires mumbojumbo allows stryx to score.

Round 3

I’m pretty well forced to deploy my Skorpios in a “Clear off these dang stryx” position. Brent is setting up some waves of chaff to keep me off the zones and rack up some points. You’ll notice the angry chicken. That’s the pteraphon, he has the model. It’s just a hilarious proxy and we chuckled about it all game. I was able to get the last point of damage done to the center objective and get a few points. Brent is scoring 7 this round though and starting to pull ahead.

Round 4

Pretty interesting turn, crucially I win the roll off and am able to just MELT the leonine avatara on the left flank with some companion cav. Even with some truly S+ Tier defensive rolls there is 2.5 leonines dead. Centaur avatara center get to just evaporate a chariot and set up some nonsense for the following turn. My sacred band, in a display of intense skill and competence, kill some force grown drones. The propaganda machines of the scholae will sing the songs of their brilliance.

I really like my position here, I really debated bringing on my inquisitors last round and holding my companion cav in reserve, but I am glad I did it the other way around and looking back I think this is absolutely the right call. Faster cav can tie things up, get board space, and allow the inquisitors much more freedom to do their work.

Round 5

It was supremacy turn. And…Boy was it a brutal one. Polemarch and Sacred band get to charge into the leonine, and it’s a weird one for sure but they just squeeze in melt that unit down to a wound or two left, also tying them up in combat and ruining their damage potential to be just simple chip damage the sacred band can heal back.

The center flank goes poorly. I bounce off of the centaur avatara and lose my inquisitors. My Skorpios are engaged and that centaur is going to be healed up.

Round 6

Flog walks up and shoots an objective. My two chariots in the center just melt to the drones which was hilarious. At this point I have caught up on points and attrition is wildly in my favor. A lot of reforms and prepping for murder next turn.

Round 7

The ability to entourage into strategic stack comes up so much in my games. Allowing for reform clash instead of inspire clash with 1 stand connecting. Pteraphon goes poof and the water makes is so the avatara bounce off the companion cav. At this point it is 24-17 for the city states and we decide to just talk out the last few rounds. I will lose the chariots and companion cav, but the inquisitors, haspists, and sacred band will kill everything left on the table and score max points for 3 rounds. We end the game with the score 46-17. A much closer game than the score would suggest I really liked Brent’s list and his playstyle. There was really clever move blocking, engagements, and general “Jailing” me in the beginning rounds. We talked about how a bit more careful approach with the leonines so they got to do more damage, or maybe using them for damage instead of shooting the left objective so they could be further back would’ve been a potential play change. But all in all, spires definitely have some opportunities for change in the army as a whole and Brent and I did chat a bit about how cool the rework is and how excited we are for it. Spires have always been that faction that I wish I owned.

Final Thoughts

Boy, this is EXACTLY how I want to play city states. I had a few more list iterations in mind, mainly wanted to try out the oracle somewhere somehow, but this was SO fun and I can’t bring myself to playing anything else for the next little bit. Time to get painting! The chariots were fantastic and even with the fire and advance changes they’re still so crucial to our army. The sacred band was the key. I LOVED how impactful they were. And the ability to use the polemarch supremacy with an offensive powerhouse felt so good. So much better than a hoplite brick. Also, weirdly enough, I loved that the sacred band were heavy. I was able to deploy them with nearly perfect information about the battlefield where they would be able to just destroy anything put before them. I don’t think that will be the case every single game, but this game it was an important part of the ability I had to get a win for sure.

Anyway! Thanks so much for reading. Reach out and talk shop with me! Help me list build something with the oracle in it 😀 Though it’ll take a lot to pry me away from this list. My contact info is Arrest on discord and Arrest_paints on instagram and I am always happy to talk minis, games, painting, and anything else.