City States Battle Report 4

CS Polemarch vs Dual Court SK

Had a great game at the FLGS against Steve and his terrifying Fire and Air court SK list. I was trying out my last thing I wanted from the CS roster and that’s the Promethean Oracle. I swapped out an eidolon and two MSU inquisitors for a Oracle and Promethean and a random worthless 10 point upgrade I can’t even remember.

Scenario

We were playing on off balance. So two major zones, two friendly objectives, two enemy objectives. 2 points per zone, 2 points for holding both, 4 points per enemy objective, and 2 points for killing the enemy warlord.

I have two moderately tanky unyielding heavies. Seems like a slam dunk for me! I had a plan for using my flogobollons to kill the enemy objectives, then park my heavies on the zones, and just…win? Let’s dive in and see how that worked out!

Round 1

Typical round one stuffs

Round 2

Both Steve and I get 4 success and have 5 units coming onto the board. I choose all 4 chariots and a haspist unit to get some scenario and attrition pressure. He gets two sword dancers, his windborne and steelheart and his proxied trinvarta. I do a bit of chip damage into the ghols to try and blunt the damage they will bring when they try to engage my chariots

Round 3

Things start happening this round. Left to right he has march charged to tie up that flogobollon, The comp cav go to support this action and I am WAY too close for this. I really really should’ve been much further back to prevent the clash charge turn from the efreet. Skorpios heads up onto the zone to deny points. Promethean comes into the forest. Skorpios and Flogobollon do some chip shots and then I post up on the right side pretty heavily.

Here’s a major error of mine. I brought in my oracle as my auto choice instead of my sacred band. It will definitely come back to bite me but I wanted to try my new toy. Looking back, due to being slower, harder to maneuver, and more impactful. The SB should’ve absolutely been the choice.

Round 4

At this point Steve abandons the right flank so I start bringing the oracle back. Chip damage is accumlating through the air ritual and you’ll notice i’m jailed and blocked quite well. The mistakes are sadly starting to add up. The sacred bad is trapped in a weird spot forced to fight against things off of a zone. The left side has collapsed to the aforementioned charged clash. Right side is going well though!

Round 5

You’ll notice that Steelheart is STILL alive. Very clever plays over on that side and a few crucial unfortunate dice moments left it alive and the haspist now has 5 damage and instead of crashing the companion cavalry through the squishy back line from right to left. I have to leave them on the zone and finish off that steelheart. Sacred band have been tied up off zones. And oracle has committed into the monsters with the alpha strike. I made some daring death star trench runs with my flogobollon and killed the objective but it was a desperation play to get some points and maybe hold onto the lead?

Round 6-8

Comp Cav manage to win the fight against the efreet and I start making desperation plays. I know if I can get into the last objective and just hold on for a round or two I will have enough points to win.

Sadly my opponent is very smart and good at the game 😀 At this point I have made too many mistakes in all aspects of the game and my opponent has capitalized on nearly all of them. He kills the comp cav. And my Sacred band are much depleted. They sure murdered A WHOLE BUNCHA STUFF THOUGH WOULDA BEEN COOL IF THEY WERE ON THE BOARD TURN 3

Annnnyyyway. I digress and I have learned some great lessons this game. Stephen ends up winning with some very smart and patient play by 4 points after all is said and done.

Conclusion and Lessons Learned

Okay. I recently saw something very insightful from Mass of Bonktable fame. He said at the end of games he asks himself a few questions win or lose. What did I do well (Positioning, deployment, general strategy, etc)? What did my opponent do well? What should I change or do differently?

Okay. Things I did well. I think in general my deployments were correct, but they just were the wrong order. I like that I made a plan for scenario (abuse chariots, abuse unyielding) but I truly believe it was the wrong plan and I needed to adapt more. The WILD thing was. I felt that. Like turn 3 I was like…I shouldn’t be doing this with my chariots. But I didn’t change. I will in the future though!

Things I did poorly. Sacred band has to come on turn 3 no matter what. Such a stupid simple error but it was very impactful. Chariots should’ve pivoted from scenario to attrition like I mentioned in the last paragraph. And I should’ve positioned so that a clash charge was impossible from the efreet on the left flank. If I can lock in a bit more and make some of these changes I think this list is quite powerful. It feels that way anyway. I’m not changing my list for a bit, going to take it to the TTS tournament and see how that goes. I’ll do a tournament report when the TTS league has ended.

Things my opponent did well. I think he punished my mistakes which is a huge part of wargaming. You need to have those eyes open watching for mistakes and punish them. All in all a great game with a fantastic guy! What more could you want!?

Thanks again for reading! I hope you enjoy these battle reports. I just accepted a commission to paint some models and get Weaver courts in payment so I will be playing CS for a few more months and then it’s off to try out the weavers!

As always feel free to reach out and chat if you want! I’m arrest on the discord, arrest_paints on instagram, and IAmArrest7 on Reddit. Here’s the Leontarchos I just finished