Round Three ended up being my most fun game (I'd become somewhat more comfortable with rules and such). The round was to be the Process of Elimination scenario:
My opponent ran something like:
Ossyan
-Hypnos
-Banshee
2x Stormfall Archers
Full Houseguard Helberdiers w/ UA
Full Mage Hunter Strikeforce w/ UA
Aiyana & Holt
eEiryss
Arcanist
I won the roll, and opted to go second, to try and take advantage of deployment (after my first game. Gah.)
I placed Stormwall basically centrally. He deployed With his battlegroup mainly to my left-center, with Halbs on my right, and a unit of Stormfalls on either side. I countered by placing my Stormblades vs the battlegroup on the left, and ATGM vs the Halbs. Then he AD'd his MHSF in front of the battlegroup, opposite the Stormblades. Shit.
Turn one, he advanced, and put Quicken up on the Halbs (Def 15 HH's. Shit.)
My Turn one, I ran stuff-- put down some covering fire, but not far enough up to really be an issue (although with as fast as Quickened Halberdiers move, it might have been a good idea). Stormwall advanced and Covering fired as well. Stormwall got Arcane Shield, Gunmages got Snipe.
Turn two more stuff moved up (sort of constrained by my covering fire) Ossyan, Hypnos, and the MHSF shot up my lancer on a hill some, which pretty much neutered him. Stormfalls threw AOEs, etc, at my dudes, and killed 1-2 ATGMs.
My turn two, my ATGMs tried to shoot up the Halberdiers, but just can't quite hit DEF 15, and with no way to strip the upkeep, there's not much other than covering fire I can use to keep them from claiming the Right Zone. The Stormblades assault the Banshee, and on like 6 rolls at Dice-5 I manage to do like 7 damage? Weak. Weak-weak-weak. So, with the Stormblades hanging out in the wind, Stormwall had 3 FOC and used covering fire to try and screen the SB's some, and took 2 boosted shots at the Left objective, failing to kill it by 4 boxes. The Lancer stays on a hill, I guess waiting for an opportune Earthquake moment? Now that I'm thinking about it, I should have charged the objective, and bought attacks-- I would have been rolling straight dice and auto-hitting, which would have basically guaranteed me a CP, and would have put me further up the board when Stryker feated that turn.
My opponent was pretty bottled up by Covering Fire, and all of my stuff was ARM ridiculous. He took some shots and killed some Stormblades and ATGMs, including the UA which made the Cyclone autonomous again. Hypnos shot Stormwall Overall, didn't lose any majorly important pieces, but some stuff I'd rather have kept around. The Stormfalls proved effective again.
From here it's pretty fuzzy. Stormwall advanced and killed the objective (1 CP! Hooray!), and I covering fired some more, and maybe the stormbades did some stuff? I still really had no way to deal with Stealth, DEF 14 Mage Hunters en masse opposing Stormwall. I think my stuff pretty much struggled here. The ATGM stood still and fired at the Halberdiers, but still didn't do a GREAT job at wiping them out.
My Opponent's turn, he feated and just wiped Stormwall off the board with Stormfall Archers and a few Mage Hunters. He did some significant damage elsewhere, but WOW.
Not too long after this, round time was called-- per the SR2013 Document, it's a mutual loss, but I conceded the victory to my opponent because I'm not a dick, and he pretty much had me.
Result: Loss
So, I think a few things went wrong here. I should have DEFINITELY played more aggressive with Stormwall early, going into the Feat-- That would have given me a good chance to be further up the board to take advantage of him in Melee and drop pods for more precision piece removal. My list had no way to offensively (or defensively, actually) strip upkeeps, so Quickened Halberdiers were a BIG problem for my anti-infantry guys. My Opponent deployed the Mage Hunters REALLY well, on a side of the board with nothing to threaten them early on.
A few things went against me, my dice rolls were just crap. Failing to kill the objective was an error in judgment mainly, but I'll be having nightmares about the failed Stormblade Assault for months. Going in at -5 when there's no way to actually get into Melee to seal the deal was risky, but I didn't think it was THAT risky.
I think the game really came down to my opponent's ability to play a strong ranged game (with Stormfalls, his Battlegroup, and the MHSF) to really attrition me while I was mainly busy giggling about how much covering fire I was putting down on the table. In all, I think I was a little too conservative in my play. More aggression, and more abuse of the Stormwall's turn of ARM 27 seems like it would be the way to go.
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