I suffered my most ignominious defeat this past Saturday. I'm still kicking myself for it.
The scene: A team tournament in Redmond Washington. Each team was two players, 350 point lists per person. My team was Caine (me) and my buddy Wolf playing Sorscha. It was my first time playing Caine, and about his third time playing Sorscha. Given that we had almost no familiarity with our casters and lists, and that our only strategizing consisted of chatting for about fifteen minutes the night before while I waited for a Margarita to arrive, I think we did OK.
However, the ignominy was suffered in our third game - it was the two of us against a Cryx horde lead by the Coven and Skarre. Literally they had nothing but bile thralls - bile thralls as far as the eye can see; stretching from one side of the table to the other. Oh, and some Pistol Wraiths, a Machine Wraith, and a full unit of Bane Knights.
Coven ghostwalk most of the army, and it's obvious they'll be on my ADing trenchers in a turn. So we get down to the grisly task of shooting as much as possible. Turn two sees Skarre hitting Sorscha with a Skarre Bomb, as well as the Coven and Skarre popping their feats. The Bile Thralls slaughter lots of our stuff. By way of retaliation Wolf loaded his Berzerker up with focus and ran it into a horde of thralls, where it promptly exploded and took about 9-10 with it. He also counter feated with Sorscha to buy us some time, catching almost all of the enemy army. Caine advanced, setting up his feat for the next turn (he was blind on that turn). Caine's sick, and I figure that his feat can probably eliminated 75% or so of the thralls remaining on the table.
On their turn they're still frozen, so all they can do is some upkeep - in particular, the Coven upkeeps stealth on the Bane Knights (who by this point were reduced to about three models after eating a ton of firepower from Widowmakers and Trenchers). "Screw your stealth, I'm going to kill them with the feat" I think. So Caine sidles up next to Sorscha, pops his feat, and I target a Bane Knight.
It was as the damage dice were going down that I remembered what those Bane Knights can do; what makes them so very very awful. It was like the world was in slow motion - dice rattling down on the table as my partner did that whole slow motion comical "nooooooooooooooooooo". Realization had set in.
I killed the Bane Knight. He pulled it from the table, smiled, and advanced the next one into base to base with both Caine and Sorscha. With an enemy in base to base, Caine was unable to continue his feat. I KILLED ONE LOUSY BANE KNIGHT. I had lost us the game. With nothing left to do I flashed Caine to safety, eating the free strike and leaving Sorscha to the tender mercies of our enemy - she couldn't get away, on the next turn she'd bite it along with most of the rest of our combined forces.
The game was perfectly winnable up until my moment of stupidity; if I did Caine's feat properly I would have left them with maybe a handful of Bile Thralls on the right flank, and of course the handful they had on the left flank. Easy pickings for our army on the next turn; just so long as we kept our casters away from their exploding attack.
I'm still kicking myself over this game. But not too much. It was my first time playing Caine, Stormguard, and the list in general. It was also my first time playing against Bane Knights, and only my third time playing against Cryx (first time against thralls; my previous two games were against Jack heavy Goreshade lists).
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