I really enjoyed clash this year. It's been my favorite con for three years running now. I am pretty happy with how i did overall.
Day one I attempted to play hardcore with Mordikaar, and lost my first game vs Marc Taylor's eThags because I messed up under the time pressure and killed a shredder that didn't have any need to die, giving thags enough transfers to survive a fully buffed heavy. I dropped and jumped in to spell draft with eHexeris and pulled out 3rd place.
Day 2 I played specialists with Zaal.
- Round 1 a Kromac player got too greedy with spells on his feat turn and thought he was safe behind a gobber cloud and a bunch of models. a puppet-mastered sho from an eyeless sight raider and then the LOS-ignoring spells from Zaal killed him.
- round 2 I played vs pVyros tier 4. I killed him 2 lights early, then vengeance got my immortals in to kill almost all of his infantry. he feated and had Imperatus try to kill my archdion after 2 side steps, but whiffed and only did about 10. the archidon got feat + last stand and killed his caster.
- round 3 vs Goreshade3. there was an unfortunatel river in the middle of the board that made scenario hard. the wrong flag on incursion went away, and I had to slog over to the other side. attrition was hard with him bringing back a bunch of soul hunters, but i wasn't losing too much. he cleared a flag and then decided it would be good to get goreshade in position to run over there next turn (instead of staying behind his safe wall in the back). he very carefully made sure he was out of the range of the Archidon, but forgot Hakaar got a righteous vengeance move. I moved up, gave hakaar pathfinder, charged zaal up, gave last stand and promptly forgot to feat. Hakaar charged anyways and rolled like crap (4 dice on charge damage came out 2,2,2,2). I left him on 2 boxes. last ditch was puppet master on archidon, charge darragh wraithe. boost attack, got the crit, toss into goreshade. needed a hard 8 to kill and got it.
round 4 vs Collin Hill's eMorvhanna. I dug into my specialists and brought in a min unit of incindiarii. i ran up, he saw the incindiarii and then forgot them while doing his moves. he ended with a bunch of models clumped up and i tossed some fire in at them, lighting his stalker, a tree and a bunch of medium base infantry on fire. he realized that if i gave eyeless sight to my raider i could pretty easily wipe his skinwalkers, so he tried to distract me with a stalker on the opposite flank. on my turn i kill all but one skinwalker, then shoot at the stalker with zaal and a soulward. those two boosted shots plus one puppet master reroll got the stalker down to 2 boxes which then dies to fire. morvhanna gets desperate but can't get to zaal, dies to a kovass next turn.
I ended 4-0 and got second after Jesse on tiebreakers. then did Who's the boss and got another second place.
masters i used zaal, Makeda3 and Morghoul1 with a Mammoth. round 1 vs Billy Robin with eHaley. I drop Makeda3, he tries to kill her, finds out that's hard. I win on deathclock.
Round 2 I play Apollo. I roomed with him all weekend, and had helped him build a third list after talking up how much i love zaal. after talking to him the day before, I thought Rasheth would be his anti-Skorne drop so i dropped Morghoul to shut down his beasts and get the alpha. he instead drops the zaal list i had helped write that he had also already played once. zaal with a bunch of infantry wiped out my 10 model army. 4 last-standed slingers charged and did about half the boxes on the mammoth. it was bad.
Round 3 i play vs Chilly Winters with another eHaley list almost identical to the last one (blazers instead of gun mages). so i drop the same list. this one isn't even close. agonizer survives because of all my protective buffs, shuts him down before and after feat turn. i kill lots of stuff. Makeda personally gets the kill on Haley.
Round 4 I play Mike Puryear. I'm locked into Zaal, he drops Harby. it's a bad matchup, but i make it a game. it's a long slog, but i manage to get one flag bunkered up a bit and score 4-0. I have 1:20 on my clock he has 2:00. everything i have left is on my flag, but i have no beasts or guardians left so he shoots down Zaal.