Battle Report: pStryker vs Witch Coven

Oh dice how I sometimes hate thee.

My list: pStryker, 2 Stormwalls, Squire, Journeyman, Strangeways, 2 Stormcallers, Storm Strider, with the Fuel Cache Objective.

My opponent fielded: Witch Coven, Kraken, 2 Nightwretches, Skarlock, 2 Pistol Wraiths, 2 Warwitches, Withershadow, Necrotech, 4 Scrap Thralls, Wraith Engine, with the Effigy of Valor Objective.

We played the SR2015 Incoming scenario. I won the dice roll and opted to choose sides and thus went second. This afforded me some good terrain options, but resulted in me being jammed pretty hard for the scenario. To be fair to, my opponent had been taunting me about a list similar to this in order to specifically counter my "double Stormwall technology". The battle was brutal for me with Death Chills and Stygian Abysses and the Coven's feat immobilizing a big chunk of my army for my second turn, which is what the photo shows. In the end I lost this game but more because I rolled poorly on two assassination situations. The first was on my second turn where I managed to drop 2 Stormpods and then get 2 triangulation attempts on one of the Witches. Unfortunately I failed the skill check on the second triangulation otherwise I would have killed one of the Witches then. Later in the game, the whole Coven was standing in my zone to dominate and were B2B with the Egregore so stealthed which made for no direct shooting options. So what did I do? Well fortunately my Storm Strider still had Snipe on it, and although it was Death Chilled, it resultantly had 3 power tokens on it. So what I did was move my Stormwall close enough to drop a Stormpod and clip 1 Witch. Then I fired twice with my Storm Strider at the Stormpod (not damaging it) and the lightning bounces leaped into the Witches. Unfortunately I rolled minimums for both bounces and wasn't able to use all my power tokens and finish them off. On average rolls I would have nuked them all. At that point I straight up lost on scenario.

Lessons learned: Playing against a list heavily skewed against my specific list was frustrating but ultimately made me a better player. Instead of following traditional tactics, I had to get creative with my options. I feel really good about this game despite losing since ultimately it made me a better player. I'm also really boon on this Stormpod/Storm Strider trick now too.

Games this year: 13