My friend and I will be attending a Steamroller tournament in a few weeks. It's my first, although he's been to a few in the past few years. To prepare, we both decided to practice one of the lists we'd be bringing to the tournament.
I was bringing my favorite caster, and the one with whom I'm most familiar: Nemo 1.
Commander Adept Nemo
Squire
Lancer (Fisher)
Hammersmith
Centurian (Molehill)
Dynamo
Firefly
Storm Strider
Tactical Arcanist Corps
Arlan Strangewayes
Field Mechaniks - Crew Chief & 3 Grunts
Journeyman Warcaster
Firefly (Joules)
Archduke Alain Runewood (proxied by a sword knight)
My thinking with this list is as follows: The squire is there because he's essential. I've hit this in my Nemo1 overview, but the extra control area and the re-roll are must-haves. Ditto the Journeyman because of arcane shield and the lancer because Nemo needs an arc node. The Centurian has always been my anchor when I play Nemo1. I can send him to one zone with the arcane shield and forget about him, focusing all my forces on the other side of the map.
Dynamo is also in every Nemo list I make. His four boosted lightning shots will do an average of 16 damage to an ARM20 model, or 24 if a firefly is nearby. And after he's fired, if he's threatened, Nemo can locomote him back. In melee with lightning shroud, his 5 attacks do an average of 40 damage to that ARM20 model.
I always have high aspirations for a lightning shrouded hammersmith, but this game was the first time I'd pulled anything off. Sort of. Under Nemo, the hammersmith has seven attacks, and with lightning shroud, that's seven electro-leaps, each one pushing an inch further into enemy terrain because beat back. And locomotion helps his threat ranges.
The two fireflies are there not only to help with Dynamo and the Storm Strider's damage output, but also for jamming and infantry removal. The lightning generator is nice, but a firefly loaded up with focus can fairly easily take out all infantry within its 2" reach, especially if I give it lightning shroud, which would then produce POW12 electroleaps.
The Tactical Arcanists were added only after themepocalypse 2017 nerfed Heavy Metal but also added in a number of other options for the theme: suddenly Nemo had access to the TAC again. They can fully fuel his arcane accumulator by themselves. They're quite squishy, but if their cloud wall buys Nemo a round of not being shot to death, it's worth it. Not being killed is Nemo's favorite thing.
Arlan I considered removing at the last moment. I've always had him there to generate power tokens for Nemo, and to give an extra focus where its needed. But with the TAC, I had the option to omit him. In the end, I didn't. Having the option to add magic weapons should they be needed seemed important in a tournament where I didn't know what to expect. Plus, having an 8-box solo sitting on a flag is always nice.
The mechanics are fairly essential with heavy metal. I'd have included a gobber tinker as well if he was allowed in the theme. In this case, the mechanics are there (along with the TAC) to score round zones and to sit behind the Storm Strider and repair it. They'll pop out if anyone else needs repair.
Runewood was my last-minute addition after I discovered that the removal of the cyclone and charger left me with four points. I struggled with a way to free up 9 more points to get that charger back in, but couldn't do it without removing something I wanted even more than the cyclone. So runewood is in. My plan for him mostly involves parking a heavy like the hammersmith fully behind a forest, then giving him pathfinder, locomoting him into the forest to open line of sight, then charging whatever's on the other side. Tally Ho! Of course, since Runewood isn't painted, I forgot him at home on my painting table instead of bringing him to this match. Oops!
My friend brought Durgen, much to my surprise. I'd expected him to bring Ossrum.
Durgen Madhammer
Ghordson Earthbreaker
Hammerfell Siege Crawler
Horgenhold Forge Guard (max)
Horgenhold Forge Guard (max)
Horgenhold Forge Guard (min)
Horgenhold Artillery Corps
Thor Steinhammer
Ogren Bokur
Here's what our deployment looked like
Notable is the fact that I forgot to give myself the extra two inches of deployment that Heavy Metal grants. But more notable is that fact that I timed myself (with a cell phone timer set to 60 minutes) during this game in an attempt to train for death clock at the tournament. I've always been a slow player, but I figured that if I hurried myself, I could get by.
On our respective turn ones, both armies rush forward. Cygnar jacks take cover from incoming huge-base fire, and the tactical arcanists hide in the fire terrain, to which they're immune. My figuring is that any forge guard would have to charge into the flame to kill them, and meanwhile, the TAC could launch fireballs with impunity and score the zone.
I finish my turn 1 with 51:52 left on the deathclock. An eight-minute turn one! I congratulate myself.
Mercenary Turn 2
The dwarves lumber forward. The siege crawler puts a few shots into Dynamo, and the Earthbreaker launches a few torpedoes at the out-of-range Storm Strider, hoping for a lucky deviation. A shot deviates into Nemo and the squire, killing the squire and setting Nemo on fire.
Cygnar Turn 2
Nemo succeeds in not burning to death, but the fire remains alight.
The tactical arcanists lob fire at dwarves, and set them all on fire, but fail to kill any. The firefly manages to finish off a couple dwarves.
Nemo gives the hammersmith lightning shroud and locomotes it up and around the building, giving it a lane to charge the earthbreaker. Largely due to my frantic rush, aware that I'm on deathclock, Nemo forgets to feat, and when the hammersmith does charge, I forget to take his chain attack when both initials connect, resulting in one fewer attack than it should have gotten. Still, the hammersmith with Lightning Shroud takes out more than half of the Earthbreaker.
Dynamo, the fireflies, and the storm strider produce tons of electicity, but the forge guard continue to roll well over half of their tough checks. All the leaps and all the tough rolls result in a lot of clock time.
When it comes time to score, I realize that I'd failed to move the TAC up a few millimeters so that all three were toeing the zone. With a little more work, I could likely have cleared the righthand zone.
At the end of the turn, I check my clock. 25:48 remaining. My turn two took 26 minutes. I was rushing, so it's likely that this was far quicker than my turn would normally have taken, but given that I'm going to be playing in a tournament in two weeks, this is not acceptable.
SCORE: Mercs 1, Cygnar 1
Mercs Turn 3
Dwarves run/charge forward. The one forge guard who hits the lancer takes out half its boxes. The Cygnar objective takes some damage, and the hammersmith is wrecked, as expected. The siege crawler shoots out one of the TAC members.
The mercenaries score one more point on their friendly square zone.
SCORE: Mercs 2, Cygnar 1
Cygnar Turn 3
The lancer, firefly, and centurian clear out a lot of forge guard, and Dynamo zaps the siege crawler for a lot of boxes. The storm strider zaps the Earthbreaker, and many more e-leaps force many more successful tough checks. Seriously, he made so many tough checks, and I think I failed to do damage on 95% of my dice minus 6 and dice minus 8 leaps.
I check my clock at the end, and I'm at 6:21 remaining. That's a 19-minute turn three. If this were a tournament, I'd be done right here.
SCORE: Mercs 3, Cygnar 2
Mercs Turn 4
The remaining dwarves rush forward. Very few are able to charge, but those that do hurt. A single dwarf takes out both of the firefly's arms. The siege crawler charges the centurion.
Mercs score another point, pulling ahead on scenario
SCORE: Mercs 4, Cygnar 2
Cygnar Turn 4
At this point, I bring up the fact that if this were deathclock, I would lose now. My opponent hasn't been using the clock, and I wasn't going to force him. I mainly wanted to try it myself. But I'm realizing a number of things as a result of clocking this game, and I'll cover those at the end of this article. For now, I drop the clock and start relaxing a bit more on my turns.
The centurian kills the siege crawler, and the storm strider takes out the Earthbreaker. Other models clear dwarves.
Nemo is still on fire, although he's able to mitigate the damage with focus, slowly healing back up.
SCORE: Mercs 5, Cygnar 3
Mercs Turn 4
My opponent takes a hail mary shot at Nemo with the artillery, and when it misses, he concedes the game.
Cygnar win!
Final Thoughts
Deathclock is going to be a major major issue for me. Cygnar has a lot of effects and bonuses which apply only when one model is within a certain distance of another, and I spend a lot of time considering these. Fireflies grant a +2 to lightning damage when they're within five inches of a target. The storm strider grants a bonus to hit when a target is within ten inches. Electro-leaps from lightning shroud and lightning generator leaps from the storm strider and the fireflies take time to resolve. Locomotion angles need to be considered. I love this list, and I can deal with its complexity, but not quickly enough. Hence, I cannot take Nemo to the tournament. I need to design the simplest list I can think up. An assassination list would be ideal. I need to adjust my lists to exclude units like stormblade infantry, less familiar models like Rorsch & Brine, and time-consuming feats like Stryker2's. I wish I owned colossals.
