Meta Benders - Haley2

The meta to give a simple definition is the state of the game. At Guild Gaming and in Wollongong in general there is a very casual meta, the one in Canberra is more competitive. The competitive meta is formed at tournaments, generally ones more competitive than the one I'm attending this weekend (and no one else from the guild is because you all suck). A lot of things shape the Meta, colossals in particular have forced lists to include more options to crack ARM. Iron flesh in early MKII forced people to make sure they could deal with high DEF. Recursion mechanics are also beginning to have an impact on the game and the easily contestable nature of the steamroller package last year made the gunline particularly dominant. More than that though there are particular lists and combinations that shape the competitive meta and I'm going to go through the worst of them and give some basic general advice on how to deal with them.

Lets start with Haley2.

What's The Problem?

• Two Stormwalls, arcane shield and Deceleration - there are a lot of damage boxes and they are protected stacked ARM buffs
• The feat - nothing that needs activation order or melee attacks is going to work for a turn
• Temporal acceleration and the bond - Her bonded stormwall can get to SPD 9 with 3 initial attacks (from the big guns or the fists) it can also get 4 focus. The other one can go to SPD 7 with the same initials and 3 focus which is still insane. 
• Covering Fire and Mage Storm. Each stormwall will put down two covering fire templates spaced about an inch apart and then one stormwall will drop a pod on the end. Ryan will then mage storm this pod. With decent spacing you are looking at approximately 20" of the table that you can't enter without taking a POW 12
• Gun mages with deadeye and they also benefit from Deceleration so if you shoot at them they are DEF 17. 

She also has some situationally awesome abilities. Set defence makes her DEF 18 on the charge, replication will let her recast offensive spells your opponent casts if they are within her control area (so 18") which occasionally means that she has crippling grasp. She also has domination, telekinesis and time bomb which are spells that are almost broken good and she doesn't need to ever cast them but can in a pinch. 

How to Deal

First and most importantly you have to get her to feat early. She needs to use that feat to protect her stuff. If she's able to hold off the feat until she gets the absolute most out of it then you are boned. So get stuff up in her face. Spread out. Don't be afraid to come in waves and make sure your key pieces are protected.

Next you need to be able to crack armour. Seriously crack armour. You also have to be careful about using infantry to do it. POW 12s mean you need to get their ARM up to 19ish before you can start seriously thinking about running a unit through those templates. Multi wound units are slightly less scared. 

You need to be able to absorb a stormwall. By that I mean it can't just be able to scalpel out the most important pieces of your army (whether through the big guns or it's stupidly long charge range). You also need to be able to deal with gun mages who don't care about high DEF or stealth. 

Caster Recommendations

Cygnar - Caine2 with all the ARM debuffs. It's an infantry heavy list but Caine can remove a Stormwall with his feat, you have no problem killing Ryan and then you can envelop the last colossal. There won't be enough covering fire for all your dudes. You can also arcane shield forge guard and charge them through the covering fire templates. You expose the weakness of this list which is that the concentration of force in two colossals leaves you bereft of the ability to kill swarms of infantry, your rely on the covering fire templates and squishy gun mages. Nemo1 and Nemo2 are options too, Nemo1 can with with a little bit of support scrap a 19 point Stormclad with a 7 point Ironclad which is hilarious to me. Nemo2 is also very fast with his jacks and has one turn of utter devastation that should be able to end a Stormclad.

Legion - It's Lylyth all the way. She's always been my go to girl for Cygnar and she still is. She'll kill the first colossal and half the gun mages before they have fired a shot and then take the second without much difficulty. The Stormwalls cannot shoot back and the gun mages struggle to hurt her beasts. Also Lylyth is really good at killing them. The match up is a nightmare for Haley. Vayl2 is another suggestion. She purifies off arcane shield and her super long range spell assassination will kill Haley dead. 

Mercs - Bart Galleon can take a charging Storwall and can fight back pretty strongly and is probably the best match up. MacBain can countermeasures their colossals to stop the covering fire templates but that is difficult. Magnus2 has the feat/counterfeat thing going and can arc Calamity so is an option. It's a hard one for Mercs.

Trollbloods - Doomshaper, either one. With good positioning of the wall from Janissa and use of the feats it's not a huge issue for either caster. Madrak1 can do it too (with the beast brick), Madrak2 struggles unless you have brought long riders with him. 

Minions - Poor Barnabas. Long the gator's answer to Cygnar because of his wonderful swamp pits. Unfortunately he can't crack a stormwall to save his life so until colossals stop being so prevalent or Gators get upkeep removal, a damage buff or P+S higher than 17 he's lose a lot of his previous competitiveness. Rask on the other hand is made for this kind of match up. Carver can do it, especially if you take a bunch of warhogs and even Arcadius isn't out of it, his theme force with 7 point warhogs + forced evolution (+ crippling grasp if you are desperate) is pretty nice. The threat ranges are an issue but you probably don't care if you have 7 warhogs (note: my 50 point Arcadius list has 7 warhogs). 

I'm too new to Menoth to offer up a discerning opinion but it doesn't seem like a huge problem. You have choir, purification, Eiryss, enliven, Bastions and Vengers, and some really hard hitting jacks. As a cygnar player like the Haley2/Caine2 pairing and playing that Caine2 is my menoth match up.

For the factions I don't play Ret have Ossyan and Vyros2 (with all the light jacks). Skorne have whichever list has the most bronzebacks, Xerxis and Morghoul1 probably preferred but meh. Circle I think are pushing strongly towards Kaya2 with a pureblood being particularly important and it is a great match up if you have Kaya2. Khador do not particularly like this match up, Karchev, Harkevich, Irusk and Vlad3 might have a game, it does depend a lot on a pending infernal ruling concerning crit devastation (which I'm sure will be ruled in Khador's favour or quickly errata'ed). Cryx do not have a good answer. Asphixious2 has some game, his feat allows him to get past the covering fire templates and if he get stuff into melee with a stormwall it disintegrates, he can generally only kill one though and the second one will be a problem. You can play Skarre2 and trade feats but she doesn't have a damage buff and cryx jacks don't hit hard enough. You can probably make a Denny1 list specifically to kill Stormwalls as well.

Even the factions that have a particularly bad time of Haley2 (Cryx, Mercs, Khador, Trollbloods) can beat the match up but you probably have to tech out a list specifically to play against her.