Kevan vs Euron - the Rematch
The playoff rounds of our second season of are underway! After winning my quarter-final round, I find myself in a rematch from the last battle report against Cam, with Lannisters.
One of the big lessons I’m taking away from this league is that unless you have identified an actual problem with your lists, tinkering might do more harm than good. It’s unscientific to make changes just for the sake of making changes, because it complicates or even confounds your learning and development, making it more difficult to know whether it’s your mistake or a listbuilding issue that is causing you to lose games. With that in mind, I rock up to this match with the exact same two lists I have been playing since the second round of the group stage of the event.
Game Mode: Winds of Winter
Opponent: Cam, playing Lannisters
Might as well have the other secret mission game mode for the rematch, I suppose! Winds of Winter is a great scenario for Euron, so I lock that in right away. Cam has a Roose list and a double-crossbows Kevan setup for this match, and elects to go with Kevan. This Kevan list is different than the last, in that Cam is forgoing the Casterly Rock Honor Guard in favor of Bronn in a second unit of Crossbows and Tyrion NCU to make sure he has a Counterplot handy when the time comes.
This time around I get the honor of putting down the first terrain piece, and do so with a low wall over center. Now against double crossbows this isn’t going to have the same value as it would if I was going to push Euron forward onto it facing a more melee-oriented list. However, later in the game things might devolve some and having a strong point to hold and score a point or two might be a difference maker. If Cam decides to push one of his melee units forward to take it, I just blast it off the table with three units of Bowmen and then maneuver Euron onto it anyway. Seems like a win-win.
Cam places a Corpse Pile to his right, also along the center line. This seems calculated, so I drop some Woods screening off the near side objective on my right trying to set up a better position on the opposite map edge. Cam’s final terrain piece is a Weirwood on his side of the map.
For my Mission cards, I choose Mission 1, Mission 2, Mission 4, and Mission 9, plus the mandated 11 and 12.
For a 9 activation list like the one I’m playing, I strongly favor having the option to score Center for 2 points. If you stack that on top of your opponent’s Mission 12 turn it can create a massive swing. It can also be used as bait, to draw a unit into the center of the field to be shot to pieces by all the Bowmen. Mission 2 is a great option for this list as well, because I can play it when I’m First Player and use Petyr to claim a “safe” zone and trigger swords, leaving my opponent with a difficult decision to make. Mission 4 is generically useful when you’re starting the round as Second Player and are even or slightly ahead on board. Your opponent may have to cede a point to advance their gameplan, or invent a new one on the fly that doesn’t involve claiming zones. I like Mission 9 in this matchup as well, since it’s highly likely I’ll find myself in a position where I am losing units while my opponent isn’t, so being able to put some more scorable points on the board can really help me out.
Missions selected, Cam wins the deployment roll and gives me choice of sides. So, naturally, I take the one with the Weirwood on it. There’s no point pretending Euron is going anywhere but straight up the middle, so I drop him there, off centered slightly. Cam places Bronn in Crossbows to his left, so I place my first unit of Drowned Men on that side. From there the exact order things go down is a bit murky in my memory but when all’s said and done, Cam’s melee units are facing off against my naked Bowmen, and Kevan and Bronn are both positioned to threaten a wide field of fire.
It seems to me that the objective for Cam here is to keep me from being able to safely claim the center objective by threatening it with a fusillade of Crossbow fire backed up by Gregor, while pushing forward with his Infantry for an envelopment by bullying the Bowmen back. I’m going to have to be very careful with when and how I move Euron in Blackguard forward if I am going to avoid getting erased by all those Sundering ranged attacks.
Round 1
Cam elects to start the game as First Player, and Round 1 sees us jockeying for position on the battlefield and the Tactics board. A unit or two activates in between all of this NCU back-and-forth, but it mainly plays out like this:
Tyrion opens on Letters, weakening Asha’s bows. I claim Swords with Wendamyr, going up to two tokens. Cam’s Petyr claims Bags and triggers Horses. On my start of turn, I play Mind Games on Horses, and claim Crowns with Petyr and replace that with We Do Not Sow for a shot at his Halberds. Euron has some pretty high value cards, so I feel that slightly less optimal use of a card like We Do Not Sow is worth it to dig deeper into the Tactics deck. You want to draw both copies of What is Dead May Never die, both copies of Cunning Ploy, and both copies of Devious Methods before the game is over, so you kind of have to just go for it.
My goal here is mostly to get Mind Games out of my hand, but catching Pycelle off the board and leaving the prospect of denying me an activation there with Varys means Cam has a complicated choice to make. For one thing, Weakened tokens on my Bowmen are really important for Cam to mitigate the damage my list can generate, so passing with Pycelle is rough for him. In addition, if I lose Varys’ activation this round, it means instead of activating three times in a row from the end of Round 1 through the first turn of Round 2, I’m only going twice, which given the range of my units is probably to Cam’s advantage. The other thing for Cam to consider is whether I value a Varys token as a shift enough to spend one here, or if retaining them for later in the game is a better use of the resource. There is a lot to unpack about what the optimal play is, but I could make a compelling argument for either of them. Cam elects to deny me an activation, place a Weakened token, and see what I do with the free maneuver.
One thing I’ve noticed is that with this 9 activation list, Varys combined with your natural activation advantage really means you don’t care as much about a “lost” activation due to a full tactics board. Varys can generate value wherever he is, which leaves you some freedom to decide when or if it’s the right time to pass and preserve your activation count. In this case, Mind Games plus a 3” shift got a ton of work done setting up good angles for shots in Round 2, and I didn’t need to put the NCU on the board to do it.
When all is said and done for Round 1, I’ve got everyone positioned such that they’re lurking around the maximum range of Kevan and Bronn, everyone is within range of the Drowned Men’s orders, and we are ready to mix it up in Round 2, where I’ll be first player.
Round 2
Ok, top of Round 2, it is time to execute my Master Genius Plan. I select Mission 2, and Cam picks Mission 9. At least I think he picks Mission 9, based on squinting at the corner of a card peeking out from under the pile in another photo. I activate Petyr, thinking that I am going to go claim Bags and trigger Swords, leaving Cam with awkward choices to make with his own NCUs, and keeping the option open for me to give up a point and take Swords a second time. Well, he has Intrigue and Subterfuge to answer that (and I completely forgot about this possibility, so good on him and shame on me) so I am now in a bit of a pickle. Do I take some other zone and essentially pass, leaving him with the same play I was going to make but now in his favor? After some internal debate clearly the answer is “No”, so Petyr dutifully claims the Swords, donates a VP to Team Kevan, and the left side Bows take another shot into the Halberdiers.
Those naked Bowmen, incidentally, vastly overperform in this game. The dice run pretty hot for me on attack rolls from start to finish in this one. Drowned Men were getting 2-3 hits per attack, that kind of foolishness. Anyway, Cam’s Intrigue and Subterfuge had me way on the back foot, scrambling to make sure that I didn’t give up more value as Round 2 played out. After topping up with the bags, he used Wealth of the Rock on the naked Bows second attack of the Round to make it sting a little less for his Halberds, and I decided to pick that up with Devious Methods. I also snag the Letters this Round, weakening Kevan’s bows, so when the first attack comes in against Euron’s unit I use the Weakened token to shrug it off and hold on to Wealth of the Rock. The second attack into Euron for the round meets Kevan’s card, and saves me a lot of wounds. I take a shot here with Asha into Kevan that ends almost disastrously, with a failed Lannister Supremacy test for 6 wounds. Meanwhile on the other side of things, it’s Bronn vs the other no-attachment Bowmen supported by Drowned Men. Finger Dance and the Drowned Men rerolls let my Bows punch above their weight here, and the two ranged units take big bites out of each other while the Drowned Men tie up the Guardsmen. Cam moves Gregor up, threatening violence, and I position Roose to counter charge if he goes after Asha and fails to kill her.
Round 3
We go into Round 3 with Cam up by a point and starting as First Player. He chooses Mission 2, which seems to indicate he’s making the same play I did in the previous Round. Seems like a good time for Mission 11!
Please Note! As I am writing this, the game was played nearly a week ago, so I want to apologize in advance if my recollection of any of these details are wrong, but I am doing my best to recreate the sequence of events in what was a very busy game purely from memory. If something is wrong/doesn’t make sense, assume it’s because I’m forgetting an important detail.
Tying the score and acting first to blunt the Petyr play seemed like a Good Idea to me, so I do it. At the start of my turn, I pick up Cam’s Wealth of the Rock again with my second Devious Methods, and send Wendamyr to claim the Crowns to grab another Order token, bringing him back up to two. After that horrible Lannister Supremacy into Asha’s bows, I know I’ll need the Morale boost if they’re going to survive Gregor’s initial hit.
Gregor charges, and does a pile of wounds to Asha, but Wealth of the Rock keeps them from failing the test and dying. Here I have to choose between trying to save Asha’s bows, or letting them go and trying to make sure I trade for Gregor. I opt for the latter, have Asha War Cry something, send Petyr to bags and trigger Swords, firing with my naked Bows into Gregor who takes a couple of wounds.
Cam now has no choice but to claim Swords with Pycelle and Weaken the bowmen threatening Gregor. If I get lucky and get even a small amount of damage through Greg’s armor, he’s in enormous trouble. I can’t remember whether he attacked with Gregor’s unit or Kevan’s. I think it may have been Kevan’s, because Gregor’s 3 dice without rerolls or the possibility of Crit Blow may not have been enough to get the job done. Either way, Asha dies. On my turn, I activate the Bows, use Bless with Stone to remove the Weakened token, shoot Gregor in the flank, and he dies.
The rest of the Round is a flurry of activity as Cam’s Bronn-led Crossbows finish off my second unit of Bowmen, my Drowned Men murder his Halberds with some major help from the dice gods, and the remaining Drowned Men donate their activation via Cunning Ploy to get Euron into position to charge Kevan (who I seem to remember had failed a Sow Discord check earlier in the round, so could not punish my weak charge with Lannister Supremacy). I think Cam had Counterplot for a second We Do Not Sow from me as well, which was really strong for him, as it might have saved Kevan’s unit.
Round 4
Heading into Round 4, I believe we are tied at 4 VP. Cam is first player and picks Mission 12 (I think), and I go with Mission 4. With the score tied and me ahead on activations, Mission 4 here is meant to force a lose-lose decision onto Cam. He will have to either activate units and concede the initiative on the tactics board to me, or give me at least 1 VP. It’s important to remember that Mission 4 gives you 1 VP each time your opponent claims a zone before you do, meaning that if they run 3 NCU onto the board ahead of you, you score 3 points.
Cam takes the first Tactics board zone, which puts me into the lead with 5 VP. He considers standing and fighting with his Crossbows into Euron, but in light of Horrifying Visage’s odds of demolishing the unit he elects to retreat instead. He maneuvers Bronn’s unit over to the objective on his side of the table but can’t quite reach it, while I move Euron back to center and keep my Bows in position to score another objective. Euron gets chipped pretty good over the course of this Round by ranged attacks from Kevan and Bronn, but doesn’t die, so the score at the end of Round Four is 7 to 4 in my favor.
Round 5
In Round 5, it’s Cam’s turn to Uno Reverse the initiative with Mission 11, which makes the score 7-5. I really wanted to play Mission 1 this Round, but the risk of Euron dying to a ranged attack and the guardsmen somehow getting the zone is too great, so I decide it’s my time to run out Mission 12. This spreads out the potential scoring which given the board positions is probably better for me. If Cam’s Guardsmen retreat from my Drowned Men, I walk them on to an objective and score it. My unadorned Bows are going to be easily able to get onto the far side objective and score that while still pressuring Kevan. Euron will be able to score center unless disaster strikes anyway, so I am set to score no fewer than 2, and possibly as many as 3 VP this Round.
Anyway on Cam’s Start of Turn, Kevan gets smacked with Sow Discord. He claims Swords and attacks with Bronn’s unit, shifting them out of range of the Corpse Pile and firing into Euron. I cash in my last Varys token and come up just short of killing them. I commit a few more resources trying to get a Tactics Board kill on Bronn, but come up just short. My Issue Commands eats a Counterplot, stranding Drowned Men in a dumb place while Cam’s Guardsmen are free to retreat to the objective and score it. My remaining Bows move up and take the objective on my left flank on Cam’s side of the map, and Euron just chills in mid, happy to survive another round. Nothing dies, and Round 5 concludes with a score of 9-6 in my favor.
I think win the game here if I don’t try and get cute with that Issue Commands. I didn’t realize at the time how dumb that play was, but this may have been a big woopsie. Maybe I’m forgetting something that made the play make sense. I don’t know.
Round 6
Having both of us used Mission 11, I am back to being Player 1 for the final round. I once again consider a Mission 1 play but again realize it’s just not smart to give my opponent ways to score if things don’t go my way. Instead I opt for Mission 9, and Cam picks Mission 5. I have no idea the exact order of operations here, but I believe I tried to kill Bronn from the Tactics Board again with a Panic test via Crowns, which didn’t work. Cam then started taking shots at Euron, who I kept alive through several such activations with both copies of What is Dead May Never Die. Both of us had drawn our decks at this point, and Cam was out of Counterplots, so I was in the clear there. As the ranged attacks failed to secure the kill, I charged Kevan’s Crossbows with some Drowned Men (but rolled a 1, so couldn’t unload with Kraken’s Wrath) and shot them with my Bows, scoring 3 points to make the score 12-6.
Cam then used Horses to retreat his Guardsmen from my Drowned Men, and I - because I am a fundamentally silly person - decided that rather than charge them to hold them in place with my Drowned Men that it would be more fun to charge Bronn and finally kill him with Kraken’s Wrath. That ends up happening, making the score 13-6 in my favor. At this point Cam can’t catch up, but we talk out how he kills Euron with a Guardsmen charge, roll some dice to make sure, and the final score ends up being 13-10 in my favor.
Final: 13-10. Euron wins!
This was a great game. I think the Drowned Men really punched above their weight this game, doing a lot more than merely standing around getting beaten on by Cam’s Infantry. Aggressive play with them, using their order to grant themselves or bows rerolls instead of healing, made sure that the somewhat spindly attacks of this 9 act Euron list brought sufficient pressure to threaten Cam all game. Euron landing a couple of very clutch Sow Discords against Kevan and Bronn minimized the amount of free shots I had to eat, and Varys + Wendamyr drew my deck for me by the end of the game, making sure I saw every important card before it was over.
I feel like the double-crossbow variant of Kevan is not as scary as the one that brings CRHG, personally, because of how much Lance cav dictate the positional play you can get away with in a squishy, all-infantry list. This matchup with these units and commanders is likely never going to be seen again, though, so it’s not a lesson that can really be applied by anyone in the future.
With S03 coming out and the Greyjoy rework doing what it does to the faction, I will only have one more chance to play this list as it is on this patch, in the League Finals against House Martell. We decided that the finals should be on S02 before we knew what was in S03, and I can’t tell you how glad I am about that. I would have probably just conceded if I was forced to play S03 Greyjoys, but that pile of complaints is for another post another time.
Thanks for reading this batrep, and I’ll be back with another one after the finals where I hope to give S02’s House Greyjoy a victorious sendoff.
