The Terminus Challenge: Civil War

There are a lot of bad match-ups in my own faction, and what's worse is that they're nearly all amongst the regular tournament casters. pAsphyxious almost made the list, but I've decided I can handle his onslaught and stay of his melee assassination range.

Scaverous also nearly made it, with his unbeatable ARM and movement shenanigans, but if I meet a player that can juggle Scaverous with SR 2012 time limits I'll lose anyway, and if he can't Scaverous is easy to beat. I did think about including pDeneghra as well, but most people bring melee lists with her, and I can handle that.

• eAsphyxious

I can't take him down with attrition, I can't declare a charge on him, and if the player is smart enough to avoid placing anything near him I'm in trouble. I can use my Machine Wraith to run up and act as a charge beacon, but I fully expect him to be dead at that point.

Terminus doesn't handle the Spectral army very well either, and although a spectral army assassination isn't guaranteed to work on Terminus, it can wipe my list of the table, and there's not a whole lot I can do about it. His Bile Thrall shenanigans are better than mine (though I can keep my living models the hell back), and his clouds are murder on my advance.

• eDeneghra

If I lose Admonia I can't ever rely on getting a charge with Terminus on eDenny due to pursuit. I've faced her once before with Terminus, where I was saved by the clock, random dice and so forth, but Madelyn Corbeau + Darragh Wrathe + Admonia will need to prepare the way for me. 

I've also considered using Brine to throw something at her, since knockdown is a good way to bring her down, but Incorporeal will save her from that. I do have quite a lot of magic attacks at range, so a surprise attack with some good dice could ruin her day: Orin Midwinter, WSC, Darragh Wrathe, Skarlock (Hellfire), and Terminus himself (Hellfire).

• Terminus
  

There's no doubt in my mind that it will end with dice down, because the first Terminus to launch against the other will lose unless miracles happen. Dice -6 and few souls on the other side of the table means inflicting twelve damage to the other Terminus, and then going down hard.

Assuming I'm up against a standard Terminus list full of Mechanithralls, I'd bet on my list as more likely to take down his Terminus, and his list more likely to win an attrition war. My guess is we would end up with one Terminus looking hard at the other Terminus, across an endless sea of destroyed Thralls, and going "You're a sexy bastard, yes you are" in unison, when the TO declares dice down.

• Summary

So there we have it: The three worst match-ups feature the two most most common Cryx casters. I'll have to pray my opponent makes a mistake because he doesn't know what my list can do, and pray I can take advantage of it when he does.

/Lamoron