Some really close scores above, if you are interested in how the tie breakers went you can check it out in more detail on the challonge page.

The top list of the day was Ben Clapperton's Corsairs, I feel pretty happy about this for two reasons. The first is that the Corsairs have seen a lot of stick from people quoting they are unplayable and this just shows that they not only can hold their own, but when played well can win a Cadre. Secondly this is the list (with one change) I was going to take until Lewis Wundowa nabbed my Corsairs for the day (I forgive you Lewis).

50 Point Winning Corsairs List

Unit	Type	Points
Wildspace Gabe	Knight	14
Fleshreaper	Cypher
Darkspace Isabeau	Unique	9
Corsairs x5	Minion	7
Darkfield	Boost	4
Amelial	Unique	12
Dampening Field	Boost	1
Esper Condenser	Boost	2

Asides from the playing, Conrad managed to bag the best painted Cadre with the most votes for his Black Diamond which have featured elsewhere (I don't have a picture to hand).

The aim for the day was to have fun, leading up to the event I had acquired quite a few new Relic Knights miniatures that have come out in the new wave of material and packaging. I rushed to get these guys finished for the event as I wanted to play with the new shiny toys! So here are my two lists:

35 Point Doctrine List

Unit	Type	Points
Anthony	Knight	14
Castor & Pollux	Cypher
Master Wu	Unique	12
The Prefects	Unique	9

Speed Painted Anthony, Doctrine Questing Knight

So my first match of the day kicked off against Sam Pugh, a great guy who had travelled up with team London to get in on the action. I had a real fun game with Sam who felt like he knew the game inside out despite only playing for a short period of time. Unlucky positioning of the Primary objective meant I could get Wu and the Prefects into position to score heist very quickly being near a board edge. Wu being a pain and dropping Remain Where You Are caused a few headaches for Sam but he did manage to rack up some damage on the Prefects who were without their usual Darkfield to protect them. Time was called and I managed to squeeze in the last token drop for the five victory points. Really enjoyed this game and I made a few mistakes myself being new to using Anthony, his switching Cyphers and Wu.

Master Wu - Doctrine Unique

Second game came into sight and I had a rematch with Lewis Wundowa (who beat me in his first ever game) so the stakes were set high. Who would come out with their head held aloft? Lewis went straight for the jugular, pumping round after round of attacks into Wu and Anthony. Both are tough cookies when Anthony has Castor out and chose Angel as the Cadre ability (all defence skills are +1) but he still managed to half the health of Wu and Anthony. I drew Heist again and being the villain, managed to set up my primary objective central to force him near a board edge. Anthony and especially Wu did their thing, being damage sponges and grabbing heist tokens to deposit them off the board.

Wu's diving charge ability is brilliant for objective grabbing, it allows him to move a considerable distance by diving onto target models and gaining a feint after plus his follow up move. This coupled with the damage meant I was thinning Lewis's corsairs ranks until he finally finished them off. Then the unthinkable happened, Captain Harker and Isabeau combined to put the hurt on Anthony taking him down. The score was 3-1 to Lewis and with time running out this could be a Corsairs win! But alas seeing Anthony fall Master Wu didn't skip a beat, diving onto the objective, grabbing the last heist token and making it off the board meant I scored the 5 VP plus the extra for the Corsairs unit kill for a Doctrine victory. Huzzah! A great game against Lewis which was a lot closer than the scores suggest and only his third ever game! One to look out for in future Cadres.

Castor and Pollux, Anthony's Cyphers

Next up was Cy Dudley fielding the Shattered Sword. Cy has played for quite a while so I knew I was going to be in for a close match. Some careful positioning meant that my objectives were as far as possible from his primary as he flipped Conservation. I had Tear it Down and Carnage but due to the awesome peculiar board we were playing on there was an Esper Crystal positioned on the highest part of the board (which overlooked everything, see below). I took the initiative and landed my units right next to this great piece of terrain, all but Master Wu who was going to be my go to guy for playing tricks against the Shattered Sword. Having both the prefects with Coordinated Attack and Anthony in this position meant I could not only attack his objectives every turn but also I would generate free Held Esper in doing so (being next to the crystal). It was just a race against time.


Cy started by compelling my objectives closer to his, I then hit his secondary for 11 points of damage and followed up with another 6. Master Wu dived in for the final killing blow on activation number 3. Not too bad, just one more to go. I then focused a little on slowing down the enemy, dropping a Remain Where You Are which meant Cy had to move around the outside of the AoE. The next few turns passed and again I managed to wipe out the other secondary in pretty quick fashion. Five victory points to me. Just to try and stop Cy now.

Unfortunately for Cy, he had positioned his Purifiers and Isabeau to provide armour buffs to his primary objective, in turn denying himself access to drop the tokens he had acquired. This meant my Fiametta had an opening to destroy a purifier then place herself in the gap to deny access and provide her burning ability to all models that ended a move within her range.

Time was called but given a few more turns I would have been hard pressed to stop him indefinitely whilst trying to get the final victory point from killing his Purifiers. Cy admitted after he had screwed himself over with the positioning a little, this could have went an entirely different direction indeed. Having the psychic team though with full board access, inside a Darkfield with free Held Esper was always going to be a nightmare for him.


So the final match of the day came round and I was fated to spa against Ben Clapperton, otherwise known as "the guy who wins all the Cadre events". This was a really good game to be a part of and my first against Ben. I drew Tear it Down again (which I am not a fan of) and Ben drew Corruption and Anarchy. I knew he would be going for the faction objective "Booty" as well as Anarchy and with Wildspace Gabe that linked activation with the Corsairs meant he could deny my objectives and further his own whilst cycling Isabeau. I decided to try to take out the Corsairs, being the unit with no guard it would also mean fast cycling his queue wouldn't be an option if I achieved it. Sadly this is where Ben's experience came into play, great positioning, Deep Crow Nesting my Prefects and the fast activation meant he managed to complete his faction objective and secondary objective before I managed to kill the Corsairs who were snug in a Darkfield (even after I managed to shift it out of the way with Stand Back).



With one victory point left I set about denying Ben killing my remaining Prefects (being the only target without a Guard). They were sitting within a Darkfield but the amount of AoE's and damage Ben could output meant that it was a losing battle. I got some decent damage off onto his objectives but without the focused effort I couldn't last long and Ben took 6 victory points for the win.

In hindsight if I had purely focused on my Tear it Down objective it would have been a very close race to the finish. With Gabe generating Held Esper and sitting next to his secondary objective though it would have been very tough to push enough damage through without him healing it multiple times (again because of the fast activation linked corsairs unit). A great game all in all that was quite tense at times and doubly great as it was almost the list I took :D (see earlier comments).


I spoke to a lot of new faces this Cadre event and had a great time with everyone of my opponents. The general consensus seemed like this was a hit so I will be definitely looking to plan more Relic Knights events in the future, I very much enjoyed running the event for everyone and seeing everyone have a great time so thank you all who attended to make it a great day.