Jeff “That Guy” Everitt is a very accomplished member of the western Canadian Warmachine Meta and has also been a prominent player in the international warmachine scene in the last couple years. He attended WTC last year as a member of team Moose and this year is heading up the same team as Captain. He won Wet Coast 2015 and just last week won the Las Vegas Open. Jeff gave me the opportunity to interview him about his LVO win!

The lists he used for Masters were as follows:

Issyria [Effigy of Valor]

Issyria -6

Hyperion +18

Imperatus +12

Houseguard Halberdiers (max) +7

Houseguard Riflemen UA +2

Stormfall Archers +5

Lady Aiyana & Master Holt +4

Arcanist +1

Mage Hunter Assassin +2

Mage Hunter Assassin +2

Eiryss 2 +3

Ravyn [Effigy of Valor](Will of the Nine Voices Tier 2)

Ravyn -6

Hyperion +18

Mage Hunter Strike Force (min) +5

Eiryss 3 +3

Mage Hunter Strike Force (max) +8

Mage Hunter Commander +2

Mage Hunter Strike Force (max) +8

Mage Hunter Commander +2

Stormfall Archers +5

Stormfall Archers +5

Narn +3

QUESTIONS:

1. Hi Jeff, and congrats on the win! How long have you been playing the game and how many factions do you play competitively?

I have played almost every faction competitively over the past 4 years. My main success has been with Mercs, Cryx , Cygnar and Retribution.

I notice that a fair number of your other tournament outings have been with Cygnar, Seige and Haley2 to be specific. Do you consider Cygnar your primary faction and can you explain what went into your decision to play Retribution for LVO?

I played Cygnar primarily last year in preparation for the 2015 WTC. Having played over 150 games with that pair of casters I wanted to change things up. I have never played a faction longer than a few months at a time. While I was preparing to take my Cryx to LVO when I randomly decided to buy a retribution army and paint it up one week before LVO. I played retribution years ago and thought it would be fun to play them again. The decision to play them was also due to the fact that Ravyn tier is extremely powerful in the current meta.

Have you been playing Ret for a long time now?

I played Ret a few years ago for maybe two months and in one local tournament. Then I had a three or four practice games before the LVO.

2. You played Ravyn tier and Issyria for Masters. The Issy list looks like a very common build but the Ravyn tier is a bit unusual in that it is only tier 2 and includes Hyperion. Can you explain the thinking behind this particular build and how it plays differently than the traditional Tier 3 Ravyn build?

Day one of masters I was playing Tier 3 with a Hyperion, Fane Knight Issyan and 3 Max MHSF units. I saw that Jay Larsen had a List which dropped the Fane Knight and made one unit of MHSF minimum to fit in 2x units of Stormfalls. The 2 units of stormfalls add a lot into the mirror match and solve the weakness of stealth units. Hyperion has always been great in the list as he solves the problem of heavies running into your units and is an amazing late game piece. I switched my Ravyn list to this build for the second day of Masters. It ended up helping me tremendously as my first game was into runes of war. The stormfalls did a phenomenal amount of damage to the runeshapers and beasts.

3. It’s my understanding that you may have been inspired to use this list from something Jay larsen was using recently, is this correct?

Yes.

Did you have much time to experiment and test out this variation of Ravyn?

The variations in our lists were very minor. His list just added some more damage at range, the ability to kill stealth units at range and some much needed armor cracking. While the fane knight can be amazing, he usually does not contribute until it is too late.

4.Assuming that you had to qualify for masters, what event did you qualify in and did you use the same lists for that qualifier as you used in Masters?

The LVO just ran the single masters event with the cut to the top 16 players, I only swapped my Ravyn list to Jay’s version as it was clearly better in my opinion.

5. Out of the two lists did you consider either to be your primary and did you select the lists so that they would complement each other in any certain way?

Going into the event I considered Ravyn to be my primary list. My plan was to always use Ravyn unless she couldn’t handle the match. After the event I considered them to both be my primary lists, having played each caster 4 times. Issyria Covers quite a lot of match ups and is very good into the matches that Ravyn has a hard time with. The two lists complement each other very leaving very few holes in matches.

6. Do you feel your pairing had any inherent weaknesses and if so how were you prepared to deal with them?

My primary weaknesses were armies with a lot of stealth and Hordes brick style armies with robust casters. My only way to deal with those was to play Issyria carefully into them and hope that the match wasn’t too skewed in the opponent’s favor.

7. The timing of LVO was close to the release of the Glacier King and the Blight Bringer, did you notice a large representation of these models at the tournament? Was it a concern to you that you might face these models/factions and was it a factor in your decision to bring Retribution and the lists you brought in particular?

The Glacier King and Blight Bringer were everywhere. The blight bringer was my only concern with P Thagrosh as it is very good against both of my lists. Without heavily changing my lists I didn’t really have a way to fix the dis-advantage.

8. There were 16 players in masters, with a wide variety of factions present. Was there any particular player or match up you were hoping to avoid?

The top 16 was a mess for me to play into. There were 9 out of 16 people i wanted to dodge. Jay Larsen with the mirror match, Bret Fogel with Runes of War , Tom Guan with Haley 3 , Ben Ripple with his legion, Charles Soong with Zaal tier or fist, Ryan Chiriboga with Shade 2, Brian Marino with Lylyth 3 , Sam Cameron With Runes and Jordan Nach with Mcbain. I ended up playing into 4 people on this list. Luckily Bret Fogel was list locked in the final game.

9. Can you briefly outline your matches (just player/caster/ win condition) for your matches in Masters and if you had played these players before.

Game 1

Tanner Lauerman – Cyphon Vs Issyria – Close Quarters

– This Game was a grind. By the end of the game only Imperatus, Aiyana & Holt , 2 Stormfall archers and 2 Halberdiers were alive. Tanner Still had 2 Wreckers and a Subduer left. Tanner was in a position to start scoring but had no way to deal with admontion and Imperatus. He went to put a breath stealer on Imperatus which would of won him the game, but Issyria was close enough to arcane vortex the spell. After that Imperatus was able to clean up the remaining heavies.

Game 2

I think his name was Joshua – P Sevvy Vs Ravyn – With Killbox –

I went first and ran up to just outside of ashes to ashes range. He ran up cast ashes on one of his own models, rolled a 1 and killed one Mage hunter. Sevvy advanced a few inches onto a hill with his army trying to jam me. My turn 2 was Snipe Feat Go, and sevvy died to three mage hunters shooting him.

Game 3

Daniel Yount – Bradigus Vs issyria – Recon

I think going into this game Daniel felt excellent about the match up. I saw this match at the WTC 2015 between Gord Weppler vs Christopher wedding. I played extremely conservatively and staying far away from his army and very spread out and using the stormfalls to light everything on fire getting early damage done. I abandoned the zone on the Top of 2 and let Bradigus score 3 points. At this point i have only lost 2 halberdiers. The top of turn 3 comes around and it is time to go to work. Issyria walks up, feats and sends the army off to work. The first charge is a Mage hunter assassin who does 30+ damage to a Wold Warden, followed by Hyperion targetting his objective and Crit – Consuming a stone from each unit and finishing off the wold warden. After my feat turn with every model in my army doing damage he had 2 Wold Guardians, 1 Watcher and Bradigus alive. After that i had way too much of a model lead for Dan to recover from.

Game 4

Brian Marino – Thagrosh Vs Issyria

Going into this game we knew we had both made the Top 16. We decide to try Thagrosh into Issyria for fun. The game went as expected Issyria had the advantage due to her threat ranges and hitting power. At the end of the game i try a funny assasination on thagrosh that had very good odds of killing him. He was knocked down no transfers and barely alive by the end of it…… So Issyria decides to float next to him and ancillary attack Imperatus to kill him. Of course he does no damage. thagrosh stand up his fire goes out, and he proceeds to eat Issyria.

Game 5

Sam Cameron – Runes of War vs Ravyn – Incursion

The day before David Beauchamp and I were talking to Sam about this exact match up and how runes beats Ravyn in the match. Lucky for me Sam and I play right after talking about this. Sam wins the dice roll and decides to go second taking the side with the hill. I run all my models just outside runeshaper threat range, Sam goes and moves all his beasts onto the hill with his stone 9″ behind doomshaper so i cannot kill it, and flanks with the runeshaper units. Top of 2 i spread my models across the entire table and set up to score on either side of the board as well as killing most of the rune shapers and doing a few points to his beasts. Sam then charges his beasts in and starts killing as many models as he can. He ended up getting an axer into combat on the far side of the board contesting a flag who held there forever.

But on the opposite side of the board i made a bunker of models with hyperion hiding behind them and started scoring before him. Because of the scoring pressure he kept on trying to contest but only had beasts to contest who kept dying to stormfalls and hyperion’s shooting. In a very scary last effort, doomy charges mulg to try and get LOS on Ravyn who is camping 0 hiding in some trees to try a spell assassination. Luckily she is 3.1″ into the forest from where Doomy is trying to see her.

Game 6

Ben Ripple – Twins vs Issyria – Two Fronts

Ben is playing a twins List with Double Croaks, Zuriel , Seraph and a few other things. On my first Volley of fire from my stormfalls and Hyperion i manage to kill 8 out of his 20 Croaks. Ben was clearly losing the range battle so he decides to go all in on killing Hyperion. The Croaks go first, Oil him up and roll their first damage roll. Ben forgot that IR was on Hyperion for the +2 armor. At this point he already commited to killing it so he sends Rhyas from downtown and tries to kill him. He ends up leaving Hyperion with 16 or so boxes, luckily he only got 1 Crit-Decapitation on his last attack. I decide to go for a somewhat dicey assasination run. Issyria Feats, tries to cast blinding light with 4 Dice dropping the lowest, needing a 9 and misses. Not off to a great start. A mage hunter assassin the charges from a mile away and one shots Ryhas needing a 10 to Hit and ends up doing 24 damage or so. Eyriss then Runs taking a harrier free strike and runs in front of Saeryn. Hyperion Power Punches Eyriss slamming her into Saeryn and Imperatus charges Saeryn to close out the game.

Game 7

Ryan Chirboga – Goreshade 2 vs Issyria

This was the match i did NOT want to play. Neither of my lists are good at dealing with Ryan’s Goreshade 2 list.

Ryan moves up on turn one, on the bottom of one i decide i need to try something insanely lucky. I use Issyria’s feat to try and spike damage with 2 mage hunter assassins. The first MHA flies off, Hits the Kraken, all 6 dice i roll dont even break his armor combined….. somewhat heartbreaking….. the second MHA flies off, Hits the Kraken …. once again 0 damage. At this point I figure I am royally screwed as i wasted my anti stealth feat vs a stealth army. Eyriss ends up running under the kraken to deny him focus. Ryan’s turn, both MHA and Eyriss end up living, which let me kill tartarus and do some damage to the kraken. The game ended up turning into a complete grind fest, there were only a handful of models alive at the end. My win came heavily from Ryan failing well above average on his tough rolls, rolling terrible on damage on Hyperion and Eyriss living for 5 turns underneath his kraken. I ended up killing the last bane thrall with 24 seconds left on my clock and scoring my 5th control point.

Game 8

Bret Fogel Grim 1 vs Ravyn –

This was the worst possible scenario for Bret, his grim list was designed to beat lists like Goreshade 2. In the semi-final round Bret Played Jordan Nach. Bret decided to list lock himself as his runes of war list was much better vs Jordan and his Grim list is excellent vs Ryan Chirboga. Unfortunately, me winning vs Ryan gave Bret almost no hope of winning against me. The match was so far in my favor that i had to screw something up severely for Bret to win. I played very cautiously and kept my caster safe from all assassination attempts. Ravyn Feated the bottom of one and cleared out 75% of Bret’s infantry. On the bottom of two I cleared the rest of his infantry out and decided to shoot my stormfalls and one of Hyperions shots at the Glacier King. To add insult to injury, those 9 shots spiked and killed the Glacier King. After this Bret concedes as there is no way for him to win.

10. Which game, in your opinion, was the greatest struggle? Why? Did you do anything unusual to overcome the challenges?

The game vs Ryan Chirboga was a very difficult game as explained above. I tried something unusual feating the top of 1 for almost no reason. Please do not try that at home, it was very dumb of me.

11. The final game against Bret Fogel, he was locked into Grim, do you feel that played any significant impact on the result and did you feel it gave you an advantage? If Bret were able to play his ROW list instead do you think you would have used Issy instead?

Bret being locked was almost a guaranteed victory to me, i think bret knew this as well. The match was as unbalanced as a match can get. The final game was just us going thru the motions of removing models and seeing if i gave bret an opening to kill me. I would of played Ravyn either way as she is actually good into runes of war. But the match would of been a very tight 50/50 game rather than a 90/10.

10. What are your feelings on Divide and Conquer? We were at Captaincon the same weekend you were at LVO and all the qualifying events were D&C 0 whilst Masters was D&C 1, which I felt was a bit strange. Do you have a preference and do you think D&C gives any particular faction an advantage/disadvantage?

I love and hate D&C , i love the fact that it promotes list diversity and can force you to play a weaker match up to avoid being list locked in the later round. I hate the fact that can screw someone over so badly tho. Bret played into 3 matches that heavily favored him playing Runes of War, then got list locked against me. I played into one game Issyria was the clear choice and one game Ravyn was the clear choice. As for the factions that have advantages, it is mostly in list design. Circle sticks out as having a big advantage. Krueger and Bradigus can play into so many different match ups it is easy to play each one once.

11. What do you consider the most important thing to do or remember when you play/prepare for a tournament?

1) Have Fun. Going to any tournament just remember to have fun. The best part about the tournament scene is the players. Being able to go relax play some games and hang out all weekend is the best part for me.

2) Double check you have all your models, accessories and cards. Nothing can put a damper on your weekend like forgetting a bunch of stuff.

3) Bring and wear Deodorant. A Clean and good smelling gamer is a happy and considerate gamer

4) Remember, Don’t be a douche. No one wants to be “That Guy”

12. Do you have any advice for players just starting to get into the competitive scene?

Take your losses lightly and keep your spirits up. If you are new and going to a competitive tournament, you are most likely going to get slapped around a bit. Learn from the matches, talk to your opponent after the game about strategy and idea they may have. Knowing your army, the basic rules of the game and playing cleanly are also very important. Competitive players can seem a bit jerkish when they ask you to make sure you check your measurements if you are playing loosely. But the game can be won and lost over the smallest measurement.

13. I understand your Cygnar army is quite the sight, are you responsible for the conversions/paint (please feel free to include any images you have)? How much is the hobby aspect of the game (painting/collecting) mean to you? Do you consider yourself a hobbyist or a competitive player?

A ton of work went into my Cygnar army and was the highlight army of many cons I attended (while not being the best painted army) It is an amazing sight to see. Will Hellebrand from Rayzthedead studios did all of the conversion work. Marshall Reeves did all of the Mural art on the weapons and I did the painting of the army. I really love the hobby aspect of the game at times. If I am in a rush to finish an army for an event, I hate it. But if I have the time I really enjoy it.

14. Party Foul has recently done a series of videos on the difference between Hordes and Warmachine. Do you play a hordes faction and do you believe the systems are balanced? If not, why and does it affect your faction choice for competitive play?

I really feel Hordes has a clear ( while not massive ) advantage over Warmachine in the design of the Fury System. Fury Keeps your caster much safer as it can mitigate dice spikes where war casters cannot. Warbeasts can run very hot giving you large swing turns which can give you a game winning advantage. This with the mass amount of fury management available gives hordes the option to have very beast heavy lists. Warmachine is very restricted in what casters can run Jack heavy lists.

Casting spells in warmachine always feels risky as you are taking away your casters armor and can leave yourself open to a few stray range shots killing you. In hordes you need to cast a spell or two and can still feel very safe with a few transfers.

I have always played more Warmachine than hordes due to the range play style and love of infantry spam. Warmachine armies just seem to Infantry spam better than hordes armies.