Right; I had the mods correct in ghostlords but I forgot when typing out the forum post, my bad. Fixed it in the original comment.
My numbers are not quite the same as yours but they mostly agree with the assessment, Knauf is not advantaged in this engagement. I will also point out that the choice to delay by the player owning Knauf was pointless "I had no idea which of the Sepulchre knight holoechoes was the real one so I just delayed against the one I could see." If you can only see one, just shoot it (assuming the weapon your trooper is armed with is appropriate which the MSR is). Either it is real and you contest the shot they are about to make or it is fake and you shoot and potentially remove an Echo your opponent could otherwise utilise.
@Delta57Dash oh that's probably what happened. I was futzing with a bunch of stuff in the calculator and probably forgot to update the Burst dropdown by accident. I definitely only rolled 1 die in the game though, so we got that correct. In other words, not a rules problem, it was a user error when using the calculator. Thanks for the catch. I'll update the report.
Whelp, I wasn't supposed to play at the Rose City Raid but our ringer was indisposed for Round 1! I borrowed some models and put some Not Hot Garbage on the table! What the Hector
Hector is a very scary dude in a fireteam. He's singlehandedly demolished me after I killed the opponent's list outside the fireteam.
Closing in on having put all the factions on the table... Steel Phalanx was the latest! Send in the Frowns
Great batrep and analysis as always. I learn something useful every time I read one of your reps. Gotta say that "smash first, grab objectives from the bodies" (if I understand your "what I should have done" analysis correctly) seems like a risky tactic. Even if Fiddler's dead, a run to the corner and castle with the boxes can make even SP's life pretty hard if you're planning on recovering held boxes using 4-4 troops.
I was imagining a scenario in which: 1. Turn one I wreck face with Ajax, killing Fiddler and a good portion of the Ghulam link. I do nothing about the box. 11 Orders of Ajax is brutal, and I could've challenged ghulams/fiddler individually. 2. Turn two, this gives me 11 orders of Patroclus (assuming I don't take any attrition from the YY) to go destroy the kaplans, which I can do by smoking them up and Pulzaring or just smacking them in the face. At this point Adam is low on orders because both links are severely degraded, which lets me roll hector and crew around on Turn 3 doing whatever needs doing. Really my main point is that Steel is better at smashing things than grabbing boxes--by grabbing the box early with Patroclus I turn him off as an attack piece because I don't want to overextend him with a box. Also, Fiddler is very mobile on the Brutal Cities table and unbelievably efficient, so I needed to re-evaluate my target priority. In any case, I think you're right that it's not easy by any means. I just think that I could've made the game a more durable victory by taking out Fiddler and letting Patroclus bully things that he's designed to kill, i.e. not the Azrael (he's... okay at that). I guess even more abstractly--I spent a ton of effort moving forward and then back with Patroclus and Hector's link. That's a ton of wasted effort. I think it would have been much stronger to just let Adam push forward and then back, and for me to _just_ push forward. Like here I am with the freight train that is Hector, and I scoot forward, melt a YY, and then scurry away like he's a fusilier or something, you know? It was the right call at the time, given that the Kaplans were still around, but it felt inefficient. I kinda feel like Steel is all about not wasting movement, especially due to their comparatively high distribution of 4-4 units. Anyway, bottom line, yes, it would be difficult to do the ideal case I described, and I'm open to other ideas to secure a more "durable" victory. Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it!
On a more serious note, yet another excellent batrep, and yet another good lesson. Well-examined failure teaches more readily than success! Thanks for putting the effort into all this, I learned a lot and was entertained!