Speaking of Curbstomp: eHaley. As my send off game in the league I was apart of in my home city of [REDACTED] I had decided to see how one of the worst casters to go up against, reputably, one of the most nonsense control casters just to see what happens.
To make things simple, I did well. Better than I expected. I nearly won. If I had thought to boost a damage roll, this would be a hilarious success story against impossible odds. Sort of like the every sports film but backed by a team of task masters, wearing a lack of compassion with pride. Fully overworking and marginalizing their center pieces while expecting no dissent and fantastic consistent performance. Huh... so like the dark truths behind every actual professional sports career.
Anyway, I was resigned to loss this game, because she's a power caster. I had recently assembled my Cetratii at this point and wanted to give them a test run as best I could. So I was running a 35 point list of eHexeris, Bronzeback, the Pinball Wizard Molik Karn, a Drake (Bonded), Max. Cetratii, Paingivers, and an Agonizer, and a Feralgeist to fill me out a point. The Feralgeist contributed nothing as he got stabbed by Morrowans.
My thought behind the Drake as my Bond beast is to have him be able to Bushwack to get to where he needs to go and untarpit himself and still deal with key pieces with the fun use of POW 14 SP8s. He never did that trick, so I still want to see how it holds up outside of the Dojo.
My opponent was running the Cygnar Battle Engine, eHaley, Stormwall, a max unit of Morrowans and UA, and a Squire.
The entire match consisted of me weathering a storm as best I could, while being very overly defensive of Molik Karn, by hiding him off to the side out of fear of losing him to big gun shots. The Bronzeback just trundled forward, screened by the Cetratii and the Drake hanging to the side.
I never really tossed the Cetratii into shieldwall, as I wanted them to get the momentum they needed, so I decided to stupidly not have them just walk forward 5 and do the weather the storm strategy.
The Cygnar player pretty much tried to shoot anything he could off the table, which he really didn't/couldn't.
Doing some heavy damage to my Cetratii who were charged by Mini-Feat Morrowans and curtly quickly removed from the table in a very sanctimonious huff on the part of the Morrowans.
At about 2 turns in, I looked at the table and realized the fallacy of all people who play against eHaley. "Oh on my next turn this will go really well for me". Going against eHaley, without her feat, would be actually remarkably okay, just because I managed to set myself into an okay aggressive position. However, he popped feat and made all my dreams disappear as my pieces were ridiculously ineffectual. Except for the Drake. He chose the order my pieces would activate wrong and chose the bonded Drake that was surrounded by two Morrowans to activate before my caster. Letting me clear them out, and toss ashes to ashes onto the battle engine. I did this after wasting 3 Fury hellfiring the battle engine.
I'd have killed Haley with POW 10s if I'd have boosted the last damage roll, which left her with 2 boxes, and if I hadn't wasted a round trying to toss Hellfire at the Battle Engine like it really mattered.
But she had two boxes left, there was a hole in my defenses and she had killed the agonizer last turn, gave the Stormwall focus, backed up and away from the battle engine, and proceeded to kill my Caster on Dice +4.
This one slip up in my opponents turn, is what gave me the chance to nearly win. This shows the thing with control casters like this, you need to know a lot about your opponent and the core constructs behind the games mechanics to be able to get a lot out of that feat. Otherwise, chains just show up you didn't think of, and then your caster has two boxes left after eHexeris pops feat and blows up stuff.
If I had known that the real fear of the list was the SPD 9 POW 20 Colossal I'd have played a lot differently. The electro-leaps on the part of the battle engine weren't the major issue and if I'd just bricked up a little more and started walking 12/20s up the board, I'd have been a lot more stable. I also could have played Molik Karn a little better, by having him be aggressive and on the side of the field away from the colossal so he wouldn't be easily reached. Electroleap isn't a big deal if your caster is in the back, so bunch up your ARM 20s, Box cars only happens 1/36 times, so he probably won't kill shield walled multi-wounds with some Static Cling.
But to be fair, I didn't find her that much of a problem beyond the feat and -2 SPD Debuff. What that does show though is an important rule of the game. You can play defensively by just pushing hard on offense, so powerful moves are used as a defensive strategy. If I had forced her to feat while I had more pieces on the board, odds are I'd have been more successful as time went on,, and still been able to do a ridiculous amount of damage and hopefully clear out the Morrowans with Molik Karn instead of him being a wasted 11 points.
You also definitely need to learn the threat ranges of your opponent, and on gauging those, play as aggressively as is reasonable. They're two important rules to learn, because if Offense is the best Defense, and a pretty good offense, you never go really wrong with pushing ahead and carving out some space on the board.
So, the easiest strategy to recommend, but the hardest to learn was just in Page 5. Play like you've got a pair.
