Michigan Masters Recaps

I played a 3-list divide and conquer (play each list at least once) 50 pt faux masters event last weekend. Overall it was pretty rad. My lists were:

Haley1
Hunter
Squire
Journeyman
Hunter
Lieutenant Jakes
Hunter
Boomhowlers max
Tactical Arcanist Corps
Black 13th
Rangers
Anastasia di Bray
Eiryss

This list was made so that I could place jakes honestly. It worked okay. Jakes was rad. It's predicated on being able to remove a heavy with Haley's feat and 6 boosted damage armor piercing shots from the hunters.

Stryker2
Squire
Ol' Rowdy
Minuteman
Minuteman
Journeyman
Madelyn Corbeau
Reinholdt
ArchDuck Runewood
Stormblade Captain
Stormblade Captain
Stormguard Max
Stormblades with Unit Attachment and 3 storm Gunners

This list is a melee puncher with some tricks. It played way better than I expected it to. Opponents consistently allowed my minutemen to do awesome things while concentrating on storm knights.

Lastly
Commander Sturgis
Stormwall
Journeyman
Hammer Dorfs with Jonas Murdoch
Captain Max Finn
Gorman di Wulfe, Kung Lao Impersonator
Rangers
Lady Aiyana and Master Holt
Mechaniks min
Alexia and the Risen
Stormsmith
Rupert Carvolo

This list is . . .a list all right. I'm not sure exactly how to run Sturgis. This was okay, but it felt off. Also, Sturgis is in peril a LOT early game.

Round 1 I played a game of Outflank against Butcher 1.

Butcher
War dog
Spriggan
Malakov
Torch
Winter guard Death Star (full unit with unit attachment, 3 weapon attachments, and kovnik Joseph gregorovitch)
2 units of kayazy eliminators
The great bears
Gorman

My opponent won the roll and went first. He ran up and cast iron flesh on the WG and fury on the great bears. Malakov put redline on torch.

I counter moved most of my stuff to just give him a few dudes on either side of the zones, and cast deflection. One minuteman jumped wide to flank my right zone.

My opponent decided to pop his feat (probably early) so that whatever he gets to hit dies. However his dice fail him and the 10 attacks he does yields only 3 kills.

I counter feat and kill everything in both zones, scoring 2 points. People underestimate storm blades charging and the minutemans ability to kill shit. This turn my minuteman killed 2 kayazy eliminators.

My feat is devastating. I manage to kill a LOT of winter guard with electro leaps.

He counter strikes but can't get back in. I clear the right zone and dominate it. He tries some last ditch holding actions but my minuteman kills his high-defense model and the stormblades get Aiyana. Win 5-0 on scenario.



Round 2 I'm playing fire support against a menoth player. He drops kreoss 2 tier against my Sturgis. There is a big stupid bridge and river in the middle of the table.

Kreoss
Fire of Salvation
Two bastions max
Bastion seneschal
Two knights exemplar
Two knights exemplar seneschal
Stabby pony chicks max
Exemplar gravus


I play this game fairly badly. I feat for nothing with Sturgis and then flub a decent assassination run. Lame. My opponent plays well through my mistakes and I clock out on a last ditch (bad) run on kreoss.

Round 3 I play another cygnar player who has high-armor lists so I drop Stryker again. He also drops Stryker. The scenario is incursion.

His list is

Stryker 2
Ol Rowdy
2 Centurions
Squire
Journeyman
Black 13th
Runewood
Madelyn Corbeau
Gorman di Wulfe
Hammer Dorfs with Jonas Murdoch
Eiryss 2

I got to go first. I made an early play for Gorman but my minuteman missed 2 boosted 8s to shoot him. I try to keep some stuff out of threat. His Stryker feats, rebukes both my units (!), then backs up. He starts charging storm blades and my arcane shield rowdy charges up with counter charge. He gets some charges on rowdy but they don't break armor. His centurion misses. During feat his dwarves continue to not hurt rowdy. He does kill most of my storm blades.

I counter feat and counter attack, feeding my jacks for revenge. One minuteman kills Gorman and Ryan (score!), rowdy kills a centurion and
Hammer dorfs. My storm blades kill dorfs too. During my feat kill most of the remaining dorfs.



My opponent sends his rowdy into mine and fails to even disable a system (eiryss missed her 7 to hit my rowdy in a wreck marker). He doesn't clear my 3 stormblades to score. Those guys kill Madelyn and his eiryss. My rowdy kills his with the help of positive charge. I score 2 points.

He tries to clear a lane for Stryker on Stryker violence but it doesn't work out. I manage to score 3 more the next turn.

Game 4 was against morvhana2 in balance of power. It's a terrible scenario. My opponent and I are both list locked because of divide and conquer rules. This might be he last round. I must play Haley against his morvhana.

I don't hate it.

His list was tier.
Morvhana
Pure blood wolf
Moon hound
2 tharn ravagers max, one with ua and shaman
Blood trackers max with Niall
Blood pack max
Druid wilder

I go first and take up space. He tries to jam my hunter not realizing they have parry and can walk away.

I decide to feat top of 2 and try for morvhana. I give artillerist to lynch, Haley feats an cast TB catching his warlock. She's a half inch out from getting morvhana with her own hand cannon. Lynch drifts a fire beacon on morv, then my black 13th miss or fail to hurt morv a bunch on 6 more snipe shots. I had run a range forward as well for Mark target so only needed 5s.

My hunters each have 2 focus so I hope to hit 6s and then boost damage on their two shots but I miss the first of each pair and only manage to cripple morv and her battlegroup instead Of Killing her.

The game goes another 5 rounds since morvhana is having trouble with her schtick now. Eventually Haley dies to the pureblood spray.

Awesome game tho. Worth it.

Round 5 was against MOAR cygnar. Sloan v my Sturgis in destruction.

I feat better, my opponents dice fail to kill my stormwall and I repair and nearly wreck his. We grind and I win on scenario.

3-2 for the day. Not a bad run.

-Merlin out.

Location:Fenton MI

Tourney Report

Tournaments are fun. I managed to come in 3rd at a tourney in Saginaw not too long ago. It was a 35 pt set up.

PNemo
Stormwall
Sylas
Defender
Aiyana and holt
Mechaniks
Journeyman
Gorman

And
Haley2
Stormwall
Squire
Trenchers min and UA
Stormsmith
Black 13th
Journeyman

In game 1 I played the radial Scenario Diversion against Kromac
Ghetorix
Pure blood
Gorax
And two units of Tharn Ravagers,
One had the UA
And a whitemane

That's a lot of beef.

I managed a win in this game but the terrain was awful. There was a huge river in the middle of the board an all the bridges were considered elevation. I basically won on scenario with about 2 minutes left in the round. My opponent ignored stormwall until I killed a heavy. That was game.

I lost in round two.

My Nemo against hayley2 in the flank scenario bunkers.

My reinforcements were epic eiryss and a charger.

Hayley2
Squire
Centurion bonded
Thorn
ATGM and UA
Marshalling a hunter
Arlan
Journeyman
Gun Mage captain

Reinforcements were a hunter and a stormsmith.

Terrain was again awful. My opponents scoring zone was in a forest about 12 x 12", with some cutouts so that it was blob-shaped. I felt I had to park stormwall there to not lose by scenario. So I did.

My opponent's hunters (one in reinforcements) kept rolling 15s and 17s on their armor piercing shots. So stormwall took some damage. I managed to mail them both to oblivion and won that flank but the round was a grind. In the end I killed a centurion when I should have killed Haley. Haley managed an assassination to win.

I then won the next two rounds with Haley going first, advancing aggressively, then feating over my opponents army to either win by scenario in round 3 or force the scenario on my opponent and thereby assassinate (round 4).

So hayley is nuts. I might play her in January at a tier tourney, but I will probably take a step back from her. She's a little too good.

-Merlin out



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Travelin' games

I've played a few 35 pt games in preparation for a 35 point steamroller in Saginaw this weekend. I played 3 against tmage in chitown. Tmage is rusty but he's still a legit opponent.

Game1 was Nemo1 v Ossyan

Nemo
Thorn
Stormwall
Wishanalalala
Journeyman
Aiyana and holt
Stormcaller
Arlan Strangewayes
Gorman di wulfe



V ossyan in Overun
Ossyan
Discordia
Wishnalalalalala
All the halbardiers
All the Mage hunters
Mage assassin
Eiryss angel



I punched tmage in the nuts on the bottom of 1 with a massive lightning storm. I killed 5 Mage hunters and 7 halbardiers with lightning. Tmage was not happy.

He managed to kill most of the stormwall and I realized that I had no other real punchy options. I managed to kill most of the remaining Mage hunters, eiryss, the assassin, and a couple halbardiers, but the game broke down to:

Ossyan, wishnalalalala, and a cortex less disco
V
Nemo, arlan, Aiyana and holt, spearless thorn, and jr.

And tmage won that particular slap fight. Nemo isn't good at stabbing fools, even with 10 focus.


A couple weeks later we played two more games.

Haley1
Stormwall
Squire
Journeyman
Min trenchers with UA and grenade porter
Black 13th

Tmage dropped Absylonia
Ravagore
Angelius
Scythean
Naga
Shredder
Two strider deathstalkers
Shepherd
Forsaken

We played overrun again b/c we didn't want to play reinforcements or radials.

He won the roll for first. The angel flew into a hill with all the Absylonia buffs. I still managed to hit it with my trenchers with a decent CRA for 8.
The black 13th killed both his deaths talkers.

He was now under temporal barrier and just killed a few trenchers. The rest of his stuff just repositioned. He feated to heal the angel.

I counter feated and . . .nearly nothing happened. Almost all my models missed or failed to damage with all their attacks. The stormwall killed the angel.

The Scythean managed to mostly wreck stormwall with the retaliation. I was again left with no heavy hitters. I went for an assassination with deadeyed infantry shooting Abby under TB but everything missed again.

The Scythean ate Haley.

So that was sad. Haley1 tends to play that way for me tho.

We played again. I played the same list, but with haley2 helming it.

He played the same list, but with no Scythean, subbing in a second Ravagore and adding a second shepherd. He switched warlock to Lylyth 2.

He moved up, I did some shenanigans to murder his strider again. He decided to go for the big feat blasts and just couldn't catch a break on Haley under deceleration. Lylyth missed first shot, hit second but couldn't boost (was out of fury). Blessed Ravagore missed two shots needing 11s. Non blessed one missed twice needing 13s. One deviated on Haley but no blast through her armor. She was on fire.

Angel missed twice.

Haley put the fire out. Moved behind stormwall. Cast TA on it (it was allocated 4), cast decel. Feated. I took a couple pot shots at Lylyth but didn't really hit her.

Stormwall walked into her. He boosted all three attacks w 3 focus and missed the 10s to smash her. Then he dropped a pod behind her and boosted damage for quite a bit. The trenchers assaulted her (two got range). One hit with his gun needing an 11 and managed to do a few points, leaving Lylyth on 2.

I forced her to activate first and she tried to walk away and the trencher stabbed her to death.

In hindsight tmage should have transferred that free strike. None of his stuff had Los to Haley at this point however, and he was going to lose a lot of action due to Haley's feat. He conceded. (Stormwall drops a pod on Lylyth for massive damage next turn regardless, and he can probably kill a heavy with ease afterward; the black 13th was alive and within deadeye range as well).

So that was a fast one. I kinda liked it.

More from cincinatti trip later that week:

I played the masterrabbi in two games with my prospective lists for a tourney this weekend.

Haley2
Stormwall
Squire
Min trenchers with UA and a grenade porter
Black 13th
Arlan Strangewayes
Journeymans

He played
Mohsar
Megalith
Warpwolf stalker
Gorax
Druids
Min blood trackers with nuala
Gallows grove

The scenario was supply and demand.

The first couple turns we just advanced up. The blood trackers got mirage and the trenchers managed to deadeye two Druids off the table. The black 13th killed 3 blood trackers.

The blood trackers flanked hard around one side (Haley was prey). My opponent nearly scored a point on his turn 2 but didn't contest the objective. I feated and stormwall ate megalith and I scored a point.

His retaliation wound up being an assassination run that didn't pan out. Mohsar got punched by stormwall.

We played another game. This time the scenario was guantlet.

I played nemo1
Sylas
Stormwall
Stormclad
Gorman
Journeyman
Aiyana and holt
Mechanics

He played kaya1
Pureblood
Stalker
Gorax
Wold scrimps
Druids and overseer
Gallows grove

This game was a weird slap fight. My opponent made two mistakes that I capitalized on. First he used zephyr on the wold scrimps to move up and concentrated power shots on my stormclad. Then he remembered concentrated power and zephyr are mutually exclusive.

So I killed all them easy. We wheeled around the center and he ignored my stormwall. Eventually he killed some of my power solos while feating, but Gorman lived (he always does) and the stalker wasn't in a cloud.

So I killed the stalker. The game was mine to lose at that point. My opponent tried to kill Nemo while I scored two control points but failed.

Lots of good prep. Tournament report to follow.

-Merlin out


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The Big Show

I've played in a tournament since my last series of battle reports. It was a pretty hardcore one. 3 lists, 50 pts divide and conquer. It was called the Big Show in Fenton MI.

I brought three lists with what are widely considered mediocre warcasters.

They were my Constance Blaize tier 4 with stormwall list, aNemo1 list with stormwall, thorn, and Boomhowler to tarpit, and a Kara Sloan list with tons o guns.

Round one was overrun. I played against a khador opponent who took butcher1 in tier with 2 full units of man o war, 3 heavy jacks, all the manhunters, and a unit of widowmakers.

I went first and advanced cautiously. Most of my stuff ran behind walls and on hills. His stuff counter-ran.

I feated and killed two widowmakers and four man o war. I delayed his heavies with knockdown from Pendrake and the avenger and black oil from Gorman. I killed yuri and all the manhunters with black 13th. The drakhun lost his horse. He went into butcher camp mode and killed a bunch of my commandoes.

He failed to score a point by one commando.

I still had a lot of beef to chew through. I killed two more man o war and another widowmaker, and Gorman black oiled the butcher this time. I spent a bunch of my turn killing the dog, and my avenger never got to activate as I ran out of time. It was supposed to spank the Kodak. Had 3 focus. Sad.

Butcher didn't do much. His jacks were beat up but managed to get to the fight finally. He left my strider on 2 hp.

I sent in Sloan to contest the zone and managed to almost maul on juggernaut. My damage rolls went south though. The Drakhun killed Ryan. Lunch and watts killed him in return. Some more mow died. The avenger lived through a Kodiak assault and counter stabbed it. Hard. It got wrecked.

Butcher was blinded again. He walked into Gorman. Sloan shot him but did little damage. She then shot the juggernaut but it refused to die. The defender got its cortex. The strider died.

The avenger got to butcher and stabbed him hard but the damage was meh. The juggernaut killed the avenger. Butcher engaged some other stuff and cast iron flesh. Now was my chance! His camp was lower than usual but his defense was up. Sloan dropped upkeeps, aimed needing a 7 on three dice. . .and missed. Hit the second shot and did a few damage to drop butcher to 2 hp.

But then she died.

Ah well.

Loss rd 1. Game MVP probably butcher. Guy does some work.




Rd 2 I played in a flank scenario, envelopment, vs the retribution. The caster was vyros, and he had a Hyperion.

That was the big deal there. I took nemo1 and my stormwall. My opponent won the roll and advanced pretty far. I trampled stormwall up a bit to get across some walls and dropped a storm pod. Chain lightning didn't kill many sentinels (needed 8s on damage, got 1 for 6 rolls :p).

He flanked on two griffins (which are sweet with 3 focus!) and a scyir. They killed a Boomhowler. The Hyperion charged a Boomhowler. . .? And killed it. For sure. Sentinels engaged my eiryss.

I gave stormwall 5 focus with supercharge, had Aiyana harm the Hyperion, and stormwall pretty handily annihilated the other colossal. Had a focus to spare. Boomhowler took up space. Thorn was engaged but murdered a sentinel. My flank killed a bunch of sentinels.

My opponent sent his hydra into the stormwall. But it had arcane shield. And not much happened. Stormwall crushed it and killed 3 sentinels with electro leaps. Mechaniks repaired the minimal damage.

The game was in hand at this point. My opponent moved vyros up to work on his zone and kill my flank minuteman. I counter moved stormwall into my zone and scored a point while killing a bunch of invictors. Boomhowler continued to stall the griffins. Thorn killed an invictor.

Vyros charged stormwall to contest my scoring zone. He did half of the walls damage. My remaining mechaniks healed up thorn. Thorn got evasive to move around the field, got within 5" of stormwall. I had of course allocated 5 to stormwall. Nemo went and arced disruption field onto stormwall. Stormwall boosted to hit and did a boosted pow 22 to vyros. He bought another attack with his good arm and boosted to hit and connected. Game.

Game MVP: 5 focus stormwall killed like 40 pts of stuff.

Rd 3 was against a newer circle player and this was her first tournament. I played my well practiced Constance list against her unplayed grayle list.

It went well for me. Scenario was guidons. Which is a bad scenario.

She moved too aggressively, gave me lots of opportunities to trade up on pieces, and I won handily.

I came in 5th overall of like 11 players. That's meh. Somehow, I won the best painted army award, which it turns out had a substantial prize. I'm super pleased with all that. I'm especially thankful that no serious painters showed up, because I'm not the best myself.

I'll update this post with some pics the tournament organizer took of my army when I get them.

-Merlin out


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Bad Seeds!

I finally got my Bad Seeds epic Magnus tier list painted up after diecon, but I've been having so much fun playing storm wall I haven't gotten around to playing it. I got the chance this week.

Brandon (our league Legion player) wanted to try his hand at Circle, and so we were both playing lists we've never played before. Both were a bit pillowfisted too, I think.

I played
Magnus the warlord
Defender
2x renegade
Min Trencher commandos w/ one scattergunner
Min Sword Knights
Rangers
Saxon Orrik
Kell Bailoch
Orin Midwinter




Brandon dropped
Kromac the Ravenous
Gnarlhorn Satyr
Shadow horn Satyr
Feral Warpwolf
Full Tharn Ravagers with Shaman
Tharn whitemane




He got to go first. Scenario was Overrun. Big box in the center for control. He ran. Put two upkeeps out.

I advanced, tried to stay out of threat, mis-played the threat of the ravager's cannibal rush, and moved a bit.

Brandon's cannibals killed two rangers (which I thought were safe, thought the Ravagers were speed 5 and not 6, my bad) and using warpath managed to move up two beasts as well. They killed more rangers and mugged a renegade.

My super-shooty list didn't get to shoot much before engagement. Ah well. I had my good renegade fire his knockdown rocket into a satyr and catch the feral Warpwolf as well. Magnus himself charged in and murdered the wolf with his armor piercing strike. I had him feat to try and stay safe afterward; this was probably a mistake.

The defender charged in and hit the knocked down satyr hard. My infantry killed a couple cannibals. I shuffled some stuff around and my biggest mistake was probably firing the obliterater rocket on my mostly dead renegade. It missed and deviated poorly, killing some of my own stuff. I didn't need to shoot it and it's a powerful effect to waste.

Brandon retaliated, but my feat kept him from a lot of juicy targets. The defender passed a strength check to resist a two-handed throw from a satyr. A bunch of sword knights and rangers died. Orin died.

My next turn most of my troops whiffed attacking the savages which was bad since a single one can kill several models in retaliation. They did manage to kill two more of them, but there were still two more and the solo as well.

My defender got a full load of focus and killed the wounded satyr while mugging the last satyr pretty well. Magnus moved away from Kromac (dude is serious business).

Kromac and the last satyr killed the defender and one of the last savages tied up my good renegade.

The infantry failed to kill Ravagers a bunch, but volume of attacks finally paid off and all but one were removed. Magnus ran away a bit.

Kromac moved up to finish the renegade that was superhurt. The last ravager got into my last renegade again.




I decided it was now or never for an assassination. Kromac was in beast form, but with zero fury and his only beast was full. Magnus hit with his scattergun and Convection (boosted attack and damage), but came up 5 damage short of winning the game.

Kromac ate him next turn.




In hindsight perhaps I should have cast Bullet Dodger instead as tried to weather an assassination run with some camp.

Next time, gadget.

As an added bonus here's a shot of Brice's fully-painted proxy-tastic trolls on the next table. I would have taken a shot of Charlie's Menoth but it's still a work in progress.





-Merlin out

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Chicago Warmahordes

Let’s start this story with an anecdote. When I first began to play WarMachine, I didn’t own many models. I knew that I wanted to own more, so that I could play bigger games with my pals. I owned just the battlebox and a unit of Stormblades, and knew that I wanted some ranged support and other warjacks.

One day I went to the store to play some pick up games on WarMachine night, and there was a bunch of my faction’s models available for sale used. My FLGS is good about selling those used models at half-price (generally regardless of paintedness or quality of paintjob). So I saw a full unit of Cygnar Long Gunners, a separate packet of the unit officer and standard attachment, and some other stuff for sale. I picked it all up. It was only like $30 for $60-odd worth of models. I thought that as a new player this was a hot deal.

Thing is, Long Gunners aren’t so awesome, as far as troops go. They’re not terrible, but they’re certainly outshone by the awesome Arcane Tempest Gun Mages for similar army point costs at a number of points. I’ll write a full article on Long Gunners at a later date, after I play them some more, which brings me to the next part of my story.

My good pal Ray paints models like a boss. He had a fully painted unit of his own Long Gunners that he didn’t need anymore last summer, months after my Long Gunner purchase. He sold it to the store. I bought it. He said, “crap, I would’ve sold them to you if I thought you’d wanted them.” But my reply was, “I want a full unit awesomely painted, for cheap. I can sell my unpainted ones back. . .”

Or not. See, there are several Tier or Theme lists in Cygnar which require two units of Long Gunners. So I actually decided to paint up my own second unit (and paint the officer and standard in Ray’s colors) to run those tier lists. Tier lists are lists which restrict model choices but offer interesting advantages and often allow a player to break the rules in some way. Since there are three Long Gunner Tiers, I’ve decided to play each one a bit and see how they shake out. It doesn’t look promising.

The first experiment is Commander Douchebag McWeen, who as a caster is really growing on me. I think he’s got some serious game, but he’s a support ‘caster through and through. His highest tiers require two units of Long Gunners, but gives a Unit Attachment for free (so cheap, which is good). He also is forced to take his awesome character ‘jack Ol’ Rowdy, which isn’t so bad and gives a +1 to the starting die roll. At his biggest tier level, he must also take two Lancer arc node ‘jacks, which is. . .meh. The benefit is that he gets his three sweet buff spells into play for free at the beginning of the game, giving him full focus to run those ‘jacks up the table. Which is nice.

I went to Chicago and contacted a local who I’ve played before, Tmage. T said that he could meet me for some games, though he seemed more interested in competitive play, and I told him that unfortunately I was planning on playing some janky nonsense. He graciously offered to play some fun lists himself so as to make a good game of it.

We met and set up a scenario called Outflank, Outfight, Outlast, which features two giant control zones which can be scored upon on either side of the center of the table. Controlling either one (no enemy models and certain of yours in the zone) nets a point, first to three wins. Or assassinate the enemy ‘caster. Whichever.

T decided to play Morvhana the Autumnblade, a Circle warlock who, like the Long Gunners, doesn’t see much play and is overshadowed by other choices. We thought it would be an okay matchup. It turned out to be good. . .in a terribad way.

T’s list was
Morvhana
Megalith
Warpwolf Stalker
Gorax
Swamp Gobbers
Shifting Stones
Witch Doctor
Full tharn Bloodtrackers with Nuala the Huntress Character Unit Attachment

His reinforcements were a unit of Shifting Stones with UA and the Lord of the Feast.



Mine was in tier:
Stryker
Ol’ Rowdy
Two Lancers
Long Gunners min with UA
Long Gunners min
Stormblades
Journeyman Warcaster

I had to scramble to find reinforcements in tier. It was either an Ironclad that Stryker would have trouble running, some ranged ‘jacks that probably wouldn’t do much good, or an extra unit of Stormblades. I opted for the last, was forced to proxy as I don’t own two units of them, and filled them out with two Storm Gunner weapon attachments.



Stryker’s tier has some weird synergies going on, and it’s lacking a lot of synergies available to him while he’s not in tier. For instance, he has trouble casting his awesome signature Earthquake spell while upkeeping a couple of his sweet buffs AND running any amount of warjacks. He needs a ‘caster attachment and Arlan Strangeways pretty badly to manage his focus-intensive playstyle. Losing those makes every turn a turn of difficult tactical choices.

I lost the die roll to go first. T decided to go first, and deployed his stuff that wasn’t advanced deploy pretty centrally. I set up Stryker and Rowdy in the center of my deployment, with the Lancers on the flanks, my larger unit of Long Gunners on the right and the smaller on my left, Stormblades behind them. The journeyman hung way back.

T’s AD blood trackers and shifting stones set up all over the center of his AD zone. He declared the smaller unit of Long Gunners as their first prey target. I had put Blur on them with my tier bonus, with Arcane Shield on the Stormblades and Snipe on the larger unit of Long Gunners.

T moved all of his stuff up, taking a big chunk out of the center of the board with his bloodtrackers. Morvhana put Regrowth on them, which is an upkeep that states she can spend fury to revive grunts to the unit during her Control phase, which is ballin’ in an attrition festival. The Witch Doctor put Undead and Tough on them, and pretty much everything else advanced or teleported forward (shifting stones. . .).

I had to advance more cautiously. I realized at this point that everything within range of my long gunners had stealth, so ranged attacks from further than 5” away automatically miss. That’s a serious problem for the Long Gunners, whose whole thing is long-ranged combined ranged attacks. So. . .I was behind the eight ball from the start. I allocated focus to the jacks. I advanced the big unit of Long Gunners and put down the covering fire template (which is about the only thing the unit attachment gives them. . .) to block some bloodtracker movement. The Lancers ran up to strategic positions. I moved up the other LGs and SBs in a mix, but not too far. Jr put his Arc Shield on Rowdy (which is substantial; 23 ARM is a LOT of armor) and stayed far far away. Stryker moved up and tossed an Earthquake with his remaining focus at a bloodtracker. It auto-missed because of stealth, but the template is enormous, and it deviated onto the front rank, knocking two down anyway. Rowdy ran up a bit.

I had contemplated popping the feat at this point, but it would have been largely wasted as T could probably back up and ignore most of my stuff. However, if I’d run more stuff and tried to jam up the ranks with my mostly-useless Long Gunners maybe I could have popped the feat to more effect, at least for board position purposes. They aren’t supertough under the feat, but ARM 17 is alright, and one of them was also defense 16 because of blur. I don’t know. . .still shaky.

T set up his reinforcements, and my ignorance of the threat range on the Lord of the Feast cost me a bit. I didn’t realize his Raven attack was a 10” shot. With the shifting stones teleporting him closer to my infantry and the Raven attack allowing him a teleport, he was a half inch close enough to hit the front stormblade. The raven attack allows him to teleport (again) into my ranks and thresher with a reach attack. He killed 5 guys, three of them my hard-hitting stormblades. They failed their massive casualties check and flipped out. That was bad.

The bloodtrackers acted in their hit and run role and killed two more of the smaller LG unit, but they made their casualties check. Then they reformed back. During their activation I counter-charged two of them with Rowdy to take away their ranged attacks. T moved the rest of his stuff up more cautiously, keeping Megalith a good distance from Rowdy and popping his animus to make rough terrain. The warpwolf moved into a forest and gained stealth from prowl (more stealth! Awesome), but was within striking distance of most of my force.

It became clear to me that I needed to just commit some stuff and hope my feat could save it from the inevitable alpha strike, either from bloodtrackers or the warpwolf berserking through a unit. I deployed my reinforcement stormblades near the edge of the table as far up as I could and ran them into the control zone near the wolf in the woods.

I needed to kill the Lord of the Feast. Jr managed to hit him with a hand cannon shot and blow him away, which was good. The long gunner prey hid out in the back. The fleeing stormblades rallied. The lancers moved up to contest both zones and give Stryker juicier earthquake targets later on. I moved the arcane shield from the fleeing stormblades to stryker and had stryker failcharge way up toward the stalker in the woods, popping the feat and daring my opponent to try and assassinate him at 26 armor. Rowdy failed to kill the two blood trackers he was engaging.



My opponent largely ignored my high-armor stuff during feat. He instead killed 5 of my new reinforcement stormblades with his berserking stalker (which I figured would happen) and sprinted back. He did not end in the woods, however.

Morvhana herself didn’t do much other than revive her bloodtrackers or cast animi on her beasts most of the game, hiding way back in a swamp gobber smoke cloud. I couldn’t get to her with my Long Gunners for a doubletap, and she had plenty of fury to spare anyway. I contemplated upkeeping Snipe on the bigger unit of LGs, moving them forward and trying for two or three man CRAs on her, since most of her screen was stealth and therefore did not block LOS. I could have gotten an earthquake autodeviation on her, and then while she was knocked down the LGs could have hit her with 3 pow 12s? or maybe 7 pow 10s? It was sketchy, and she still might have been out of their threat range.

Instead I decided to do as much damage to the warpwolf as I could. It was a long shot because it has a bunch of hit points, but I was trying to take it out of the game for at least a turn. I moved the Lancer up to get an autodeviation onto the wolf, had stryker quake it, and then the stormblades left and large unit of Long Gunners managed to hit it for a bunch of damage. If I’d upkept Snipe on the Long Gunners I might have done even more, but alas. . .

The rest of my stuff was ineffective. I realized at this point that killing blood trackers was just allowing my opponent to revive them and place them nicely to attack my squishy stuff, and resolved to not kill them anymore.

T used his blood trackers to kill another LG of the prey group, and one even managed to kill the journeyman (needing an 8 to hit and 12 to kill . . .) which was a big blow to my survivability. I realized at this point that I should have had Rowdy trample through the blood trackers and try to kill the Gorax or Warpwolf, but hindsight and all that. . .

T had some issues this turn because I’d knocked down the warpwolf and managed to get its spirit out, so it couldn’t shake the knockdown. He wound up moving it back. The flank forces tied up my Lancer. The Gorax nearly wrecked the one on the forest/wolf/stormblade flank.

I was losing the attrition war pretty badly at this point. I managed to kill the Gorax with lucky Long Gunner CRAs after it wrecked my Lancer with a free strike, but the stormblades couldn’t reach the blood trackers contesting the right zone to charge, and missed with their ranged attacks. I put Stryker behind Rowdy and waited for the hammer to fall.

Megalith went to throw Rowdy for the assassination, but Rowdy proved too strong against the odds. At this point the game was getting pretty silly. T killed some more stuff and passed the turn. I tried to kill Megalith with Rowdy (odds weren’t good, and then the dice just said no) and conceded the game.

There were a lot of interesting tactical choices we made, and I’m still kicking myself for forgetting about Rowdy trampling through a bunch of blood trackers. That might have gotten me control of a zone during the final turns, and then maybe we could have had a fight on our hands.

For a slap fight it was a good game.

We played a speed game afterwards, since my opponent and I tend to overthink our turns (which generally lead to good play, in our defense, but our single game had taken well over two hours). So we played “timed” turns, and made our armies a bit more effective. T played

Baldur1
Megalith
Warpwolf Stalker
Gorax
Double shifting stones
Full blood trackers and UA
Blackclad warfarer

I played
Stryker1
Rowdy
Squire
Strangeways
Full Long Gunners
Stormblades + UA + Storm Gunner
Black 13th strike force
Gorman di Wulfe

This scenario was close quarters, a pretty basic one where the goal is to score on the circle just on the opponent’s half of the board and keep him from scoring on yours.

T won the roll again. He deployed pretty centrally again. I did the same, though my Long Gunners were on the left flank and Black 13th with Gorman on my right for ranged support.

T ran up the blood trackers to jam up the middle again. Everything else advanced. I had Stryker buff the LGs with Blur, and the Stormblades with Arcane Shield. He advanced. Jr cast his Arcane Shield on Rowdy again and hid in a forest. The LGs ran mostly through the forest. The Stormblades advanced. Rowdy ran. Arlan powerboosted Rowdy (for grudge) and stayed pretty far back. Squire kept up with Stryker. The Black 13th went for lucky deviations but didn’t get any. Gorman gave them stealth with a smoke cloud.

T had his trackers move up to toss spears, and I had Rowdy countercharge one of them. That tangled two of them up. They mostly missed or failed to wound their targets (might have killed a Stormblade?). T then powered up his Stalker and teleported it in to scrap Rowdy, which it managed easily (I forgot about the Stone Strength buff on Baldur. . .). Megalith stayed further back. Everything else advanced cautiously.

I had Stryker Earthquake the stalker to knock it down and pop his feat. Jr put a new Arc Shield on Stryker. With the Stalker down I had the Stormblades assault it and they killed it easily. The LGs moved up cautiously but failed to kill any blood trackers. The Black 13th managed to kill the Blackclad wayfarer and tried to damage a stone to no avail. Gorman popped more smoke.

T backed up a bit, since he wasn’t going to be able to kill many Stormblades at ARM 23, and sending in Megalith to do it would have probably cost him a Megalith in the long run.

I had the LGs move up, fail to kill any bloodtrackers because of Stealth and general accuracy issues. Then Stryker moved up and Earthquaked them, missing because of stealth, but again the deviating GIANT template still caught four in the blast, knocking them down. Then I had the Stormblades assault to get within 5” to negate stealth, and since they pretty much autohit that was 4 dead blood trackers. Nice. Gorman advanced and put black oil onto Megalith (which was awesome), and the Black 13th again failed to kill the stones.

For those keeping score, that’s a warpwolf Stalker and half a unit of blood trackers for the stormblades, and NOTHING for the long gunners. Dammit.

My opponent went for an assassination, as he could buff baldur up with Megalith’s geomancy and then teleport to within range of Stryker with the stones at full fury. He would have won the game, but did not boost his first attack and missed Stryker’s impressive defenses. The next attack hit, and then weight of stone (Baldur’s sword has a sweet debuff attached to it) kicked in, making it so Baldur hit on 6s. He hit with 3 of his remaining 4 attacks, but left Stryker on 2 wounds. That one boost at the front would have sealed the deal.

T told me via email later that he also could have popped Megalith’s animus (he was pretty close to Stryker at the time) to get a debuff in before which would have done it as well.

But we were playing pretty fast, and I’ll take wins where I can get them. T’s a better player than I am, so any victory I can catch is worth it (in spirit he really won). Baldur was clubbed by Stormblades.

Clearly we should play more timed games so that we make better choices under duress (I shouldn’t have pushed Stryker as far up as I did, really).

Long Gunners aren’t looking so good at the moment. I’m not giving up on them yet, but I’ll probably stop playing them against T so that I can give him better games while I’m out of town

-Merlin out


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Chitown Game

I played a game of warmachine while on business in Chicago recently. I found the place on the privateer press forums, and they happened to have open warmachine and hordes the night I was in town.

It's a little store called Unique Games & Gifts, in Grayslake IL, north of Chicago proper. I started a game with a small child there, but he had to leave unexpectedly, and so I faced off against one of the local players.

He wanted to try Circle Orboros' new warlock, epic Baldur, the Stonesoul. I had only brought the mercenary stuff I'd taken to the latest Flint not-tournament. I played Constance Blaize.

Constance
Gallant

Full Precusor Knights and UA
Full Nyss Hunters
Gorman di Wulfe
Epic Eiryss, Angel of Brokeness
Harlan Versh
Ogrun Bokur on Blaize

His list was full of new Circle proxies

EBaldur
Megalith
Ghetorix
Gorax
Druids and UA
Shifting Stones and keeper
2 gallows grove

The scenario was killbox.

His only ranged attacks were magic attacks, so I put Banishing Ward on the Nyss and moved everything up. He did the same with his stuff; standard first turn advancing. He kept his troops out of my infantry charge range.

So I had Harlan advance and shoot one of his trees to death. Then I had the PKs advance a bit in shield wall. The Nyss shot a Druid with CRA and everything else stayed back a bit.

However, I'd left a hole in the middle of my troops for the battlegroup, and my foe decided to pull Gallant through it toward his Druids so that ghetorix could wreck it. Ghetorix did wreck gallant. Then Baldur put a rock wall in front of Ghetorix to protect him and the rest of his troops hung back. He also popped his feat and put Roots of the Earth on a few models.

The PKs charged up and hit the other tree, but because I was in shield wall I didn't actually charge and the lack of boosted damage hurt me (I had transference up but hadn't realized the tree was at like 19 Armor with the feat).

I wound up charging the Nyss into the Druids, shooting Megalith With Harlan and Eiryss, counterfeating, and having Gorman auto-deviate black oil onto Ghetorix.

Ghetorix forfeited his action and advanced into Blaize. The Gorax killed Gorman and the Bokur. The Druids and megalith struggled against the defense 15 spellwarded Nyss. My foe put Roots of the earth on Ghetorix and Baldur and a wall in front of Baldur (he'd moved up a bit to keep Ghetorix in his control area).

I don't think my foe was expecting the PKs to kill the Gorax or maul Ghetorix. I popped their mini feat and they made short work of the Gorax and the Battle Chaplain put 10 wounds on Ghetorix. I also don't think he was planning on Blaize finishing off Ghetorix herself. But she had a few extra focus from losing solos on her feat turn and managed to get him. The Nyss killed another Druid and popped Megalith for a bit more with another CRA. Eiryss knocked Megalith's animus out (she did this several times). The PKs also slapped the other Gallows Grove a bit, and destroyed a Shifting Stone during their charge.

My opponent was on his back foot. Baldur was 12" from Blaize and that was too far for him to assassinate. We'd traded heavies, but the Druids and Megalith were struggling with the Nyss. Baldur killed a Druid to drop a crevasse on some PKs and Megalith killed Harlan and a few Nyss Hunters, but I was winning the attrition war.

The Nyss charged Megalith and hurt him badly. Eiryss mugged a shifting stone to no avail. Baldur backed up and tossed out a Rock Wall.

Rupert gave the PKs tough and they advanced into Baldur, hitting him with transference for boosted damage. He was down to like 5 wounds. The Nyss got megalith down to 1 wound, and Eiryss used Sniper to finish him. Blaize put a huge obstruction between Baldur and herself.

Baldur had like 5 Wurm tokens at this point, and without Megalith to heal he was looking bad. He used his self-nuke to kill a couple PKs on him (one was tough) and moved back to heal on a shifting stone.

Constance moved up so that the PKs could use transference to attack and damage Baldur again. He lived due to poor rolls.

Baldur gave up and charged forward to kill some PKs, and with flank Blaize finished him. It was inevitable at that point.

It was a good game. Took about 3 hours.

I forgot to take a pic of the game, but here's the Thai food I ate in Chicago.



-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Hordes: Gay WarMachine

So I wanted to play a Hordes army to complement my WarMachine forces, as much to learn the Hordes game mechanics as feed my consumerist addiction for buying shit I don't need.

Hordes is a "sister" game to WarMachine, with most of the same statistics in place, and many shared rules. However, there are some significant differences, most of which relate to the Battlegroup rules.

Instead of a warcaster who gains X focus per turn and then allocates to their warjacks, a Hordes chess-king is called a warlock (apologies to Charlie Sheen) and their battlegroup consists of monstrous warbeasts instead of mechanical warjacks. Warlocks have fury instead of focus, which can be spent in mostly the same ways as focus for warcasters. However, fury works differently in its replenishment mechanics. Warlocks don't automatically regain their fury each turn. Instead they leech fury from their warbeasts. If there isn't enough to fill their fury to capacity, they can regain fury by wounding themselves on a point-for-point basis, but otherwise they're boned. Warlocks begin the game with max fury.

Also, warbeasts aren't allocated fury each turn. Instead, they start with zero fury on the first turn and they can be "forced" to do extra awesomeness by their warlock, gaining fury. They gain fury at roughly the same rate warjacks would spend focus. So while a warjack needs to be allocated 3 focus to work at maximum efficiency, draining the warcaster's resources, a warbeast can spend to capacity. Capacity is dependent on the beast in question. Most heavy warbeasts have a 4 fury, and most lights 3. There are exceptions, but that's the baseline.

The catch is this: if a warlock doesn't leech all the fury off their warbeast(s) each turn, the warbeast may fenzy and maul whatever is next to them instead of doing something more directed. More importantly, warbeasts can't be forced when outside their warlock's control area, so warlocks need to be played closer to the front than warcasters.

In a game which often ends in assassination of the king-piece, being forced to play further forward can be a serious disadvantage. Further, unlike the focus from warcasters, leaving a few fury on the warlock does not provide extra armor. Instead, warlocks can spend fury to transfer damage to one of their warbeasts, which also adds a fury to that warbeast.

Anyway, I don't want to invest in a huge army for my hordes force. I had to choose wisely, and decided that since I already have a mercenary unit that will work for two hordes factions I would look hard at those. The mercenary unit is the awesome Nyss Hunters.

The hordes factions are:

Skorne: a militaristic, ancestor-worshipping, sadomasochistic, aggressive society which is somehow aligned with the deposed monarch of Cygnar, Vinter. Their themes are powerful beasts and hurting their own forces to gain some buff. The Nyss won't work for them.

Circle Oroboros: Druids. Who have aligned with the "devourer worm" (werewolf: the apocalypse anyone?) and a group of atavistic cannibals. Their themes are Werewolves, beastmen, Druidic animism, and lightning attacks. Lots of pathfinder units and forest-using shenanigans. Nyss will work for Circle.

Legion of Everblight: a group of blighted elves who have been corrupted by a dragon named Everblight. Their themes are powerful souless beasts with wings, fire attacks, and speedy assaults. The Nyss won't work for them, but as a faction Legion is quite strong.

Trollbloods: a group of racially-linked humanoids with a tribal structure and an underdog, everyone's-out-to-take-our-land feel. Their themes are literally Tough troops, hungry beasts, and lots of synergistic buffs to help melee troops out. Nyss work for Trollbloods.

Minions: Minions are the Hordes equivalent of "mercenaries" from warmachine. They break down into two subfactions: pigs and gators. Nyss might work for minions, but not for pigs or gators (I think?).

I don't want to play minions, despite the fact that they are inherently a smaller faction with less for me to collect. I wanted a faction that will work with Nyss, so that puts Skorne and Legion out. I leafed through the Circle and Trolls warlock sections, to see which ones might actually support Nyss (many hordes buffs only help faction units). The Trolls had a few 'locks who help Nyss. In particular Grim Angus looks like fun.

I swear his name is "Clint".

So I picked up some Trolls. Unfortunately my Grim Angus list doesn't use the Nyss until 50 points. At 35 it's much more streamlined.

-Merlin


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone y'allz

WarmaHordes Team Tournament

Ray called me on Tuesday and said that there was a WH Team tourney on Saturday. He also asked if I'd team up with him, as he had theorymachined a bunch of Cryx/Cygnar villainy. I managed to find some family support and got to play, and the villainy commenced.

We played:
Army Name: Shootethrax 2.0
Cryx
50+6 points, 46 models

Lich Lord Venethrax +6 points
* Malice 9 points
* Skarlock Thrall 2 points

5 Black Ogrun Boarding Party 6 points
10 Bloodgorgers 8 points
10 Croe's Cutthroats 10 points
General Gerlak Slaughterborn 3 points
Necrotech 1 point
Satyxis Raider Captain 2 points
10 Satyxis Raiders 8 points
* Satyxis Sea Witch 2 points
Withershadow Combine 5 points
1 Scrap Thrall

and

Army Name: Stupid Caine Tricks
Cygnar
50+6 points, 30 models

Lieutenant Allister Caine +6 points
* Ol' Rowdy 9 points
* Squire 2 points

Journeyman Warcaster 3 points

Arcane Tempest Gun Mages 6 points
* Gun Mage Officer 2 points
** 2x Hunter 6 points each
Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team 4 points
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution 3 points
10 Nyss Hunters 10 points
* Captain Jonas Murdoch 2 points
Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator 1 point
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord 2 points

The basic idea was that Caine's ranged buff spells Deadeye and Snipe make the units Ray was taking (Ogrun and Cutthroats) awesome, as generally speaking Cryx doesn't have access to ranged buffs and Cygnar doesn't have access to the dirty-tricks shooting of the more evil factions. It worked okay. Further, giving Snipe to Malice, so that he can harpoon a jack from like 18 inches away and drag them into your lines to get mauled, is gross.

 In fact, the Black Ogrun also have drag, so the list was very "GET OVER HERE!" with Snipe and Deadeye to pull stuff in. We didn't get to do too much of that, but what there was was nasty.

Round 1 vs Constance Blaize (Cygnar) and Baldur (Circle)

Baldur was running a unit of bloodtrackers, a tricked out ravagers unit, two woldwardens and the Megalith, and the shifting stones with ua. Constance had a min Precursor Knights with ua, Gallant, a Charger, Jr with a Hunter, Squire, Strangeways, a min unit of Trenchers and a max unit of Sword Knights with UA. And a Stormsmith. Someone had Swamp Gobbers as well.

We won the roll, set up first, and deployed our mess of infantry all over the map. Caine gave Blur to the raiders and Snipe to Malice, and Rupert gave the raiders Tough. The raiders ran to engage the Trenchers (like an 18 inch run, ridiculous). pretty much evverything else ran. Venethrax cast Lamentation and upkept it all game. Soul Harvester is a hard counter to Blaize's feat.





Deployment photo!

The Circle moved up and Baldur feated, giving his entire army cover and making it difficult to fight them. We made some mistakes because of the feat. I had never played against it so I wasn't sure how it worked, and Ray misremembered it. Everything moved up, with the bloodtrackers (Prey= Satyxis) engaging some Nyss with a run. Nothing much happened otherwise; the Trenchers killed two or three Raiders with help from Transference, but it was expensive. Baldur had Solid Ground up and Constance had Transference up.

Ray and I realized we'd kept Caine too far back to feat this turn, so we just went our way. Caine dropped Blur but left Malice with Snipe, then the Satyxis Raiders murdered a bunch of Trenchers with Soul Harvester on them (Venethrax gets a pile of souls). Also got the Stormsmith. Venethrax feated, and the Nyss assaulted the bloodtrackers, killing a couple and making clouds. The sword knights on the far flank were engaged by a Nyss and a Raider.

The gunmages and Hunters managed to kill a Ravager and hurt another. Cutthroats engaged the other Ravagers in Baldur's control area and feat, and the trolls and ogres hung back a bit. Gerlak set up for a ridiculous turn. B13 did nothing.

The counterstrike was rough, with several Earth Spikes from Geomancy killing four gunmages and quite a few cutthroats. The ravagers killed more cutthroats in the woods (though they had some trouble due to Tough from the piper). The bloodtrackers killed a couple Nyss (poof! clouds!), and the Sword Knights killed the stuff engaging them. Constance managed to get a bunch of Raiders dead, but we were controlling the middle zone at this point, with only one Trencher and one Sword Knight contesting it.





Poof! Clouds!

Ray did something awesome and terrible, with Gerlak getting soul harvester and a reroll from the withershadow combine, and proceeding to kill the Trencher, the entire 12-man unit of Sword Knights, and a blood tracker with his berserker fury. Constance's feat was up as well, so all those tasty souls went to the Lich Lord instead of the Knight of the Prophet. It was amazing to watch. The Nyss killed all but 3 bloodtrackers and their ua. The remaining gunmages, B13, and Hunters killed another Ravager and put some damage on a woldwarden. The bloodgorgers charged up and wrecked the Hunter and engaged the other woldwarden. Malice and Rowdy didn't do a lot this game, but this turn they moved up to cover Venethrax's soul-gorged, ARM 30 advance.

Caine feated and killed 3 Percursors and put a bunch of shots into Megalith, doing 8 or so damage (without boosting, weirdly). Then he teleported behind the Ogrun. The last Raider ran away to deny the bloodtrackers a new prey target.

At this point we were winning the attrition war but our clock was running down. We were talking out a lot of strategy and we had a ton of models with a ton of attacks. We also had gained a control point.

The next counterstrike was pillowfisted. The woldwarden on the gunmage-flank charged up and failed to hurt them, then dropped earth spikes all over the place but didn't do much. Megalith did similar, also using his defense-debuffing animus. He killed two of the B13. The remaining Earth Spikes hit Malice, but didn't do much damage and he never got the crit knockdown.

The Ravagers finished Croe's but couldn't hit the gunmages. The bloodtrackers had trouble with the Nyss. The Precursors charged up, killing two trolls but getting countercharged by Rowdy in the process (splat). The gunmages moved up to contest the zone again and shot at the withershadow, killing one.

We had 20 minutes left. Venethrax used up like 12 of his 20 focus (SOULS!) killing Constance with Soulfire spells. That took some time. The Hunters killed the woldwarden on their flank. We tried to kill the lone precursor to survive the counterattack in the zone but he survived. only 1 control point. We hit the chess clock with 5 seconds left on it.

Now, here's the thing: we were playing death clock, which means that when the clock runs out you lose. We didn't realize that any work done up to that point was wasted. So Ray's caster-kill, and our control point advantage, and our huge army-attrition differences, meant nothing. The other team had like 30 minutes to mosey through their depleted-army turn, and when they hit the clock, we would lose.

Ray had trouble with the chess clock early, and it wasn't running during our first turn. He'd docked us like 20 minutes for it, but it was probably too much. Had we had 10 more minutes we may have been able to hail-mary Venethrax over to Baldur and win the game (or kill the 3 gunmages left in their control zone and win that way; they'd been ignoring the scenario).

So we lost.

Round 2: Vs Strahkov (Khador) and epic Goreshade (Cryx)

Strahkov had a Spriggan, Torch, Beast09, a min unit of Assault Kommandoes, a min unit of Kayazy Assassins with Underboss, the Great Bears, and a unit of Doom Reavers. Goreshade was a tier 4 theme list chock full of Banes: 2 full units of Bane Thralls with all the trimmin's, a full unit of Bane Knights with Tarterus to back them up, the withershadow, Skarlock, and a bunch of scrap thralls to feat into new Banes.

Strahkov had a bad game. We won the roll and went first again, deploying things better to move Caine forward turn one. We gave the Raiders tough and fearless and Blur, and they moved up a bit, we moved things up more conservatively against Goreshade's special ability "If a BaneNoun kills a living dude, it becomes a new BaneNoun!". We really just advanced up little more than a walk.

Again Venethrax upkept Lamentation all game, and again Malice got Snipe.

They moved up all their stuff conservatively as well, though the Doom Reavers charged up to the Raiders and killed one. Goreshade put Occultation on himself to gain stealth, and Strahkov could have done the same (he has the spell), but instead decided to put Superiority on Beast09 and run all his slow 'jacks up the middle.

Ray looked at me after their turn and said "let's kill Beast09 and Strahkov." I thought it would give us an early advantage, so I said hell to the yes. The Raiders killed most of the doom reavers. Malice activated with some focus for boosts and walked up, using Snipe for a better threat range on Beast09 to harpoon him and drag him into our lines. Then he pummeled him with his fist a bit, and possessed Beast09 to present his back arc to the rest of our forces. Rowdy hit Beast good and solid, and the withershadow combine finished him and used their dark industries to make him into a fresh heavy warjack for Ray to use, a Harrower.

The Khador player was not happy. It got worse. Caine moved up and cast Deadeye and Snipe on Croe's Cutthroats, and Deadeye on the gunmages as well. Using the extra die on ranged attacks from Deadeye, and the incredible range of Snipe, and the extra die of Poison damage from Croe's poisoned weapons, the cutthroats advanced and managed about 6 attacks on Strahkov. One of them rolled high and it was enough to finish him (even on average rolls they'd hit 3-4 times for 5-6 damage, enough to kill the warcaster). They had a shot left over and killed a Great Bear.

I had the piper give pathfinder to the B13, who walked through some woods to get a clear shot at the Kayazy on the far flank. Lynch's fire beacon was outside the range of attack, so it deviated. . .right onto the middle of the kayazy, negating their stealth. The rest of the B13 killed 2 assassins and the Nyss killed 2 more with CRAs.

They failed their command check for massive casualties. So they were out of the fight a bit. Khador was having a rough go of it. With Strahkov gone his other two 'jacks went inert, and with the Kayazy fleeing he was left with two Great Bears and a unit of Assault Kommandos.

The gunmages shot at some Banes who were out of range. The hunters hit two but failed to penetrate their armor. The trolls and ogrun prepared for a charge next turn.

The Banes just advanced, though the Knights killed most of the cutthroats ad a pair of Nyss, and Tarterus actually made several new Knights in the process. The Great Bears managed to kill a cutthroat as well. We were down to two.

The Nyss countercharged the Bane Knights and killed 5 of them and another Kayazy (who'd failed their command check again to rally). The Harrower tried to clear out a shooting lane for the B13 to get to Tarterus, but missed the attack and the blast did nothing except kill another cutthroat (down to just Croe). I maneuvered Rowdy into the woods to get Caine line-of-sight to kill a Bane Knight in the way, but I failed to kill it with him as well.

I moved the B13 around to try and get shots at Tarterus, but Ryan couldn't get line of sight, so I had to Fire Beacon with Lynch, stick it, and hope to put some hurt on him with Watts. The Fire Beacon hit, then Watts rolled fire on his Brutal Damage shot (17 on three dice), one-shotting the Bane Lord. That let Ryan see past to some Bane behind, and she killed three with her Mage Storm.

Venethrax moved a bit and popped his feat. The Bloodgorgers moved up and killed a few banes, using their overtake move to escape the clouds (from V's feat) and counter-attack. The gunmages tried to help, and the Raiders managed to kill a bunch of Kommandos and they failed their command check for massive casualties (thanks for playing, dude, holy crap what a bad game for Khador, I think the doom reavers killed a Raider and then he only got to roll command checks the rest of the game).

The Bane Knights (down to three from 12) killed two Nyss with Vengeance and then their activation attacks. The Kayazy rallied but did nothing. Goreshade moved up and popped his feat, splooging Bane Thralls all over our mid-lines, and a few charged the Bloodgorgers on the far left flank, spewing yet more banes (MOAR BANES!).

The Nyss murdered everything on the right flank with assault. We had killed everything on one side of the board, but our objective was on the other side. The Raiders moved up and killed most of the Banes on the objective, and the Bloodgorgers and Ogrun killed the rest (and a bunch of the spawned Banes. The gunmages and Hunters mostly failed to hit things (cover from a wreck marker and engaged by Raiders made it rough even with Deadeye). Venethrax moved up a bit. Caine did as well.

Now we had a control point. The Banes countercharged again, killing a few Bloodgorgers, but Ray made a few too many Tough rolls, and the Ogrun crew have 8 wounds each, which made it tougher to kill them. Only three more Banes joined the force, and they were mostly on the far flank. After Goreshade's last turn, we had ten minutes to clear a Skarlock, a Scrap Thrall, and four Bane Thralls from the objective. We did so with 42 second to spare. Venethrax himself killed three of the Banes.

So we won. Third place. Of four teams. :p

Somehow I managed to forget to snap a pic of the bane thrall madness (MOAR BANES!) in the second game. My bad.

-Merlin out