MacBain!!!!
-Freebooter
-Sylyss
Nyss Hunters
Croe's Cutthroats
Alexia & the Risen
Aiyana & Holt
Kayazy Eliminators
Kell
Maddie
Ogrun Bokur (proxied by MOW Kovnik)
Reinholdt
Thor
-Blaster (2)
Gru had a new trick in his list: ambushers!
Barnabus
-Spitter
-Bullsnapper
-Boneswarm
Gatormen (5)
Gatormen (5)
Gatormen (3)
Witchdoctor (2)
Bog Trog ambushers (10)
Gobber Bellows Crew
Victor Pendrake
Pre-Game:
We got the scenario with three flags. I won the roll and chose to go second. I picked the side with the forests because Nyss Hunters.
Deployment:
He deployed fairly symmetrically. I put my two big Pathfinder units on my left, behind the forests. This left my jacks, solos, and Alexia on the right.
Round 1:
Gru put out some swamps and ran into them.
I couldn't shoot at him because of the swamps, so I spread out my models around the flags. He had Iron Flesh on the central unit of Gators, so I put Fortune on the Freebooter, as it was probably going to have to try to do something about them. Maddie hugged Alexia, to extend corpse collection range. The Blasters flanked hard to my right. Kell ran up and stood just in front of the house.
Round 2:
His Gator unit on the left killed a couple of Cutthroats. The Bog Trogs moved in and killed another, along with some Nyss Hunters (CMA is a thing). The central unit walked into another swamp, while the rightmost unit hid behind a smoke cloud. He made some order-of-activation mistakes and ended up leaving his Witch-doctors very far back.
Kell put a respectable amount of damage on a Gatorman from the left unit, then the Cutthroats charged in and finished it off. Nyss Hunters killed some Bog Trogs. Eliminators ran up to be ready to counterpunch. Risen jammed his central unit. The Bashers walked up and shot at the Gobbers, killing one. MacBain!!!! threw out a Rift, the idea being that if he used Pathfinder to charge my stuff it would prevent him from using one of his other abilities.
Round 3:
The Spitter shot at the Freebooter, catching MacBain!!!! and Reinholdt. Did you know Reinholdt has ARM 9 and only 1 damage? I think he's the flimsiest solo in the game (well, if you can land a hit). That meant that Gru only needed to roll a 3 on the Spitter's blast damage to kill him! Guess what he rolled?
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| Wah waah waaaah... |
Barnabus feated, catching most of my Nyss and Cutthroats. The Gatormen and Bog Trogs then killed everything, leaving only Cylena - who failed her command check - and the Eliminators. The middle unit of Gators cleared out the Risen, and the remaining gobber charged in and killed one himself! The last unit of Gators charged the Blasters, leaving the nearby one on two boxes.
Sadly Reinholdt died to the acid after all. The Freebooter ran up under a full load of focus and killed one Gator, then Macbain!!!! used the rest of his focus for Jackhammer attacks, which all missed, before advancing backwards (which is funnily enough not an oxymoron in Warmachine). The Eliminators charged a Gator, killing it. Cylena ran away and rallied. Alexia threw more Risen at the central unit of Gators to keep them busy. One Basher took a freestrike to walk backwards and shoot up the rightmost Gator unit, putting a bit of damage on them. Kell missed a Gator. Holt killed some Bog Trogs. The Bokur moved up to protect MacBain!!!!
Round 4:
The Gators in the center put some damage on the Freebooter, then the Boneswarm charged in and did a bit more, knocking out his right clamp. The Gators and Bog Trogs on the left put everything they had into the Eliminators but only managed to connect on one attack, killing one. One the right, one Gator killed Thor while the other two finished off the engaged Blaster. Pendrake killed Sylyss and the Spitter killed the Bokur.
Things were not looking good, but I saw a potential Hail Mary: Barnabus had spent all his Fury putting out Spiny Growth and swamps, leaving him with no camp. First Maddie triggered Intrigue off the Gator that killed Thor, using it to move Alexia up, who was then able to drop a Risen on the left behind the line of Gators. I dropped Fortune and gave the Freebooter three focus. The last Blaster (would be a good name for a band) aimed and shot at the two Gators that killed it's friend, doing very little. Maddie then walked up and Seduced the Gator that had killed Thor, getting it to walk back and finally kill one member of the unit.
MacBain!!!! moved up a bit and cast Failsafe on the Freebooter, then shot the seduced Gator in the back, killing it. This left the Gatormen unit on the right unable to score. The Freebooter used a double-hand throw, boosting all the way, to toss the Boneswarm (don't ask me how you pick up and throw a pile of bones) into Barnabus, knocking them both down. Alexia activated next; three Risen finally took down the scrappy little gobber, while the one behind the Gators leveled-up into his evolved form and slapped Barnabus for a respectable amount of damage.
Aaaand... this is the part where I screwed up. I moved Kell to be able to shoot at Barnabus through a gap in the Gators, and somehow derped completely and moved him up into engagement with the Gator wall. The rest of my army pretty much just whiffed on everything.
Round 5:
Barnabus killed the Thrall to trigger Warpath, allowing the Spitter to walk over the wall then charge the Freebooter. With help from the Gators they finally put the jack into the dirt, along with Kell and Alexia. The last Gator on the right killed Maddie. The ones on the left whiffed on the Eliminator. The Bog Trogs killed Holt.
Well, I had a plan: if I could get MacBain!!!! over the flag on the right and keep clearing it, and if the Eliminator could survive for five more rounds, then I might still have a chance. Hey, it can't be worse than the chance of winning the lottery, can it? Hmm, maybe it can.
MacBain!!!! charged and killed the last Gator on the right, then Energized as close as he could to the flag (not close enough). The Blaster walked over to shoot at a couple of Gators for no damage. The Eliminator killed a couple of Bog Trogs.
Round 6:
The Gators finally killed the Eliminator. So much for that plan. The Blaster survived because the Gators couldn't reach him under Iron Flesh, but in my desire to get as many Gators as possible with his spray I had forgotten to get him in to contest the flag. Pendrake killed the single contesting Risen model, allowing Gru to score two points this turn for controlling two flags.
Well, I wasn't going to win on scenario, so it was time for plan C: get...
Shot dooooown... in a blaze of gloooryyyy!
A Risen missed his attack on Pendrake. Aiyana tried to Kiss the central Gator unit and whiffed. MacBain!!!! charged in and spent his stack to kill 3 Gators, showing the rest of his army what they should have been doing the whole time. Well, obviously they couldn't actually see it because they were dead, but I like to think that somewhere in Urcaen, they were feeling pretty bad about themselves.
Round 7:
The witch-doctor killed the last Risen to free up Pendrake, who knocked down MacBain!!!! with his bola. Well, MacBain!!!! could still survive the Gator and Spitter, all he needed to do was pass seven consecutive Tough checks. It could happen, right?
He passed one.
Postmortem:
My infantry do not like getting knocked down! In retrospect I might have been able to protect some Nyss Hunters from the feat by hugging the Freebooter, except then I expect they would have died to a Spitter shot or something.
I put both Pathfinder units on the left to take advantage of the forests, and ended up putting Alexia on the right to have a Risen screen for my jacks and solos. This meant that I wasn't able to collect most of the corpses from my units. I think perhaps it would have worked better to balance out my forces a bit more; putting one infantry unit and a battlegroup on each side.
Gators are a very well rounded unit, and they get really tough when you put Iron-Fleshed on them. I might have been able to wear the other units down eventually if it hadn't been for that feat, but my Mercs don't really have a solution for Iron Flesh right now, so the best I probably could have done about the middle unit was keep jamming him with Risen.
I should mention that near the end it was getting late and we were both getting fatigued. We started making a lot of mistakes in the last few rounds; I don't think MacBain!!!! would have killed very much at all if Gru hadn't forgotten to upkeep Iron Flesh. I really should have cast Fortune on him the turn before. That's something I need to remember to do: when I start running out of models, put Fortune on MacBain!!!! for the inevitable last hurrah.
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