Orsus The Unhinged

This was my first game of Warmachine in almost exactly a year. I had recently put together a Butcher proxy and have been thinking about Butcher jank, which led me to this list:
Butcher 2
- Kodiak
- Destroyer
- Sylyss
Greylord Forge Seer
- Decimator
Nyss Hunters
Alexia and the Risen

Speedy had not been feeling his Protectorate army, so I suggested trying Vlad1. After all, he's powerful but straight-forwards and just makes his whole army better. So I wrote this list for him:
Vlad 1
- Spriggan
- Juggernaut
- Berserker
- Greylord Adjunct
Kayazy Eliminators (proxied)
Doomreaver Swordsmen
Croe's Cutthroats
- Valachev

Admittedly my list building was constrained by my model selection, but I think both lists did what I had in mind for them. The Butcher's was about efficient jacks and independent infantry who could power his feat, with the Forgeseer and marshaled jack to help reduce the focus burden. Vlad's list was full of melee jacks that would love his feat, and generally just Friendly Faction models that could take advantage of Signs and Portents. I considered the Grolar over the Spriggan, but decided that the Spriggan's 2" melee would be useful to have. The Berserker filled out the points, and is actually a decent jack under V1.


Pre-Game:
I forgot the rulebook so we just put a zone in the center and called it good. I also seemed to have misplaced my forests, so we just said that the water and hills were both forests (since hills aren't in the game anymore and water is annoying). Speedy won the roll and chose to go second.


Deployment:
I set up my two-line "kill the Risen first" infantry formation on my left, with the Butcher in the middle and his jacks on my right. Speedy deployed his infatry on my right and his jacks on my left.

Round 1:
I put Fury on the Kodiak and advanced into the zone.

Speedy walked and Zephyred the Cutthroats up to start shooting at Butcher. With Signs and Portents they managed to get 5 damage onto him. Which I should have prevented using focus since I wasn't doing anything else with it, but I forgot. The big issue though was that Croe himself managed to tag Butcher and Silence him, so I wouldn't be able to cast spells next turn. The rest of his army advanced slowly.

Round 2:
Butcher rolled a 1 for his focus, big surprise. I was originally expecting my jacks to clash with Speedy's, and likewise for the infantry to face off, but his battlegroup were too far away and his infantry were right there, so I adjusted my plan slightly and started softening up his jacks with my Nyss and Destroyer shooting, while putting the Kodiak into his Cutthroats. The Risen continued to form a flimsy wall.

The Eliminators charged into the Kodiak, doing a decent bit of damage then side-stepping towards the rest of my battlegroup. The Cutthroats continued to focus on Butcher, although they didn't silence him this time. The warjacks started thinning out my Risen - although the Berserker wasn't in range and had to run to engage.

Round 3:
Unlike last my last turn, Butcher started by rolling a 1 for focus. Oh, sorry, did I say "unlike"? I meant "just like". I sent him in to kill the Eliminators; it cost him a focus but he took them down and alongside a Cutthroat and a Risen. Because his final kill was a friendly model, he didn't trigger Homicidal Maniac and couldn't try to pac-man his way through the Cutthroats. I'm not sure I would have wanted him to anyway tbh; he was already very exposed. Which I tried to remedy by moving some Nyss Hunters and Risen in front. I would have liked to run the Decimator to shield him but couldn't get him into a really good position. The Nyss Hunters didn't have much to shoot at so they tried to ping the Spriggan - who's shield had just been crippled by the Destroyer - but only really managed to kill a couple of Risen. Alexia created a Thrall next to the Berserker, but he didn't do very much. The Kodiak killed a couple more Cutthroats. Finally the Forgeseer ran to try to keep up.

The Berserker was allocated two focus, and the Juggernaut was allocated one. The Cutthroats shot at Butcher again, silencing him once more. The Adjunct put a bit of damage onto the Kodiak and Decimator, then the Doomreavers charged the Kodiak and killed him (and only one Doomreaver was killed by his fellows in the process!). The Berserker trampled over my units, taking some damage from the Thrall free strike but killing a couple of Risen. He then bought attacks to kill Alexia, Sylyss, and I think a Nyss Hunter. His job done, he considered blowing up but didn't. The Spriggan walked up and used Bulldoze and his grenades to help clear out the Nyss Hunters to create a path for the Juggernaut. He also worked through Butcher's focus and dropped him down to 5 health. Finally the Juggernaut walked up and perfectly dropped Butcher with a single left jab; he didn't even need to use his three Ice Axe attacks.

Post-Mortem:
Man, it was nice to get to play Warmachine again! I was really missing it. I was pretty rusty, but at least I remembered most of the base rules, that's something. My original plan had been to send my jacks into Speedy's, but his deployment and the way the infantry ended up running ahead into the center of the table meant that I never had a clear line. I shoud probably have commit my jacks to go after his infantry, but between the lack of focus my inability to even cast spells most of the time, it didn't feel like that would have done all that much anyway. I wasn't really sure what to do with this Butcher; his rules seems to be designed around him doing infantry killing duty himself (hell, he needs to just to be able to proc his battlegroup buffs), however seeing as he's the least survivable Butcher ever I feel like you don't want to be too agressive with him. Also I momentarily forgot that his Mk3 feat does not let you run and then attack the way his Mk2 feat did. He probably wants a jack with 2" melee to make the most of Ravager, and of course for the threat range... yeah, he wants Ruin. Well, that would help, I still don't know how I would play him. Maybe I'll try him again. Maybe.