Mark 3.5

Karas and I finally sat down to try out the new Warmachine Mark 4. The only problem was: neither of us had actually read the rulebook. So we basically played using Mk3 rules, except for specific changes that I was aware of. Which I believe are most of the important ones. So we used the new unit movement rules as I understand them, the new run distance rule, the new AOE rules, etc.

I brought an Armoured Korps list I put together using mostly models I already own:
Armoured Korps 50pts
Harkevich 1
-Black Ivan
-Juggernaut
-Kodiak
MOW Bombardiers (proxied by two Butchers and a baker)
Battle Mechanics
Greylord Forgeseer
*Blessing
*Hit & Run
*Infiltration
*Power Swell
*Take Cover

Karas has been eyeing up Cygnar, so I encouraged him to run a proxy list:
Storm Legion 50pts
Anson 1 (Arcane Shield, Chain Lightning) (proxied by what appears to be Reznik 1 on a small base)
-Courser (Shield Guard, Heavy Stormthrower, Electrified Shield) (proxied by Vigilant)
-Stryker (Plasma Nimbus, Voltaic Halberd, Power Fist) (proxied by Fire of Salvation)
Stormblade Legionnaires (proxied by Exemplar Errants)
- Standard Bearer (proxied by Exemplar Errant Standard Bearer)
Stormguard Legionnaires (proxied by Temple Flameguard)
Tempest Thunderers (proxied by Exemplar Cinerators)
Legionnaire Officer (proxied by Exemplar Errant Officer)
*Blessing
*Hit & Run
*Old Faithful
*Put The Fires Out
*True Inspiration


Pre-Game:
We didn't know what the scenario situation was in Mk4; a quick search did not turn up any default scenarios in the rulebook in the app, so we literally did not play with a scenario. Guess it was a pure caster-kill game. I believe this edition is more terrain-friendly/centric? What I had with me though was some mousemat terrain I bought a while back for Mk3 but never used, so I just tossed some onto the table. We were playing on a table that was about 30 inches wide, so we played across it. I won the role and chose to go first.


Deployment:
Not much to say really.

Round 1:
I ran everything forwards, with Butcher in a trench in base contact with the Kodiak and the mechanics a short distance behind the MOW.

Karas put Arcane Shield on the Courser and Lightning Tendrils on the Stryker. He forgot to keep his Stormblades in base contact for Shield Wall. The Thunderers put some damage on one of my MOW, knocking him down with a crit.

Round 2:
I allocated 1 to Black Ivan. The Forgeseer Empowered him for another, bringing him up to 3. Ivan then took an aimed shot at the Stormguard, boosting three damage rolls and killing four models. Hark then cast Bombshell on the Stormblades. I rolled a crit, knocking three of them backwards... which put them into base contact, ironically increasing their armour. However after a bunch of boosted damage rolls I had killed three grunts and the standard bearer. Hark then walked to the back of the trench.

The Mechanics repaired some of the damage from the Bombardiers. I wasn't sure how Knockdown interacted with the new movement rules, so I just sacrificed my MOW combat action as I figured this should allow the unit to move normally. Which I believe was correct. They advanced and managed to kill one Thunderer with their guns. The Juggernaut ran up the flank. The Kodiak walked forwards, dropped a cloud, and repositioned back out of it.

The remaining Stormblades charged the Bombardiers, killing one. The Thunderers backed away and shot at my Juggernaut, doing very little damage. The two jacks shot at Black Ivan, putting a reasonable amount of damage on him but not crippling any systems. The last of the Stormguard repositioned to better protect Anson.

Round 3:
Last round was very good for me, killing a bunch of infantry models and only losing a single one in return. But without an objective I didn't see the lines actually closing, and I didn't want to be left standing around trading shots, so I came up with a plan to force the issue. I would run the Kodiak forwards under Hark's Feat to lock down his jacks (sure, he could technically walk away without taking free strikes, but I didn't think he would) while my other two heavies moved into better positions to threaten next turn.

At least that was the plan. Unfortunately I didn't really pay enough attention to the Juggernaut; I ran him further up the flank towards the remaining infantry, but forgot to keep him in Harkevich's Feat range, so he didn't get the ARM bonus from the feat. Black Ivan walked up and shot something but I don't think he did any real damage. The Mechanics took some more damage off the Bombardiers, who finished off the Stormblades.

Anson cast Positive Charge on the Stryker. The two jacks together were unable to take down the ARM 23 Kodiak... however, in their darkest hour, the Last (Storm)Guardian came charging out of the forest to deliver a mighty blow that finally felled the Khadoran warjack. Meanwhile the Officer and the Thunderers, taking advantage of Positive Charge's buff bubble, were able to cripple the Juggernaut's cortex and axe.

Round 4:
I had expected to lose the Kodiak, but the Juggernaut was a different story. That hurt. I guess I wasn't done making stupid mistakes, because I tried to cast Broadside with Harkevich, and when I remembered he didn't have it I spent 3 focus to cast Guided Fire instead, even though the only ranged attack my battlegroup was going to make was with Hark's handcannon (which hit the Stormguard but was shield-guarded by the Courser). For some reason I had it in my head that Black Ivan would make a ranged attack before charging, even though I had already used up the Feat. I also mixed up the Dual Attack icon and forgot Black Ivan had it, so I didn't even make a ranged with him after all even though I could have. Anyway, Black Ivan charged in and crippled the Stryker, but couldn't finish it. Either the Bombardiers or the Juggernaut took out another Thunderer. The Mechanics repositioned to possibly fix Black Ivan if he survived next turn.

Black Ivan did not survive the turn. Neither did the Juggernaut. Karas played Old Faithful to fix up the Stryker, with Positive Charge his army was able to finish off the two jacks.

With no jacks and no line of sight to Anson, I couldn't see any way to recover, so I conceded.


Post-Mortem:
I really threw away a good position there. Well, games being won or lost on a single decision is nothing new, and it's part of what I like about this game. My dice were pretty hot; killing eight reasonably high-ARM infantry models with just two AOE attacks is proof of that. Karas' dice in contrast were very cold at the start, rolling lots of 3s. But I think it evened out eventually.

I put Old Faithful in every list I've been writing, except this one because I figured I had mechanics so I didn't need it. It's a shame because it would have helped the Juggernaut hang in a bit longer, but in truth that wouldn't have changed the outcome. I actually didn't end up using any command cards; there were a couple of times when they might have helped a bit, but it's a new system, it's not unusual to forget things. Perhaps I should have focused Black Ivan's efforts on the Courser using the Blessed command card to ignore Arcane Shield? The Courser was very pillow-fisted, but the shield was effortlessly crippling my cortices, so... I dunno.

Overall the game felt mostly like Mk3. The new infantry movement streamlined and simplified things a lot; precise positioning feels less important now, which has advantages and disadvantages. But AOEs feel deadlier; you can't mitigate them by spreading out. Infantry always being bunched up feels a bit weird, but I'm not sure how much it will actually impact the game. I felt the game was pretty quick and fairly effortless, which is good considering it was our first time with this new ruleset and we tend to be pretty slow. I expect it will be easier for newer players to pick up. I just wish my list options hadn't been cut down so much; so many of my models won't be seeing any use for the forseable future.

What's in the box?

I've wanted to revamp my storage and transport solution for my miniatures for a while. While planning that out I reckoned I could fit all my Warcaster stuff in a single KR tray. I wanted to include the rulebook, larger cards, and lots of small slots for magnetised weapons. Initially I tried to plan out a tray with a bunch of large and small slots by hand, drawing lines directly on a foam block. But I've noticed that it's easier to cut clean lines when tracing along a paper template, than when manually trying to follow a line marked directly onto the foam. So I ended up creating a template on my computer and printing it out. I pinned it to the foam block with tailer pins, cut out the unwanted areas of the template while it was attached to the foam, and then traced the template on the foam cutter. Finally I glued the base on.

One thing about Warcaster is that it has a lot of cards, of several different types. liked the idea of an organiser of sorts, that would keep the different types separate. I considered milling or printing a box for cards, but then I hit on a different idea. I had replaced the messy block of foam I used in my earlier experiments with a new one, and initially I didn't think there was anything much I could do with it. But after some thought I realised I could cut out the messy slots to create two large rectangular holes, big enough to hold cards lying on their sides. I could then glue in dividers (which I ended up making from the same pieces I had cut out, so that was nice). This would leave enough room in the middle for some smaller slots, which I ultimately used for storing even more cards, and some small token boxes.

It was a messy job, with lots of false starts and repairs required, but hey: it was a learning experience. For example, I tried to trim the excess off the bottom sheet with my foam cutter, but ultimately found it easier to just use a knife. The cards are a little bit awkward to fit in place as the corners of cards tend to grab the porus foam and pull the card out of place, but it basically works, and that's good enough this time. I might replace it in the long run, but it will do for now.

By the way, I was able to add two 30x30mm slots between all the cards holder slots. While these could be used for miniatures, what I really wanted was room to store gaming tokens. I could of course have just dropped the little plastic baggies I was using to hold tokens into the slots, but me being me I had to complicate matters. So I went and designed some combination scatter-terrain/token-boxes to perfectly fit into the space.

One last little tweak I made was to add risers to some slots. Basically, some of my models fit just about perfectly into the foam, but some are a little short, leaving a lot of room above the model. In theory this could allow the models to bouce around more if the box were to be treated roughtly. It's probably not a big deal, but I figured since I had the original foam cutouts from the slots I had made for the models, I could just cut a small slice off and place it at the bottom of the slot, acting as a riser to lift up the model. So I roughly measured how much space there was above each model, set the gate on the foam cutter, and carefully sliced out some risers. I tried to keep them completely flat and level, and I would say the came out well enough. I reckon though that it would be possible (tricky, but possible) to deliberately introduce a slant into the risers, to allow models to sit at a slight angle; in some cases this might allow a model with overhang to fit into a slightly smaller space. It's not something I plan on doing myself though.

Well, I can now fit everything I need for a game of Warcaster into a single KR tray, which is nice and appeals to my sense of order. Technically there's no specific place for the dice, though I found they do fit well enough on top of the rulebooks. I'm considering making a simple box for the dice that will sit on the rulebooks or in the spare card slots. We'll see how that goes.