Rustier Than I Thought

Another game of Warmachine Mk4. I decided Alexia1 wasn't working for me, so I swapped her for Alexia3 and a unit of Mechanics; this would give me repair, shield-guards, and a point left to upgrade my Marauder.
Khador Unlimited 50pts

Strakhov 1
-Juggernaut
-Marauder
-Sylyss
Nyss Hunters
Cutthroats
Battle Mechanics
Ol' Grim
Alexia 3

Blessing of the Gods
Grave Robbing
Hit & Run
Old Faithful
Power Swell

Karas had just aquired The General. He's always hated my snipers, so this game he tried to counter Ol' Grim with his own Sharpshooter.
Storm Legion 50pts

Athena (Electrify, Jackhammer)
-The General
-Stryker (Relentless Charge, Voltiac Javelin, Power First)
Stormblade Legionnnaires
Stormthrower Legionnaires
Arcane Mechanics
Sharpshooter

Careful Reconnaissance
True Inspiration
Hit & Run
Old Faithful
Power Swell

Pre-Game:
We glanced at the Steamroller 2024 document, but all the scenarios seemed quite complicated, and a had a lot of scoring elements for a 50 point game. However Karas had a version of the Mk4 rulebook from 10/01/2024 that included a scenario called "Split Decision", which we decided to use as it was simple and had a more reasonable number of scoring elements. Karas won the roll and chose to go second.


Deployment:
I decided Strakhov would live in the forest, giving him constant Stealth. The Kodiak would come out of the forest to threaten the zone, and the Juggernaut would be more central. Ol' Grim would take advantage of the forests on the right. I put Alexia in the center so she could move to get my infantry in her bubble as needed. Support went behind my battlegroup. Karas bricked up in the center of his table. I put the Cutthroats on my left and the Nyss on my right. I believe I declared the Cutthroat's Prey to be The General.

Round 1
The Nyss headed for the trench. Strakhov put Assail on the Kodiak, walked into the forest, and spent the rest of his focus putting Return Fire on himself and a bunch of Nyss Hunters. The Cutthroats stepped into the zone. The Kodiak ran through the forest, while the Juggernaut ran around it. Ol' Grim got a Soul from the Grave Robbing command card and headed to the right. Alexia killed a Mechanic and replaced him with a Thrall... which we later realised I couldn't do, so later on you'll see the Thrall disappear and a Mechanic reappear.

Karas put Hallowed Avenger on the General - which it turns out was redundant because The General already has Righteous Vengeance - and Electrify on the Stryker. Everything moved up in his big brick.

Round 2:
I popped Strakhov's Feat, then pushed him up a little to try to take advantage of the part of his feat that nerfs the enemy's gun's range. I did camp all his focus just to be on the safe side. The Cutthroats shot at the Stormblade Legionnaires, but couldn't do any damage. I spread them out with the Repo move to avoid AOEs and electroleaps. The Kodiak ran in the middle to bully the zone. The Nyss Hunters moved into the trench and rolled like fire, killing five Stormthrower Legionnaires with five shots. Which is kinda insane; these are the guys who almost always disappoint me, consistently missing and dying without actually achieving anything.

Reeling in shock, I left them in the trench to try to push the lines past my flag. The Juggernaut pushed up to stop anything from contesting my flag as well. Ol' Grim moved behind the forest, then spent a soul to shoot at a mechanic with his double-boosted Fantom Seeker shot. Even with a boosted POW 12 damage roll, he wasn't quite able to kill a single mechanic, leaving it on one box. Which is crazy to me. Alexia based the flag.

Thanks to the Nyss' amazing performance, The General was able to take his Righteous Vengeance move and get into charge range of Strakhov. Athena Feated and swapped Electrify to The General, the Stryker killed all my Nyss (and the Thrall that Alexia created from a Nyss corpse), and The General managed to take down Strakhov with his last bit of Focus. The Stormblades could have gotten three or four men into Strakhov too, so it wasn't exactly close.

Post-Mortem:
Funny how my Nyss actually doing a great job was what lost me the game... alright, seriously, my carelessness is what lost me the game. I just kinda eyeballed Strakhov's position and said to myself "That's probably fine". I didn't measure any ranges or anything. And I completely forgot about Righteous Vengeance. I feel like I'm very rusty. I need to start paying attention and trying to remember how to play.

Seriously though, The General is kinda silly; SPD 6 with a MAT 8 RNG 2" POW 19 weapon is already very strong, but then he has a built-in 3" threat extension? Why are Cygnar heavies SPD 6 anyway? And why are Mechanics ARM 17 with 5 boxes? Maybe I need to bring Destroyers or something.

So far I just feel like Mk4 is worse than Mk3. Unit movement is faster... as long as you're not doing anything interesting. The moment your movement interacts with anything on the table, it becomes unintuitive and you have to learn a whole new set of rules that you didn't need to know before. And units have to be so bunched up all the time; I've always liked spreading out my grunts a bit, but now you can't really do that. The legacy themes are boring and extremely restrictive: there's some essential options that are missing from some themes, we barely even get to use any warcaster attachments! Unlimited is better, but all my units are half the size and since I run a lot of character units I can't just double-up. Power attacks were a fun part of the game even if they were rarely worth actually doing, but they've been nerfed so badly that all the fun is just gone. And hell, I can't even attack my own models with basic attacks now! Nevermind that they took a lot of the fun out of my favourite warcasters (Strakhov, Karchev, Butcher2).

I'm not sold on the command cards either. I feel like they de-value a lot of rules: if you expect Stealth to do anything, you probably need to bring a lot of it because just one Stealth model is easy prey. Ditto for ARM or DEF buffs, what with the Blessed command card. And of course rules that counter Stealth or Blessed aren't as useful since you can just bring a card instead. Yeah, the card is single-use, but that could be all you need (if you need it at all). Tough, Repair, all can be covered with cards instead of models.

Also Focus management used to be a core part of the game, but there's so much easy access to Empower now that you don't really need to allocate focus anymore, so managing it as a resource isn't that important. Between Power Up, Accumulator, and mechanics having Empower, the Cygnar heavies technically didn't need any allocation to be at max focus.

I dunno. I'm trying here, but I'm starting to sour a bit on this new edition. Well, maybe dusting off my brain and figuring out how to play again will make me feel better about the game.