Armylist Of The Dead

With my Risen and converted Legion of Lost Souls finally painted, I had the idea of running a big (by 50pt Mk4 standards) "zombie horde" list, with as many undead models as possible. Which... is not that many in Khador unfortunately. At least Butcher3's Argii kinda almost count. I really wanted to try it in Halloween month, so I put together a list with Khador's scariest warcaster, his soul-fueled dark-magic-enchanted warjack, and a bunch of skellies:
Butcher 3
- War Argus
- War Argus
- Ruin (proxied by Juggernaut)
- Kodiak
Alexia & the Risen
- Thrall Warrior
Legion of Lost Souls
Legion of Lost Souls
Ol' Grim

This was kind of a big deal for me because it would actually be my first time ever playing a fully painted Warmachine list, even if it's only 50 points. Unfotunately I didn't get actually to play it, because Karas was unable to bring his models. So I gave him the Butcher list and threw together something on the spot with the other models in my case, which I named "The Dregs":
Strakhov 1
- Spriggan
- Destroyer (yes, it has Black Ivan's claw, I was too lazy to remove it)
Doomreavers
Croe's Cutthroats
Manhunter
Koldun Lord
Sylyss


Pre-Game
Karas said he didn't want to play a mission so we just played caster kill. Threw down some random terrain as usual; I had been planning on putting a zone in the middle but that didn't happen. Karas won the roll and chose to go second.


Deployment:
I deployed Strakhov behind the forest, and the jacks in the center. Karas put his battlegroup behind the trench and spread out his units. I put the Cutthroats behind the forest as they have Pathfinder, the Doomreavers behind the hill, and the Manhunter on the right flank. I declared the central unit of Legion to be the Cutthroats' Prey target.

Round 1:
We both advanced. Ol' Grim got a soul from the Grave Robbing card. Alexia created a Thrall. The targetted Legion unit pulled Cygnar and ran to the rear edge of the table.

Round 2:
The Cutthroats took the hill. Croe missed his shot at the entrenched Ol' Grim (to be fair he rolled a 9 and that wasn't enough), and another couple missed their shots on the Legion. I ran the Doomreavers and Manhunter behind the forest where they couldn't be charged and so would be hard to reach. The Destroyer walked up but turned out to be just out of range of the Thrall. The Spriggan ran and Strakhov set up on the hill.

The Legion charged and killed all the Cutthroats. Ol' Grim killed the Koldun Lord and Sylyss with Wraith Shots. Alexia ran over, and the far unit of Legion of Lost Souls headed back now that the Cutthroats were dead.

Round 3:
Strakhov dropped Assail and fully fueled the warjacks. The Doomreavers charged the Legion of Lost Souls and went mental, killing the entire unit, the Thrall, Ol' Grim, and a couple of their own dudes. The Manhunter ran to engage the other unit of Legion. The Destroyer killed the two War Argii and a Risen. The Spriggan killed Alexia and the Risen with aimed, boosted Grenade shooting and then used the Hit and Run card to repo backwards. Strakhov dropped a smoke bomb and repo'ed backwards.

The Legion ignored the Manhunter and killed a couple of Doomreavers. The Kodiak killed the Manhunter in a cloud of steam. Butcher shot the last Doomreaver but he toughed, which was actually bad for me because Ruin was then able to finish him and take his soul.

Round 4:
I fuelled up the jacks. The Spriggan killed most of the Legion. Strakhov walked 10" away from Ruin, rolled a single shot on the Riot Gun and double boosted it for no good reason, but still did no damage. He then repositioned back. The Destroyer charged Ruin and, for the first time in over ten years of playing Khador, finally did some damage with his Crit. Ruin's lost about half his boxes or so, suffereing from crippled movement.

Karas healed a single movement box using Old Faithful, bringing Ruin back up to full operation. Butcher held his focus and charged the Spriggan, spending his stack on Flashing Blades, killing the two jacks and Feating back to full focus then casting Energizer. This brought Ruin into range of Strakhov; the Doomreaver's soul gave him a second focus, which was just enough to kill Strakhov with boosted initials.

Post-Mortem:
I made a lot of mistakes that game, perhaps the biggest was just not doing anything useful with Strakhov. I didn't really shoot anything until the end, I didn't feat (his army didn't have too many guns, but I could have at least saved my support solos), I dropped Assail and didn't recast it which made things harder for my jacks, I spent my focus on shooting instead of putting out Hand of Destruction. I think not having a mission to play for threw me off a little. I probably should have put Prey onto Butcher, because if I could kill the War Argii then start shooting Butcher with Croe, he wouldn't be able to cast any spells, which is somewhat crippling for him because that's a big part of his toolkit. Of course that's not really going to happen, not for more than one round anyway, and doing it in early rounds wouldn't mean much while holding the Cutthroats back hoping to pull it off late game would cost me too much.

Anyway, I'm really over Strakhov at this point. I want to play a Sorscha or a Vlad or a Butcher. I need to get some more of my warcasters painted.