Slow And Steady

I ran a demo game for a new member of our hobby group. This was my first game of Warmachine this year. I had put together two 30 points Unlimited lists in preparation. I ran a silly Strakhov2 list that I could use to show off a little of the jankier things you can do in this game, mostly centered around Alexia and LoLS to demonstrate soul and recursion mechanics. I don't think either of used a command card all game (though I did mention how he could use them a couple of times), but we both had Blessing, Lucky Penny, Old Faithful, Hit & Run, and For The Motherland (which I guess is not legal anymore but w/e).
Strakov2 (proxied by Strakhov1)
-Kodiak
-Elite Kommandos (2)(proxies)
-Reinholdt
Koldun Lord
Alexia 2 (& Thralls)(proxy)
Battle Mechanics
Legion of Lost Souls (Risen conversions)

The list I made for new players was intended to be simple and solid, mostly centered around demonstrating the basics, including the use of straighforwards buff spells. Ruin was a no-brainer. I included Bombardiers as versatile faction models with good overall stats and enough armour for Butcher's Deceleration to be meaningful. The Forgeseer fit with the MOW, was painted, and could help counter Strakhov's cloud/stealth tricks. Mechanics made sense as they are cheap and could repair most of the army.
Butcher1 (buff version)
-Ruin (proxied by Juggernaut)
Greylord Forgeseer (Bombshell conversion)
Man-O-War Bombardiers
-Bombardier Officer
Battle Mechanics


Pre-Game
I placed a simple 12" zone in the center and said any model could score starting from the second player's second turn, with the first to 5 points being the winner. I went firsts so I could demonstrate basics rules first. I gave him the terrain so he could place them as he wished.


Deployment
I put Strakhov and his support near the forest. The Kodiak in the center, with the Mechanics behind him, and Alexia and the Legion to the left. He spread his MOW in a line in front of the rest of his models (I could not remember the rules for deploying units).


Round 1:
Strakhov cast Inviolable Resolve on the Kodiak and Quicken on himself, used the Sneak battle plan and ran into the forest. His support followed. The Legion ran into the zone, clustered up in a shield wall. The Kodiak, excited to get to grips with the enemy, "accidentally" vented steam and killed all three mechanics. Oops. Oh well, accidents happen in war. Alexia respectfully and surreptitiously pocketed their souls - no point in letting good corpses souls go to waste, right? Walking up, she used the souls to craft three Thrall Warriors, who immediately ran forwards.

Butcher's army ran up, with Butcher himself staying behind the wall of Bombardiers, while the Forgeseer alone split off from the force. Butcher cast Deceleration, and put Vengeful on the Bombardier Officer.

Round 2:
I upkept both spells. Strakhov moved forwards just enough to take a shot at the Forgeseer, hitting and rolling just low enough to not do any damage. Alexia walked up and slung a Hellfire at a Bombardier, also somehow rolling just low enough to not do any damage. The Legion walked forwards and shot their pistols, doing some damage. The Thralls charged the Bombardiers, although only one could make the 3" needed for boosting damage. They finished off one Bombardier, but the return swing from Vengeful on the officer killed a Thrall. The Kodiak trampled up and used Vent Steam, the Kommandos then walked forwards and did the same.

Butcher upkept Vengeful and allocated to Ruin. The Bombardiers shuffled up a bit and killed the Thralls, allowing the Officer to lob a shot at the Legion; it missed but a roll of 10 on the blast damage still killed the target. The Mechanics then repaired some of the damage on the Bombardiers. Butcher Feated and cast Deceleration again. Ruin charged the Kodiak, dispelling Inviolable Resolve. I was surprised that even with Butcher's Feat and the free charge from his Bond, he still only just managed to finish off the Kodiak on his final hit (doing only one point of extra damage). The Forgeseer walked in to the zone and cast a Hoarfrost at the closest Legion grunt, killing it and also a second with another roll of 10 on the AOE damage. At least Alexia was close enough to take their souls.

Round 3:
I dropped Quicken. The Legion charged the Bombardiers, killing one and bringing back a member of the unit. One attack hit the Bombardier Officer, triggering Vengeful. The Officer's attack did no damage, but it was a Crit allowing him to use Shred to attack again (it was only later that it occured to me that Crit Shred is only during the model's combat action), unfortunately he rolled low again, leaving the Legion trooper untouched.

Alexia charged Ruin, using souls to buy attacks and boost damage rolls. She did some damage, not that much. One Kommando charged Ruin, the other I feared would block Strakhov's charge so I charged the Forgeseer instead, leaving her on one health. Reinholdt gave Strahkov a Lucky Charm (which came in handy as I think I rolled three 1's on a damage roll at one point). Strakhov then cast Last Stand on himself and charged Ruin. After buying all his attacks Ruin still had around 10 health boxes left; pow 11 is just sad really. The Koldun Lord managed to land a Brittle Frost on Ruin but did no damage.

With all my activations done Last Stand kicked in and Strakhov keeled over; karmic retribution for killing his own Mechanics no doubt.


Post-Mortem
It was a fun game that flowed fairly smoothly. I did end it somewhat prematurely using Last Stand, but I felt there wasn't much point in drawing it out too long. Still, in retrospect I probably should have let him take down Strakhov himself using Ruin. But this was actually my first game with Strakhov2 and I thought it would be funny for Strakhov to basically kill himself. I do think only have one jack per side is a bit of a problem, because losing that jack is hard to recover from; having a couple of jacks just sort of "buffers" the impact of losing one, or at least creates more of a back-and-forth. But I wanted to have a bit of everything without having too much of the power in the battlegroup as that might make the rest of the army feel redundant; I feel that gives a more accurate impression of the actual game. I think the Butcher list did what I wanted it to quite well, but I might re-write the Strakhov list.