Proxying Khador Infantry

Warmachine has been pretty much dead around these parts - my last game was over a year ago. Although to be fair it was never particularly lively to begin with. We have started to build up a 40K community, but as many of the players are new to wargaming they are not so heavily invested in 40K as to be unwilling to try other games.

One such newcomer, who I shall call "Speedy" (because he builds up his armies much more quickly than I do), shared my interest in Infinity. After a few games from the Operation Icestorm set, we weren't sold on the game. I do think the miniatures are amazing, but there's something about the game that I'm struggling with a little. I feel it's more grounded that Warmachine, but I don't feel as if there's as much interaction between the models in your army.

Regardless, at some point while talking games Speedy agreed to try a game of Warmachine. After some deliberation I put together a simple list for him that would introduce the basics and demonstrate how a Warcaster enables his army:
Butcher 1
- Juggernaut
- Demolisher
- Wardog
Assault Kommandos (max)(proxied by Cutthroats)

While I ran a trickier list to try to show a bit more of the depth of the game:
Strakhov 1
- Juggernaut
- Kodiak
- Sylyss
Winter Guard Infantry (max)(proxied by Nyss Hunters)


Pre-Game:
Speedy won the roll and chose to go first. I picked the side with more forests. It was a simple caster-kill game.


Deployment:
To speed things up we set the deployment line at 12". We pretty much faced off our infantry and warjacks across from each other.


Round 1:
Speedy ran his jacks and started moving his infantry into the trench for protection. Fury went on the Demolisher and Iron Flesh on the infantry.

I gave the Kodiak got superiority but didn't run it too far so it wouldn't outpace the rest of my list. I put Occultation on Sylyss.

Round 2:
Speedy pushed forwards with his jacks while his AKs started thinning out the Winterguard.

I charged the Kodiak into the Juggernaut and chucked it into the Demolisher, knocking down both jacks. The Winter Guard charged the AKs.


Round 3:
The jacks shook knockdown. Butcher popped feat and took a Blunderbuss shot at my Kodiak, doing very respectable damage. His Juggernaut then finished the job. The Demolisher charged my Juggernaut and crippled his axe arm, but couldn't finish the job after having to spend focus to shake. With aimed shots the AKs took out most of the Winterguard.

Strakhov walked up to get range on Butcher; the Wardog countercharged but whiffed his attack and withdrew, denying me an Overrun target. So all I could do was try to kill Butcher with a couple of gunshots and a Ram. It wasn't enough. My Juggernaut did some damage to the Demolisher and a Winterguard trooper died to a freestrike.

Round 4:
The Demolisher finished off my Juggernaut, then Speedy's Juggernaut killed Strakhov with a pair of boosted attacks.

Post-Mortem:
Obviously I should have been more aggressive with my jacks, but I was more concerned with demonstrating power attacks. I didn't exactly do a great job of describing the game rules, but still Speedy got the hang of it quickly enough. Although I did have to be a bit pushy in some instances in order to demonstrate specific things that I wanted him to understand, Speedy still seemed to enjoy the game; enough to want to play it again anyway. As for myself, I really enjoyed pulling out my Khador and putting the Hoff in action.

It would be nice if Warmachine would pick up around here again, but if not we can always go back to Infinity.