Butcher Gonna Getcha

I got to play some more Warmachine with Speedy. This time we decided to try Clashmachine.

Game 1:
I've been a little tired of Strakhov and kinda wanted to run a list that could hit a little harder. I settled on Butcher 2: since the massive update a while back I've been interested in giving him another try. He brings a bit of speed, a bit of armour-cracking, and I feel he has some fun rules. I stuck with the Wolves of Winter theme. I brought a Spriggan for the 2" reach: not only would that help compensate for my lower threat ranges, it would also make the most of the Ravager spell. A Berserker was a cheap way to fill points, and with Boundless Charge and Fury would make a good opener to start the piece trade. The Adjunct was a must considering Butcher's... "Focus situation". The Koldun Lord along with the Forge Seer would also help with Focus. Nyss Hunters with Valachev can hit hard with Fury. Action Saxxon is a fairly survivable Stealth solo for scoring, and being able to hand out Pathfinder would let the Doomereavers charge and still ignore Tough, or potentially allow Butcher to go in without needing to spend Focus on Boundless Charge.
[Theme] Wolves of Winter
[Butcher 2] Kommander Orsus Zoktavir [+28]
- Berserker [8]
- Juggernaut [13]
- Spriggan [17]
- Greylord Adjunct [3]
Greylord Forge Seer [0(4)]
Koldun Lord [3]
Saxon Orrik [4]
Cylena Raefyll & Nyss Hunters (max) [16]
- Koldun Kapitan Valachev [0(4)]
Doom Reaver Swordsmen [10]
- Greylord Escort [3]

Speedy was running Amon with a jackspam list:
[Theme] Exemplar Interdiction
[Amon 1] High Allegiant Amon Ad-Raza [+29]
- Crusader [10]
- Dervish [7]
- Devout [7]
- Devout [7]
- Reckoner [14]
- Repenter [7]
- Hierophant [2]
Scrutator Potentate Severius [0(5)]
- Fire of Salvation [13]
Vassal Mechanik [1]
Vassal Mechanik [1]
Vassal of Menoth [0(2)]
Vassal of Menoth [0(2)]
Choir of Menoth (min) [4]
Choir of Menoth (max) [6]


Pre-Game:
This was our first time playing clashmachine, and man: I do not have enough terrain, or objective markers, for this game. Luckily we rolled mission 1, and between the two of us managed to scround up enough zone markers and terrain... more or less. Speedy won the roll and chose the side of the table with less forests.


Deployment:
I deployed my Nyss Hunters on the side with the forests. Butcher and the Juggernaut went on my left, towards the wall, with the Berserker and Spriggan central, behind the pool. My Greylord solos were farther left, positioned to go for the left zones. Speedy positioned his battlegroup centrally, with a Choir on each side, and Sevvy on my right. I put Action Saxxon on the zone on my right, with the Doomreavers in a line across the center in order to threaten the central zone.
Round 1:
I threw BC on the Spriggan and the Berserker, the latter of whom also received Fury. This allowed them to charge over the pool in their path. The Doomreavers stepped into the zone, claiming it for the MothaARGHARGHAAARGH! Sorry, they can be a little incoherent at times. The Koldun Lord pushed up to be able to cast Frostbite on stuff. The Nyss Hunters spread out on my right. Amon cast Mobility and walked 8" to touch the zone. The rest of his army moved up cautiously.


Round 2:
I believe I rolled 7 Focus on Butcher. I filled up the Spriggan. He trampled forwards to be within 10" of the closer Devout, hitting him with a boosted Flare grenade and tagging Amon as well, dropping his DEF to 14. This allowed the Koldun Lord to advance and hit Amon with Frostbite, dropping his ARM to 12. The Nyss Hunters tried to aim and Zephyr up to shoot at Amon, but in all the clutter on the table I forgot about the forest blocking LOS so they did literally nothing. Finally the Doomreavers charged Amon (with Pathfinder from Saxxon), with the first one dying to the Devout's Defensive Strike. Thanks to the lowered DEF I was able to land my attacks, and the second crazed swordsman cranked his damage roll. With the Escort blocking Tough, Amon was toast.

Game 2:
We decided there was no need to change anything for the second game. I won the roll and chose to go first, Speedy stuck with the same side of the table.


Deployment:
I tried switching things around this time, putting the Nyss on my left and Butcher on the right. Speedy again put his battlegroup in the center and units on the sides, but this time had Sevvy more central so it would be easier to use his buff aura. I put my Doomreavers on my right this time.
Round 1:
I pushed forwards again, spreading my infantry out and getting my jacks as far fowards as they could go. I ran the Adjunct behind the forest on the right "for safety", which was stupid because he wanted to stay near the Nyss Hunters and Koldun Lord on the left. Speedy was a little more conservative with Amon this time. The Repenter was able to kill one Doomreaver and leave another kocked down and on fire. The Reckoner shot down the Greylord Escort.
Round 2:
I really didn't know what to do here; I figured my best bet was to try to get a lead on scoring. The burning Doomreaver died, but the other 4 managed to kill the Dervish and get some damage onto the Repenter. The Nyss Hunters spread out and ran to engage the jacks on the left, just to keep them busy. I moved the Spriggan into the zone, keeping out of the Crusader's threat range but within range of the Devouts. I thought about putting the Berserker there instead, but I figured that, even with some buffs, the P+S 13 Devouts probably wouldn't wreck the Spriggan. Butcher toed into Saxxon's zone, allowing him to touch the back of the next one. I ran the Adjunct into the Koldun Lord's command range, allowing the Koldun Lord to cloud himself. The Forgeseer hid behind the cloud. Fire of Salvation killed the engaging Nyss Hunter then used Road to War to walk over and kill the other contesting his zone. The Crusader killed the two in his face. The Repentor and Reckoner finished off my Doomreavers. The two Devouts charged the Spriggan; at P+S 17 they were doing respectable damage and almost certainly would have destroyed him if Amon had been able to actually spare focus to fuel them; as it was he was left with about 10 boxes that very fortunately included the arms and cortex. For some reason Amon advanced much farther than he needed to. At the end of the turn Speedy scored 3 points and I scored 5.
Round 3:
Well, my Juggernaut had a clear path to Amon, so I just needed to figure out how to get him there with as many buffs as possible. Butcher <sarcasm>helpfully</sarcasm> chose this turn to roll minimum Focus. Last turn I had run the Adjunct away from Butcher, so I had to drop Fury to save Focus. I actually got a little flustered and made a lot of mistakes this turn; I don't even remember some of my activations. First I shuffled the Spriggan around a bit to create a window for Butcher to see the left Devout. This earned the Spriggan two Defensive Strikes, but at P+S 14 they bounced off harmlessly. I think I tried to flare Amon with a boosted Grenade and missed, but I don't remember for sure. I had intended to use the Spriggan's melee attacks against the Devouts, but somehow forgot. The Berserker walked up to the left Devout and hit him twice for good damage, leaving him with just a few boxes left. The Berserker still had his Power-up focus so he could have attacked again, but there was a chance of killing the Devout so I ended his activation there. Butcher could not see the Devout so he couldn't charge, meaning he needed Pathfinder from Saxxon. Luckily Butcher was just in walking threat range. So he walked up, popped Feat, and killed the Devout, triggering Conferred Rage and allowing him to cast Boundless Charge and pass a Rage token onto the Juggernaut. Butcher stepped back an inch, toeing the zone. The Koldun Lord and Forge Seer then Empowered the Juggernaut up to the full 3 Focus. I tried to aim with the Nyss Hunters again, but once again I somehow missed the forest and just gave up on them, ending their activation without doing anything.

With all the help I could give him, the Juggernaut - now at MAT 9 and able to charge 11" for free, with 3 Focus and a Rage token - charged into Amon, and immediately rolled Snake Eyes on his charge attack. The fist attack missed as well. The first bought attack rolled a crit and left Amon Stationary. The second bought attack burned through the last of Amon's focus, and the third Boxed him... but he passed his Tough roll. Fortunately I still had the single Fury token, which allowed me to buy one more attack... that Amon Toughed through. Searching the table, I found the one model I had left to activate: the Greylord Adjunct. He advanced as far as he could towards Amon... then I read his card and realised his only offensive spell was an 8" spray, and he was just over 8" away. With the turn over I scored 4 points, bringing me to 9, and Speedy scored 3, bringing him to 6. Amon shook the Stationary and retreated. The Reckoner killed my Juggernaut and the Crusader kill the Adjunct and the Berserker. The remaining Devout bounced off the Spriggan again. Sevvy stood his ground, but the Repenter moved in front of him. Fire of Salvation trampled over my Nyss, killing most of them, including Valachev and Cylena. The Vassal Mechanic moved up to contest the zone that Saxxon had been controlling. At the end of the turn I scored 2 points, bringing me to 11, and Speedy scored 4, bringing him to 10.


Round 4:
My only chance now was to try The Move. Butcher started with 5 Focus this turn, which was not bad. I couldn't get the Forgeseer into range to Empower the Spriggan, so I just had to make do with the 1 Focus. The Spriggan bulldozed the Devout back and moved around him to be in shield-range of the Reckoner, easily shrugging off another Defensive Strike from the Devout. He then fired his Flare grenades at the Heirophant who was standing next to Amon. The first unboosted attack scattered off harmlessly, but the second boosted Flare hit, lighting up the Heirophant, a Choirboy, and Ammon. The Heirophant survived but the Choirboy didn't, and what's more I rolled boxcars on the damage roll against Amon! Speedy momentarily forgot that he had focus on Amon and instead rolled the Tough roll... turns out Amon was still Tough. Well, I guess that's some saved Focus anyway. The Spriggan then used his two initials to do serious damage to the Repenter. Saxxon then fired at Amon but also failed to finish him off. The Koldun Lord moved across and cast Puppet Master on Butcher. Finally it was Butcher's turn. Casting Boundless Charge on himself, he charged the Repenter, moving as far towards Amon as he could (which was a little short of his full movement). His initial attack destroyed the Repenter, and his Berserk attack killed Sevvy. That allowed him to move an inch and cast Eliminator on the Flared Heirophant. I boosted the attack roll and hit; I think I boosted the damage roll too, which was enough to kill. The blast damage was not enough to force another Tough roll on Amon, and what's worse Amon was just over 4" away from Butcher at this point so the 2" move from Eliminator was not enough to reach him. If only the Spriggan's grenade hadn't killed the Choirboy I might have been able to kill him for the extra movement. Luckily though, a Vassal near Amon was just within 4" allowing Butcher to get into melee with him. I bought an attack and killed him; this allowed Butcher to move an inch, more than enough to engage Amon. The Berserk attack hit, and Amon finally reached his limit.
Post-Mortem:
Good grief, that last hail-Mary was tense! My dice were solid though, consistently rolling well for that whole sequence. Man, that wall of fast hard-hitting jacks was pretty overwhelming; I felt at a disadvantage the whole time. If it wasn't for Speedy pushing Amon too far up on order to keep everything in Synergy range, I don't see how I could have won - at least not considering how many mistakes I was making. I could not figure out what to do with my Greylord solos; there was just too much on the table and I ended up spreading things out and losing out on the chance to put buffs where I needed them. I think a big part of the problem was that there was just too much on the table; too much terrain, too many zones, and of course a bunch of dangerous jacks. But I had always expected to have to use Butcher himself to win, so I was always on the lookout for ways to get him into Amon, and in the end I found it. It was dicey as hell though! I could hardly believe Butcher managed to pull it off!

I wasn't sure about the Spriggan or Saxxon, and almost didn't include them in my list; it's hard to bring a Spriggan over Ruin after all. But the Spriggan's Flare, and even Bulldoze, proved to be extremely useful; there was nothing Ruin would have done in those games that was better than what the Spriggan did. And even though most of my killy warrior models already had access to Pathfinder, somehow Saxxon handing it out to the Doomreavers and Butcher was still huge.

I think Speedy overestimated Amon's survivability, although that was his first time playing against the new Spriggan, and the combination of Bulldoze and Dual Attack can be hard to account for. Without the Flare I'm not sure the Doomreavers could have sealed the deal in the first game; the Koldun Lord would have missed without it, and I think the first two Doomreaver attacks would have too - needing 9s to hit is a lot worse than needing 7s.

That was a good game, it got pretty intense by the end. I feel like that second game illustrates what I like about Warmachine: there's different paths to victory, and even if you're behind there's always a chance you can find a way for your pieces to work together to get you the win.

Reinforcements Have Arrived

I FINALLY finished these two. I originally figured I could knock them out real quickly seeing as the whole point of my Marcher Worlds colour scheme was to be quicker to paint. But between one thing and another I just couldn't seem to sit down to paint. I also had more trouble with the glows than usual. I'm not really sure why; maybe I'm just getting old, because everything feels smaller now when I try to paint fine details.

After painting my Dusk Wolf I realised that too many glows could make a model feel unfocussed. So far I've used exactly the same technique for all the teal glows, but for these two I wanted to try painted different glowing areas to have different intensities. The idea was to stop one "brightness level" down for the "less important" glows, so that the "more important" glows look brighter and grab more attention.

For the Warder, the brightest glows were to be the outstretched hand, the helmet, and the Arc-receiver dish. The hand looks a bit too "homogeneous"; the glow doesn't quite have that "brightest at the center and fading towards the edges" gradient that I would have liked. I really should have left the tips of the fingers dark, but it's just hard to control that well while drybrushing.

My Razorbat came with an extra Arc-receiver dish, so I attached it to the Combat Engineer; it was pretty straight-forwards as the part pretty much fit perfectly without really needing any work. I consider the Arc-receiver a characteristic element of the Marcher Worlds and intend to make sure it's present on every model. On the Engineer in particular I think attaching it to the left shoulder helps balance out all the equipment off his right side, so I think it works well for the model. The brightest areas on the model were intended to be the Arc-receiver, the "spotlight" array, his helmet lenses, and the reactor-looking thing on his chest. It's not obvious in the photos, but his hot beverage is glowing; I guess he's so hardcore that he literally drinks Arc for breakfast?

Warder & Engineer
I used the same colours and techniques as the rest of my Marcher Worlds:

1. Prime with Vallejo 73.660 Surface Primer Gloss Black
2. Apply a zenithal highlight of Vallejo 70.862 Model Color Black Grey, Vallejo 70.992 Model Color Neutral Grey, and Vallejo 70.990 Model Color Light Grey
3. Edge-highlight with the same Light Grey
4. Wash with Citadel Shade Nuln Oil
5. Apply glows by layering and drybrushing Citadel Layer Sotek Green, Citadel Layer Temple Guard Blue, Citadel Layer Baharroth Blue, and Formula P3 Morrow White
6. Define the glowing surfaces by outlining them in thinned Sotek Green

I've been slowly changing my methodology for the glows over time to try to be more efficient. I think what I did this time (hard to remember when it happened over a period of months) was to first basecoat the glowing surfaces in Sotek Green, then layer a smaller area and edge-highlight with Temple Guard Blue, then drybrush the glowing surface and surrounding surfaces with Sotek Green, then layer/edge-highlight with Baharroth Blue, then drybrush with Temple Guard Blue, then apply a little the Morrow White on the centers of the glows, then drybrush with the Baharroth Blue. This way each new, brighter layer (except the white) was drybrushed over first with the previous darker colour, then with it's own colour, to help create soft transitions. Which is what I have always been trying to do, but previously I was doing it less efficiently and pretty much applying each drybrush twice; this new sequence does the same thing but with only one drybrush per colour.

Like I said the original plan was to build up to two different brightness levels, however due to the long stretches of time between painting sessions, the glows sat half-finished for a long time and when I came back to finish them I couldn't remember my exact plans. What I ended up doing was painting the "brighter" and "less bright" glows the same way, with the single difference of the less-bright areas not getting the final white dot before the final Baharroth Blue drybrush. What I should have done is to only drybrush the less bright glows up to Temple Guard Blue, so that the cast light would be darker as well. Hopefully I'll try that next time.

I do find that the brightest centers, where the white paint was layered on, tend to not blend in as well as the other layers. I think this is because I only hit them with a single drybrush of the lightest blue; I don't want to drybrush white on top of the final blue as I don't want pure white in the final glow. However, I'm thinking that if I actually drybrush white before drybrushing the final blue, that might blend the white areas better without increasing the "maximum brightness" or leaving pure white lying around.

I've also noticed that a lot of my careful attempts to build up successively smaller layers inside the smaller glowing areas end up pointless as I ended up pretty much needing to just cover them all in the lightest blue (with maybe a dot of white in the centers) and then outlining them in the darkest blue, invalidating all those careful earlier layers. So I think I can save a lot of time and effort without much effect on the final outcome by not bothering with the careful layering and just slopping the brightest blue in at the end. That's another thing I need to remember to try next time. I do have a bunch of infantry and jacks, and of course the Razorbat, left to paint. I'm only worried that I'll have forgotten my plans by the time I finally get around to painting them...