Cor Blimey! Look at all those Crocs!

I finally got the chance to try MacBain!!!! against Gru's gators. I brought the Freebooter because it's amphibious and I really like the model. This list included pretty much all the Merc models I have.
MacBain!!!!
-Freebooter
-Sylyss
Nyss Hunters
Croe's Cutthroats
Alexia & the Risen
Aiyana & Holt
Kayazy Eliminators
Kell
Maddie
Ogrun Bokur (proxied by MOW Kovnik)
Reinholdt
Thor
-Blaster (2)


Gru had a new trick in his list: ambushers!
Barnabus
-Spitter
-Bullsnapper
-Boneswarm
Gatormen (5)
Gatormen (5)
Gatormen (3)
Witchdoctor (2)
Bog Trog ambushers (10)
Gobber Bellows Crew
Victor Pendrake


Pre-Game:
We got the scenario with three flags. I won the roll and chose to go second. I picked the side with the forests because Nyss Hunters.


Deployment:
He deployed fairly symmetrically. I put my two big Pathfinder units on my left, behind the forests. This left my jacks, solos, and Alexia on the right.

Round 1:
Gru put out some swamps and ran into them.

I couldn't shoot at him because of the swamps, so I spread out my models around the flags. He had Iron Flesh on the central unit of Gators, so I put Fortune on the Freebooter, as it was probably going to have to try to do something about them. Maddie hugged Alexia, to extend corpse collection range. The Blasters flanked hard to my right. Kell ran up and stood just in front of the house.

Round 2:
His Gator unit on the left killed a couple of Cutthroats. The Bog Trogs moved in and killed another, along with some Nyss Hunters (CMA is a thing). The central unit walked into another swamp, while the rightmost unit hid behind a smoke cloud. He made some order-of-activation mistakes and ended up leaving his Witch-doctors very far back.

Kell put a respectable amount of damage on a Gatorman from the left unit, then the Cutthroats charged in and finished it off. Nyss Hunters killed some Bog Trogs. Eliminators ran up to be ready to counterpunch. Risen jammed his central unit. The Bashers walked up and shot at the Gobbers, killing one. MacBain!!!! threw out a Rift, the idea being that if he used Pathfinder to charge my stuff it would prevent him from using one of his other abilities.

Round 3:
The Spitter shot at the Freebooter, catching MacBain!!!! and Reinholdt. Did you know Reinholdt has ARM 9 and only 1 damage? I think he's the flimsiest solo in the game (well, if you can land a hit). That meant that Gru only needed to roll a 3 on the Spitter's blast damage to kill him! Guess what he rolled?

Wah waah waaaah...

Barnabus feated, catching most of my Nyss and Cutthroats. The Gatormen and Bog Trogs then killed everything, leaving only Cylena - who failed her command check - and the Eliminators. The middle unit of Gators cleared out the Risen, and the remaining gobber charged in and killed one himself! The last unit of Gators charged the Blasters, leaving the nearby one on two boxes.

Sadly Reinholdt died to the acid after all. The Freebooter ran up under a full load of focus and killed one Gator, then Macbain!!!! used the rest of his focus for Jackhammer attacks, which all missed, before advancing backwards (which is funnily enough not an oxymoron in Warmachine). The Eliminators charged a Gator, killing it. Cylena ran away and rallied. Alexia threw more Risen at the central unit of Gators to keep them busy. One Basher took a freestrike to walk backwards and shoot up the rightmost Gator unit, putting a bit of damage on them. Kell missed a Gator. Holt killed some Bog Trogs. The Bokur moved up to protect MacBain!!!!

Round 4:
The Gators in the center put some damage on the Freebooter, then the Boneswarm charged in and did a bit more, knocking out his right clamp. The Gators and Bog Trogs on the left put everything they had into the Eliminators but only managed to connect on one attack, killing one. One the right, one Gator killed Thor while the other two finished off the engaged Blaster. Pendrake killed Sylyss and the Spitter killed the Bokur.

Things were not looking good, but I saw a potential Hail Mary: Barnabus had spent all his Fury putting out Spiny Growth and swamps, leaving him with no camp. First Maddie triggered Intrigue off the Gator that killed Thor, using it to move Alexia up, who was then able to drop a Risen on the left behind the line of Gators. I dropped Fortune and gave the Freebooter three focus. The last Blaster (would be a good name for a band) aimed and shot at the two Gators that killed it's friend, doing very little. Maddie then walked up and Seduced the Gator that had killed Thor, getting it to walk back and finally kill one member of the unit.

MacBain!!!! moved up a bit and cast Failsafe on the Freebooter, then shot the seduced Gator in the back, killing it. This left the Gatormen unit on the right unable to score. The Freebooter used a double-hand throw, boosting all the way, to toss the Boneswarm (don't ask me how you pick up and throw a pile of bones) into Barnabus, knocking them both down. Alexia activated next; three Risen finally took down the scrappy little gobber, while the one behind the Gators leveled-up into his evolved form and slapped Barnabus for a respectable amount of damage.

Aaaand... this is the part where I screwed up. I moved Kell to be able to shoot at Barnabus through a gap in the Gators, and somehow derped completely and moved him up into engagement with the Gator wall. The rest of my army pretty much just whiffed on everything.

Round 5:
Barnabus killed the Thrall to trigger Warpath, allowing the Spitter to walk over the wall then charge the Freebooter. With help from the Gators they finally put the jack into the dirt, along with Kell and Alexia. The last Gator on the right killed Maddie. The ones on the left whiffed on the Eliminator. The Bog Trogs killed Holt.

Well, I had a plan: if I could get MacBain!!!! over the flag on the right and keep clearing it, and if the Eliminator could survive for five more rounds, then I might still have a chance. Hey, it can't be worse than the chance of winning the lottery, can it? Hmm, maybe it can.

MacBain!!!! charged and killed the last Gator on the right, then Energized as close as he could to the flag (not close enough). The Blaster walked over to shoot at a couple of Gators for no damage. The Eliminator killed a couple of Bog Trogs.

Round 6:
The Gators finally killed the Eliminator. So much for that plan. The Blaster survived because the Gators couldn't reach him under Iron Flesh, but in my desire to get as many Gators as possible with his spray I had forgotten to get him in to contest the flag. Pendrake killed the single contesting Risen model, allowing Gru to score two points this turn for controlling two flags.

Well, I wasn't going to win on scenario, so it was time for plan C: get...

Shot dooooown... in a blaze of gloooryyyy!

A Risen missed his attack on Pendrake. Aiyana tried to Kiss the central Gator unit and whiffed. MacBain!!!! charged in and spent his stack to kill 3 Gators, showing the rest of his army what they should have been doing the whole time. Well, obviously they couldn't actually see it because they were dead, but I like to think that somewhere in Urcaen, they were feeling pretty bad about themselves.

Round 7:
The witch-doctor killed the last Risen to free up Pendrake, who knocked down MacBain!!!! with his bola. Well, MacBain!!!! could still survive the Gator and Spitter, all he needed to do was pass seven consecutive Tough checks. It could happen, right?

He passed one.

Postmortem:
My infantry do not like getting knocked down! In retrospect I might have been able to protect some Nyss Hunters from the feat by hugging the Freebooter, except then I expect they would have died to a Spitter shot or something.

I put both Pathfinder units on the left to take advantage of the forests, and ended up putting Alexia on the right to have a Risen screen for my jacks and solos. This meant that I wasn't able to collect most of the corpses from my units. I think perhaps it would have worked better to balance out my forces a bit more; putting one infantry unit and a battlegroup on each side.

Gators are a very well rounded unit, and they get really tough when you put Iron-Fleshed on them. I might have been able to wear the other units down eventually if it hadn't been for that feat, but my Mercs don't really have a solution for Iron Flesh right now, so the best I probably could have done about the middle unit was keep jamming him with Risen.

I should mention that near the end it was getting late and we were both getting fatigued. We started making a lot of mistakes in the last few rounds; I don't think MacBain!!!! would have killed very much at all if Gru hadn't forgotten to upkeep Iron Flesh. I really should have cast Fortune on him the turn before. That's something I need to remember to do: when I start running out of models, put Fortune on MacBain!!!! for the inevitable last hurrah.

Primer and Bare Metal

Game 1:
I swapped the Decimator for a Demolisher; the idea is that it's a durable piece that the opponent can't ignore for risk of being frozen, and with the bond and eSorscha's feat it should hit hard enough if needed.
Sorscha II
-Demolisher
Doomreavers
Nyss Hunters
Croe's Cutthroats
Alexia & the Risen
Reinholdt

Beanpole threw something together:
Mordikaar
-Gladiator
-Bronzeback
-Krea
Nihilators
Incendiarii (4)
Paingivers (4)
Saxon Orrick


Pre-Game:
We played a simple mission with two flags. I won the roll and chose to go first. As our games tend to take a rather long time, we decided to play ten minute timed turns for a change.


Deployment:
I aimed the Demolisher at Beanpole's flag and Sorscha at my own. Alexia went in the center with the Risen positioned to run up ahead for a change. Nyss went on the left.

Beanpole put the Bronzeback and Incendiarii on my right, with the Gladiator and Nihilators on my left.

I decided I would rather the Cutthroats face off against the Incendiarii than the Doomreavers, so they went on my right and the Doomreavers on the left.

Saxon went on my right, so he could help the Incendiarii through a patch of rough terrain.


Round 1:
I ran stuff up. Cutthroats got Iron Flesh, the Demolisher used Boundless Charge for the extra inch, Sorscha used Cyclone to move up farther. The Nyss caught up with the Doomreavers but passed their leadership check.

Beanpole advanced agressively and feated, giving his army +3 DEF and Poltergeist. The Nihilators got Hollow.

Round 2:
I dropped Iron Flesh for the focus and so I could declare a charge with the Cutthroats, but then remembered the feat and decided to just run and jam. I made sure to engage the Bronzeback with my first move. I had very intelligently put Risen in front of Reinholdt, meaning he couldn't reach Sorscha to use Lucky Charms. Sorscha moved over to hide behind the well and froze the Nihilators. The Demolisher ran up to cover Sorscha. The Nyss killed a bunch of Nihilators, but several survived thanks to tough rolls. The Doomreavers killed a couple more, leaving just the one survivor. I ended up using my extension this turn.

That is a big pile of souls...

Mordikaar now had something like 16 Fury. He brought back a couple of Nihilators, then between Mordikaar, the Paingivers, and the Incendiarii, Beanpole cleared enough Cutthroats for the Bronzeback to charge and Beat-Back it's way to Sorscha. Result: dead Sorscha.

Game 2:
The last time I played Gru I was impressed by his fully painted army, so I put together a list that used as many of my painted Warmachine models as I could. The only one missing is the wardog, who it seems can't be in the same list as Sylyss. Perhaps the elf is alergic? I went for the Kodiak for the free run, and Destroyers and the Demolisher so I wasn't trying to charge my entire army into melee in one go. I threw the Kovnik in there at the last minute for a laugh, but didn't think to actually put a warjack on him, which I really should have done; the Demolisher wouldn't have been a bad choice. We decided to go ahead and play at 50 points.
Strakhov
-Black Ivan
-Destroyer
-Demolisher
-Kodiak
-Berserker
-Sylyss
Alexia & the Risen
MOW Kovnik
Koldun Lord
Widowmaker Marksman

Gru just brought lots of gators, but for some reason brought the Spitter instead of the Wrassler. Perhaps he was anticipating my usual infantry horde when he wrote the list.
Barnabus
-Ironback Spitter
-Bull Snapper (2)
Gatormen Posse (5)
Gatormen Posse (5)
Gatormen Posse (3)
Gobber Bellows Crew
Witch Doctor (2)
Croak Hunter (2)
Thrullg


Pre-Game:
We left the table as it was. I won the roll, and decided that I had better pick the side with less rough terrain in my way, so I chose sides and Gru chose to go first. No timed turns this game.


Deployment:
Gru put his whole army on my left, facing his flag. I think he may have deployed his advanced deployment models in his regular deployment step?

Strakhov aimed for the flag. I put the Kodiak behind the forest on my left as it was the only other model that could run through it. I put the Kovnik behind the house as I was scared of the Croak Hunters' poisoned weapons - in retrospect I should have put him near Strakhov so I could give him Occultation (assuming I could ever spare the focus). The rest of my jacks went in the middle, with everything else on the right or behind the jacks.

The largest number of painted Warmachine models I've ever put on the table! Sad huh?

Round 1:
Gru put Iron Flesh on the three-gator Posse and ran everything up. The Croak Hunters hid in the trench.

I put Superiority on the Berserker with the intention of sending it in as a "first wave". Everything ran. Alexia starting accumulating Thralls.

And even more painted models thanks to the Thrall!

Round 2:
Gru advanced cautiously and hid the bulk of his army behind swamps and clouds (well, OK, one of each), casting Spiny Growth one each of the three Iron Fleshed Gators.

I realised at this point that I had stupidly positioned my "first wave" where it couldn't attack because of the well. So I hatched a Cunning Plan^TM! Strakhov gave the Berserker three focus and kept three for himself, then he advanced to shoot at the Gobbers in order to use Overrun to reposition the Berserker. Unfortunately they were too far away, so he threw a cinder bomb and a Rift instead on the off-chance that they provided some protection or something. The Berserker simply ran around the house instead, while the rest of the jacks ran or walked and shot, doing very little.

The Marksman then walked forwards and fired at the rightmost Gator. He landed the shot and rolled an amazing double 6 to perfectly one-shot the big lizard! What a champ! Alexia advanced and summoned a second Thrall.

Round 3:
One Bullsnapper frenzied, and took a big chunk out of the other, knocking out an aspect. Barnabus triggered his feat, knocking down several of my models. The nearest Posse charged the Kodiak, but only a few manage to reach. The Croak Hunters put a few boxes of damage on the Kovnik. The Gobbers moved up and put a cloud in front of my Berserker. He put Spiny Growth on a couple of the Iron-Fleshed unit. The rest of his army mostly just held it's ground.

I realised that my Kodiak was out of my control area and thus I wouldn't be able to shake, meaning he wouldn't be able to do anything useful this round. Neither would the Kovnik. So I hatched a Cunning Plan^TM to get some use out of them.

The Berserker got three focus, the Destroyer two, then they both shook. The Kodiak and Kovnik both sacrificed their actions to stand, and moved into position. The the Destroyer slammed the Kovnik, hoping to send him over the Croak Hunters. Sadly the slam distance was an inch short. I wanted to slam the Kodiak as well, but I realised that the Destroyer was in the way, plus I probably wouldn't have range anyway. So the Demolisher just ran forwards.

The Berserker trampled over the Gobbers, boosting his attack rolls and killing them both. Hang on, the maths doesn't add up; did I forget to pay for the trample? Perhaps I used Strakhov's feat but forgot that it doesn't give free tramples, only charges and slams? Either way I guess I screwed up somewhere. Anyway, the Berseker promptly exploded and put a few boxes of damage on the min unit of Gatormen.

Black Ivan did very little with his bombard. The Marksman shot another Gatorman but did not manage a repeat performance, only doing a few boxes of damage this time. Alexia summoned a third Thrall (proxied by Reinholdt). Strakhov based the flag to score a point.

Round 4:
One unit of Gators charged and killed the Marksman. Revenge! The Croak Hunters finished off the fallen Kovnik. The Gators swarmed around my jacks, slowly chipping away at the Kodiak. I scored a second point.

With the Berserker dead I would be wanting to re-cast Superiority. But who would get it? Well, with the Demolisher engaged, he would pretty much have to open up now, so perhaps a couple of extra points of defense would help keep him alive. However, he was too far away from Strakhov. So I hatched a Cunning Plan^TM (are you seeing a pattern yet?). Strakhov kept all his focus, moved up to cast Superiority on the Demolisher, then cast Overrun on himself and tried to gun down a Gator in order to be able to move back onto the flag. I rolled three shots, but the only unit in range had Iron Flesh so I missed them all, even with the boost.

Alexia created a fourth Thrall (proxied by a Nihilator). A pair of Thralls charged an Iron Fleshed gator and missed, while the newborn charged a regular Gator and also missed. The rest of my army then stood about flailing ineffectually.

Round 5:
Barnabus finally based his flag, but didn't score as my jacks were contesting. The Ironback Spitter nailed Alexia with a double-boosted loogie. If I'd had one more Risen (or the one Risen that was also in the AOE was a little farther away so I could pass damage off to it) she could have traded them to survive it, but Gru had rolled the exact damage needed to kill her, so I let her die and hung on to the Risen. The Croak Hunters hit the Koldun Lord, landing him with Corrosion, but poor damage rolls meant he survived the attack.The Gators killed three of my Thralls and kept chipping away at the jacks. I think this was the turn that the other Bullsnapper frenzied, taking a big chunk out of Barnabus.

Strakhov handed out three focus to the Destroyer and kept three. The Destroyer, using all three focus, finally managed to kill a single Gator. My flag was starting to look like a dangerous place to be, so I decided to focus on killing stuff with Strakhov. I wanted to charge him into the two Croak Hunters, but due to poor positioning I didn't have a line on the far one, so I charged the near one, killed it and Overrun into the second, but whiffed my attack. Finally Strakhov sprinted away, taking some damage from a free-strike.

The Risen simply regrouped (did you know they have CMD 3?). Ivan moved in to melee since he wasn't having much luck with his gun. The Koldun Lord lost another damage box to Corrosion.

Round 6:
The Gators finally managed to finish off the Kodiak. The Spitter moved in and, with the help of a couple of Gators, knocked out the open Demolisher's arms and cortex. The rightmost posse killed all but one Risen. The Thrullg disrupted Ivan.

Well, I really didn't want to move Strakhov over to my flag now. The Destroyer was the only jack left that I could allocate to; I couldn't even use the Koldun Lord to try to give Ivan focus as he died to Corrosion at the start of the turn. It occurred to me however that Barnabus was injured and on zero camp; perhaps I could put some damage on him this turn. The idea was to move Strak up, kill a gator, cast Ram at Barnabus, then sprint to a position of relative safety. It was a risky play, but the alternative was just to continue chipping away at Gators and lose the game from attrition / him scoring on my flag. So I went for it.

First I tried to free up Strakhov with the Demolisher, but a freestrike killed him. It's a shame, but at least he was out of the way. Strakhov then charged one of the Iron-Fleshed Gators (the freestrike from the Croak Hunter missed) and boosted the attack roll. The attack missed. This was a problem; I couldn't afford to just stand there, I had to try to reposition to somewhere a little safer with the sprint, so I spent the rest of Strakhov's focus trying to kill the Gator, but failed.

Sylyss ran to engage the Croak Hunter. The Destroyer killed another croc. Black Ivan took a swing and missed. The sole remaining Risen charged a Gator and missed.

Round 7:
Two Gators killed Strakhov. If they hadn't managed to finish it the Ironback would have.



Postmortem:
It's a completely different experience when you're on the clock. I would say it was exciting, but also somewhat stressful of course. The added pressure meant that I didn't play very smart and made stupid mistakes, like moving Sorscha into range of the Bronzeback. I think it might be worth playing with timed turns every once in a while, but probably not with the infantry spam lists I'm currently playing, and probably with a slightly more generous time limits to start off with.

It was fun to run jack-heavy again; in fact I think this is the jack-heaviest I've ever done. Strakhov is clearly not the right caster for it though. I love using Overrun for janky little plays, and I spent all game trying and failing to pull that kind of thing. I guess the Hoff really likes easy to kill targets for triggers, and Gators are not exactly easy to kill; I think I only took out three of them the whole game.

The terrain was part of the problem; it funneled us into a rather narrow skirmish line where we couldn't get enough of our larger-based models into engagement, drawing out the game a little. Iron Flesh didn't exactly help; DEF 16 is obviously not as bad as DEF 18, but it was still enough to give me trouble.

Actually, I think both our dice were pretty poor overall. I had some good rolls early on, then he had a few at the end when he killed Strakhov (whole bunch of 8s for his attack rolls...), but for most of the match I think we were generally rolling below average (my attacks kept missing, his kept failing to do damage).

That Marksman though! Man of the match! I should have used Swift-Hunter to move him back to maximum range after his first attack though, I just forgot how fast Gators can be when charging living models.

Looking at the photos, I think Gru could have gotten that posse around the right flank a lot sooner if he'd been more agressive; with the forest in the way they could have flanked without much risk of my jacks catching them, then put pressure on my flag sooner. In hindsight, knowing now how much trouble my jacks had with his Gators, I would say that if he'd moved the main complement of Gators up faster he could have jammed me off his flag and started scoring fairly early on.

Going Epic

I decided to try epic Sorscha. Proxied naturally by my pSorscha model that has been sitting around in it's red primer for some two years now. I think painting her is going to have to be one of my new-years resolutions. I decided to take her web-wide-standard posse of Beast, Sylys and Rienholdt, along with my current infantry spam:
Sorscha II
-Beast 09
-Sylys
Croe's Cutthroats
-Valachev
Nyss hunters
Alexia & the Risen
Reinholdt

Beanpole was running a much slower list than in recent games:
Makeda I
- Tiberion
- Krea
- Marketh
Immortals
- Extoller Advocate (I think, proxied by the Extoller Soulward)
Incendiarii (min)
Hakaar

Tiberion is a real tough nut to crack, but no Molik Karn meant that at least I wasn't too scared of being assassinated. Immortals, especially under Defender's Ward, are pretty resilient to my ranged output, but they aren't as kill-y as Nihilators and they have a harder time with high DEF. Incendiarii can potentially wipe out swathes of my infantry, but at least I can actually kill them, unlike the Cetrati.

Our new friend, who I'm nicknaming Gru (because he has a lot of minions...), brought a fantastically painted Gator list:
Barnabus
- Wrassler
- Bull snapper
Gatorman posse
Gatorman posse
Witchdoctor
Witchdoctor
Gobber bellows crew
Feralgeist
Thrullg


Game 1
Pre-game:
We rolled the scenario with a flag and an objective on each side. I decided I would have to jam him out of the zones with my infantry, so when I won the roll I chose the side with protective terrain near the flags rather than choosing to go first. Because making bad decisions before the game even begins is my modus operandi it seems.


Deployment:
He deployed in a brick with Tibbers on my left. I decided that naturally meant I would put Sorcha and Beast on my right, with the Risen set to rush his objective and be a nuisance. The Nyss went in the middle, and the Cutthroats were positioned to jam his flag and shoot at his Incendiarii.

Round 1:
He ran up and spread out, angling towards the side of the table where my important models were. The Immortals got Defender's Ward.

Well, I didn't fancy running the Cutthroats up just to get instantly killed by AOEs and stuff, so I had to give up on the idea of jamming him out of his flag. Instead the Cutthroats moved up and shot stuff. They actually rolled pretty hot and took out two Incendiarii, which was huge since they were the biggest threat to my infantry.

The rest of my infantry ran up and spread out; my focus was on being hard to kill rather than being in a position to do a lot of damage. Sorscha put Iron Flesh on the Cutthroats and Shatterstorm on the Nyss (to prevent him from recovering souls from the Immortals).

Round 2:
The remaining Incendiarii managed to put Valachev and a Cutthroat on fire. His Nihilators ran and charged, but he actually forgot to take his charge attacks with them. The Krea moved up to protect the rest of the Incendiarii with Paralytic Aura. Makeda also put up Paralytic Aura.

The fire on Valachev went out. I wanted to freeze the Immortals, but I would need to un-engage the front ones first, so I had to start by activating the Cutthroats. They shuffled around, avoiding free strikes thanks to Zephyr. With some crazy-hot shooting they put down a bunch of Immortals and put some damage on the remaining Incendiarii.

Sorscha then used a boosted, Lucky-Charmed, Arcane-Secreted Freezing Grip on the nearest Immortal, freezing the unit. I decided at this point that the Immortals would not be much of a threat anymore, while Hakaar could be a bigger problem. So I moved up all my Nyss and took one giant, RAT 16, POW 20 shot at Hakaar. Which was shield-guarded by Tiberion. Who took like 3 damage from it thanks to the buff from Paralytic Aura. Fantastic activation that.

Beast moved up to protect Sorscha. I jammed some Risen forwards and took out another Immortal with a Thrallpedo.

Round 3:
Because I had moved Beast up to base contact with Valachev, the Nihilators had no problem setting him on fire again. A few of my models died to various attackers.

Valachev finally burned to death. This was a problem because Croe was all the way off to the left for some reason, leaving most of his unit out of command.

I figured that Alexia and some Nyss could probably take out Tiberion under Sorscha's feat, so I moved her to catch everyone, feated, then moved her back. Beast got two focus and Boundless Charge, with the idea that I would use him to kill Hakaar.

The Risen killed a Paingiver, then Alexia went into Tibbers. After burning all the Risen, Tiberion had lost a grand total of two damage boxes. That's with the feat. The Nyss then charged in, but only one broke ARM, doing six boxes after doubling for the feat. So yeah, that fell very far short of my expectations. Cylena missed her attack against an Immortal, just to further remind me how useless she is.

Using Reinholdt's spyglass, I saw that Beast was a little too far to reach Tiberion, and I didn't want him charging over that side with Tiberion still a threat, so I used him to kill an Immortal. Great stuff. Most of the Cutthroats couldn't attack, but the two that could killed another Incendiarii. I think Croe himself missed his attack against an Immortal.

Round 4:
Makeda moved up to dominate and cast Carnage. Hakaar, Immortals, and Tiberion killed Alexia, most of my Nyss, and my objective. Beanpole scored three points.

He was basically going to win this turn or the next since I was not going to be able to stop him from scoring for long. So I went for the last-ditch assassination. Sorscha got Lucky Charms and Arcane Secrets, then promptly wasted Arcane Secrets by using Cyclone. Then she cast an unboosted Freezing Grip on Makeda. It hit, freezing her in place. My last Nyss Hunter was fleeing and unable to help. Four shots with the Quad-iron did a few points of damage, but not much - POW 10 isn't great. Beast 09 walked up and killed the last Incendiarii, and the Cutthroats tried to walk into shooting range. Sadly only one made it, which obviously wasn't enough. At the end of my turn Beanpole scored another two points, bringing him up to five.

Game 2
Pre-game:
Out of laziness we decided to just leave the table as it was and keep playing the same scenario. In retrospect this game me a huge advantage because the mistakes I had made were fresh in my mind and I was determined not to repeat them. Gru won the roll and chose table sides, which gave me another big advantage because going first is exactly what I should have done first time. We both chose the Arcane Wonder objective.

Deployment:
This time I decided to play it safer and send Sorscha after my own flag. So I placed her and her retinue over on my left. The Nyss went in the middle again, but this time I put Alexia behind them to make sure she would be in a good position to collect souls.

Gru deployed his army in a tight bundle facing his flag, so I counter-deployed the Cutthroats directly facing them.

Round 1:
This time I was focused on getting as far forwards as possible, so everything ran. The Cutthroats were too far away so Sorscha put Iron Flesh on the Nyss.

Barnabus put up three swamps and everyone crowded into them.

Round 2:
The Cutthroats charged the Gators and the objective. Which, now that I come to write this, I realise makes no sense since the objectives shouldn't have been vulnerable yet. Also we forgot that the Arcane Wonder auto-hits models that attack it. They do a bit of damage but not very much. The rest of my army spreads out, with the Nyss forming a front line far ahead of my flag and Sorscha moving up to base my flag.

His Gators start killing Cutthroat and Risen, but keeps both units on the right side rather than starting to push towards my flag. The Gators put up smoke, and I think he put Iron Flesh on the Wrassler. I start scoring this turn.

Round 3:
The Cutthroats and a Thrallpedo charge the Gators and objective again, but fail to kill it. The Nyss kill the Gobbers because it's easier than killing Gatormen. Sorscha freezes the closer unit of Gators. I score my second point.

He finishes off the Cutthroats this turn. The Feralgeist starts to run towards my flag. He drops a swamp in front of Beast 09 for some reason. I score again.

Round 4:
Sorscha swasp Iron Flesh to herself so the Nyss can charge and kill the closest Gatormen. She also takes a Razorwind shot at the Feralgeist but I forget to take the extra dice from Sylyss and Reinholdt and it misses. Alexia charged the Wrassler, but due to Iron Flesh I ended up boosting attack and damage rolls, stopping me from doing too much damage before I ran out of Risen. I go up to 4 control points.

The Feralgeist makes it in to contest the flag. The Thrullg runs into the swamp. The Wrassler kills Alexia. The remaining Gatormen go for my Nyss but his warbeasts are in the way.

Round 5:
This is Sylys' moment to shine! If he can kills the Feralgeist I win the game! Swinging his enchanted butterfly net like the pansy elf he is, he completely whiffs his attack. So Sorscha fires a boosted Razorwind at it again. Shame it was engaged by Sylyss and she misses (I completely forgot to check if it hit Sylys too, my bad). So Sorscha walked up and tried to kill it with her hammer instead; she missed with the initial and with a bought attack, leaving her dry.

I had given Beast 09 two focus to slam the Thrullg backwards, but he couldn't make distance due to the swamp. Nyss went after the remaining Gatormen, and Reinholdt bravely stood between Sorscha and the huge mass of Gators.

Barnabus moved up and used his feat, knocking my entire army over. The Thrullg disrupted Beast, then the Wrassler charged in. However, due to abysmal damage dice, Beast was left with his movement and left arm, even after a Gatorman charged in to try to finish the job. The rest of the Gatorman killed all but one of my Nyss. He passed his command check though. A Witchdoctor made a run for my flag.

Round 6:
Sylyss stood up and whiffed again. Now I had come up with a plan that was based on the assumption that the Witchdoctor was contesting my flag. It turned out that he wasn't, but for some reason I went ahead with the plan anyway. Sorscha used Cyclone to finish off the Feralgeist (for some reason Gru had been careless and left it facing away from her, so she got the backstrike bonus) then instead of walking back to my flag she headed to the right, feated, and shot at the objective, which had two boxes left. The boosted damage roll was enough to finish it, netting me my fifth point.

Postmortem:
I was doing quite well in the first game until I handed Beanpole my army on a silver platter (those parts that I didn't just destroy myself for the sole purpose of putting 2 damage on Tibbers). If I had continued with the plan and just jammed his zone bit at a time with Risen, trading the Nyss for more corpses if needed, then I think I would have had a good shot of starting to score before him. But I VASTLY overestimated when Alexia and Nyss were going to do under Sorscha's feat; this was partly due to slightly below average dice, but it was just a case where a few points swing on the dice would make a huge outcome - in other words it was extremely risky.

I learned from my mistakes and focused better on the game plan in the second turn. Gru's army didn't really have the tools for dealing with high DEF outside of his feat, but since I was feeding him my army piecemeal he didn't have a great opportunity to use it. I also think he had problems because of the medium/large base jam. In retrospect I think he might have been better of spreading out his Gators more rather than squishing them into those swamps in the start (when undead they shouldn't be too worried about taking too much damage from my shooting). Getting his Wrassler stuck behind his own objective was an issue; a trampling Wrassler probably would have gone a long way towards breaking my lines on the right. I'm not sure if he should have used his feat earlier; probably moving over to my left and using it to drop as many of my Nyss as possible earlier on would have served him better in the long run, but his low model count, low DEF, multi-wound army was quite vulnerable to Sorscha's feat and Freezing Grip. I think it was just a bad matchup for him, at least with that scenario; a single central zone might have given him the advantage as he could more easily contest, and of course use his feat to drop my DEF-dependent models.

I have to say, I missed Strakhov's enhanced battlegroup threat ranges. Sorscha's Freezing Grip is very powerful though, and of course Iron Flesh is huge. She's more mobile than Strak what with Cyclone not depending on killing an enemy model, but I miss Pathfinder. Her Quad Iron is much more reliable that Strak's riot gun when fired at the right targets, but the lower POW is a bit underwhelming. Well, this sort of thing is normal when moving between casters after all. Overall I feel better about her than pSorscha and pButcher anyway.

Beast didn't seem to do anything at all both games, but in reality his projected threat kept my opponents' big pieces away. Running for free was a big deal here, but having him there for armour cracking made him worth far more than a Kodiak or Berserker in this list.

You know, I've actually been quite happy with the Cutthroats so far. Just having an Advanced Deployment shooting unit has made them very useful, and against Hordes their shooting has been more useful than the Nyss' shooting often ends up being. Also, I like that I don't need to worry about Croe; in fact when he dies I can sometimes use that to my advantage. Compare that to Cylena, who's death weakens the unit as a whole, and Croe is just more fun.