Morrow Finally Has A Beatstick

I always wanted to like Gallant, though he never really seemed worth his cost in MkII except with Constance. Still, I picked up the upgrade kit to try to put him together, oh, a very very long time ago.

Then MkIII happened, and two things changed. First, I needed a second Merc jack just to use my warjack points. Second, Gallant got better. Much better. In fact I reckon he's awesome now. So I finally assembled him. This seemed like an appropriate time for MacBain!!!! to make his MkIII debut.
MacBain!!!!
- Gallant
- Mangler
- Sylyss
Nyss Hunters
Croe's Cutthroats
Aiyana & Holt
Thor
- Blaster
Kell Bailoch
Lanyssa Ryssyl
Harlan Versh
Rutger Shaw

Not exactly an optimal list. Sadly Gallant now has animosities that prevent me from bringing him with Alexia, but at least this meant I could bring Versh. Thor and Rutger are mainly in there for the points (although boosted shooting and a bit of ARM 18 was not bad to have). Beanpole brought a similar list to last time:
Lord Arbiter Hexeris
- Bronzeback
- Gladiator
- Cannoneer
- Shaman
- Agonizer
- Aptimus Marketh
Beast Handlers
Bloodrunners
Slingers
Extoller Soulward


Pre-Game:
We rolled a mission with two flags and a killbox. I won the roll and chose to go first. Beanpole picked the side that didn't have a giant forest in the middle.


Deployment:
I couldn't deploy my battlegroup as centrally as I might have due to the forest, so they went on my right, behind my flag. Versh and Lanyssa stayed nearby to support my beasts. Nyss were in the center, with the rest a little to the left.

Beanpole put his battlegroup in the center and his Slingers facing my jacks.

The Cutthroats went on my left, where they could contest. Kell stuck with the central forest, where he would get concealment. The Bloodrunners were deployed centrally.

Round 1:
I spread everything out and advanced cautiously. Fortune went on the Cutthroats and Fail Safe on the Mangler (this way I had one high-ARM jack and one high-DEF jack, plus I figured the Mangler would probably go in first).

Beanpole put Banishing Ward on the Bronzeback, meaning I couldn't use Aiyana's Kiss or Lanyssa's Hunter's Mark on it. The Bloodrunners got Cloak of Ash and ran to engage a couple of my models. The Cannoneer moved up and shot at a Cutthroat in the forest, killing him, five Nyss Hunters, and Kell Bailoch. Geez.

Round 2:
I moved up and killed a bunch of his infantry. I think Versh killed three models himself. I tried to spread out more this turn. I spotted an opportunity to kill Marketh before he could start killing my models with Ashes to Ashes, and moved three Nyss Hunters up to take a CRA off Cylena. I needed threes to hit, and this happened:

Oh Cylena. How reliably you disappoint me. Anyway, Rutger ran around to the far left to try to start shooting stuff with his hand cannon next turn. A&H hid behind the forest. MacBain!!!! moved up to base the flag this turn; I wouldn't score, but it would force Beanpole to contest.

Beanpole moved up his beasts cautiously, making sure to stay out of range of my jacks, and cast Ashes to Ashes on a a Cutthroat in the left forest, killing Aiyana and Holt. More spells and shooting took out a lot of the rest of my infantry, including Rutger (who had yet to fire a shot). Hexeris got on his flag to score a point.

Round 3:
I couldn't use Hunters Mark on the Bronzeback, but the Cannoneer was close enough that if I charged him I would be in range of the Bronzeback, and with Purgation average dice would be almost enough to kill it. I figured I could potentially put a bit of damage on it first with Versh and a boosted Take Aim!-ed spray from the bunny, so I went for it.

After landing the Hunter's Mark on the Cannoneer to make sure a single bad roll didn't ruin everything after the plan was already in motion, I started clearing out the intervening models. This meant activating the Cutthroats to get one out of the way. Who I promptly walked into a perfect position for the Bronzeback to counter-charge and move out of Gallant's threat range. Sigh.

So much for that plan. Oh well. The Blaster walked over and shot Marketh and the Cannoneer, killing Marketh but doing nothing to the Titan. It then used the Reposition to nuzzle up to the Bronzeback.

Versh cleared the path, and Gallant charged the gun-slinging elephant. I didn't benefiting from Purgation so I was swinging at P+S 16 due to the Agonizer. This meant I needed to use Jackhammer to finish the job, but luckily I still had just enough focus left afterwards to cast Fail Safe on Gallant. I hoped this would be enough to keep him safe, as I didn't think he could get the Bronzeback around the Blaster and I figured the Gladiator was unlikely to kill a DEF 13 ARM 21 warjack that didn't suffer from crippled systems.

The Cutthroats stood back with the expectation that I would be sending them in one at a time to contest after the Blaster died. I finally scored a point.

The Gladiator walked over the wall and boosted a double-handed throw, chucking Gallant at the Blaster. The Bronzeback then walked around and beat the now knocked-down symbol of Morrowan faith into scrap metal. Luckily poor rolls meant he didn't have the Fury left to attack the Blaster, so at least I was still contesting. Meanwhile the rest of Beanpole's army killed Versh, Lanyssa, Sylyss, and put some damage on MacBain!!!!.

Round 4:
I completely screwed up my plans here. I loaded up the Mangler thinking I might send it at the Gladiator (I could get to him in such a way that a Rush-less Bronzeback would not be able to reach him) or the Shaman. But then realised that if I attacked the Gladiator there would be nothing protecting MacBain!!!! from the Shaman, and if I sent it at the Shaman it would just get killed by Titans. So it basically did nothing and wasted my focus.

The Cutthroats (still under Fortune) and Nyss Hunters just managed to shoot the Agonzier to death, while MacBain!!!! missed two boosted Handcannon shots against a single Slinger, meaning I couldn't clear the flag to score or even re-cast Fail Safe. The Mangler made sure it was out of charging threat ranges, which actually meant it wasn't blocking the Shaman from reaching MacBain!!!!, so basically I did everything wrong for no reason.

The Gladiator frenzied and killed a Paingiver. The Bronzeback did not frenzy and sat there with four Fury. The Paingivers pulled a bunch of it off though, and he killed the Blaster. The Shaman knocked MacBain!!!! down to about six boxes I think. I lost more infantry, leaving me with only Croe. Beanpole moved Hexeris off the flag just to make sure the Mangler couldn't reach him, meaning at least he didn't score.

Round 5:
I figured I would move the Mangler forwards with Energizer, kill the Shaman with Jackhammer, then move to safety. The Mangler missed three out of four Jackhammer attacks. I gave up.

Post-mortem:
That Bronzeback counter-charge screws up my plans so often you'd think I would learn to remember that he has it eventually, but nope! I probably should have just sent the Mangler in the turn after that (at least after managing to kill the Agonizer) and found some other way to protect MacBain!!!! (maybe just camped Focus and hoped for the best). Alternately I could have recast Fail Safe, gone for the Shaman, relied on the Blaster to block the Bronzeback again, and hoped that the Gladiator couldn't kill an ARM 21 warjack. I guess I was a little tilted at that point because I played quite poorly that turn.

Although I wasn't playing too well anyway. Keeping the Cutthroats and Nyss Hunters back rather than running forwards and jamming him off the flags was not very smart (and more cagey than I've tended to play recently). I basically lost most of my army without doing anything, because everything was too far back to do much work, then it died.

I probably should have commit the Cutthroats to gunning down the Agonizer, even if it cost the whole unit. At the very least having them all around his flag and his Paingivers, rather than hanging out on my side not doing anything at all, would have given him a little trouble.

Beanpole really used Banishing Ward effectively, cutting down my threat range while also denying me my damage buff. Luckily this meant Gallant was still a threat. I wish I could have sent the Mangler at the Cannoneer instead, but once you've allocated focus you're locked in unfortunately (plus I activated the Mangler before the Cutthroats, so I couldn't even just rely on Jackhammer at that point). Perhaps I should consider Ragman instead of A&H, though he would have just been killed by Ashes same as everyone else.

I didn't really bring any spot removal in this list (other than normal unboosted shooting). Obviously I have options, but I'm quite tempted to bring Rocinante for some boosted shooting on a good beatstick. I'm not sure I'd bring him instead of the Mangler (the moment I don't bring that Chain Weapon I'm sure I'll find myself facing Tibbers), so I guess the question is what to swap him for. Well, Rutger obviously, but what else?

I think I'm getting slower at this game. Maybe it's because I'm getting better at seeing threats and options, so it takes me longer to work through them all in my head? I dunno. I should probably started playing with a clock; I don't like the added pressure or the idea of a game suddenly being cut-short, but maybe it would be good for learning?

Yes, But Is He Lucky?*

As much as I love the Spriggan, I had played like three games now without changing my list, and my GADD (Gamer's Attention Deficit Disorder) was kicking in. I wasn't ready to change anything else in my list, so out he went. Instead I took a Decimator and Reinholdt. The Decimator lacks Reach, but he hits as hard as the Spriggan with less accuracy issues, and I figured I could keep him back longer before committing, while still getting use out of him. Plus he's just one of those models that I just really want to work. Reinholdt of course would help Sorscha freeze stuff.
Sorscha II
-Decimator
Nyss Hunters
Croe's Cutthroats
Alexia & the Risen
Doomreavers
Reinholdt

Beanpole was running a list that seemed rather unfocussed to me, but it did have two of the things that scare me most in Skorne: Tiberion and Ashes to Ashes.
Hexeris II
-Tiberion
-Savage (bonded)
-Drake
-Reptile hound (3)
Paingiver beast handlers
Nihilators
Void spirit
Saxon Orrick


Deployment:
Two neutral zones. I won the roll and chose to go first. I randomly chose to put Sorscha on my left. The Decimator went in the middle so he could threaten either zone. Alexia was in the center for corpse collection, the Nyss went on the right, where they could potentially abuse the forest.

Beanpole put the reptile hounds on my left, while Tibbers and the Savage went on the right.

In my advanced deployment phase, I put the Doomreavers on my right; not only were they facing his harder targets, he couldn't target them with Ashes to Ashes, hopefully minimizing the threat of his arc node Savage. The Cutthroats then took the other side - I spread them out in the hope that would limit the number that could be killed by Ashes.

Beanpole put Orrick a little ahead of his Nihilators.

Round 1:
I advanced and spread out my forces. Iron Flesh went on the Cutthroats. One if the ideas I'd had before for dealing with Ashes to Ashes was to pad the front line with Risen to absorb the hits, but I'd forgotten about that and left all my Risen far in the rear. So instead I created a Thrall and ran him up. Which was stupid because he presented a low DEF target that, unlike the rest of my front-line infantry, didn't have Spell Ward or Stealth. Sigh.

Beanpole put Ashen Veil on the Nihilators and arced Ashes through the Savage, easily hitting the Thrall. He rolled for the number of additional models, and got... a 1. To add insult to injury he failed to break armour on the Thrall itself. Final death toll: 1 Cutthroat. Who donated his corpse to Alexia. Well, at least Saxon came through, gunning down a Doomreaver.

Round 2:
I considered going for the big freeze this turn, but the Nihilators looked less threatening than the Savage at this point, so I decided to focus on gunning it down. Using 4 focus, the Decimator put some decent damage on the beast (maybe 10 points?), then I charged three Doomreavers into it. The first one finished the Savage off with his first attack. Unsatisfied, he turned and cut down the unit leader with his Berserk attack. Well, that's something I'm going to have to learn to deal with. The third Doomreaver swung on the nearby Nihilator but missed, in part due to Ashen Veil.

The Nyss walked up a bit and tried to the CRA the offending Nihilator, but then Beanpole reminded me that you can't CRA into melee. Someday, in the distant future, I might learn to remember that rule and stop basing my battle plans around illegal CRAs. Anyway, not wanting to kill my Doomreaver and with no other targets in range, they just stood there trying to look cool (they didn't fool anyone).

Sorcha, the Cutthroats, and a couple of Thralls killed a couple of Nihilators and put some damage on the dog.

The Nihilators, Reptile Hounds, Saxon, and Tibbers killed some Cutthroats and most of the Doomreavers. The last Doomreaver survived thanks to a Nihilator Berserking onto the unit leader, with the promoted leader being too far and leaving the last Nihilator out of command range before his attack. It was an unlucky order of activation. I believe Hexeris cast Ashes to Ashes again this turn, but rolled another 1 for the number of extra hits, killing a Thrall and a Cutthroat. At least he cleared a path for one Nihilator to charge Alexia, but it missed.

Round 3:
Sorscha toed the zone, froze the Nihilators (despite being at -4 to land it due to Ashen Veil; thanks Reinholdt!), then gunned three of them down. The Cutthroats tried to clear the zone, but couldn't finish off the last Hound. The Decimator tried to finish it off, but without focus for boosting I decided that aiming and hoping I was in range was better than moving and missing. He was a quarter of an inch out.

The last Doomreaver (would be a great name for a band) killed a Nihilator then Berserked onto Tiberion, doing respectable damage. A Thrall joined him, rolling pretty high as well, knocking out Tibber's body aspect. I think the Nyss had done some damage with a CRA first?

The Paingivers, Hound, Drake, and Tiberion killed some more models. Sadly the Drake's spray missed everything that wasn't a Risen. With the Doomreavers and their magical weapons gone, the Void Spirit ran out to engage my Nyss.

Round 4:
Tiberion looked like he might be in charge range of the Decimator, but I wasn't sure and I didn't want to risk it, so I put 4 focus on the Decimator and used it to one-round the Drake with crazy damage rolls from the Dozer, using Beat-Back to move a bit further away from Tibbers. I then filled the space between the two with Risen.

However, being a genius, I placed one Risen grunt within 2" of Tiberion. So when I tried to put a 9 man CRA into him, I couldn't because he was engaged. Every. Damned. Time. The Nyss were left with no choice but to stand around and continue pretending that "they meant to do that".

Sorscha and the Cutthroats once again failed to clear the zone.

Hexeris himself finally came out to play, charging the Nyss and hitting them with Ashes to Ashes. This time he rolled a more reasonable 4, killing half the unit. Tibbers and the Void Spirit killed a few more, leaving only two who were outside the zone. Luckily for me they passed their command check. The last Nihilator then cleaned up, taking out 4 Risen by himself. Beanpole scored 2 for dominating the zone. Saxon, now enjoying Ashen Veil,

Round 5:
The pressure was on now. Neither the Decimator nor Alexia could charge Tiberion due to the well, so instead I spent three focus shooting Tibbers in the back, doing decent damage and using the Bulldoze moves to reposition for a potential charge next turn. A newborn Thrall poked him for a few more, while a shamble of Risen (that is the correct term for a group of undead, right?) took out the last Nihilator. One Nyss aimed and shot down the Void Spirit, while the other positioned himself somewhere easy for Tibbers to kill, instead of forcing him to chose whether to go for the Nyss or the Thrall. Because I'm smart.

Meanwhile, the Cutthroats totally failed to do anything. Sorscha spent three focus on trying to put down Saxon, but left him on one box. At least the Thrall finally killed the last Reptile Hound.

Saxon killed a couple of Cutthroats. Hexeris walked up and Threshered 5 Risen in one go, while Tiberion killed the Thrall and Nyss hunter who were contesting. Tiberion and Hexeris both put up Bump, and Beanpole scored two more points. Well, at least my last Nyss passed his command check.

Round 6:
I needed to contest the right zone this turn. However, to contest with anything that had any chance of survival, I would need to kill Tiberion. Despite my chipping away at him all game, Beanpole had kept healing him with Paingivers and Hexeris passive battlegroup healing ability, meaning he still had maybe around half his health left (maybe a little less). Also he had Bump up. So Sorscha gave the Decimator 4 focus, walked over to catch Tiberion with her feat, cast Boundless Charge on the Decimator, and missed a shot at a Paingiver. The last Nyss charged Tiberion in the back, managing to land a single point of damage on him (which of course was doubled); this was enough to trigger Bump, meaning I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. Then Alexia went in. Thanks to the feat and decent damage rolls, she took the big guy down!

MORAL! VICTORY!

Sadly the Decimator wasn't going to be able to do much with his focus since I needed him to run or charge to get into the zone, and I couldn't reach Hexeris on account of having put my Risen in the way (probably a good thing as he had Bump on him, which might have pushed the Decimator out of the zone; I could probably have killed him if I'd planned it by positioning Risen to stop the push from Bump, but I didn't think that far ahead; last time Alexia went for Tiberion she'd done like 2 damage total). So instead the Decimator just killed a Paingiver.

The rest of the Cutthroats and the Thrall in my left zone all completely whiffed on Saxon again.

Hexeris cut for fury. I realised at this point that I had gotten too focused on getting into the zone and left Sorscha completely open and vulnerable on 0 camp. Apparently however Beanpole thought scoring the last point he needed to win in the left zone was the safer bet, so he charged the Thrall with Hexeris and cast Ashes to Ashes. He only rolled a two though, killing two Cutthroats and failing to break the Thrall's ARM. The charge attack finished off the Thrall, but this left Saxon with the job of killing Croe and Reinholdt.

Did you know Reinholdt has DEF 16? I don't think I ever noticed that before. Hexeris threw a boosted Black Spot at him to try to drop his DEF, but missed. Then Saxon sidled around Croe and... missed Reinholdt with both attacks. Ouch.

Round 7:
Even from behind, the Decimator and last Nyss Hunter missed their shots at Hexeris, so Sorscha went in and just managed to kill him with her last attack. Then everyone hoisted Reinholdt on their shoulders and carried him off the field in triumph as the crowd went wild.

PostMortem:
OH MY GOD! Reinholdt won me the game! Reinholdt! How crazy is that? Well, to be fair, what really won me the game was Beanpole's abysmal dice. Seriously, he really should have won that, but his dice completely let him down with terrible Ashes rolls, I think he passed one Tough roll the whole game, and of course he completely whiffed on the plucky little gobber at the end. Meanwhile my damage rolls were pretty consistently great; the Decimator even one-rounded the Drake with his gun! Hell, my Doomreavers hit so hard they killed the Savage too quickly and had to turn on each other.

I feel as if Beanpole should have killed the Thrall first then cast Ashes into a Cutthroat in his final push, but I guess he was afraid of missing (kinda understandable given his dice) and decided to play it safe by targeting the DEF 11 Thrall with the backstrike bonus. Well, I guess if he realized Reinholdt's DEF was as high as Sorscha's (higher with the hill), he probably would have just gone for her instead; pretty sure that would have won him the game.

I'm kinda sad I missed the opportunity to put the Decimator into Hexeris, but I didn't even consider Alexia finishing off Tibbers on her own, and just didn't plan that far ahead. Plus of course I just left Sorscha open there too. I feel like being able to see those opportunities without the kind of tunnel vision I get is the level of skill I'd like to learn. Something to think about.

Well, Saxon did good work that game. He pretty much killed at least one of my models every turn except the last. Since my infantry are mostly 1 point each, he paid for himself pretty quickly. Then he just stood there and tanked everything I could get to him. I need to get me one of those!

I really did not get much done with the Nyss this game. I had been saving them for contesting and late-game stabbing, there wasn't much infantry on that side for them to shoot at and I kept losing out on chances to CRA. I probably should have spread them out farther through the zone, but I think I was subconsciously keeping them back out of fear of Ashes.

Going in, I had wanted to focus on playing a "sharper" game than usual; I need to start remembering to check charge distances and so on. I think I did better than I have been recently. I still made plenty of mistakes, but they were more "honest" ones (poor target priority, playing too defensively at times, that sort of thing), rather than being down to carelessness or forgetting rules. Well, except for my continual attempts to shoot into melee that is.

So did the Decimator work out as well as/better than the Spriggan? Well, having Reinholdt WON ME THE DAMNED GAME, so there is that. If I had the Spriggan I probably would have commit him to combat sooner, which may have worked out to my advantage in this game as Tiberion was about the only thing that could take down jack by that point, but I'm not really sure. On the flip side, the temptation to pour focus into the Decimator's gun did limit Sorscha's own actions at times, which might have contributed to my inability to clear her zone. I suppose more playtesting is needed.


*Said to be what Napoleon asked of his new generals.

Selling Out

I was pretty disgusted this game to find that my opponent, who was playing Khador as usual, had bowed to peer pressure and dropped down to a single Warjack. That sellout. He should be ashamed of himself. He ran:
Strakhov
- Decimator
Nyss Hunters
- Valachev
Croe's Cutthroats
Alexia and the Risen
Maddie
MOW Kovnik

As always I played Skorne:
Hexeris II
- Tiberius
- Drake
- Savage (bonded)
- 3 Reptile Hounds
Nihilators
Beast Handlers
Void Spirit
Saxon
 ... and a couple more small models in the back, I forget what they were but they didn't actually do anything, so whatever.


Pre-Game:
Rectangular zone, two objectives, killbox. I think we both chose Arcane Wonder. I won the roll and chose to go second.


Deployment:
He put his Nyss in the middle of his deployment zone, with the Risen behind them. Strakhov was on his right, where he could go run into the forest for protection. The Decimator was on the other side, where he could potentially shoot at my objective without overextending himself.

I deployed the Nihilators behind the forest as Saxon could help them find their way through. My Savage was just past them on my left, while Hexeris and the rest of my beasts were on the right.

The Cutthroats went into the forest on my left. I put Saxon in my own forest.

Look at all those unpainted models on his side of the table. What a lazy git!

Round 1:
My opponent ran everything forwards, but somehow managed to completely screw up his plans for Strakhov. It seems he wanted to cast Sentry on Croe, which is stupid because Croe is not a Khador model so the spell can't go on him. Then he realised he had deployed the Decimator too far away to get Superiority, and casting it on him would involve staying too far back and moving away from the forest he was aiming for. Since he had activated Strak before the Croes, he couldn't even run forwards properly since they were in his way. In the end all he did was put Sentry on the Kovnik... with it's RNG 8 gun. What an idiot.

I spread my forces out and ran the Savage up to the Cutthroats, managing to get just within stealth range, allowing me to arc Ashes to Ashes onto them. I rolled a 5, meaning six Cutthroats died right off the bat. The Nihilators got Ashen Veil.

Round 2:
He threw the corpses of the Cutthroats at my front line, placing them in engagement with models that he should have been shooting at with the Nyss, who would ignore the concealment from Ashen Veil. Instead he put his Nyss' shooting into the Drake, apparently scared of it's boostable spray. Between them, a couple of Cutthroats, and a Thrallpedo, he put it down. A single Cutthroat's poison shot also put significant damage on the Savage. The Decimator (who finally received Superiority) tried to shoot at Tibbers, but was out of range. A couple of Nihilators were also killed, but all that Cylena herself managed to do was kill a Thrall. You go girl!

In my turn I put Blackspot onto a Nyss Hunter, lowering the unit's DEF to 13. I followed that up with Ashes to Ashes, rolling a 6 this time, for 7 dead Nyss Hunters! The Void Spirit charged and killed one too, but the very sight of him caused the unit to break and run. Cowardly elves. The Nihilators killed the last of the Cutthroats and a bunch of Risen, and even took the time to senseless murder an unarmed woman who was inexplicably wandering around the battlefield smoking a cigarette. The Kovnik triggered Sentry and tried to shoot at a Nihilator before it could attack Alexia, but he just ended up shooting another Risen in the back. Tibbers toed the zone, and the Savage destroyed the objective, netting me two points at the end of the turn.

Round 3:
My opponent at this point had a record twelve corpse tokens, bringing his unit of Risen up to the full twenty. He scattered them around, trying to lock down my Nihilators by surrounding them with corpses. They actually would have killed a bunch of my Nihilators if I hadn't passed like four tough rolls. Alexia killed the Savage. The Kovnik shot a knocked-down Nihilator, who passed his second tough roll, so that was pretty useless. The last of the Nyss hid behind the Decimator, who put a couple of boosted shots into the Tibberium, doing like seven damage.

My opponent had originally been planning to try to kill the void spirit with Strakhov since it was vulnerable this turn, but he stupidly put a Risen in the way, so instead he tried to gun down a Nihilator. Rolling three shots on the riot gun, he finally connected with the last shot, but the Nihilator passed it's tough roll.

In my turn, Tibbers and the Nihilators wiped out most of his Risen. My opponent, who clearly doesn't learn from his mistakes, had put Cylena and Valachev close enough for the Void Spirit to kill with a single attack, taking the Nyss off the board. Alexia was knocked down to 1 damage point. Two Reptile Hounds charged the Decimator, with the third one running to engage. Those two P+S 8 dogs, attacking the ARM 20 heavy, took off more than half it's boxes, crippling it's only melee weapon. So much for PP's rubbish claims of Khador warjacks being sturdy. Thanks to Hexeris ridiculously overpowered passive ability Vampiric Harvest, much of the damage on Tiberion was healed.

Round 4:
My opponent now had absolutely no chance of killing Tibbers, and of course he couldn't knock him out of the zone, so he had no chance of scoring. His only option was an assassination run with Strakhov. So he cleared as much of the path as he could with Risen, feated, charged and killed a Paingiver, then used Overrun to walk up to Hexeris. The thing was that he had to take a free strike from Tiberion. With full health and 4 focus the free strike shouldn't kill him, but if I rolled a crit then Strakhoff would be knocked aside and would not reach Hexeris. But what were the odds of that happening?

Yeah, I rolled a double 3 and we shook hands.


Postmortem:
For those who didn't realise it, I'm actually the Khador player. Normally I take photos of my games from my side of the table, but this time my opponent took them from his side, so I wrote up the report from his perspective. You know, for the lols.

I'm just going to go ahead and say this: I'd been pretty busy at work and ended up taking some work home for the weekend; as a result I was feeling pretty fatigued during this game and ended up playing even worse than usual (if such a thing were possible). I honestly wasn't looking at his army or considering his threat ranges at all, I could barely even keep my own plans straight in my head; in fact my opponent had to keep stopping me from doing stupid things like trying to resolve attacks before I had finished moving a unit and crap like that. I was just really off my game.


Losing more than half of my unit of Cutthroats right off the bat really hurt. I would even go so far as to say that it put me significantly behind on attrition very early on, and I never recovered. Losing seven Nyss to that single spell pretty much hammered the nails in my coffin, and when the Decimator lost his arm with no way of fixing it, I was pretty much left with zero chance of killing Tibbers. And since he can't be moved, I wasn't going to be able to get him out of the zone either.

Not only did I run the Cutthroats so far forwards that they were in spell arcing range, he even managed to engage one with a Nihilator (and might have engaged more if they had survived). Since their job was to shoot then scoot back into the forest, they didn't need to be that far up. However, this was my first time running an advanced-deploy unit; the most I'd ever had before this was a couple of sniper solos. On top of that I'm not used to thinking about arc-nodes; I don't have any and since most of my games are against Skorne I don't face them that often either, so I didn't respect the threat range.


Clearly my opponent had great dice, rolling great on Ashes to Ashes and pulling out that crit at the end. Although, to be honest, he didn't need good dice to kill my infantry, who are all quite fragile; the only survivability that I have is mobility (which I didn't use) and the Nyss' DEF. Which I lost to Black Spot. The only thing that kept me in the game that long was Alexia. She's easily the best 5 points in my army, if not the whole game. In retrospect I think I should have "padded" my front lines of infantry with Risen, to absorb the hits from Ashes to Ashes. I'd just learned to keep them back so he can't choose where to place AOEs, now I need to learn when to put them forwards.

Even if he hadn't crit to knock Strakhov away, I would have needed amazing dice to take down Hexeris. He had 2 Fury and I would have reached him with 4 attacks; I would have had to hit all four attacks, and the two that got through would have needed to roll like 22 or something between the four dice. Of course the moment I rolled less than a 10 on my damage roll he could have let it through, and that would have been it. So yeah, I had almost no chance of success. Although if I had remembered to try to take a double-boosted shot with Alexia that might just have changed the odds.


Again Maddie died without doing anything, in pretty much exactly the same way as last time: I moved her too far forwards, allowing his Reach models to attack her past the first line of my infantry. The Kovnik got bogged down behind the faster infantry and just didn't contribute. Actually, that's pretty much what happened to Strakhov too; he ended up left behind with no line of sight to try to sling spells or take shots. I basically didn't get any use out of Superiority, Overrun, or his feat, and those are his best abilities. Just poor play on my part. I think part of the problem was that I let the spot of rough terrain in the center of my side of the table push my slower models - the Decimator and Kovnik - to the sides; I might have been able to use them more effectively if they had been positioned more centrally.


The Decimator didn't really get the chance to do much. I didn't want to put him into Tibbers without softening him up a bit first - an ARM 19 Bronzeback I would have gone for, but ARM 21? Bleh. But between standard Fury healing, Paingivers, and eHexeris ridiculous passive healing, it turns out that was a stupid idea. Then the dogs did way more damage than I expected and crippled it. Eh, I only really had one chance to get to Tibbers before I ran out of models to clear the charge lane, and I didn't take it. I still think the Decimator has potential, but I need to figure out how to make use of it. Croe's didn't get a chance either, but I'm optimistic that I can get more use out of them with smarter play.


The ease with which Warlocks can heal their Warbeasts is just a slap in the face of all Warmachine players (well, except for Convergence and possibly Cephalyx players), but that wasn't enough for PP. Paingivers being able to heal Warbeasts from a distance without even a roll, making them far better at healing that any mechanic in Warmachine is at repairing (even though fixing flesh should be harder than fixing primitive steam-powered machines), that wasn't enough for PP. No, PP decided they needed to give some Warlocks the ability to passively heal their Warbeasts. PP, I have to ask: why do you hate Warjacks with such virulent passion? Do you just enjoy abusing Warmachine players for the sense of power it gives you? You make me sad PP. Some days I look at Infinity and think: "Why am I not already playing that?"

By the way, I haven't read the fluff, so can someone explain to me PP's justification for Paingivers not only being able enrage already angry beasts that have been tortured their whole lives by striking them with whips, they can also calm them down by striking them with whips, and can even heal an animal's wounds by, you guessed it, striking it with their whips. They must be using their whips as they can do it from several inches away while Mechanics have to be in base-to-base contact to fix something. Actually, I think they can do all their stuff from three inches away, while they can only attack from two inches away, so honestly I don't know what's going on there at all. I mean, I can understand enraging them without actually touching them, like it's just the sound of the whip, but healing them? What?