I played very carelessly last game, so I was happy to get another game in, hopefully I would actually remember to pay attention to little things like threat ranges this time. I've been exploring a lot of list ideas in the app over the last few weeks - thematic ones, skewy ones, gimmicky ones, all sorts really - but I wanted to give Strakhov another chance first, so I ran almost the same list as before, only replacing Sylyss with the Koldun Lord to help me with armour:
Khador Unlimited 50pts
Strakhov 1
-Juggernaut
-Kodiak
Cylena & the Nyss Hunters
Croe's Cutthroats
Battle Mechanics
Alexia 3
Koldun Lord
Ol' Grim
*Grave Robbing
*Hit & Run
*Old Faithful
*Power Swell
*Blessing
Karas was excited to try Cygnar's new Karchev. Sorry, I mean Karchev. Oops, my bad, what I meant to say was the new large-based Cygnar warcaster, Karchev-with-a-jetpack-and-a-gun-instead-of-an-axe.
Storm Legion 50pts
Huxley (Electrify, Jackhammer)
-Strike-her (Relentless Charge, Voltaic Javelin, 40K Fist)
-The General (OP-Head, Gun-Sword, Red-Light)
Arcane Mechanics
Tempest Thundercats
Stormblade Legionnaires
-Standard Bearer
*Old Faithful
*Power Swell
*Probably some other cards, idk
Pre-Game:
We've been having issues with scenarios; the current Steamroller scenarios feels too complex, at least for 50 points. After asking for some advice online, it was suggested that the Brawlmachine scenarios were decent for smaller games. A quick search brought up version 1.2 of the Brawlmachine rules, I skimmed down and snap-picked the "Binary" scenario, because it seemed simple but with a good number of objectives.
We used 6inch zones (I think the scenario called for 12", but we weren't sure and just kinda felt that was too big), which according to the linked Steamroller could only be scored by units and warcasters). For the 40mm flags, which could only be scored by warcasters and solos, I used my old plasticard discs. I threw some terrain onto the table and tried not to make it
too symmetrical, while still hopefully being balanced. Karas won the roll and chose to go first, so I picked the side with more forests because I have a lot of pathfinder and my guys like to stand in forests for concealment - especially Strakhov.
Deployment
Karas placed his infantry on my right, ready to head for his zone. Since he didn't have any solos to score the flag, he put his battlegroup on that side so Cygchev could score it instead. I put my Nyss on the right, with Ol' Grim ready to grab the flag. Everything else went on my left. The I chose the Thunderers to be the Cutthroats' Prey target.
Round 1:
Karas got into position to score, even though scoring wouldn't start until next round. He put Electrify on the Stryker and Failsafe on The General.
My Kodiak "accidentally" vented steam before running to the zone, instantly and painlessly killing a mechanic. At least that's what the official report sent to his wife and children said. The part about Alexia reanimating his corpse as a Thrall was not mentioned in said report. Strakhov cast Assail on the Juggernaut and moved up into the forest. The remaining mechanics, Koldun Lord, and Strak's bony new shield-guard buddy followed.
The Nyss Hunters moved up and opened fire on the Legionnaires, only killing one. I used the Grave Robbing card to give Ol' Grim an unearned soul, then used a couple of well-aimed bullets to steal two more from the Legionnaires. I wanted to load him up to start putting boosted POW 12's into harder targets later, but I did spend one soul for +3 DEF, leaving him with two.
I didn't know what to do with the Cutthroats; it didn't look like they were going to be able to do any work on my left, so I bit the bullet and ran them all to the right. Alexia followed them into the forest, making sure to stay close enough to the Thrall for him to take advantage of her (now properly worded, thank you PP) Shield-Guard aura.
Round 2:
The remaining Legionnaires charged the Nyss Hunters, not doing much. The Thunderers then advanced into the zone and fired on Ol' Grim. The first AOE attack missed, but a big damage roll on the POW 8 blast damage was enough to kill the soul-laden spectre. The other shot into the Nyss Hunters, killing Cylena and one of her friends. I replaced Cylena - who was only just in range of Alexia) with a fresh Thrall (proxied by an unpainted Laddermore who had been converted to be holding a sword).
The Stryker shot at the Juggernaut for some damage, then repositioned back. I believe The General did too, and put up Polarity Field while he was at it. Huxley also chipped in some damage, but a low roll meant it wasn't too bad.
I allocated two focus to the Kodiak and dropped Assail as I wasn't going to use it this turn, but was going to use some focus. The Nyss killed two Legionnaires, and the Thrall took out the last one. The Cutthroats moved up and shot at the Thunderers, managing to kill one. Alexia ran across to base the flag so I could score.
The Koldun Lord cast Puppet Master on Strakhov. The Hoff then Feated and moved into the zone to cast an uboosted Hand of Destruction at The General. I needed a 6, and missed. Luckily I gave him Pupper Master for just this reason, allowing me to reroll the attack roll. I missed again. I then landed three unboosted Riot Gun shots, burning the Power Swell card to give me enough focus to boost the damage on all three for an OK number of boxes. The Kodiak trampled up to The General, buying two attacks and missing them both. He then Vented Steam and repositioned backwards - the cloud wouldn't save the Kodiak, but it would make it harder to reach the Juggernaut. The Juggernaut just stood at the back of the zone, where the Mechanics could walk up and heal a few boxes (very few; they only healed 3 between them). I realised that the Thrall was too far from Alexia to use Shield Guard, so I moved him away from the rest of the group so at least he wouldn't get killed by any blast damage or a stray Electroleap.
I had Alexia and Strakhov in position to score, Karas had Huxley and the Thunderers, so we both scored two points.
Round 3:
I believe this was the turn Huxley Feated, casting Full Throttle to help his jacks kill the Kodiak. He also shot Strakhov for 11 damage. I think Karas used the Old Faithfull card this turn. The Thunderers charged into the Cutthroats, making sure each Thunderer was only engaged by one Cutthroat - the plan was for each to kill a Cutthroat in melee then use Dual Attack to put an AOE shot into my mass of low-ARM infantry. Unfortunately they both missed their melee attack, so each could only kill one Cutthroat with a POW 8 blast damage roll. I replaced one with another Thrall, proxied by Ol'Grim. The Arcane Mechanics ran over to score the zone in the Thunderer's stead. This meant we both scored two points again, keeping the score even.
I loaded up the Juggernaut. The new Thrall moved to base my flag. The remaining Cutthroats killed the last two Thunderers, giving me yet another Thrall (proxied by Sorscha). An older Thrall charged a Mechanic, leaving him on one box. The three remaining Nyss Hunters charged the other two Mechanics; the first two rolled low on damage and just chipped away at him, then the third one cranked the damage roll and completely overkilled him, invalidating everything the first two had done.
The Koldun Lord put Pupper Master on Strakhov again, who moved up and cast Hand Of Destruction on the Stryker, then did a bunch of damage with his gun before repositioning into the forest. I also recast Assail on the Juggernaut. I made a stupid math mistake earlier on, thinking the Juggernaut could charge the Stryker and get into melee range of The General, but actually no, he could barely make it to the Stryker. So the Juggernaut made one charge attack - which crit and left the Stryker stationary with three damage boxes left, suffering from crippled left arm and movement systems - then got pushed back out of range by Electrify, leaving my jack with three unused focus.
Sadly I had nothing else in range to try to finish off the The mechanics ran into the zone to score, doing what they could to block LOS to strakhov. The original Thrall ran back to be in 3" of Strakhov again, and Alexia - now free of scoring duties - ran back into the forest, making sure to get close enough for the Thrall to get Shield Guard again. With the far right zone contested, I scored two points and Karas scored one, putting me one point in the lead.
Round 4:
Huxley swapped Failsafe onto the Stryker so it could ignore the crippled systems, and put Electrify onto The General instead. I think Karas used Power Swell this turn to help Huxley cast Jackhammer on the Stryker, but it might have been last turn. Huxley and the General then finished off the Juggernaut. This allowed the Stryker to charge a Mechanic and get close enough to ignore Strakhov's Stealth. The Stryker killed the Mechanic and gunned down the Thrall to deny Strakhov a Shield-Guard, but luckily missed his actual shot at the 6-health, 0-focus Strakhov.
One Arcane Mechanic killed the last three Nyss Hunters with stupid hot rolls on a single spray attack. The other one brained the Thrall engaging him. They didn't have any attacks left to try to kill the last contesting Thrall though, meaning they couldn't score the zone. I still had a Thrall on my flag, and Huxley was still on Karas' flag, so we scored one point each.
Well, I was all out of jacks, so I really needed some luck if I was going to do anything now. I debated upkeeping Hand of Destruction on the Stryker, but decided Strakhov wasn't going to be able to put any attacks into it, so I needed to commit all my focus to The General and let the upkeep drop. I remembered Alexia had a POW 14 spell and put it into the Stryker, but I rolled low on damage and did nothing to the ARM 20 jack. This left the Koldun Lord, who I REALLY needed to come through for me. I used a command card to give him Blessed weapons, and charged him into the Stryker. He crit the attack roll, meaning that he didn't need the Blessed weapons since he Dispelled Failsafe. With the Stryker now at ARM 18 with three remaining boxes, I needed to roll at least an 11 on three dice to kill it... I rolled a 12!
Killing the Stryker triggered Battle Wizard, allowing the Koldun Lord to cast Brittle Frost on The General to reduce his ARM by 2 - a crucial part of my plan. The last remaining Mechanic charged The General but missed the attack. The Cutthroats charged their new Prey targers, the Arcane Mechanics, and finished them off. The Thrall on that side ran around the back of the central building to start to threaten Huxley.
All that was left was to activate Strakhov. I cast Hand of Destruction on The General, and actually landed it this time. Strakhov charged into base contact and hit with his Trench Sword, getting pushed an inch back. I rolled two Riot Gun shots, hitting with both and boosting the damage, amazingly putting The General down on the second shot. Strakhov could have still made one melee attack with boosted damage if needed.
I repositioned Strahov backwards, for what it was worth. I now held two zones and a flag, scoring three points to Karas' one. This put me a total of three points ahead.
Round 5:
We spent at least ten minutes discussing the best way for Huxley to try to assassinate Strakhov. Should he take an aimed Mag-Bolter shot in Ground Assault configuration? Or use Sky Stormer configuration to just charge in to melee and start swinging? Finally Karas settled on his plan: charge in, take one swing, cast Ground Zero and boost the guaranteed POW 13 damage roll, then follow up with a boosted Mag-Bolter shot. With his course mapped out, Karas activated Huxley and casually took down Strakhov with his first attack.
Post-Mortem:
Man, that was a good game! The last couple of turns were very exciting as we made increasingly desperate moves. We both had good dice at times and bad dice at times. I made mistakes, but overall I felt like I was doing a decent job of balancing agression with caution, sending models forwards knowing they would die, but also knowing it was necessary to push the battle lines to enable me to score. I also remembered the command cards this time. I should have used Old Faithful earlier, in my head I was saving it for fixing crippled systems so I could still allocate focus, but then never got the chance to use it. Blessed happened to not matter because of a crit, but it was certainy good to have. In retrospect I could have used the Reposition card to move the Juggernaut back after attacking the Stryker; this
might have been enough for the Mechanics to reach him and repair a few boxes.
I liked the scenario, I thought it worked well at 50 points. It was relatively simple but had enough scoring elements that we had to spread out and push up. I do believe it favoured me, especially with the terrain being set up the way it was: Karas didn't have any solos so he absolutely had to glue Huxley to the flag to keep scoring - luckily for him Huxley was capable to contributing reasonably well from that position. Meanwhile I just kept generating more solos as the game went on. The action basically happening on two lanes also separated the infantry from the jacks, denying him Vengeance triggers when I killed his infantry. And the forest being close to my zone was good for Strakhov's survivability.
I pretty much knew Strakhov was unlikely to survive after killing The General, but that's OK, just killing that damned jack was a victory in itself. He just has SO MANY rules, and they're ALL really good! And then Electrify on top is just overkill. So yeah, I may have lost the game but I'm claiming a moral victory for finally taking that damned thing down.
Alexia3 felt much better this game; being able to create a steady supply of solos worked well for me, and having a shield-guard was a big deal against Huxley's long-range stealth-ignoring armour-piercing boostable gun. The Kodiak being able to cheat out a Thrall in my first turn feels like a big deal though; otherwise it would have been very hard to get a Thrall close the Strakhov early on.
Strakhov himself felt good to activate. I'm not sold on his toolkit or his playstyle (which I'm still trying to discover I guess), but his face card is amazing. Speed 7, Pathfinder, Reposition, Prowl, Alchemical Mask, Dual Attack, Pistol, Takedown; Strakhov basically ignores half the restrictions in the game! I don't know if he's strong, and the tools he has to support his army all feel set up for one big turn rather than the kind of slower game I tend to find myself playing, but there was just something liberating about being able to move 7", ignoring rough terrain, and also move another 3" afterwards, making a decent volume of quality attacks then passively gaining stealth.
Nyss Hunters were decent, which is better than they usually end up performing. As always they are kind of just OK at whatever they need to do, as long as they survive long enough to get the chance to do it. Cutthroats did work this game; two attacks with Prey and Poison worked out quite well against Karas' tougher infantry. Feels like they can be good in the right situations.
Huxley didn't feel crazy powerful, but my impression is that he's pretty good, and pretty fun to play. He isn't doing too much that's too useful mid-game if your opponent has Shield Guards, but he brings some good battlegroup support and, as we saw, he can present a good late-game threat. He did seem complicated to play though: not only do his stats,
including weapon stats, change when he changes configuration, so do his base rules - including his field marshal! That means his jacks gain or lose Reposition or Pathfinder depending on his configuration! We didn't realise until halfway through the game that the Stryker and The General should not have been repositioning backwards after shooting!
I did notice that not having Pathfinder is a LOT less punishing that it used to be, and measuring is a lot easier since it's a flat -2 rather than having to break down your movement. I am OK with this change (even though a lot of my favourite models already have pathfinder and that's less of an advantage now than it used to be).
We might be moving up to 75 points next game. 50 points is tight, but I feel it's just enough to write a functional list if you forgo the bells and whistles. At least with my models. And even at 50 we play slow enough that games take a while. Perhaps we should put a time limit and score the game based on objective points if we run out of time? I am NOT ready for an actual deathclock though!
