The Journey Man III - The Manning

We were able to get another couple of 25 point games in. I was still running:
Strakhov
-Spriggan
-Juggernaut
Croes
-Valchev
Kell Bailoch

Beanpole of course had his beast-heavy list:
Morghoul I
-Molik Karn
-Gladiator
-Savage
-Brute
Paingiver Beast Handlers

And Blondie had swapped in Gunmages and Old Rowdie, plus an Arcane-Shield-On-A-Stick:
Styker I
-Old Rowdie
-Ironclad (proxied by Crusader)
-Charger (proxied by Repenter)
Journeyman Warcaster
Gunmages
-UA


Game 1
I played Blondie. He won the roll and chose to go first. Since Gunmages would murder Croes, I decided to pick the side with the wall, so I could at least possibly get cover if the fight stuck to the center.

Round 1:
Blondie put Arcane Shield on his two heavies and moved up. The gunmages walked forwards and took sniped shots at the Cutthroats but were out of range.

The Spriggan got Superiority and Strakhov cast Occultation on himself; no more charger-assassinations for Stryker! I put my Spriggan behind the forest threatening his heavies. The Cutthroats walked up and took shots at the Gunmages, but don't think I actually hit any (I might have been out of range).

Round 2:
His gunmages stood still and fired at my Croes, but surprisingly bad dice meant he didn't kill as many as expected. Meanwhile his heavies walked forwards to toe the zone. Stryker moved up into base contact with Rowdy.

I ran my Cutthroats forwards to engage the Gunmages, with Valachev striking a heroic pose on the top of a hill where everyone could see him. Croe himself went for the Journeyman but missed. Strakhov feated and the Spriggan charged Rowdy. I had been planning to bulldoze him out of the zone, but annoyingly I couldn't do that with Stryker in place. I did lightly touch the other Ironclad and send it staggering backwards, you know, for funsies. Thanks to Arcane Shield, Rowdy was left with all his systems except movement.

Round 3:
The Journeyman killed Croe before the Gunmages activated. This was a mistake because Croe just tagged in for the one Cutthroat who hadn't managed to engage any Gunmages; because Croe has Reach this meant I was suddenly engaging a whole lot more gunmages than I was a minute ago. When it came time to actually activate the Gunmages however, their dice exploded and they killed off most of my Cutthroats. Blondie hadn't moved the ones engaged by Croe as he'd been hoping to kill Croe with an aimed shot from an unengaged Gunmage, freeing those ones up to take more aimed shots. The unengaged mage missed, leaving the rest unable to attack.

Old Rowdy wailed away at the Spriggan but didn't take out any systems. The other Ironclad took some damage from a Spriggan free-strike in order to make it into the Spriggan's back arc, but this allowed him to ignore the shield, ultimately knocking the Spriggan down to a single Cortex box. Striker himself walked up and took a swing; he disrupted the Spriggan but couldn't break his armour. Finally he feated.

So my Spriggan was distrupted and left with a single Cortex box, eh? What harm could he possibly do? Well... I upkept Superiority for the extra 2", which I made good used of moving back and forth bulldozing Styker and the two heavies out of the zone. The Juggernaut took out Blondie's objective and Strakhov ran up to a protected position behind the forest, but in the zone.

Meanwhile the Cutthroats swung at the Gunmage UA, and even Valachev got stuck in with his magic shotgun, getting four attacks. Unfortunately I whiffed everything; only Croe himself managed to kill a single Gunmage.

With that the turn ended and I scored three points; I only needed to dominate one more time to win.

Round 4:
Again my opponent did not move his engaged Gunmages in order to get Croe into their melee range, trying to shoot Croe down with a single Gunmage and missing. The others did manage to take out another Cutthroat however. The Ironclad walked over and destroyed my objective earning a point, while Rowdy attacked the Juggernaut. I don't remember if he lost any systems, he might have lost the axe. The Charger tried to finish off the Spriggan but failed, so the Journeyman went in. With his last attack, boosting the damage roll, he just managed to the get the 10 he needed to knock off the Spriggan's last box.

This wasn't looking good, but I had a plan. There were three jacks and a Journeyman in the zone; if I could clear them all out I could dominate for the win. With Croe in the Journeman's back arc, I should have no trouble killing him. The Juggernaut could throw Rowdy out, and Strakhov could use Ram to push the remaining jacks clear.

So I gave the Juggernaut one focus and started with Croe. In a flash of "brilliance", I decided that I could Zephyr and aim in order to take a RAT 8 shot rather than a MAT 7 swing at the Journeyman. So instead of needing a 5 or something to hit; I ended up needing... an 8 because he was in a forest touching the Spriggan's wreck marker. I rolled a 7. Sigh.

The other Cutthroat took a shot but was just out of range. OK, not a problem. Strakhov could kill the Journeman himself. So I activated the Juggernaut and tried a one-handed throw... and failed. Sigh.

So now my only chance was to Overrun Strakhov off the Journeyman and try to kill Stryker himself. Stryker had no camp but was at DEF 18 thanks to Rowdy, so the odds weren't good. Anway, Strakhov charged the Journeman, needing a 7 to hit... and rolled a 6. Sigh.

I bought a second attack and this one did the job, but now I had only two focus left for buying attacks against Stryker. Needing 11s, they both missed. Double-sigh.

Round 5:
Stryker killed Strakhov.

Game 2
I wasn't there for this game, so here's Beanpole's narration:
He won the roll and chose the side with the wall. So I deployed first in my usual clump but off to the side with the hill and Blondie's objective. He deployed with the battlegroup central and the gun mages in a line on the same side as me.

Round 1:
Gladiator puts Rush on Savage and makes a slam toward Charger. Savage runs up to behind the forest. Morghoul puts admonition on Molik and rush on Brute then fails a charge at Stryker. Molik runs to the hill and Brute runs between Molik and Morghoul. Paingivers run up as well.

Styker puts Arcane shield on Rowdy and advances. Journeyman does same for Ironclad. Both heavies run up to the zone. Charger advances and tries to shoot something but I think was out of range. Gun mages take snipe shots at Molik and Brute inflicting a few points of damage.

Round 2:
I had one too many fury point out so the Brute passed a threshold check. Morghoul upkeeps Admonition then activates, casts Abuse on Molik, takes the fury from the Brute with Maltreatment and advances to just out of the zone camping 3. Gladiator moves up to put Rush on Molik. The Brute puts safeguard on Morghoul then advances into the zone where he will be able to shield guard for Morghoul and Molik. Savage moves up into the forest in the zone. Paingivers enrage Molik and remove any other fury. Molik charges Rowdy and scraps him.

He loads the Charger and keeps 3. Junior upkeeps Arcane Shield. Charger backs up to get out of the feat and shoots at Molik as do the gun mages except one cheeky guy that hits a Paingiver which I have the Brute shield guard. I think Junior shoots at Molik as well and he is around half boxes. Stryker feats and puts Arcane Shield on himself. The Ironclad walks up to the objective and does 10 damage.

Round 3:
Upkeep Admonition, then Molik passes his threshold check. Molik moves into the wreckage of Ol' Rowdy and kills the objective with his initials and sidesteps deeper into the wreck. Gladiator moves up to where he can get to the ironclad next turn and puts rush on the savage. Morghoul moves into the zone and forest and casts safeguard on himself. Brute moves into forest between ironclad and Morghoul. Paingivers enrage the savage, remove fury from gladiator and heal the brute for a few points. Savage charges into the gun mages but hits none.

Stryker upkeeps arcane shield and allocates the rest. 3 to the charger and 2 to the iron clad, I think. Ironclad decides to ignore Molik (who has admonition anyway) and tries to kill the Brute. He does heavy damage but only knocks out body. The Gunmages aim. One kills a Paingiver and others get some damage on Molik. The Charger aims and shoots Molik bringing him to down to one box in the spirit. He hits the second shot and I force a re-roll which misses. Junior also aims and hits Molik but also misses the forced re-roll. Stryker decides to make a break for the forest (but it is not far enough, spoilers).

Round 4:
I drop admonition this turn. Molik and the Savage pass their threshold checks. The Brute walks around the Ironclad to clear the lane for the Gladiator and takes a swing with his halbard, but since I forgot to heal his body it does nothing. The Paingivers go enraging the Gladiator and Molik and healing the Brute. The Gladiator charges the Ironclad leaving it on 4 boxes or so, everything crippled but the fist. The Savage decides he will kill something before the end and caps a Gunmage. Morghoul walks around to have his control area far enough and heals Molik two points and casts Rush on him. Molik charges Stryker and puts him into the dirt.

Final Score: (wins/losses)
Beanpole: 4 / 2
Blondie: 3 / 1
Samurai: 1 / 4


Postmortem:
I think Blondie needs to learn to move those Gunmages rather than focussing on the aiming bonus; they would have been better off taking out the Paingivers than standing around trying to put damage on warbeasts. He also seems to trigger Strykers feat the round after he walks into charge range for some reason; I think that he hasn't yet fully understood that Cygnar jacks won't last a round (at least against Skorne) without at least losing a system, even with Arcane Shield. He's not thinking enough about protecting his caster yet either, but of course that takes time.

I made some stupid mistakes that cost me my game (like trying to shoot the Journeman rather than just stabbing him in the back with Croe), but then my list didn't have the hitting power to get through two Arcane Shielded jacks (nevermind the feat), and of course the Gunmages love to see Croes across the table (1 point models that are RAT 5 DEF 13 ARM 11 and rely on Stealth? Rofl!). I might have won on scenario though had my dice cooperated.

Hmm, I seem to be falling behind on the score board. Oh well, I figured this would happen when I chose Strakhov. I think I'll probably try a new caster soon (although I might have to proxy for a while).

The Journey Man II - The Journeying

In the second week of the Journeyman League we played at 25 points. I modified my list to:
Strakhov
-Spriggan
-Juggernaut
Croes
-Valchev
Kell Bailoch

Beanpole had decided to forgo infantry:
Morghoul I
-Molik Karn
-Gladiator
-Savage
-Brute
Paingiver Beast Handlers


Game 1
I think this scenario had a killbox. Beanpole won the roll and chose to go first; I decided I liked the wall more than the house. Nothing special happened in the deployment phase.

Round 1:
Everyone ran up, except the Titan who was too busy casting Rush on everything.

I spread my forces out and took a few early shots at his beasts.

Round 2:
His Cyclops' starting attacking my Cutthroats while the rest of his forces stayed back.

The Juggernaut took out the Savage and Overran a full 4" backwards. Meanwhile Molik Karn triggered Admonition off the Juggernaut's charge in order to enter the forest. Kell tried to kill Paingivers but missed once and the other shot was shield-guarded.

Round 3:
Yeah, using Overrun to hit-and-run doesn't work as well when you're SPD 4 and don't have Reach. So Molik Karn killed the Juggernaut, but luckily didn't have enough Fury to use Fatewalker afterwards. Meanwhile the Brute completely whiffed on a Cutthroat. I think Beanpole meant to feat this turn but first he charged Croe with Morghoul only to find he was a millimeter out, meaning he couldn't feat.

Ugh, interpreting photos are hard when everyone has out-of-activation movement. Anyway, I think I surrounded Karn with Cutthroats and then finished him off with the Spriggan, Overruning away from the Gladiator. The rest of my Cutthroats finished off the Brute. I may have tried to shoot Morghoul with Croe but missed.

Round 4:
The Gladiator destroyed my objective. Morghoul put Admonition on walked into the zone and used his feat. This brought him to 3 points.

So for some reason I completely blanked on the fact that Morghoul only needed to dominate once to win, and started my turn by shooting at the Gladiator with the Cuthroats. As soon as I finished their activation I realised that I didn't have enough models left to put into the zone. I had originally intended to run Strakhov over to the flag, but that obviously wouldn't work, so I enacted a desperate plan: I ran Strakhov up and camped, while Kell ran interference and the Spriggan toed the zone on the other side. I figured maybe if he went for the assassination with the Gladiator, he might just fail to pull it off; that's was pretty much my only hope anyway.

Round 5:
My opponent did not take the bait ("bait" in this case being my Warcaster...) and focused on clearing the zone. The Gladiator slammed the Spriggan out and finished off the nearby Croe (in retrospect I probably should have put the Spriggan a little farther away, so that he'd be forced to try to kill them both in melee), then Morghoul took out Kell. Game, set, and match!

Game 2
At this point I was a little fatigued from trying to learn the rules to a whole new game - Star Wars Armada - and I could tell going in that I wasn't going to be able to play a good game. Looking at the mission we rolled up, I didn't think at the time that it was a good one for me either. And lest you think this is me just making up excuses after the fact, I'll have you know I made sure to get these excuses in before we even started playing!

I lost the roll again and was left starting second. I decided that I didn't want him getting the defense bonus from a hill against the Cutthroat's shooting, so I picked that side. Umm, I don't remember what I was thinking about deployment; I guess I figured I had to split my forces so that's what I did.

Round 1:
Stuff.

So I seriously screwed up judging distances here. I tried to move my Cutthroats into just within 10 of the Brute so I could zephyr away after, but only a couple of models ended up in range, so I had to use Zephyr to reposition and ended up basically leaving all my Cutthroats in danger. Also I figured I would have to use the Juggernaut as bait for Karn.

Round 2:
So Karn killed the Juggernaut. I hadn't considered the positioning very well because the wall would make it harder to lock him down. Also Morghoul feated.

I surrounded Karn with Cutthroats, but they mostly whiffed their attacks and didn't do much damage. I had been planning to put Superiority on the Spriggan, but stupidly forgot and spent Strak's focus taking boosted shots at Karn; two shots missed (one killing a Cutthroat) and the last did a bit of damage. Ultimately he had 15 boxes left and I couldn't spend focus to buy attacks. However I figured that between the boosted charge attach and the shield I had a chance of rolling high and finishing it. Otherwise I was screwed. Since it was getting late and I was tired, I told Beanpole that if I didn't manage to kill Karn this turn I would give up since it would be pretty hopeless at that point. So Strakhov feated and the Spriggan charged. I needed a five to hit with the charge attack, but he used Karn's ability to force me to reroll the attack roll, and it came up a four. So we shook hands.

Final Score: (wins/losses)
Beanpole: 3 / 2
Blondie: 2 / 1
Samurai: 1 / 3


Postmortem:
So I can't roll two fives in a row, huh? Well, my dice were a bit poor that second game all round (they weren't all that great the first game either), but I wasn't exactly playing well anyway. I do think that his list outclassed mine though; on feat turn my Spriggan threatens 15", but he has three beasts that all threaten 15" (with Pathfinder) all the time, no feat needed. Plus Molik Karn can use Sidestep to potentially get another 4". Yes, Overrun extends my threat range, but there's no infantry for me to trigger it off (and if I trigger it off a beast I probably don't have enough focus left to kill something). He also matches my hit-and-run use of Overrun with Fatewalker. But on top of all that I can't charge him because of Admonition, so my threat range is mostly useless; I have to wait for him to get close enough to surround him with my infantry. Meanwhile his feat shuts down over half my army for a turn. I think Croes did better here than the Nyss would have, but they really need something else to hold enemy models back while they dance around and shoot. And Kell is pretty much a waste of points against an all-beast list.

I got lucky in the first game when Karn couldn't walk away and Morghoul failed the charge; had I used my brain I think I would have had a chance of winning; feeding him some Croe's to weather the feat turn while chipping away at the Gladiator would have meant that next turn I might have been able to take out the Gladiator (I was close enough to his Paingivers at that point to potentially start using Overrun to counter Admonition) or possibly assassinate Morghoul.

I'm still not doing a good job of guessing ranges; in fact once something is over 12" away or so it seems I don't even try. Looking back, I might have been able to use the Spriggan to start to take out his light warbeasts and Overrun to safety, at least in the second game, possibly activating the Cutthroats second to cover him. I don't know really.

The Journey Man I

Our small local group decided to take part in a journeman league. We played a simple Mangled Metal game for the first round. Against my better judgement I picked Strak's battlegroup:
Strakhov
-Spriggan
-Marauder

Blondie ran pStryker (mostly with proxies as he's still getting his stuff assembled):
Stryker I (proxied by Stryker I)
-Ironclan (proxied by Crusader)
-Lancer (proxied by Revenger)
-Charger (proxied by Repenter)

Beanpole chose More-Ghoul:
Morghoul I
-Gladiator
-Savage
-Savage


Game 1
I got in just in time to see Blondie beat Beanpole. I think he used Earthquake to counter Admonition and take out all his beasts.


Game 2
We decided that, being new to the game, Blondie should try to get as many games in as possible, so I played against him next. I ended up going first and we deployed in simple facing lines.

Round 1:
I put Superiority on the Spriggan and ran him a little ahead.

He ran the Ironclad and Lancer forwards, with the Charger staying a little further back. The Charger got Snipe and the Ironclad was gifted with an Arcane Shield.

Round 2:
Despite being given a short brief about Strakhov's abilities, my opponent had not respected Strak's threat range and neglected to use his feat. I considered overrunning the Spriggan off the Lancer (after weakening it with the Marauder) in order to reach Stryker, but decided to just aim for his jacks. So Strakhov gave the Marauder two focus (because I am stupid) and the Spriggan three, feated, and tossed a cinder bomb on the off chance that it helped keep him safe somehow. The Marauder then charged forwards and slammed the Ironclad over the Lancer, doing plenty of damage to both. The Spriggan charged up and finished off the Lancer then crippled the Ironclad's cortex (and possibly some other systems).

With his jacks hurt pretty badly, Blondie decided to go for the assassination. Stryker walked up and dropped an Earthquake on Strakhov; it missed but only deviated a couple of inches, knocking my caster down. He put a bit of damage on him with the pistol and feated in case I survived. But the Charger made sure that I didn't.

Game 3
Giving Blondie a break, I played a game against Beanpole. Again I ended up going first. I decided to shake things up this time by (gasp) deploying my caster on the other side of the jacks!

Round 1:
I run forwards. Spriggan goes a little ahead, but not too far.

He puts Abuse and Rush on a Savage, which runs surprising far forwards to act as bait. The Gladiator hangs further back with Admonition on it.

Round 2:
Did he forget about Overrun? I dunno, but the Spriggan walks calmly forwards, kills the Savage, and then shuffles back. The Marauder just gets between Strakhov and the other Savage.

The Gladiator sets up closer this time. The remaining Savage charges the Marauder and rolls poorly, doing something like 3 or 4 damage total.

Round 3:
The important thing here is that the Savage is blocking my charge lane to the Gladiator, meaning I can't charge with the Marauder to trigger Admonition then go in with the Spriggan. So instead I slam the Savage into the Gladiator and walk up to them both with the Spriggan. The Gladiator uses Admonition to back away, but the Spriggan simply kills the Savage with it's shield then overruns up to the Gladiator again. Unfortunately I needed one focus to boost the attack roll on the Savage and two for Overrun, so the Spriggan is left with only two focus and it's initial lance attack. Funnily enough, none of my damage dice can seem to come up higher than a 2, so the Savage is barely touched anyway.

In his turn the Savage gets Abuse and rolls a whole bunch of 5s and 6s, wrecking the Spriggan. Of course it also received Admonition, and just for good measure Morghoul feated as well, so I wouldn't be able to spend focus in his control area.

Round 4:
Well, this was a pretty pickle. With only one jack my chances of pinning down the Gladiator were pretty slim, and with the feat up all I could do this turn was run away. So Strakhov cast Superiority on the Marauder, walked away and threw a cinder bomb, hoping it would land in a position where I could hide the Marauder behind it. No such luck, so the Marauder simply walked as far away from the Gladiator as he could.

In his turn Beanpole decided that the Gladiator was just out of range, so he just walked up with Admonition again. I think he also cast Abuse before deciding not to go for the charge, and used the rest of his fury to heal the Gladiator?

Round 5:
Well I wasn't going to be able to kill the Gladiator, so the only option left was assassination. Strakhov walked up and cast a boosted Ram at the Gladiator, pushing it out of the way, feated, then missed Morghoul with his gun. The Marauder then charged in to Morghoul, easily making distance. I needed 9's to hit and decided on 4 unboosted attacks instead of 2 boosted ones. The second and third attack rolls came up 9s and Morghoul bit the dust.

Game 4
With time for another game, I decided to quit while I was ahead, so I encouraged Blondie and Beanpole to have a rematch.

Round 1:
Blondie walked his army forwards at a relaxed pace. Arcane Shield went on the Ironclad, Snipe on the Charger. Beanpole ran forwards to meet him.

Round 2:
Blondie shuffled forwards a bit more and tried to put some damage out with the charger.

Beanpole charged the two jacks in the lead, crippling the Lancer but rolling poorly against the Ironclad and not doing enough damage to destroy it. I don't remember if he crippled any systems or anything, but thanks to his feat he wasn't too worried about reprisals next turn.

Round 3:
Without being able to spend focus on the Ironclad, Blondie simply popped his feat and put out some more shots. The Lancer couldn't do any damage with it's crippled spear, so instead it positioned itself in such a way that the Savage would at least have to take a free strike if it tried to gang up on the Ironclad.

Since he couldn't damage the Ironclad this turn, Beanpole used the Gladiator to throw it into the Charger.

Round 4:
I don't remember why the Ironclad didn't attack the Gladiator, I think Blondie had decided to save all his focus for shooting and spells or something.

The Gladiator and Savage finally finished off the Ironclad. Beanpole made sure to engage the Charger with the Savage.

Round 5:
At this point Stryker was close enough to walk forwards and cast Earthquake on Morghoul. The deviation was good and Morghoul was knocked down. The Charger then shuffled a couple of millimeters backwards in order to un-engage himself and took a shot at Morghoul, but was just a couple of millimeters out of range.

In his turn Beanpole finally finished off the jacks.

Final Score: (wins/losses)
Blondie: 2 / 1
Samurai: 1 / 1
Beanpole: 1 / 2


Postmortem:
Well that was fun. It was actually kind of nice to go back to playing really small games. Although some things seem really hard to deal with at this size, it makes the casters seem more central to the game again, and the simplicity of not having masses of infantry gumming everything up is kind of refreshing.

Man, Admonition is powerful if you don't have infantry to lock a model down with. On the other hand Strakhov's movement tricks are pretty powerful too, and of course that Earthquake/Charger was a powerful combo.

I was debating casting Occultation on Strakhov in the first two rounds of my game against Blondie, but I couldn't afford the focus and decided that just hanging out in a forest would be protection enough. Man, I really wish Superiority cost 2 focus instead of three. Ah well, if wishes were fishes... um... damn, I can never remember how that one goes.

I'm not sure whether using Overrun to get to the Gladiator was the right call or not. I was planning on using boosted grenades to kill the Savage and pulling all my models back again, but I didn't like backing up so much and I decided it was my best chance to put some damage on him. My opponent mentioned that he had a plan for if I tried to overrun away again, but I think he was counting on me using Overrun on the Spriggan after killing the Savage in melee? Never mind.

I definitely feel that Blondie kept using his feat too late. It's probably just that he doesn't understand the threat ranges in this game yet. Hell, I don't understand the threat ranges in this game yet! That might be a reason why I'm starting to build more and more for shooting? Or maybe it's just because I don't seem to win the melee game against Skorne anyway. Still, he's doing really well; two wins out of three games is pretty impressive.

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?

Some Crazy Javascript

I've just finished an improvement for my Card Creator. Now if you click on a text area to edit it, rather than a popup that you have to type HTML into, you will be able to edit the text in place. You still have to use HTML tags for things like bold and italic text, but you don't need to use the "br" tag for newlines anymore, which makes it much easier to lay out elements on the larger text areas. It doesn't always look terribly pretty during editing, but it does make it a lot easier to use.

There was some interesting javascript involved, which included creating text boxes when you click on an element, removing the onclick function so it doesn't interfere with the editing process, then when the text box loses focus copying the text back to the original area, deleting the text box, and restoring the onclick function. It's trickier than it sounds, and inserting it into Blogspot took a bit of faffing about too.

Now if only I could figure out a way to export the cards without having to resort to using screenshots.