First, check out Beast 09 <--. Vince can paint somewhat yes :P?
Back into the swing of some Warmachine! Today Vince and I both brought out some different casters from our previous games. I went with the battlebox caster of pKreoss whilst Vince brought out the ever tough pButch. The stage was set with our half painted armies though a little more is done each time... The lists were as follows:
Khador -
pButch
Beast 09
Spriggan
Full Iron Fang Pikemen + UA
War Dog
Widowmakers
Great Bears
Menoth -
pKreoss
Reckoner
Vanquisher
Redeemer
Full Errants + UA
Min Choir
Covenant of Menoth
Vassal of Menoth
Rupert, Piper of Ord
So I finally brought out some character stuff outside of Blessing with the Covenant and Rhupert. Unfortunately (for the keen eyed of you), my Rhupert model hasn't come in yet and since it was only one model, we proxied it with my Heirophant. We continued using just caster kill missions though I offered Vince to do scenarios...looks like we will next time. Vince won roll off and decided to go first.
Deployment
Ironfangs central, pButch & GreatBears behind. Both Warjacks on the flanks, Spriggan on the left, Beast on the right. Widowmakers advance deployed on the right. Menoth deployment sees the Reckoner square off against the Spriggan and pKreoss, the Redeemer, Vanquisher and support and set up in the middle. The Errants advance deploy on the right to counter the Widowmakers and protect the support from that angle.
Khador Turn 1
The usual LEEROY forward ensues. pButch hands out a focus to Spriggan and casts Iron Flesh on the Iron Fangs. The Widows move forward into the ruins and take a couple potshots at the Errants and drop two who self-sac to the second line. The Iron Fangs run forward as fast as possible but don't spread out to overcome the lack of shieldwall. The Jacks both run and bookend the Iron Fangs with the Great Bears, War Dog and pButch bringing up the rear.
The Iron Fangs here really needed to spread out - with the Vanq and Redeemer capable of putting out 5 AOEs between them, getting close together is not a good idea.
Menoth Turn 1
Since the IFP are clumped, I'm looking to take them out with my AOEs. My Vanquisher normally doesn't have the range here so I'll be running and then Vassaling him for some extra firepower. This means two focus for the Reckoner, one for Vanquisher and two for the Redeemer and we save two for Defender's Ward on the Errants. The Choir activate and move around to positions near where the Jacks will be after their movement and cast battle - there's not much shooting or magic coming my way and the +2/+2 is going to be very useful with the AOEs I'm about to thrown down.
The Reckoner then moves forward and Assaults the Spriggan with a boosted damag roll - eight boxes gone thank you. The Vanquisher runs up to prepare its big ball of fire whilst the Redeemer moves laterally to try and peg a few Widowmakers first. Two lobbed shells kill two Widowmakers and the final shell takes care of a couple IFP. The Vassal moves up and hugs the Redeemer for defensive bonuses and forces the Vanquisher to shoot - it falls just short but scatters straight back, killing two IFP, setting one more on fire as well as the War Dog and a Great Bear.
The Covenant and Rupert move laterally across to ensure the entire army is covered under their Command bubbles and Covenant casts no knock-down/stationary and Rupert Tought on the Errants. The Errants then move up and plink one more Widow into the dust and another IFP. Both squads take command checks with the Widowmaker failing.
Khador Turn 2
Fires go out on the Great Bear but burn the War Dog and an IFP to a crisp.
With a lot of the IFP gone it was going to be hard for Khador to claw their way back. However, my Errants were on one flank and not in the centre so if they could somehow breakthrough into my backline, I'd be in trouble. pButch drops Iron Flesh and gives two focus to Beast - Spriggan gets none when it should have IMO. Butcher moves up and casts Fury on the Iron Fangs. The IFP then charge the Vanquisher where they get one combined melee hit in against the Vanquisher which does a pretty heflt amount of damage and nearly takes out the right arm. They then mini-feat to engage the Reckoner and three Errants. I feel here the IFP should have run up to and past my Vanquisher (no reach, so minimal issue with free strikes) and then mini-feated into my support with Shield Wall up. Spriggan with focus could then run up into midfield and if I turn my Warjacks around to deal with the Iron Fangs, he'll be in my rear arc. This would have put a lot of pressure on my backline nnd how I managed the middle of the field.
The Spriggan moves around fence and lobs a couple of grenades at my support but doesn't manage to do any damage. The Widowmaker stays broken but moves away from the Errants and then Beast comes in swinging...and drops one Errant. Great Bears follow behind to setup pressure into the midfield.
Menoth Turn 2
pKreoss upkeeps Defender's Ward and gives three focus to Reckoner, two to Redeemer and one to Vanquisher - I'm feeling the focus pinch here as I could really do with casting Purification to drop Iron Flesh and probably should have used and shuffled the focus allocation around (some Wracks would have really helped manage this though). The goal here is to try and clear the IFP with my Warjacks whilst still having them impact the greater battlefield through Vassal and Assault.
The Vanquisher first smacks one of the IFP down but fails on the second. The Reckoner assaults pButcher and does a couple damage and then turns around to smack the IFP with his club but again only kills one. The Redeemer stays still and lobs some shells into the Great Bears - some lucky dice plus aiming bonus and choir buff see all three rockets hit and all three Great Bears die but one Tough roll sees one stay alive.
The Errants move up to clear the IFP on that side jamming them and whack Beast in combat - their dice fail miserably and then fail to kill the IFP and do superficial damage to Beast. One moves to block charge lanes to future pKreoss position by taking out the final IFP in front of the Vanquisher. Another Errant, the standard most likely, should have moved with this guy to ensure the lane to pKreoss was blocked. pKreoss moves up behind the Vanquisher when he really shouldn't - he's thinking about feat next turn but has put himself in potential danger here when staying back a further inch would have kept him safe.
Khador Turn 3
With pKreoss just an inch too far forward, Khador can potentially win the game here. It's all about getting Spriggan or a Great Bear into combat with him. pButch dumps three focus into Spriggan and two into Beast. Beast imprints and threshers but with Tough and self-sac, only kills two Errants. The IFP moves around and pokes the Vanquisher for an extra three damage before the Spriggan barrels in and quickly finishes off the damaged Warjack with a focus to spare to stab the Errant who...fails his tough roll. If another Errant had been there to self-sacrifice to, the charge lane to pKreoss from the Great Bear would still be blocked. Silly mistake!
Great Bear then charges pKreoss and some lucky dice see him live - first attack rolled only around five damage... on five dice! 2nd attack missed (though if it had hit he'd have only done enough to bring pKreoss down to 1 box left). Got away with it there.
Menoth Turn 3
Well I escaped there after making a silly error with my Errants. The standard bearer should have moved close to the Errant near my Vanquisher to ensure self-sac could keep the charge lane blocked fro the Great Bear to pKreoss. Luckily he didn't die. Silly, silly me. At this point it was pop and drop time so Kreoss activiated his feat, knocked everything down except the Widowmaker (out of range) and Great Bear (steady). The Reckoner got two focus and Redeemer three.
The Reckoner charges and plants a big old flared shell into pButch with boosted damage. The Redeemer follows up with two rockets with boosted rolls and pButch falls over - the lovely advantages of the pop and drop without any knockdown defenses - even despite pButch's impressive defensive array, throwing enough boosted shots at him will see him fall over. Still had a focus on the Redeemer and Errants to throw at him if needed as well.
Conclusion -
Vanquisher + Redeemer are a pretty deadly combo for clearing infantry and I find when I can do that and access the opponent's caster with something like the Reckoner or Errants after this happens, the game is over. When this doesn't happen though, I find myself being unable to deal with the Heavy Jacks, something which will come up next game. Regardless, once the infantry was cleared I did have a pretty easy time of it and it was simply about setting up the pop and drop on pButcher whilst keeping pKreoss safe - which I didn't really do and almost paid the price for.
Beyond this I don't think Vince got the most out of his infantry - he relied too much on Shield Wall to protect his Iron Fangs which was fine but they needed to spread out more. Perhaps clums of three or four rather than one big blob. When he didn't use Shield Wall he was still too close together so the Redeemer and Vanq were dropping shots and hitting lots of guys. Same with the Widows.
On my end, I got too loose with my movement for pKreoss - he never really needed to go forward and just an inch further back would have kept him away from both Spriggan and the Great Bear. I still need to work on dropping those Heavies as well - I'm getting a better hang of the Reckoner and basically ignored the jacks in this game but if they had been able to do more, I'd have been in trouble.
All in all a good game and more painting needs to be done! lol eFeora v pButch will be up next.
