Monday, September 01, 2008

Flush With Victory



So I played two games of Warmachine the other night, one against J and his Cygnar and one against K and his Menoth. Miracle of miracles I managed to win both.

The first contest was against Cygnar with Stryker for the caster. If you want more details you can view the battle report at J's blog geektactica.

Since he's been having such success with the battle reports I figured I'd give it a whirl.

So here goes...

... oh yeah one more thing, I suck at remembering the names of Menoth jacks so if I screw them up just leave a comment to correct me and I'll get it sorted.

Part I -- The Forces

500 pts
Player 1 Menoth
Player 2 Cryx

Menoth
Kreoss, Repenter, Revenger, Devout, Redeemer, Choir, Vassal, Piper of Ord, Temple Flame Guard, Wrack.

Cryx
Deneghra, Deathjack, Deathripper X2, Nightwretch X2, Defiler, Mechanithralls, Skarlock.

PartII --The Table

The table had a moderate amount of terrain, some forests, a couple of hills, some stone walls and hedges, a river, a small building, a river and a road put in just for looks.

The centre of the board was relatively free of terrain except that the river sectioned off about a quarter of the table. The road ran straight from one side to the other but it didn't really have any great effect.

PartIII -- Deployment

Menoth
K won the die roll so he chose to be player 1 and deploy in a line at the back of the hill. His left flank was made up of the Temple Flame Guard (TFG), the Piper of Ord, next to them were the Redeemer and the Vassal. The centre of the army was the Repenter, Kreoss and the Devout. The right flank was held by the revenger. The choir was deployed behind the centre so it could keep singing as long as possible.


Cryx
The biggest problem during my deployment was that I was constrained by the river. As a Cryx player I rely on my speed to get the job done so I didn't want to be slowed down by the river.

As a general rule I want Deathjack to line up against infantry so I advance deployed him on my right, but behind the river. I put the Nightwretchs behind the river, they shoot so they they wouldn't necessarily be forced to cross the river if I was under a focus crunch and couldn't afford to run them or cast ghost walk.

The centre of my army was Dene, the Skarlock and the remaining Boneturkeys. The Mechanithralls I put on my left since that's where his jacks were. I often like to engage jacks with mechanithralls as a speed bump.


Part IV -- The Fight

Menoth Turn 1
K gets "drunk on focus" when he plays Kreoss. He's been playing Amon Ad Raza or Reznik lately so the 7 focus on Kreoss was a real treat for him. He allocated 1 focus each to the Revenger, the Devout and the Repenter.



All jacks but the Devout move forward the Revenger and Repenter both run while the Redeemer crests the hill and looks for targets.



K hates it when my Cryx cast spells all over him so, Kreoss advances down the centre and casts Lamentation and Ward on the Repenter.



To further the "you can't spell me" tactic the Devout advances to B2B with Kreoss and does his Spell Barrier ability so Kreoss couldn't be targeted by magic. The Piper moves to the hill and plays the extra defence song. The TFG run to protect Kreoss and avoid getting into range of the Deathjack. The Choir moves up and sings the hymn of Shielding Ward and caught all the jacks so I couldn't cast spells at them.

Now its Cryx's turn... Mwahahahah.....

Cryx Turn 1
So this is how the table looked after Menoth Turn 1. A Deathripper gets a focus and the Deathjack gets one extra so he won't go crazy. Dene keeps the remainder so she can cast some goodness.

A Deathripper runs up to the wall to get in range of the Revenger... I know, I know! You are saying "Didn't K use the choir to stop that?" Unfortunately my memory isn't as good as yours; moving on.

Deathjack casts Ghost Walk on himself, moves across the river and Necrovents.

The remainder of the army advances apace. As Deneghra activates I realise that I had just thrown away a Deathripper I can't cast anything at the Revenger through the 'ripper because of the Choir effect. But hey, nobody's perfect. I settle for casting Death Rage on Deneghra (also not a terribly good move, see later) and camping 1 focus.

Menoth Turn 2

So here's the lay of the land after turn 1. I have a sinking feeling, I must have forgotten something.

Anyhow, K. allocates 1 focus to the Revenger and keeps the remainder for himself.


Kreoss checks his control area...remember that feeling I had... there it is. That's what I forgot... rule #1 when playing against Kreoss is "Don't get within 20" of Kreoss if he hasn't popped his feat yet."


This is me realising that I have screwed it all up. :(

The Revenger runs up to get within 5" of Deneghra to overcome her Stealth ability. Here it comes... Kreoss moves gathers some focus from the Wrack (it blows up to little fanfare); pops his feat to knock every enemy model in his control area on it's ass. He then casts Anti-magic Pulse to take out the Death Rage and targets Dene with immolation a couple of times. That should have done it but K's dice betrayed him and Dene was left with 6 damage boxes left.


Not to worry there is still the Redeemer, unfortunately he can't get LOS to Dene because of the Necrovent so he has to settle for a nearby boneturky and hope for a good scatter.


Ahh, the betrayal of the dice... When you want to hit you miss, when you want to miss you hit. In a fit of competence the Redeemer hits the bone turkey and does enough damage to wreck it and kill the innocent little Skarlock who never hurt anybody.

But no lucky scatters onto Dene though...


Aggrivated by the still living (though barely) Deneghra the infantry and the Repenter move forward to try to plug the hole in the middle.


Cryx Turn 2

Now it's K's turn to sweat, he has blown his load and didn't kill Dene, and in order to do the assassination run he had to drop Lamentation.

Now we all know that you can't keep a good Warwitch down, so here's the skinny...

Deathjack gets his two free focus plus Deneghra gives him 3 more to make him truly scary. Dene keeps the remaining four.

Remember the Deathripper that ran the first turn, well he stands up and leaves combat with 2 TFG and once again K's dice betray him and they fail to hit. So the 'Ripper is now in play.

The Mechanithralls move to clog up any advances by the enemy just in the event that my evil plan fails.

Deneghra stands up, dusts herself off, and uses her feat to debuff (-2 to all stats) every enemy in her control area. She then channels a Crippling grasp through the 'Ripper and boosts to hit Kreoss and further debuff him.

Now it's time for the rubber to meet the road. Deathjack stands up moves to engage some stuff and casts Venom. Kreoss takes the full force of the spell in the face and takes a boosted damage roll that causes a bunch of damage.

So this is it... Deathjack has enough juice to cast another Venom, but he can't boost either to hit or to damage. Kreoss is hurt pretty bad and has -4 to Def and Arm. I roll the dice and there it is Kreoss goes down.

Game Over...



Final Thoughts

I thought K played an excellent game. He went for the kill wehn he saw that I had left Dene out of position. The only problem is that he had to choose between casting Lamentation or casting immolation a second time. The Lamentation probably would have saved him from dying but the second offensive spell should have killed Dene. What's a guy supposed to do?

I screwed up the first turn and got away with it. What can I say, just lucky I guess.

If anybody has any thoughts leave a comment and let me know how I could have done things better.


Note: My last turn I was so excited to be still alive that I totally forgot to take any photos during my activations. You'll just have to be happy with the final pic.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great battle report. Just goes to show how fast WM can play.

Anonymous said...

and the moral of the story is; never drop Lamentation, never unless you're 100% you got the caster kill and then maybe

oh, and Dene is dirty, very dirty indeed.