Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Venethrax Hard Mode

Week ago on Monday I played a 50 point game of Warmachine. It was against the same opponent as last game, and the same list also. I used a few Specialists because Nyss Hunters had been so useless last time I tried them versus full stealth army...

So. My list was:

Lich Lord Venethrax
- Seether

Minimum unit of Bane Thralls + Unit Attachment
Maximum unit of Bile Thralls
Maximum unit of Satyxis Raiders + Sea Witch
Withershadow Combine
Madelyn Corbeau
Ogrun Bokur (Venethrax client)
Wrong Eye & Snapjaw

Objective: Effigy of Valor

I was against:

Ravens of War tier 4
Lylyth, Shadow of Everblight
- Naga Nightlurker
- 3x Ravagore

Strider Rangers

Strider Rangers + free Unit Attachment
4x Strider Deathstalker

Objective: Effigy of Valor

Scenario was Two Fronts. I'm slowly getting tired of Two Fronts. Anyway, Cryx started game. I decided to run forward as fast as possible with just about everything I got. First picture is from the end of Legion turn 1, and see what's missing? Everything!

Well. At least my offence made Lylyth to use her feat right there on turn 1. I had been thinking if I should use Venethrax's feat also, but I had not been actually planning around on Lylyth using her feat so early.

I guess it could have been worse. The feat took off only, what... almost twenty points from my roster?

Turn 2 I continue to push stuff down opponents throat and Venethrax uses his feat. He makes a nice smoke screen for him from two Bile Thralls. I was aiming for some kind of scenario game here. Last turn Ravagores had been making some heavy shooting against Snapjaw and destroyed his Spirit. My grand plan of getting both under Snapjaw's animus was foiled by me forgetting to heal Snapjaw first. I was certain that it was over now for Snapjaw...

One Ravagore frenzies, but its anger is sated by eating just one Strider. Actually, make that two, since I see only five Striders on the left at the end of Legion turn, but there were six of them at the end of my turn.

Unpainted Striders on left tried to kill all Bile Thralls. Deathstalkers were busy with wiping off the remaining Satyxis. For no good reason two Bile Thralls survived the enemy turn, which was kind of miraculous.

The unexpected frenzy of two Legion warbeasts made it look like it's a possibility for Snapjaw to survive. Naga Nightlurker tries to land a final shot on the heavy alligator, but fails to kill. Last Ravagore that did not frenzy tried to shoot Snapjaw dead, but missed its shot. And obviously the template landed almost directly on Wrong Eye. "Yay" for Snapjaw's animus.

Now. Things did not look too bad at all when my turn 3 started. Well, okay, maybe it looked bad but I still had a game worth playing.

Two Bile Thrall purges killed three Striders and three Strider Deathstalkers. Well, one of the Deathstalkers was reduced to one hit box remaining and corrosion, so technically it was Venethrax's caustic presence that killed the third Deathstalker.

Bane Thralls and Snapjaw killed enemy objective and Naga Nightlurker. This time only Snapjaw had its animus on and Wrong Eye didn't, since he had to heal Snapjaw for two. I wanted to have one Fury for damage transfer, so he healed for three instead. I don't have a good explanation why I rather had damage transfer available, since only a couple of Striders could have charged Wrong Eye. It's a shame I couldn't figure out any way to kill the Strider musician on enemy zone... if I could have killed it, scenario would have went 3-0 for Cryx in one turn. Now it was only 2-0.

I didn't take any pictures (minus the very last one) after this, but the game went so that scenario was 2-1 for Cryx, 3-1 for Cryx, 3-2 for Cryx, 4-2 for Cryx and then suddenly opponent grabbed point situation to 4-4 stall. My scenario game had looked a real possibility and I didn't think twice about the chance that opponent might get to even scores. I completely forgot to bring any kind of contestant near to enemy zone, so we would score to 5-5 on my turn and then opponent essentially just needed to end his turn to go to 5-6, or the game would end on my turn to 4-5 for Legion if I didn't kill the Ravagore who was contesting.

There was no other option than to attack Lylyth and kill her with two Hellfires. Since she had three Fury for transfers, that would have required quite a few sixes on the damage rolls. There were no sixes.

Oh, and about the title.

Since his release back in 2010 I've played Dragon Slayer completely wrong. For some reason I had been thinking that you wouldn't be able to go over you Focus via focus points gained from Dragon Slayer. At some point during this game I re-read Dragon Slayer and much to my amazement I didn't find anything that would deny focus points over seven. I thought I must have missed something, forgotten perhaps. After the game I started to do some research on the subject, and turns out that there is indeed no limit.

During my research I also found out that Dragon Slayer is not restricted to melee attacks only. If Venethrax kills a warbeast with Hellfire or Blood Rain, those fury points get stolen also. Heck... Dragon Slayer doesn't even specify warbeasts as the targets you can get focus points from. Hello there Agonizers and Forsakens. And Krielstones and Sentry Stones too, though I doubt latter two will ever end up as focus for Venethrax.

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