19.07.2010 Fantasiapelit Jyväskylä - Enter Skorne

I played my first two warmachine games with Skorne today.

Both were 25 point games and both had the same list:

Hexeris
- Bronzeback Titan
- Basilisk Drake
- Basilisk Krea

minimum unit of Praetorian Swordsmen + Unit Attachment
minimum unit of Paingiver Bloodhandlers

Bloodrunner Master Tormentor
Ancestral Guardian.

I was facing Protectorate of Menoth and if I remember right the list was:

Kreoss
- Revenger
- Repenter
- Crusader
- Dervish

minimum unit of Exemplar Errants

Paladin
Vassal of Menoth
Wracks

So, game 1:

I won the starting roll and got a pretty solid plan of giving the arc node spell to my bronzeback titan and vengeance to my swordsmen.

I was a bit worried because exemplar errants were not good meat for my feat because of their special rules. I needed to kill a living enemy model with my attack to gain control of the slain model and go whack things up. But errants have a special rule to prevent such a death and get someone else killed instead. Thus their own special rule kills their unit members and not my attacks, so no use for my feat other than maybe paladin and vassal. Oh yeah?

Ah well, anyway. After first round the exemplar errants were scared of my bloodrunner master tormentor and had moved to flank me, far away from the bloodrunner. Warjacks, however, had run full speed towards me. So I decided I'd charge the tormentor to intercept a bit those warjacks. I failed to hit.

Then I tried to shoot Oblitetarion (area effect 4" spell) against Crusader through my arc-noded bronzeback, trying to snipe the vassal off with boosted blast damage. Well, almost there, vassal was left with one damage point.

Protectorate player managed to kill my praetorian officer with errants, so no side step or minifeat for me any more. Also, Dervish and the arc node jack Revenger I had engaged with my bloodrunner solo killed off my poor little distraction.

Krea gave a bit of a bonus around in form of its animus, failing to do anything impressive. Well, then the protectorate played decided to keep a little distance, which was wrong thing to do.

On my next turn basilisk Drake advanced forward as much as it could and sprayed the crusader. Kreoss was standing right back. I did do some damage points to crusader, but the main scoring was 9 or 10 points to Kreoss with boosted hit and boosted damage roll.

Next turn was a bit... well, not the best point in Kreoss' career. He took all focus points from wracks. And he was standing right besides one. And the wrack rolled double sixes as damage. End of Kreoss.

Game 2:

I won starting roll again and started exactly same, except this time I changed my deployment a bit.

Bloodrunner got a charge off against exemplar errants this time, but it wasn't really her best shot. I was trying to destroy a wrack close by to make it explode and kill a paladin nearby, as well as trying to kill three errants. Well, I rolled the dice to hit the wrack and double ones they were. Later I found out that wrack are immobile, so I could have decided not to roll and hit automaticall and deal one point of damage to it automatically due to my rules, so I could've made it explode automatically... well, next time I'll be wiser! Moreover, I managed to hit only two of the errants.

I had lined up my swordsmen behind a linear obstacle to gain bonus versus errants' shooting. This left the swordsmen pretty vulnerable to repenter's flame thrower. I moved my bronzeback titan close by, however, thinking that if repenter got too close I'd counter charge it. Which I did.

Dervish ran to flank me, but other warjacks were doing about nothing, but they were in a difficult position to charge or do anything to them.

On my turn I feated though I knew it'd do almost nothing.

Well, I managed to kill one exemplar errant that was too far away to get killed by their own rules, so I got one attack out of my entire feat during two games... yay...

Then one of my side stepping swordsmen killed the wrack and this time the explosion killed the paladin as well as my swordman.

I sent my basilisk drake to distract dervish a bit. I hoped I'd hit the dervish with boosted attack roll but no. Then bronzeback thrashed repenter, though on the hindsigh I should have taken a free strike out of it and gone off to kill bigger targets.

Because on my opponents turn I lost both bronzeback and basilisk drake as Kreoss feated. There was a moment of excitement on my part though, as Kreoss moved too close to my bronzeback and I wanted to counter charge, but checking line of sight showed that actually my beast didn't see him. What a shame.

I don't remember from where Kreoss had taken six damage points. But anyway.

I didn't find reliable enough assassination points from my situation then, so I decided to get Hexeris to safety, trying to whack up whatever I could with my remaining forces. Well, I think I did take a shield off of the revenger and a few random damage points to crusader. And then I lost my basilisk Krea too and rest of my... well... everything and was left with only Hexeris with full fury and two praetorian swordsmen, one of which was a standard bearer.

I moved Hexeris as far as I could and tried to kill Kreoss off with two Soulfires. First one was all good, I hit without a boost and boosted damage, giving 6 points more to Kreoss. I was left with four fury then so I thought I'd boost the hit of my next spell. And I hit. I boosted the damage. Kreoss was left with 2 health (I don't remember damage roll but it was low and gave only I think two points in or something?) so that was it. End of Hexeris.