"I always thought that Oathkeeper was useless. Fetch me a new one!"

Played my first game with Cassius the Oathkeeper & Wurmwood, Tree of Fate.

It was a 35 point game and I was facing Khador under the command of Strakhov.

We took the time and toil to try a little different format of giving out the army lists other than boring listing.

So, opponent won the starting roll.

I really want to start doing statistics about my starting roll win/loss ratio, by the way!

Anyway, Strakhov cast Occultation on Great Bears and Superiority on Behemoth.

Not much else to tell about the end of round 1. I was feeling really cool, poseful and filmatic so I brough Lord of the Feast to the center hill of the board. Also, I was paranoidly fearful of Winterguard, again. So I did everything I could to not give them the chance of wiping out everything I got, again.

Luckily they didn't wipe out, well, almost anything.

They moved forward and killed my hidden War Wolf. Three walked as far as they could and tried to shoot my posing Lord who only laughed at the puny attempts of mortals to harm his majesty.

All the warjacks neared me as did the Great Bears. Looked like Strakhov was setting up a feat run. But anyway... picture:

That turn I had great plans and good scheming and all kinds of nice things going on but, well, I did mess up.

First Megalith advanced and shot the Winterguard standard bearer with a boosted Stranglehold. Then it put up its animus.

Then Lord of the Feast charged the three Winterguard who had been brave enough to defy him. All were slaughtered. Then Lord tried to shoot his raven to Winterguard officer but was about 1/4 of an inch away. Too bad. I would have been some lovely carnage up there...

Well, that was four souls at Wurmwood. Then Wolves of Orboros charged some peeking Winterguard and killed two of them that called for Massive Casualties test. They had already lost their flag so they couldn't re-roll and... double sixes. A failed command check. That was a pleasure.

Then Woldwyrd moved a little bit and here was my mistake number 1. It took two damage roll boosted shots at Behemoth and gave about 8 or 10 points of damage in with those two hits. The mistake here comes from the fact that I had now two warbeasts at maxed out Fury, meaning I couldn't transfer damage away.

Then I activated Cassius. He took all the souls away from Wurmwood and moved forward. He shot a Stranglehold at Behemoth and managed to strangle it. Then I tried to shoot another at Devastator, fully knowing it was a long shot... And Cassius didn't damage it.

Left with three fury at that point Cassius teleported away. And here came mistake number 2. I didn't use my feat.

I thought that in any case Strakhov's feat turn would be pretty lame when Behemoth was strangled and was thinking if I used my feat next turn it would annoy the heck out of Khadorans. Also supporting this way of thinking was the fact that Winterguard were running away already.

Mistake number 3 wasn't really mistake. It was lack of experience. I had never thought Bulldoze worked on charges... I was sure that just bringing my ravagers in as a meat wall was enough of a protection... so here's the final picture:

So, Strakhov cast Overrun on himself, charged one of the ravagers I had brought up and triggered Overrun. Devastator jogged forward.

Then Strakhov used feat.

Great Bears charged next and killed up some stuff. Widowmakers and one stray Behemoth bombard shot had done two points of damage to Cassius already.

Then Devastator launched in and it pushed the blocking.

Umm.

It pushed the roadblocking Sentry Stone away. Now as I'm writing this I remembered that you cannot actually move Immobile models. My bad and it cost me the game.

Because then came in the Rain of Death. Well, damage roll was a bit botched and dealt "only" 11 points in.

Then Devastator had 2 focus. It bought another attack and boosted the attack roll. Needed 10 to hit. Succeeded. Then it needed 7 to kill. Rolled 9.

I guess this game had quite a few lessons for me, few of the most basic ones to time your feat correctly and maybe even actually reading the rules of your own models.

Anyway, after this experience I'm liking Wurmwood & Cassius already.