Lamenting Mouths of Hell

Played a game of Warmachine today.

I played Circle and opponent had Protectorate, and our list were:

Cassius the Oathkeeper
- Woldwatcher
- Woldguardian
- Gnarlhorn Satyr

Maximum unit of Wolves of Orboros + Unit Attachment
Druids of Orboros
Swamp Gobbers Bellows Crew
Lanyssa Ryssyll
War Wolf

And the redneck tree was facing:

High Exemplar Kreoss
- Revenger
- Repenter
- Dervish
- Crusader

Minimum unit of Exemplar Errants
Minimum unit of Deliverers
Vassal of Menoth
2x Paladins
Vilmon

We played straightforward caster kill in a post-apocalyptic, crowded shanty town of Nuka.

Opponent won the starting roll. No forests was bad, but on the other hand the map had plenty of cover against shooting.

First picture is taken from the end of my first turn. Opponent had cast Lamentation on his turn. I had little choice except either to make a huge blob out of my troops or split my forces into dozen tiny pieces.

I chose to suffer the hail of deliverer rockets, which did little during second round.

However, errants gunned down the officer of Wolves of Orboros with a lucky shot.

On my second turn Wurmwood had collected four souls from my casualties and I was wondering what I should do with my short ranged spells and Kreoss being so close.

Druids of Orboros activated (who kept Counter Magic on them during whole game) and one of them scored a critical hit on Dervish, knocking it down and pulling it to just a wonderful spot to place a Hellmouth on. I think that sealed the deal of Cassius casting a Hellmouth on the small gathering. That's 8 freaking Fury right there. Tree Daddy pays, however.

Damage rolls weren't exactly impressive, as Kreoss had camped around five focus. Errants obviously didn't camp any focus, but still Hellmouth didn't kill but one of them. Dervish at least took some damage. Earlier it had taken some from an elemental strike launched by Woldwatcher (and damn, I'm starting to like that little beastie!)

Also, Cassius had to use his feat or be dead.

Protectorate troops decided to fall back a little, which in a way bought me a turn. Only in way, because Kreoss still hadn't used his feat.

Well, first Woldwatcher advanced into the ruin in the center of the board and shoots Dervish and rolls an absurdly high damage. Dervish is wrecked.

No models had died in while, so Wurmwood didn't offer any souls for Cassius. But Cassius really wanted to shoot yet another Hellmouth.

Wolves of Orboros charged around and killed one exemplar errant. One wolf ran so I would catch all three errants under Hellmouth, and Cassius could throw the spell from outside of Kreoss' control area.

A good plan, but it didn't work out all that well.

First, only two errants actually fell under the template even after moving them closer. Then Woldwatcher happened to be within 3" of the target wolf.

Effects of 2nd Hellmouth: 2 points of damage to Woldwatcher and dragging it to Crusader's charge range, one dead Wolf of Orboros and one dead Exemplar Errant (mouths teeth didn't bite through the other errant's armor... Their feet are well protected!)

Well, on opponents turn Crusader did beat the... umm... mold out of Woldwatcher? despite bad dice rolls. Oh, and Kreoss used his feat too just before that.

Wolves of Orboros, as to be expected, were almost wiped away. Only one Wolf was standing in middle of opposing army, weeping in fear after failing a command check.

Flanking semi-unit of Paladins launched a cruise missile known as "Vilmon" at my front lines to make it difficult for Gnarlhorn to get a charge lane right.

Couple of druids were butchered too.

Things were looking really bad for me. All of my army was knocked down, except my two remaining beasts. Gnarlhorn had one fury from shake off, so it wasn't fully effective either.

Something unexpected happened then, however.

As Crusader was quite in the middle of everything and Vilmon was blocking Gnarlhorn's charge lane I tried to do following:

Cast Hellmouth (cost: 8 fury + hit roll boost...) on Crusader, dragging Vilmon, one lonely exemplar errant to the AoE and hope for lucky rolls to cripple Crusader enough with the satyr.

However, what did happen was all of the above, except Kreoss himself was just within 3" of Crusader too.

Satyr did what it did best and performed a grand slam on Crusader, knocking Kreoss down in the process and following up into base contact with the enemy warcaster.

Kreoss had taken about 5 points of damage by then (one from a boosted Hellmouth this turn and rest from collateral damage of the satyr's slam).

I had boosted attack roll, because if it wouldn't succeed, ah, well, there would be a goat meat barbeque next turn. That meant I could buy two more pow 15 attacks against Kreoss.

Those two attacks were enough to finish the high exemplar.

So.

Without that quarter of an inch in my favor game would have probably looked a lot different. Also, it's interesting how often Gnarlhorn gets the caster kill. I wonder if I should start doing statistics on which model does caster kills most often...

Anyway, it was refreshing to play on such a board that consisted mainly of obstructions.