Thursday, December 22, 2011

The Smell of Skewered Fat

Yesterday I played a game of Warmachine, or should I say a Hordes game.

A friend who was traveling in India had a better hotel there with a decent internet connection, so we had arranged a game to be played on Vassal. We had agreed on a 35 pointer. My list was:

Dominar Rasheth
- Cyclops Shaman
- Basilisk Drake
- Basilisk Krea
- Bronzeback Titan

Minimum unit of Beast Handlers
Maximum unit of Praetorian Swordsmen + Unit Attachment
Flayer Cannon
Extoller Soulward
Bloodrunner Master Tormentor
Feralgeist

And opponent had:

Epic Vayl
- 2x Angelius
- Typhon

Minimum unit of Raptors
Annyssa Ryvaal
Shepherd

Opponent won the starting roll. Again.

First picture is taken from the end of my first turn, and you can see a little bit of the nasty map layout there. It was somewhat difficult to navigate Skorne troops with a river in the middle, and it didn't help too much that I accidentally mixed up Krea and Drake when I was deploying.

But anyway.

You can see a horrible line-up in that picture too. But, let me ask people a question: How much it takes to kill a Bronzeback in one turn from full health? Here's what:

- Epic Vayl's feat (a damage boosted pow 15 Obliteration)
- Two P+S 14 Armor Piercing attacks with boosted damage rolls.
- 3x Typhon's pow 14 sprays.

But. Yeah. Though it looks impressive that one beast of yours took the combined efforts of a warlock and three heavy warbeasts, it still sucks to lose your Bronzeback at the start of round 2. To be honest, some of opponents damage rolls, in particular the armor piercing ones, rolled numbers that even a single dice could beat or at least tie.

So after opponent had removed too many points from my army list, it was my time to give some payback.

You can see the positioning of opponents beasts.

My plan was that if boosted, aimed hit from Krea's paralysis would hit the Angelius near her, Rasheth would use his feat.

Obviously Krea missed. So I decided to just try to destroy Typhon instead.

So, what it takes to kill Typhon in one round from full health with Admonition on? It takes:

- Blood Mark from Rasheth (bringing Typhon down to arm 15)
- d3 flayer cannon shots (rolled 1)
- Pow 14 spray from Drake with damage boost
- Pow 12 Evil Eye from Cyclops Shaman with damage boost
- Pow 17 shot from Extoller with damage boost

... + something else.

The beast was left alive with one hit point. After Admonition triggered, Typhon moved closer to my lines. I saw a distant possibility in getting one Beast Handler into melee with Typhon and killing it in style with anatomical precision.

But it was not to be, the beast was way over walking distance.

One beast handler went and put a fury point on Angelius. Rasheth had cast Carnivore on beast handlers just for this purpose.

Well, because of the invincible Typhon, next turn was a slaughterfest.

Typhon killed Basilisk Drake, I guess they had a spitting contest. Shepherd had healed Typhon for 3, meaning it had 4 hit points left.

Now, Vayl throws oraculi on it, dealing 3 points of damage. Typhon was back to one health. Started to look like a game, where every model was hanging at one hit point at one point or another. Bronzeback was sitting at one wound left too before last spray from Typhon nailed it.

Angeliuses did some Refuge -shenanigans again (after just one game I find that spell really disturbing in the hands of Legion of Everblight). Extoller Soulward was a hero, because it survived three punches from Angelius (two were unboosted though and resulted in misses). Extoller was left alive with one hit point. Praetorians were all but destroyed by Obliteration from Vayl and the bows of blighted nyss.

Now, my turn was about the only turn I could try and win.

Praetorians ran into position to be used as arc nodes. Bloodrunner Master Tormentor happened to survive a free strike and tried to run far enough to get a back strike bonus against Vayl. However, she was left way out of Rasheth control area.

Rasheth used his feat and tried to murder Vayl with Breath of Corruption. Damage roll was 1, 1, 4. Nothing I shouldn't have expected already. But I can't blame everything on dice - opponent didn't roll much better than I did, but the armor piercing hits from angeliuses do quite a lot of damage even with poor rolls.

But, at least the beast handlers got his trophy and some title of being awesome. Typhon had one wound left and he hit the beast. Down with the Typhon! With anatomical precision!

Extoller continued to butcher the beasts, her stone is actually pretty potent weapon. Shame that the damage rolls were never too high.

Anyway, time for the last picture.

Extoller tried her best throughout the game, challenged the most fearsome of beasts, dealt damage to every one of them (heh, pun... look, pun!) and didn't die.

Finally Rasheth died to armor piercing hit from angelius. The hit dealt 16 points in, when Rasheth had only 14 left. Damage had come from a pathetic shoot from Annyssa and through cutting his own wrists... or logs... How did he ever even find an artery remains a mystery.

Hero of the match title goes to Extoller Soulward, though the one beast handler would be a good candidate too.

No comments:

Post a Comment