Ambush That Didn't Last For Long

A little bit over a week ago I played this game of Warmachine.

My list was (25 points):

Kaya the Wildborne
- Gnarlhorn Satyr
- Scarsfell Griffon
- Argus
- Gorax

Maximum unit of Bog Trog Ambushers
Druid Wilder

Since I had finally painted a full unit of Bog Trogs I wanted to use them right away. Because it was a 25 point game, many things had to be sacrificed... I was quite worried of playing Kaya with only one heavy warbeast.

My worries didn't ease at all when I saw opposing list:

Lieutenant Caine
- Avenger

Maximum unit of Greygore Boomhowler's & Co + Jonas Murdoch
Black 13th
Journeyman Warcaster
Ragman
Squire

I felt I had way too few attacks to deal with such a horde. And most of them had 4+ tough roll.

Scenario was Supply and Demand, and Circle got to start the game.

First picture is taken from the end... no, at the start of Circle's second turn. Because there are Bog Trogs on the board. And this is the last picture where you see them... but now I digress.

Opponent was a bit unfamiliar with the Ambush rule, so I got to pull off a nice charge against Black 13th and various support solos. I would've been able to get a few of them to attack Caine himself, but I didn't think they would actually kill him. So I focused on the support. Two of the Black 13th died, and Squire too.

Next turn Caine stands still for aiming bonus and uses his feat. Not even a single Bog Trog survives. So, pointwise thinking, my 8 points didn't even manage to kill 6 points off the board, so now I was outnumbered even worse. However, their sorry little ambush stalled Cygnarans a little, and there's no point value for that.

Avenger misses Gnarlhorn Satyr, which was quite a relief. The goat counter-slammed one advancing trollkin dead, and was shot for something like 33% of it's health boxes just by Boomhowler's alone.

So next turn I was forced to a piece trade. Or maybe I wasn't, but I sure felt like it!

Druid Wilder cast Primal on Gnarlhorn, who then charges Avenger. I was planning on wrecking Avenger and then taking a couple of swings the the objective. But as Gnarlhorn has a long history of failing at everything it tries to do, it managed to miss twice against def 12 target. With MAT 10, yes.

Well, on the plus side, one really high damage roll made up for those missed attacks and it did got to buy one attack against objective. But one wouldn't be enough to destroy it. Four points in.

Griffon had flown through the forest and killed the last remaining Black 13th and started to claw at a trollkin, who passed two tough rolls. Well, that doesn't matter, since I can still come with the Argus to finish off that trollkin. And either it passes all five tough rolls, or then Argus couldn't get through the trollkins armor. I don't remember exactly how it went, but the end result was that the trollkin was still standing (well, lying) and my beasts had forced themselves at least five times.

Griffon was teleported away with Spirit Door (Spirited Away?) and I noticed I was already dominating the control zone, so thing weren't entirely bad though they were not that good either.

Caine casts the spell that slammed its target on Gnarlhorn, but he rolls high enough to kill the wounded goat.

Otherwise the turn was quite merciful, since Argus returned the favor on the invulnerable trollkin. Def 15 made wonders for me. There is a small "glitch" in the picture, however. The objective is actually the wreck marker of Avenger and vice versa. We switched their positions, because one of the trollkins was impossible to balance on a heavy warjack model.

When I'm looking at the last picture, I got the feeling that there must be one round missing. I can't, however, remember how things went exactly. I remember charging objective with Gorax and Wilder but not managing to destroy it, but finally shooting it down with a Spirit Fang. What I don't get is how I managed to not kill those two trollkins that were contesting control zone... Perhaps one of them just kept on getting the 4+ on tough rolls?

Well, I guess the details are not that important here, because in the end it turned out to be a clear scenario victory for Circle. When I come to think of it, most of my victories with pKaya have come from scenarios. Again in this game without the scenario it would have been a bittle struggle of attrition.

Even when opponent had only Caine, three Boomhowlers, Ragman and Junior Warcaster for him, they would have been more than a match for Kaya and two light warbeasts.