No bronzeback in the great pine woods of Kuhmo

Well, this comes a few days late, but it was last game of Warmachine for 2014.

And it was a 35 point game of Skorne vs Protectorate.

My list was:

Void Seer Mordikaar
- Archidon
- Rhinodon
- Basilisk Krea
- Cyclops Shaman

Minimum unit of Beast Handlers
Maximum unit of Praetorian Swordsmen + Unit Attachment
Aptimus Marketh
Void Spirit
Bloodrunner Master Tormentor

Opponent was playing:

High Exemplar Kreoss (umm... that's Rhupert)
- Crusader
- Reckoner
- Devout
- Reckoner (the handless jack)

Minimum unit of Choir of Menoth
Daughters of the Flame
Visgoth Rhoven & Honor Guard (Saxon Orrik + exemplar)
Paladin of the Order of the Wall
Vassal of Menoth
Hierophant (a zealot)

Scenario was Supply and Demand, and Skorne started game. There's a quite lot of proxy models so the pictures are rather a memory aid for me here.

First picture is from the end of Skorne turn 2, where I misjudged the distance for Rhinodon to charge Daughters of the Flame. Well, it's only purpose was to hopefully clump enemy models and fish in a heavy warjack or two. But I hoped I could have taken one or two Daughters to grave with it.

Well, Rhinodon succeeded in fishing out the Reckoner. But there I was, then... Reckoner mid-field, and no serious P+S to wreck it. Not that I'm trying to say here Rhinodon would've been serious wrecker... Oh dear, why do I even build any Skorne lists without my beloved Bronzeback?

Defender's Ward was on Daughters of Flame, which was highly annoying too, since Mordikaar doesn't have any tricks against crazy high DEF. Uh oh. Looked like my only chance here would be to get some kind of awkward assassination, and that's why I tried to protect my Archidon.

Even back-striking Praetorian Swordsmen (who materialised behind the Daughters) were not enough to inflict any real casualties. Oh, and the Void Spirit in the first picture had ran in middle of the Daughters. But there were so many commanders around that it wasn't even an effort for the Daughters to succeed in their command check. Oh well. Visgoth & Honor Guard made short work of the Void Spirit.

Next Kreoss used his feat but the results overall gave some hope. Mostly just Praetorians died, and nobody cares about Praetorians. Mordikaar the least.

I try to shake things up (pun intented?) and after two rounds of one-pointing Reckoner it started to show some signs of slowly going down. But the few Praetorians that Revive brought back didn't break anything important even during this turn, so I charged Cyclops Shaman in. The shaman broke Cortex. Perfect.

But then Kreoss started pushing aggressively into the control zone. He re-cast Defender's Ward on himself, and Mordikaar was easily under Lamentation effect, too.

Perhaps this was the position for my awkward assassination? Well, I wouldn't be able to wreck four warjacks and a warcaster with only Praetorian Swordsmen, so I had to try something desperate.

Archidon charged the Reckoner and tried to get a critical pitch and then throw Reckoner right into Kreoss. Had that succeeded I'd shoot him with Mordikaar's ranged weapon and cast two revives with 12 Fury and get two automatically hitting boosted P+S 12 combo strikes at him.

But there was no critical pitch, and I started hammering panic button and escaped with Mordikaar way outside both of Lamentation and the Kill Box. So Protectorate scored two scenario points, but I got to bring back three Praetorians instead and even have some Fury for transfers, and I need to learn to use actual dots instead of commas.

Well, there isn't much left to tell. Game continued for a few rounds, but there was no chance for Skorne this time. Eventually Protectorate won by scoring yet another two points from Mordikaar being out of Kill Box and then destroying the objective.