Dwarf tossing and clown tossing

Last Friday I played two Mordheim games. Both were two player games, but they were against different opponents.

First game was Skirmish scenario against a Dwarf warband. Jester hero with old battle wound didn't show up, of course.

Since I was rather afraid of dwarven shooting skills, I tried to skulk behind buildings for many, many turns before finally engaging the beardfolk. About this time I also finally realised that there were actually only two dwarves with ranged weapons... oh well.

Once the dwarf crossbowman on the second story of their building shot a nurgling knocked down. That was all action we had until the set-up in last picture. Carnival had to expose itself to dwarven warband after all.

Carnival Master miraculously sniped off the dwarven crossbowman turn after. All the demons charge some dwarves, and some heroes attempt that, too. Only flail wielding strongman gets into melee, though - but it's against a knocked down dwarf.

I don't remember if demons killed any beards, but two casualties were already enough to cause dwarves to voluntarily rout.

That was a bit unexpected, though I guess that dwarves wanted some wyrdstones and didn't want to risk losing heroes.

In the aftermath my dreams for this particular warband finally became true - I had the gold to buy the Plague Cart!

Which made me wonder a bit about if it was good choice. Was 120 gold pieces actually worth +2 warband size, more reliable demons and only one STR3, WS3 attack? But damn it. I got the cart!

But back then when we were playing I didn't notice one tiny little detail about the cart.

That STR3, WS3 attack causes Nurgle's Rot.

Anyway. Only ringmaster and henchmen group got advancements, which were +1 str to ringmaster and +1 BS to brethren.

Game 2:

Second game was against the dreaded Possessed warband. As I had missed one game night already, the enemy warband rating was surely over 9000.

Well, I exaggerate slightly, but I did get a little underdog bonus.

Scenario also was Defend the Find, which was rather absurdly designed.

Defender is the player who has least models, and he must defend a building in the middle. If at the end of any defender's turn there is more standing attackers within 6" of the building, defender loses and game ends.

So... game ended right there on the second turn as a victory for the Possessed.

And every standing hero within 6" of the building (from either side) gets a wyrdstone shard for free. Heh, though now I check the scenario there was this slight caveat... "maximum of 3 per warband". I guess I erase the two shards I didn't actually gain... Sob. Perhaps I should notice the Possessed player, too, who got four extra shards, I think.

Anyway, in the only picture I got time to take from the game shows my beautifully painted Plague Cart that I finished there right between the games.

Har har.

Only one hero fell during game and was robbed as a consequence.

And thanks to +1 underdog bonus every hero got advances.

Ringmaster got a skill, and he chose Quick Shot. He also bought Lucky Charm.

Flail strongman got Leadership. What a cruel joke that my "immune to fear" strongman has higher leadership than ringmaster himself! Anyway, he also got a Lucky Charm.

Two-handed weapon strongman got a skill and chose "Strike to Injury". I'm tired of only stunning people. He also got a Lucky Charm.

Jester tainted one got a skill and chose "Step Aside" and bought Rope & Hook, Lucky Charm and Toughened Leathers.

Horned skeleton head tainted one got an additional Wound. He was the one who got robbed, so he bought his gear back, plus Lucky Charm, Rope & Hook and Toughened Leathers.

Brethren hero got two advances and got Ballistic Skill and Leadership.

I also bought two additional nurglings.

And now I just need to construct a plague cart before we play next time...

Coupon update

Another one I seem to have forgotten to write up here.

Since I had earlier filled the board game discount voucher with stamps, I had to use it right away.

I got Talisman: Deep Realms with the coupon. Whee.

Gaining a rep'

Last Thursday saw an additional game in Deadzone campaign.

There was supposed to be zombies in this scenario, which made my mission of "Close In" (kill + infiltrate) a bit worrisome. However... at least it had the kill condition. Unlike all of my earlier missions.

My strike team was:

Stage 3a General Ethereal

3x Stage 3a trooper mutons
1x Plague celatid swarm
1x Sectopod Strider

Enforcers had something like:

Enforcer Sergeant
Assault Enforcer
Missile Launcher Enforcer
Thermal Rifle Enforcer
+ troops

And their mission was "Zulu" (control Z objective and kill stuff)

Plague started game, which isn't actually very nice thing to do if there are a lot of zombies around. My initial plans had been to make two bottlenecks for zombies to come and slaughter my poor aliens - one being Strider itself, and another a group of Plague Swarm and two Stage 3a mutons. I guess it worked well enough, though for some reason Strider seemed to fail horribly in melee. At least it didn't take damage either. Anyway, because of this, the pace I managed to clear the zombies was a bit problematic.

One of the zombies that had deployed on a roof made a suicidal dive at Strider. I guess falling from heights is more lethal than a dedicated 28 point melee monster:

Anyway, the interaction between actual strike teams was almost nonexistent for a few first rounds. Enforcers and their jump packs proved to be quite nice zombie-dodgers, and soon enough all enforcers had found their way into inaccessible (at least for the zombies) locations. Most of their activations went into gunning down the endless hordes of zombies, and enough of them seemed to spawn at a constant basis that enforcers were afraid to come down.

At this point I still had faith in the melee potential of Plague forces despite the flawed (in so many ways...) Strider.

Downfall began when zombies rolled 4+ successes with three dice and a nasty group assailed my strike team. Also an outbreak of atrocious combat dice rolls on my part killed half of my team before just about all zombies had been decimated. It was perhaps the start of round 3 when I got only strider, a stage 3 trooper and a plague swarm at my disposal. I didn't realize it then, but now that I'm writing this I lost the mission right here. Even if I killed every six Enforcers and infiltrated my remaining three models, I'd gain only 9 victory points.

Enforcers had, I think, suffered an injury on one of their models.

Even if I didn't realize I had already lost, I had given up winning the game. My desperate plan to get at least some reputation out of all this was to go on a killing spree with plague swarm and hopefully infiltrate with strider and stage 3a trooper.

Obviously everything failed here, too. Plague Swarm did manage to kill missile launcher enforcer, but that was it. No killing spree for it. But it was my first reputation in the whole damn campaign! Truly paid for in blood and tears. Or whatever it is the plague bleeds and cries.

Plague Swarm was shot to pieces, but since it had injured another enforcer before it went down, I succumbed to the fallacy of exchanging fire with enforcers. And I admit it's really tough for me to give up once I make my mind up on something. And I had determined to kill that one enforcer. I believe the Strider tried to shoot him down with flamethrower for three full rounds, and stage 3a muton found a grenade that was put to use. But no. Once the Enforcer was set on fire, though.

Too late I gave up my plans, and it's quite possible I still would have continued to shoot fire on top of the green building if it was not for enforcer with thermal rifle who with just one bullet caused three wounds to my strider.

But just as I was about to start full, unorganised and cowardly rout, random zombies popped up nearby and tore strider to pieces. Last remaining stage 3a trooper had no other options than to charge the two culprits, but I think you can guess the sorry end result:

Five dead plague models by zombies. One dead plague model killed by enforcers.

One dead enforcer killed by plague.

Uh oh. When you put it like that, the game looks much more one-sided than it was. If it wasn't for a few unlucky combats, I believe I'd have had a decent chance of getting at least a bit better result. Enforcers were in difficult positions, sure, but they were just stuck there. Finding the "zulu" objective would have been very difficult for them.

Also, the plague swarm did have decent chances for slaughtering at least one additional enforcer, and with some luck it might even have eaten three full enforcers in one round.

But I had gained my very first reputation. Yay! Last remaining seven missions have to go really well if I'm going to win this campaign. But that reputation was rather costly.

I started rolling for injuries and experiences and such. Ethereal General didn't suffer anything. One Stage 3a muton died entirely, and another lost a point of shooting skill. Last muton soldier lost a point of fighting skill, but rolled a point of fighting skill for rank advance.

Plague Swarm lost a point of survival, and gained a veteran die.

And about the Sectopod Strider... let's not talk about the Sectopod Strider. In fact... let's never talk about it again at least during this campaign - unless I somehow manage to collect twenty eight points of reputation to buy a new one.

The woe that is my aliens.

Last ditching

I think I'm writing these two games into same post to gt them off of my chest. And they do share a common theme.

First game was last Friday against Cygnar.

We were playing at my place, so packing and transporting Kraken didn't seem that intimidating, so Kraken it was, then.

Game was again 42 point size, and my list was:

Witch Coven of Garlghast
- Kraken
- 2x Nightwretch
- Defiler

Minimum unit of Bile Thralls
2x Necrotech & scrap thrall
Skarlock
Warwitch Siren
Gorman di Wulfe
Ragman

Objective: Fuel depot

Opponent had:

Epic Caine
- Ol' Rowdy

Arcane Tempest Gun Mage Pistoleers + Officer

Rangers
Maximum unit of Greygore Boomhowler's & Co
Aiyana & Holt
Squire
Professor Pendrake
Gorman di Wulf
Taryn di la Rovissi
Reinholdt

Objective: Bunker

Scenario was Incoming, and Cryx started game. Damn it looked bad from the get-go. I didn't seem to have enough infantry removal tools available. Well, a minimum unit of Bile Thralls, sure... but even with Occultation on them Cygnar might just shoot them off.

Caine has cast True Sight on himself, and continued to upkeep it... I've heard Caine2 is quite good at delivering a ranged attack assassination against formidable warcasters. And my warcaster had Def 16, Arm 12 with eight boxes.

Anyway, Caine is the white figure in the pictures. First picture is from the end of Cygnar turn 1.

Cryx turn 2 Witch Coven obviously used their feat, dropping Line of Sight down to 5" for enemy models. Mostly things on my part were just positioning, though I did try to snipe Eiryss dead with a spray from Defiler. That didn't turn out so fine.

Cygnar continues to press forward aggressively. Rangers shot half of the Bile Thralls dead, and Caine shoots Defiler a bit before he Gatecrashes away. Afterwards Ol' Rowdy comes and finishes the job.

Turn 3 I boasted about making assassination with charging Kraken against focusless (or perhaps there was one focus boosting power field?).

This was achieved by getting rid of rangers and trollkins that were blocking route to Caine. Rolls were quite nice, and by that I mean that attack and damage rolls were enough to kill arm 11-16 single wound models. Usually at least one model is left alive whose removal becomes a real pain.

Anyway. Everything went perfectly and I only had to cast Ghost Walk and Infernal Machine on Kraken and charge Caine and kill him with a single attack. Fuel depot objective even gave Kraken free charges. So, Caine was splattered all over the walls and ... wait a minute.

Out of two tries Kraken failed both attempts to land a hit on Caine, who was behind a wall, effectively making him Def 19 in melee. Though Infernal Machine of course upped Kraken's MAT to 8, too, so it needed 11+ to hit. When both boosted initial attacks failed, Kraken bought one last attack and declared it on Victor Pendrake. Damn I'd be taking at least something with me! Alas... that was a miss, too.

So I had to revert to my original plan. Problem was that I did not have any original plan, so Warwitch Siren power boosted an arc node, who ran as near to Caine as I dared... getting within 5" of Eiryss would have caused some problems yet again.

Last activating witch coven member shoots one fully boosted Stygian Abyss on Caine and deals excessive damage, but doesn't cause critical effect. Now looking back again, obviously I should have done this spell slinging first, because if Stygian would have caused Shadow Bind on Caine, Kraken would then need only 8+ to hit.

And then I prepare for the worst.

Caine shoots Kraken off board, and even has some focus to spare. It did take the feat away, though. But considering that I had killed only some rangers and a couple of trollkins, the situation looked grim. It looked doubly grim when the Greygore grunts tore down arc node from my last remaining bonejack.

Turn 4 I come up with an awkward assassination attempt, which was rather suicidal. Selene and Morgaen ran as fast as they can, and Egregore floats right behind them. Hellaena advances and starts flinging Stygian Abyss at Caine's general direction. I had placed the other witches poorly - Morgaen could not see Selene, so perfect conjunction was broken.

Stygian Abyss hits, though - and this time with critical Shadow Bind. Not that it mattered much, I had all the focus still available for a damage boost, and I think I needed 6+ from three dice to kill Caine.

I roll 5.

Well, Coven did have focus for one more Stygian Abyss with attack boost, but not damage boost. At first Caine was essentially Def 21 versus shooting, as he was behind a wall. Second Stygian Abyss hit its target, again with a critical effect. Shame they don't stack.

I'm not sure if Caine had one focus or no focus at all. If he had, double ones would have saved him. If not, even double ones would kill. So it was game over, and it came to very last attack I was able to make that turn. Could have easily failed.




Game 2:

Right next day on Saturday I played another game with 35 points.

I continued to stack games for Mordikaar, but having learn from earlier experiences you simply don't make a list for Skorne and/or Mordikaar without Bronzeback plus a unit of Cetrati.

So this was what I came up with:

Void Seer Mordikaar
- Bronzeback Titan
- Basilisk Krea
- Basilisk Drake

Minimum unit of Cataphract Cetrati
Minimum unit of Beast Handlers
Maximum unit of Praetorian Swordsmen + Unit Attachment
Swamp Gobbers... sad, sad swamp gobbers...
Aptimus Marketh

Opponent had:

Butcher Unleashed!

- Marauder

Doom Reavers
Maximum unit of Iron Fang Pikemen + Unit Attachment
Minimum unit of Iron Fang Uhlans
Widowmakers
Iron Fang Kovnik
War Dog
+ two mystery points that, after consulting my opponent posthumously, were found to having been spent on Gorman di Wulfe, who never showed up in the actual battle.

There was no scenario, except for slightly modified old school Killbox (warcaster/warlock completely within 14" of table edge wins the game for opponent)

I actually almost forgot to take any pictures and first one if from the end of Skorne turn 2.

What has happened so far is that Iron Fang Uhlans with Silence of Death have knocked off Bronzeback's spirit branch. Ouch. And, funnily enough, since I had mentally flagged Bronzeback as useless for a round, I forgot to activate it completely... sigh. Of course it could have backed off a little, as Uhlans have Reach only during charge attacks.

The tragedy of Swamp Gobbers started this turn. As a preface to the story, Doom Reavers mostly just ran to engage my left flank. On my turn 2 Basilisk Drake and Cetrati kill all but one Doom Reaver. Mordikaar advances a little, away from an incoming platoon of Iron Fangs. Since he has a ranged attack I think "why not?" and try to blast the last remaining Doom Reaver. I boost attack roll just in case... and I hear that Doom Reaver has a Def 17. What?? How? He's in melee. I was sitting on a chair so that the forest blocked my view to the tiny gobbers... They were, sadly, in melee with that last Reaver. Attack roll is high enough to hit and POW is enough to kill the reaver, but one of the gobbers takes blast damage - and it's a kill. And the lone gobber fails his massive casualties test... So much for gaining additional kill count for them.

Praetorian Swordsmen (who have Hollow) were doing automatic damage points with their mini-feat to Uhlans and even the Marauder. However, only one Uhlan dies.

Turn 3 Iron Fang Pikemen charge and use their own mini-feat. One of them triggers counter charge from Bronzeback, which was its only hitting attack during whole game. Otherwise Pikemen only kill only one Cetrati. Butcher and Widowmakers take a heavy toll on Praetorian Swordsmen, which is fine by me. What's not so cool is that Iron Fang Uhlans manage to deal one hit (no damage) to Bronzeback Titan, denying the heal of spirit branch for yet another round!

On my turn every damn attack by Bronzeback is a miss.

I'm obsessed in getting the Uhlan killed. In hindsight it was probably for the best that it took Aptimus Marketh to do that. Otherwise I could have attempted something as crazy as casting Ghost Walk on Mordikaar, and Mordikaar charging focusless Butcher. After all, Mordikaar had at least 13 Fury to use that turn (after having only upkept Hollow), and it's not impossible that there are some additional soul tokens that just didn't make it into the picture.

My assets go to removing Iron Fangs instead. Mordikaar brings back one Cetrati and two Swordsmen, casts Ghost Walk on himself and moves into the forest. He was scared that Butcher would laugh at his jolly lanterns. Mordikaar uses his feat now. Swamp Gobber tries to rally. Fails.

Turn 4 Butcher does what Butcher does best. He starts butchering. And the results are quite impressive even during a round of +3 Def for me.

First he advances and solidifies his position so that he couldn't be pushed away by Poltergeist. Poor Bronzeback Titan, who only generated one Fury during whole game and hit only once, fell to his axe. Bronzeback endured quite a lot of punishment and managed to drain Butcher out of Focus. But then he used Red Haze and Energized himself for 3", cast Impending Doom and look at that... there was now Mordikaar within his reach. One Flashing Blade later Mordikaar was at four hit boxes remaining. But thankfully that was the end of it.

Payback time. Well... it sounds grand. Payback. But again it was the very last attempt at assassination I could make, and would it fail, game would end.

But first Basilisk Drake tries to spray off some models to clear path for charging Cetrati. Results are a bit underwhelming, as only one Iron Fang dies. It's possible that Butcher also took some four points of damage.

Swamp Gobber runs away, provoking three free strikes and getting skewered to the very first by an anonymous attacker. Sorry guys... no kill counters for you in this game. In fact... you didn't get to make even a cloud.


Aptimus Marketh walks a bit and attacks Butcher. Marketh has two souls from Beast Handlers that had died to Butcher. Boosted attack scores a hit and boosted damage scores some points in. First the Uhlan and now this. Have I been using Aptimus Marketh wrong the whole time I've had him in my collection? Is he actually a melee solo?

Next Mordikaar activates and he Revives one Cetrati. The rest of Fury goes to fully boosted attacks against Butcher, and they do drop him down to three damage boxes remaining. Well, I'm lying here. The very, very last and lonesome Fury was used to make an additional attack at neighboring Iron Fang, as I needed 11+ to hit Butcher and then dice -7 damage. And it was the right choice, as Mordikaar scores a hit and a kill.

Then Basilisk Krea tries to stare Butcher paralyzed.. and hot damn! She succeeds! And it looked like that with some luck I'd be able to get three Cetrati to Butcher, two with charge bonus.

The reason I had not attempted this first was the fact that I had been hoping that I'd somehow figure out a way to thin down the ranks of Iron Fangs and get more certainty to Cetrati charge. But nope. Also she had to take one free strike in the way, but luckily it either missed or did zero damage. Probably missed, as boosted P+S 13 doing zero damage to Arm 16 target might have been a little more memorable occassion.

But anyway. It was Def 7 (9 with the dog) Butcher now.

And my three Cetrati charge in. The revived one is the only one who gets there without any free strikes, but doesn't get charge bonus either. Undamaged cetrati has to take two free strikes, but the very first one causes instant death. Oh well. One last gets to try a charge from an awkward angle, and as a consequence he doesn't make it into melee with Butcher.

So, Cetrati needs to hit on 2+ and kill on 10+ with three dice.

2+ it is, and last attack I'd realistically able to make had about 50% chance of success to win or lose the game.

The Cetrati rolls no more and no less than exactly 10.

Well, it was a tough and desperate attempt. And opponent was playing two points short, even. Had Butcher just camped all focus from his feat it'd have been a lot longer game that probably would have ended in the opposite result. The loss of Bronzeback had meant that ARM 22-24 would have been all but impervious to damage I'd be able to make. Charging, reviving Cetrati, perhaps... but taking the complete unit down wouldn't have been that difficult.

Belated campaign update

Almost a year ago I started a "campaign" of sorts in A Touch of Evil with a friend. Idea is to beat every villain in the game with currently released heroes. If heroes lose to a villain, those heroes will be dead from the campaign.

Last time we won the Bog Fiend and the Vampire, but lost two really good heroes to the lousy Spectral Horseman.

We wanted revenge, so it was time to re-enact a hunt for the Horseman. These games were played about a week ago, so I'm keeping the writings brief.

Heroes were Maria de la Rosa and Jack Fellows.

Looked like last game versus Spectral Horseman had burned out all of the Horseman's luck for the unforeseen future. The game had just begun when the Heroes were drowning in investigation points, and one of the game-winnings items (the gunpowder keg) was one of the first findings from Windmill.

If it wasn't for the high cost of 12 investigation points to buy a lair at the first stage of game track, showdown would have most probably started then. Heroes actually had to wait for evil to become apparent enough to go and vanquish it. But then, somehow, a few unlucky rolls of Darkness Falls (shadow track drops 1d3) later the shadow track started speeding down, and Heroes also found out that two of the Town Elders had a secret of being a shadow puppet, lowering shadow track by one during each showdown fight round.

So there was challenge, after all, when the showdown began.

The shadow puppets died soon enough, but otherwise the epic battle of good and evil looked like two parties were beating each other with wet socks. Damage done to both sides was almost non-existent after the initial explosion of gunpowder keg and some holy water. But eventually it was the Spectral Horseman who couldn't take another sock to the chin, and darkness was banished from the land.

Game 2:

We randomised our villain between Scarecrow and Siren, and got Siren as our adversary.

Heroes were Anne-Marie, the School Teacher and Sara, the Bright Witch.

Villain seemed a little bit teethless in this game, too. We did forget to use one of her abilities for about half of the game, though (move Heroes two spaces closer to any space that has "Murder!" played on it), but I doubt it'd affected the game all that much, as it's not a damage dealing ability.

Harpies were really annoying to take down, and they kept Sara knocked out for many, many turns. And since neither Hero(ine) could get rid of them, we son ran out of harpy tokens, which in turn took a heavy toll on shadow track. But Sara had managed to train her Spirit stat to absurd levels, and then she got Runic Amulet from Blacksmith. Anne-Marie, too, had been purchasing every single book item from different town item decks, so our heroes did have respectable and steady damage output. What we didn't have this time, though, was one grand turn of insane amount of fight dice.

Before Harpies won the game we had to start the Showdown, and we were quite confident about winning the fight. After all the Siren had only, what, five fight dice?

Well... she does have this rule of gaining additional +1 fight die from every evil town elder. And unfortunately there were, what, six evil elders and two with Darkest Secret. Instead of five Siren rolled about seventeen dice instead and another rule caused each "1" rolled by Heros to inflict wound upon themselves. Uh, oh.

We lucked this one out.

After all wound preventing events had been used Heroes didn't really roll many 1's, and the Siren herself was unable to score that many hits either. All the evil elders went down easily enough. Statistically I think we should have lost in a big way, but again it was the villain who fell. True, heroes won last possible turn they were able to fight, but it shouldn't have been possible to survive for that long in any case.

So the miraculous campaign statistics are resting now at:

Villains defeated: Spectral Horseman, Vampire, Siren, Bog Fiend

Heroes dead: Argot Blackwell & Liliana, Lost Soul

Stashed investigation: 4

Two out of three (Dead of Winter)

A few days ago I bought a new board game. The only reason for buying it was to fill my gift card voucher for local gaming shop. Well, of course I was interested in a semi-cooperative survival game, too. But the main reason was the voucher...

I feel so ashamed.

Anyway. The voucher is filled up now, no more spontaneous random board games for me.

The game in question is Dead of Winter: a crossroads game.

It's a zombie apocalypse game, which is somewhat of a over-used genre. I guess the genre itself will soon rise as a zombie to have vengeance upon other game background setting, spreading its disease and multiplying in the process. Perhaps it has already happened?

But this write-up serves as the purchase post as well as details about two first games played.

First was a two-player game to get in touch with the rules. In two-player variant game isn't semi-cooperative at all, you got no personal goal to achieve. And considering the game mechanics it'd be quite foolish to include the secret objectives. First player would always be able vote the other player into exile.

Rulebook recommends the "We need more samples" scenario as the introductory victory condition, so that's what we played. One of the players had the ninja survivor in the initial group, which eased the game immensely. Other survivor group had the cook with them, so two seemingly most difficult aspects of the game were already taken care of: killing zombies and providing food for the colony.

Despite having good survivors for the job, we did manage to get some people killed. Note to self: it's not a very good idea to bring four survivors to a single location and cause some noise there. That's just asking for trouble. No, not asking... that's demanding for trouble in harsh tone, stressing every word.

Frostbite also surprised us with its lethality, as the gangrene that kicks in doesn't stop until the survivor is dead, or the frostbite is cured somehow.

Well, we did win that game, though, and we even had a couple of morale points and rounds to spare.

Game 2:

Next day it was time for three survivor groups to duke it out, this time with secret objectives.

Main objective was again "We need more samples", but because of three groups we needed nine samples now.

There were doctor and the nurse in one group, sheriff and waitress in another and janitor plus construction worker in the last one.

It wasn't a very good start when the colony failed in the very first crisis they faced, which was Zombie Surge. Colony got six survivors and every non-colony location got one. Second round's crisis was even more zombies, and had it failed colony would have gotten eight zombies and non-colony location one additional zombie. That one was thankfully prevented.

My own personal objective was to complete main objective and have four any items cards in hand. Not too hard to complete, I thought. Sheriff also felt like a good candidate to grind some zombie samples. I guess he mauled the zombies too badly to be used as any kind of a sample, though, because he scarcily succeeded in extracting samples from even half of his kills.

Starting from round three everything started to go all kinds of wrong, when illness crisis card was failed, and after that we got a starvation counter. Construction worker and janitor both eventually died to exposure, and doctor was bitten by a zombie. She was alone in a non-colony location, though, so nobody else contracted the disease.

Doctor/nurse group started attracting a lot of other survivors to the camp. And worst of all - a lot of helpless survivors. We were already starving! Either we'd need to win really fast, or the colony would need to go full cannibal holocaust, which would surely drop morale to zero and below.

Victory was not that far away, though. When morale was at 2 we already had eight samples. Only one more roll of 4+ from killing a zombie, and we'd do it. But no. Doing some quick maths only some random effect from Crossroads cards could give us a chance at victory, since we had continuous morale drop going on from starvation token.

So all was lost. Disease run rampant, hunger tormented the colony and zombies were coming in from doors and windows. Colony died, and all survivors lost.

Or did they?

Now departed doctor and the nurse group had been cleverly playing their betrayal victory. Not even once had they given wrong cards to fail at crisis, and they hadn't attacked anybody. In fact they had only rescued a lot of people... helpless survivors, even. That were eating the morale away. That did raise some suspicions, but on the other hand situation was so very desperate that it didn't feel that disadvantageous for the colony to fish in additional survivors, who might have an ability that would let the game continue for that one critical turn...

So, the colony lost. But a tyrannical despot of a small traitorous group of survivors barricaded themselves into the hospital (or library?) and won the game.

Gobber action

Okay, time to write this one up before a ton of other games come rolling in.

Last Thursday I played a 42 point game of Warmachine. I have an unexplainable aversion to the non-standard 42 point game size, but since it was tournament practice for the opponent, I did finally play my very first game of 42 points.

My list was:

Krueger the Stormlord (that's epic)
- Megalith
- Wold Guardian
- Scarsfell Griffon

Druids of Orboros
Shifting Stones + Stone Keeper
Swamp Gobbers
2x Gallows Grove
Blackclad Wayfarer
Lord of the Feast
Thrullg

Objective: Stockpile

Opponent had:

Kraye
- Stormclad
- Hunter
- 2x Charger

Maximum unit of Nyss Hunters
Rangers
Arlan Strangewayes
Squire
Journeyman Warcaster
Rhuper Carvolo

Objective: Effigy of Valor... or does it go by this name any more?

Scenario was the new one from Steamroller 2015, Recon. Cygnar started game, so Circle would actually need to struggle to win scenario. First poorly focused picture is from the end of Circle turn 1. Full Tilt is on Stormclad, and Arcane Shield from Journeyman Warcaster is on Kraye. Lord of the Feast was teleported by the Shifting Stones, and then he threw his bird at Stormclad. My initial thoughts had been in attempting to snipe Arlan out with the Lord, but when I walked over to opponents table edge to place my model, I noticed Squire was within reach, too. So Lord of the Feast ate Squire instead, a Nyss Hunter and dealt some random damage points to Stormclad.

Cygnar turn 2 (with even more poorly focused picture) light warjacks advanced around and tried to take shots at various targets, but the shots fell short because of Storm Wall. As a side note... I really wait to write a report of a game where I play epic Krueger against Cygnar with their Stormwall. That's bound to get confusing.

Anyway, Nyss Hunters ran forward, which was very annoying. I'd have to beat frail elves now instead of Stormclad I'd drag within my charge range.

And all Circle got to do was to beat some elves. Advance was painfully slow, and in the middle of my turn I decided to use Krueger's feat to blunt possible alpha strike that'd be coming my way otherwise. But still kind of lame feat, though it looks suicidally awesome in the picture when Krueger is standing almost in the front of my army with no screening whatsoever.

Turn 3 even more Nyss come to block any meaningful movement for me, and yet again many shots from the light warjacks don't get past Storm Wall. Something - probably a Nyss - killed one of the Shifting Stones.

And yet another turn of elf-beating commences. I do get rid of a few Nyss that were in really annoying positions, but that's about it. Griffon kills some Rangers, and all of my army packs into a small bubble in the scenario zone in an attempt to hide Krueger from sight and trying to be out of Stormclad's viable charge paths.

Oh, and Swamp Gobbers charge Rangers just for giggles.

Turn 4 Full Tilted Stormclad just advances into melee, though I think this was the turn where Kraye used his own feat. It was really a game of dice when Stormclad started beating Wold Guardian... but luck was in my favor, and Guardian stood still fully functional with six damage boxes remaining.

Charger kills Scarsfell Griffon, and another Charger attacks Megalith, which has taken considerable damage over the course of game.

And again the Nyss are in the way for anything. Two needs to be taken down somehow for Wold Guardian to get to beat Stormclad. One goes down with great effort and a lot of Fury from Krueger. The another Nyss has even greater will to live. I take a foolish risk when I declare a spray attack from Blackclad Wayfarer against the Nyss. The spray would easily clip Wold Guardian, which was indeed at six hit boxes. Of course I miss Nyss and hit Wold Guardian, and to pay for my foolishness Wayfarer manages to damage it! Two points only, though. Even with double sixes Guardian wouldn't die, but damn it, two damage to wrong column would break branches. But it was not to be, Guardian was now at four damage boxes and still fully functional.

Megalith has to sacrifice it's whole activation to get rid of that pesky Nyss. Well, it did get to make one attack at Charger.

Now Wold Guardian advances to critically cripple Stormclad, but thanks to high rolls Wold Guardian wrecked the warjack entirely.

After that last few rounds are mostly made of Cygnar attempting to pull off a lucky assassination and/or kill the wold warbeasts, but dice were not merciful here. In fact they were vengeful for no apparent reason, when Kraye charges Megalith and misses charge attack (MAT 8 vs DEF 11) and after that missing even one additional MAT 6 attack.

Something worth of mention did happen, though. When a Ranger broke off from melee with one of my swamp gobbers, the MAT 5 free strike was a hit. And as terrible as it is, damage roll had a decent chance of failing even against ARM 11, as Gobbers have P+S 5. Well, 7+ with three dice shouldn't be that hard, but needing 7+ against ARM 11 makes it a special case.

And 7+ it is. Another kill count for my swamp gobber!