We have been building toward getting 35 points and having zero restrictions, which I am really looking forward to. There is also a tournament coming up so that all us newbies can get thrashed by those tournament veterans who didn't want to play the grow league and instead show up for some easy prize support. That being said, I'm also looking forward to that. Lots of learning to be had at most tournaments, and I'm guessing that a Warmachine tournament will be even more instructional than normal!
Let's see how I did with my first spin with Baldur2 :)
My List:
**I must apologize to my opponents and my readers - I just noticed that I took 2 points over my maximum. For some reason I thought that I had points for my Druid Overseer, but didn't. I believe this mistake stems from my impatience that the Wold Warden should just be allowed to be a Megalith, which would put me into Tier 4 and therefore make my list 2 points fewer (Watchers are a point less in Tier 4). Whatever my reasoning, the mistake is mine. I don't think it made a huge difference, but I suppose you can see that for yourself!
Baldur2
-Wold Guardian
-Wold Warden
-Wold Watcher
-Wold Watcher
Druids
-Druid Overseer
Shifting Stones
-Stone Keeper
Shifting Stones
My idea for this list was to have unkillable beasts that were good at attrition and mostly immune to magic (via Druids). Not much thought went into the list other than getting the Watchers up to ARM 24 and spamming Roots of the Earth as often as possible.
Game 1: Circle vs. Cryx!
His List:
Asphyxious1
-Ripjaw
-Nightwretch
-Leviathan
Withershadow Combine
5x Bane Riders
Satyxis Raider Captain
Pistol Wraith
Pistol Wraith
The Mission:
We each had a destroy-able objective worth 1 CP for destroying it.
Then there were two flags in the middle, which were worth 1 CP for controlling, 2 for dominating it.
First to 5 CP wins!
(this was the same for both games I played)
Deployment:
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| I gave Craig first turn so that I could have the hill and forest in my section. |
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| A closer look at his deployment? Looks like he's already allocated Focus, haha |
Cryx Turn 1:
He moved up a bunch. His Satyxis Raider Captain was kind of close to my lines, actually.
Circle Turn 1:
I also moved up. One of my Wold Watchers was in range to shoot at the Satyxis Raider Captain. He boosted, and failed to hit on a 9.
Druids popped smoke, and the Leader used counter magic. This happened every turn unless I say differently.
Watchers went Stone Form, Guardian went Flesh of Clay, and everyone ended up getting Roots of the Earth. Lots of armor everywhere :)
 |
| It's pretty awkward learning how to play a new caster! Takes longer than I would otherwise have anticiapted! |
Cryx Turn 2:
First, he sprinted his Satyxis Raider Captain behind my lines to look straight at my Druid unit leader.
 |
| Madness! |
Then, he slowly advanced with his stuff and put his two arc nodes next to his objectives. One of them was in B2B I believe, though I think he forgot to do that with his other.
One Pistol Wraith shot and hit my Guardian thrice, taking away either his movement or action. He did the same to my Warden, I believe.
He also tried to magic one of my Stones to death, but forgot that Counter Magic was up and it failed.
 |
| Not much damage to me thus far. Can I make the most of it? |
Circle Turn 2:
My Watcher on the hill turned around and shot at the Satyxis Raider Captain, boosting to hit. He did hit, and killed her. He then went Stone Form.
The Stones near him then teleported him to B2B with the rightmost flag.
Stones on the left teleported the Guardian to B2B with the leftmost flag.
Druids and Baldur advanced. Baldur put Roots of the Earth on everything within his range.
Warden put RotE on the Watcher on the right.
And... that was basically it. I killed a single solo in my turn. Best turn ever?
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| Baldur and his stones are SO PRODUCTIVE! |
Cryx Turn 3:
He charged my Druids and Watcher with his Cavalry, cursing them and killing 3 Druids. He also did a small amount of damage to my Watcher.
Withershadow Combine and Ripjaw attacked my other Watcher and rolled really high, doing about 5 boxes of damage. (lol)
His Leviathan charged my Guardian, doing some damage, but only crippling one system.
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| Losing so many Druids hurt - pays to keep in mind that the Druids' cloud effect only works against models without reach. |
Circle Turn 3:
Far-right Watcher punched one of the Withershadow Combine and killed her, then went into Stone Form again. She turned into a forest as well :)
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| My Watcher is having fun playing attrition. |
Stone Keeper shot at some Cavalry, but didn't do anything. Other Druids just sat there, using their smoke. Overseer shot and did zero damage as well.
Baldur went, healed a system on the Guardian, then charged the Cavalry. He managed to kill three of them.
Guardian, fully functional again, walked up and punched the Leviathan, bringing it down to a single box remaining.
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| Oh yeah, check it out - I painted my Guardian! |
Oh right... Baldur popped his Feat, giving everyone Roots of the Earth.
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| I don't really remember why my Warden has 3 fury on him. Maybe he tried to cast Crevasse? I think that's what happened, and he killed his target with boosting to hit and damage. That means that Baldur only killed 2 Cavalry. What a liar I am :) |
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| Here's Baldur, somewhat exposed, but hanging out in the forest his Watcher created, and with 3 transfers available. |
Cryx Turn 4:
Craig first finished off my Guardian with his Leviathan and Asphyxious. Then, his Pistol Wraiths tried to shoot Baldur, but weren't able to do much to his ARM 20/15 DEF stats.
Finally, the Cavalry tried to hurt Baldur, and did some damage, but not enough. On the far right, my Watcher continued to laugh at the pitiful attempts to hurt his ARM 24.
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| Baldur is still alive - does that make it double-shift assassination time? |
Craig had left my Stones alive this turn - mostly because my Stones were ARM 21, and he had other priorities.
Still, I was hurting. I knew that I might possibly be able to win the game via grinding it out (Watchers were still fully functional, Warden the same), but decided I wanted to see how Baldur could do in an assassination setting.
So, I teleported him into one set of Stone, then the next set of Stones teleported him behind Gaspy.
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| Baldur was at P+S 16 because of his two Wurm Tokens. |
Baldur boosted to hit, and hit, damaging Asphyxius and taking him down another three DEF. Then, Baldur proceeded to wail on him until he died, with dice to spare.
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| A meaningless end-of-turn picture |
Results: Win for Circle Orboros via assassination!!
Post-game thoughts:
Well, I got kinda lucky there. Craig had the Focus to teleport his caster out of my threat range, but didn't see my double-shift assassination. If the game had continued, I think I had a reasonable chance to win, due mostly to the fact that my Watchers were going to continue to be 24 ARM. They could have ground it out.
That said, I felt like I could really have used another Watcher. I felt like my list didn't have much hitting power, and this scenario really stretches my list out. Not my favorite 35 point list. But, I felt like I should play it again, and so I found myself facing my friend Vince's Skorne list for Game 2.
Game 2: Circle Orboros (Baldur2) vs. Skorne (Xerxes1)
His List:
Xerxes
-Cannoneer
-Basilisk Krea
-Basilisk Drake
Paingivers (min?)
Swordsmen
-UA
6x Arcuraii
Agonizer
Void Spirit
Pregame thoughts:
I didn't have many thoughts, actually. I knew that Skorne could grind it out as well as any faction out there, and I wasn't really sure what I could do against them. Xerxes' feat was also unknown to me - I knew it made him really defensible, but had no idea that it also had such a strong offensive element to it.
I won the turn to go first and gave it to Vince. Probably a mistake :)
Skorne Turn 1:
He ran forward. Woot.
Circle Turn 1:
Watchers walked up and one of them hit a Swordsman and killed it (turning it into a forest), who incidentally had Defender's Ward on him.
Druids hung out on a hill.
Not much more happened.
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| Will Vince destroy me this turn? |
Skorne Turn 2:
He ran some Swordsmen up to mess with my lines, but didn't really get any attacks.
He advanced the rest of his army up as well. His Cannoneer was just barely in range of a misplaced Shifting Stone and boosted damage, killing it. Really poor play on my part (and good play on Vince's part).
I could tell he was getting ready for his big awesome turn next turn.
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| I didn't lose much, but him killing a Stone like that was more painful than I liked. |
Well, I had gotten out of position, and the Stones I could teleport with weren't where I needed them to be.
So, I decided to hunker down a little bit and just kill some Swordsmen, then weather the Feat turn and see what my Turn 3 brought me.
To that effect, I managed to kill TWO WHOLE SWORDSMEN, with poor rolls on my part and Defender's Ward really helping Vince out. Really a poor turn for me.
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| As if that weren't enough, I also failed to put my cloud effects up for the Druids. Not gonna be a pretty turn for me. |
Skorne Turn 3:
I could tell Vince was excited for this turn, which made me nervous. First, he popped his Feat and gave his Arcuraii pathfinder.
Then, his two Basilisks charged my Warden and did a TON of damage. As in, they killed my Warden, who had ARM 22, from start to finish. Fury + Xerxes' feat (dealing an extra dice of damage) did way more to me than I had anticipated. Madness :)
One of his Arcuraii charged in and killed another Stone, from the functional unit.
Swordsmen waded in and killed some Druids, tying me up further.
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| Not a wonderful turn for me, really. |
Circle Turn 3:
First, I had my Guardian charge in and kill the Krea and knock the Drake down.
Druids tried to hurt some Swordsmen, but with the feat in place, the Swordsmen were impervious.
One of my Watchers killed on Swordsman.
Baldur charged in and finished off the Drake, then popped his feat and grew a wall to protect him and the Guardian from Xerxes' charges next turn.
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| At least this turn I managed to kill a couple beasts. Defenders Ward on those Swordsmen makes them so good though! |
Skorne Turn 4:
His Agonizer walked up and laid claim to his objective.
Swordsmen kept hitting my Druids, but didn't do much this time, since I had decided to pop smoke instead.
Arcuraii charged in and hurt my Guardian (got about half my boxes), despite 23 ARM on him, haha! They also killed my objective for 1 CP.
Cannoneer shot at Baldur, hit, but I used Shield Guard with a Watcher and it did no damage.
Void Spirit rushed in and did a little damage to Baldur.
 |
| Really looking grim. Only two Arcuraii got into the Guardian. Whew. |
I used the Guardian to kill two Arcuraii.
One leftmost Watcher killed the Void Spirit.
Druids and other Watcher continued to punch the (seemingly) endless swarm of Swordsmen.
Baldur just cast Roots of the Earth on the closest Watcher and the Guardian, then grew a Wall to protect himself from the Cannoneer.
Skorne Turn 5:
Smelling a kill, Xerxes charged in at the Guardian and tried to slam it away. However, the Guardian was Rooted, and couldn't be moved outside his activation. Had he not been Rooted, he would have been slammed 4" away and the two Arcuraii could have walked in and killed Baldur. Instead, Xerxes cast Defender's Ward on himself.
As it was, the Arcuraii had to hit the Guardian and took him down to two boxes.
Cannoneer took a shot at Baldur, but I again shield-guarded it.
He ran a Swordsman in to lock Baldur into combat.
With that, he turned it over to me, knowing that I would almost certainly assassinate him.
 |
| Too bad the Guardian is down to "only" health remaining. Also note that Agonizer there, messing with the Guardian's POW. |
Circle Turn 5:
First, I had my Wold Watcher walk up and punch the Swordsman. It turned out to be the UA, and his boosted attempt to hit failed. However, his second unboosted attempt hit, and killed her.
Then, Baldur went. He healed the Guardian for two, then charged Xerxes, hitting him and dropping his DEF. Baldur then expended all his remaining 4 Fury, rolling *really really low* damage results (as in, the most damage in one hit that I did was 3).
Yikes.
Guardian then walked up, was debuffed by the Agonizer, and knocked Xerxes down. He boosted his attempts to damage Xerxes, but again my rolls were really low, and Xerxes had about 3 boxes left.
At this point, I conceded, knowing that Baldur's 5 remaining hit boxes wouldn't be enough to save him :)
Results: Win for Skorne via um... I assume it would have been assassination!
Post-game thoughts:
This is a good example of how dice can screw you, but how poor play can screw you even more.
My plan going into the game was to "take" Vince's objective and flag, contesting my own if necessary. I felt that if his Arcuraii were on that side, that I could probably kill off his Swordsmen easy enough (dumb assumption) and then focus on the heavy infantry.
I also failed to anticipate the ridiculously hard-hitting power of the Krea + Drake. Really really strong combo. I'll have to watch out for that one next time!
Vince made a mistake in his assumption that he could slam my Guardian, and gave me an excellent opportunity to assassinate him. However, dice conspired against me (I think I kill Xerxes about 80% of the time in that situation), and I lost. That said, had Vince played a more careful game, I would never have been in a situation where I could actually possibly win in the first place.
In the end, Vince played much better than me and deserved the win. My list at 35 points isn't my favorite. I'm looking forward to playing Baldur2 at 50 points, where I can get my 3rd Watcher in, as well as Megalith and maybe even try to sneak in a WoldWrath :)
As it stands, we have a tournament coming up this weekend, where only one caster is allowed, playing at 35 points.
My current list is as follows:
eMorv
-Warpwolf Stalker
-Gorax
Wolves of Orboros (Max)
-UA
Warpborn Skinwalkers (Max)
-Alpha
Shifting Stones
-Stone Keeper
Gallows Grove
Gallows Grove
Blackclad Wayfarer (or, Druid Wilder?)
I know the internet hate eMorv, but honestly, she seems pretty fun to play. I don't feel like getting destroyed every game at a Steamroller, and hopefully things like Purify and her feat will help me to actually be able to beat a few lists I'm not prepared for.
At any rate, stay tuned for the Grow League Finale, then the tournament on Saturday. I've had a blast thus far, can't wait to start actually playing 50 point games again though, and attending tournaments!
Let me know what you think! I'm especially interested in what your thoughts on my tournament list are, especially on what 2-point model I should take is.
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