 |
| This... is Cassius. Pre-Wurmwood, apparently. |
This report is for my first two games. I'll have another one up later, but I'll save that, since I'm going on vacation soon and won't be playing for over a week (*gasp*) and don't want to leave you all hanging for that long. Two should be enough to sate the three or so people who actually read this blog at any rate :)
My first game was actually against Leighanna's Skorne. She had gotten tired of eHexeris, and didn't feel like pulling out Xerxes either, so she asked if Makeda2 was alright. I'm not opposed to playing against Mak2, but I play her often, as she's my buddy Vince's favorite caster. However, she promised me that she took different stuff than Vince does, and I was likely just fine about it regardless, since I wanted to try my new Cassius list out anyways.
My List:
Cassius (+6)
-Megalith
-Warpwolf Stalker
-Gorax
Tharn Ravagers
-Chieftain
Shifting Stones
-Stone Keeper
Shifting Stones
Tharn Bloodtrackers (max)
-Nuala
Swamp Gobbers
Gallows Grove
Gallows Grove
Blackclad Wayfarer
Her list:
Makeda2
-Bronzeback
-Gladiator
-Molik Karn
Tyrant Commander (TyCom)
Nihilators (max)
Paingiver Beast Handlers (max)
Mortitheurge Willbreaker
Tyrant Rhadeim
Marketh
Extoller Soulward
The Mission:
12" x 6" zone in the middle, with objectives we have to destroy on either left-hand corner before we can claim points. Pretty sick of this mission - I played it this game and the next 4 games. Bleh.
**I won the roll to go first, and took it.
Pre-game thoughts:
I knew that Makeda2 had some ridiculous movement/assassination shenanigans, and that this particular list would be incredibly fast. If I wasn't careful, I would find myself without the ability to get inside the zone, and lose on scenario. Taking first turn against this particular army seemed like common sense.
Essentially, I needed to avoid the assassination (duh) and just win via attrition. I knew that Hellmouth was supposed to be pretty good against light infantry like the Nihilators, but I wasn't practiced with it yet. Mostly, I just wanted to see how my list did against hers. I wasn't even really sure if this was a great list to take vs. Skorne. We would soon find out!
Deployment:
 |
| Bloodtrackers put Prey on Rhadeim, since it might potentially cause Leighanna some issues trying to avoid them just killing him casually. |
Circle Turn 1:
I ran forward as far up as I deemed wise. I was willing to lose some of my infantry if it meant that I could retaliate the next turn.
 |
| The Cassius/Wurmwood mechanic is kind of awkward, but not awful. |
Leighanna was a little flustered by how quickly I was able to get up the table. I agree that the Ravagers having Advance Deploy makes them a threat that is pretty hard to ignore.
She counter-ran up to me, tying up a few Bloodtrackers in melee.
 |
| And now we see if Cassius can kill as much as he's supposed to be able to... |
Circle Turn 2:
I went first with some stones, who teleported Wurmwood (Cassius' tree) close to the action, in order to gather souls from the Nihilators. The Keeper took a shot on a Nihilator, but it missed and scattered back into a couple Bloodtrackers, killing them. Normally, that would have annoyed me. This time, I was alright with it, as I gained a couple souls from it. Haha, silly :)
Ravagers went next and killed an assload of Nihilators. With their corpse tokens and such, they really did do some good work. Leighanna failed every single tough check in the game. I won't spoil how many Nihilators actually died, but I will say that she didn't make a single tough check.
At any rate, Wurmwood was full on souls by then, so Cassius went next. He took all the souls, and cast Hellmouth on a Nihilator close to the objective. It was able to drag in the TyCom, Soulward, a couple of Nihilators, and a Paingivers, killing all of them after a boost to hit, and boosted damage roll against the TyCom.
Wow.
Bloodtrackers went next, killing a few more Nihilators and getting somewhat unlucky on damage rolls vs. Rhadeim, only getting 5 damage boxes despite two or three hits. They then reformed into melee with the remaining Nihilators, and I even put one on Rhadeim, who I failed to realize ignores freestrikes altogether.
Tree got full of Souls by the end of the turn again :)
 |
| The zone appears to be under my control, though I wasn't allowed to hurt the objective this turn, so no points until Turn 3. |
Leighanna was pretty surprised by how much damage I had done - most of her infantry was dead, and I hadn't really lost much.
Still, she had her entire battlegroup left.
She started with her Gladiator, who advanced toward the zone and put Rush on the Bronzeback.
Paingivers gave the Bronzeback and Molik Karn "enrage".
Makeda went and cast Road to War, and a few other spells I don't really remember, going to zero camp. She also feated.
Bronzeback charged a Ravager and killed it, but wasn't able to beatback into another one.
Molik went next, charged a shifting stone and killed it, then sidestepped to a Gobber, killed it, and sidestepped into range of my Stalker. With auto-boosted attack rolls, Molik killed the Stalker easily, and put a respectable amount of damage on Megalith.
Nihilators went and maybe killed a couple things.
TyCom flag dude charged a Ravager but didn't kill him.
Rhadeim charged Wurmwood, but even with Armor Piercing, I was at ARM 13, and a little damage went onto Cassius, who decided to keep it for some reason, despite having a camp of 4.
 |
| I see an assassination opportunity here... |
Circle Turn 3:
There was an opportunity to assassinate Makeda, and pretty reliably. I would need to pop my feat and make a forest, put Curse of Shadows on Molik to get more charges, and then charge the Ravagers in and kill Makeda with MAT 9 POW 15 attacks.
Gallows Grove went first and teleported in range of the Gladiator.
Cassius went next and took all 5 souls off Wurmwood. He cast Hellmouth at the Gladiator, which sucked in a few Paingivers, the Beast Handler solo, and Makeda. I boosted damage against Makeda, and got a bunch of boxes on her. I also managed to kill the Beast Handler solo and the paingivers.
He had enough to cast Hellmouth again, and did some more damage to Makeda, who was down to 3 life and zero transfers.
I had her. I even remembered to pop my feat.
Next step was Megalith, who put Curse of Shadows on Molik. This is where I made a mistake. Josh, who was watching the game, said "why don't you just kill Molik while you can?"
I had a reason, but forgot it temporarily, and proceeded to pummel Molik to death with Megalith. This allowed Makeda to take all 5 fury off of Molik, essentially making her invulnerable to my assassination attempts.
Wow, what a huge, stupid fail. Even in death Molik mocks me.
The Ravagers, disheartened by their missed opportunity, assaulted the Bronzeback and killed it.
Bloodtrackers SUPER EPIC FAILED to kill Rhadeim, and only killed a Nihilator or two.
Suddenly, the game was back on.
What a fail. When will I stop doing things like that?
 |
| The game is still looking favorably toward me, though that was an embarrassing turn of events for me. |
Skorne Turn 3:
Makeda went up, cast Engine of Destruction on herself, and killed a slew of Ravagers.
Gladiator did the same.
Rhadeim needed a "9" to kill Cassius, and only got a "7".
Not much of anything else happened.
 |
| I will basically need to kill Makeda this turn, or risk losing the game. |
Circle Turn 4:
Makeda had wisely left herself on 2 transfers this time.
One of the few surviving Ravagers walked up and killed a Paingiver.
Cassius advanced, taking all the souls off Wurmwood. He put a Hellmouth into the Gladiator, which hit and dragged Marketh to his death, which also forced Makeda to transfer damage. He put another Hellmouth into the Gladiator, which also forced Makeda to transfer damage, leaving her again on 3 boxes and zero transfers. It also killed my Ravager, haha.
Blackclad moved up and sprayed the final Paingiver to death.
Megalith then used his Animus, charged Makeda, boosted to hit, and killed her with his first attack.
 |
| Megalith FTW!! |
Results: Victory for Circle Orboros via belated assassination!!
Post-game thoughts:
Ah man, I'm still kicking myself over that fail. I had probably a 95% assassination opportunity against Makeda (4 or 5 Ravagers with MAT 9/10 with POW 15, some of whom had Corpse Tokens to boost to hit). Pretty dumb of me. I need to learn to stop making dumb mistakes like that.
Otherwise, my first ride with Cassius was pretty smooth. I killed an assload of models with Hellmouth, and I didn't even use my Stones to get "free hits" against stuff around them. Pretty cool stuff. I found it hilarious that as my own models died, they contributed to the eventual deaths of more models via Hellmouth (due to their soul loss). Pretty fun list to play, I am looking forward to more of Cassius in the future!
My next game was against Josh, who had just drubbed me twice a few days before with Butcher3. He wanted to play a different list that he's thinking of taking to Feast, so I took Kreuger2, as he seems to me like my best Khador drop (if we assume a 3-list format where I'm taking Cassius, K2, and Morv2).
My List:
Kreuger2
-Ghettorix
-Warpwolf Stalker
-Gorax
Druids of Orboros
-Druid Overseer
Shifting Stones
-Stone Keeper
Shifting Stones
Wold Stalkers
Wold Stalkers
Druid Wilder
Gallows Grove
Gallows Grove
Blackclad Wayfarer
Josh's List:
Sorscha2
-War Dog
-Conquest (bonded)
Nyss (max)
Great Bears
Winter Guard (max)
-Unit Attachment
-3x WA Rocket guys
Widowmakers
Mechanics (like... 5 or 6 of them?)
Kovnik Joe
Gorman the Asshole
The Mission:
Same as above. Bleh.
**Josh won the roll to go first, and took it.
Pre-game thoughts:
Well... I immediately thought of the fact that perhaps my Cassius list would have been better against this. While the Conquest would be difficult to kill in that list, at least I had access to Curse of Shadows. And, to be honest, my own army was going to have a lot of trouble killing Josh's DEF 15-17 infantry.
My plan was essentially to run up, kill the objective, freeze everything for a turn with Kreuger's feat, and try to win via scenario. I was going to try and take pains to keep at least Ghettorix alive to hurt Conquest, as with Gorax + STR warping, he would be doing an average of 40 damage on his own, and I could hopefully kill the damn thing with Stalker/Kreuger2 shooting.
At any rate, I couldn't count on killing any of the infantry with shooting. I would just need to kill the Conquest and try to push the infantry out of the zone as best I could. One thing I was interested to see work was Kreuger's Storm Wall spell, which would prevent a lot of Josh's models from shooting until they got extremely close to me.
Khador Turn 1:
Josh ran up. His Winterguard actually also ran, not using Bob and Weave. Sorscha did put Iron Flesh on them, making them "only" DEF 15 this turn.
 |
| Such a quick army, and so difficult to kill those troopers! Also, I didn't realize until I was putting models away from this game, but I also forgot to deploy/USE my Druid unit. 9 points, not on the board. Heh. |
Circle Turn 1:
I advanced, and got Kreuger on a hill and had him put up Storm Wall. I tried to Zephyr with the Stalkers on the hill, but didn't have range.
I set up so that if the Conquest ran into the zone, I'd be able to get both the Stalker and Ghettorix into it via Blackclad using Hunter's Mark, TKing Ghetto 2" farther forward, etc.
Kreuger list has some crazy threat ranges, actually.
Otherwise, I got the Stalker in the forest with Prowl, and called it good.
 |
| This army is actually kind of close to 100% painted. Madness! |
Khador Turn 2:
Josh elected to advance with his models once again, though he didn't run the Conquest into the zone as I was partially hoping for.
His shooting killed most of my rightmost Stalker unit, but didn't do much more, since Storm Wall was in effect, and most of my stuff was obscured/stealthed from his LOS.
 |
| He's only *slightly* in the zone right now, heh. |
Circle Turn 2:
I decided that I wanted to try to put some scenario pressure on Josh. The Blackclad walked up and shot the objective with Hunter's Mark.
Stalkers all aimed, shot at some Winter Guard, and killed a couple of them (needed 9's even with RAT 8, heh)
Kreuger went then and put Lightning Strike on the Stalker, put up Storm Wall, and advanced, toeing the hill, and popped his feat, pushing everyone out of the zone and camping 2.
Stalker went then and charged the Objective for free, killed it, and also killed a couple Nyss who were nearby. He then lightning struck next to the wall but still in the zone so that I could score.
I sent some shifting stones up to block Josh's imminent assault with his Great Bears, and shifted Ghetto and his surrounding stones up.
Having destroyed the objective and cleared the zone, I scored two points.
Score: 2-0, advantage Circle.
 |
| Silly Conquest is only SPD 2 under my feat. Just enough to get him into the zone :-/ |
Khador Turn 3:
Sorscha went up, popped her feat on Kreuger, two Stones, and my Stalker, then cast a spell to move behind the Conquest agian.
Josh mostly just advanced into the zone as quickly as he could.
His Great Bears were not affected by my feat, so they charged the Stalker, but he had failed to kill a Stone (stealthed), and only got 2 of them into my Stalker. One swung through the wall, needing 8's, and missed both swings. The other swung needing 6's, and I got lucky and he missed both of those as well.
If he had hit with even one of his charge attacks and spiked damage, the Stalker would have likely been one-shotted, due to the Feat. As it was, the Stalker remained healthy, and the Stones themselves were all still alive as well.
As it was, Josh's feat turn hadn't done much to me, and I was pretty lucky that was the case. While Kreuger wasn't really at risk, a few lucky shots from the Winterguard and their sprays would have been enough to really mess with him.
Josh had also only done 14 boxes of damage to the objective, which wasn't awesome. It meant he still couldn't score.
He did, however, kill my Blackclad, who had foolishly come out of the forest to shoot the Objective the turn before.
Score: 2-0, advantage Circle.
 |
| There's enough stuff in the zone, I probably can't kill it all in one turn, since that also includes the Conquest. |
I knew that I needed to kill the Conquest, or it would put up some ridiculous damage on me.
Druid Wilder started by putting Primal on the Stalker.
Stalkers shot at some Winterguard, killing a couple.
Stones near the Stalker teleported the Stalker into the back arc (like it mattered) of the Conquest.
Gorax put Primal on Ghetto.
Stones surrounding Ghetto shifted him as close to Conquest as possible, which wouldn't quite be enough.
Kreuger went, making sure he was within 14" range of the Stalker, and TK'd Ghetto 2" farther, into range of the Conquest.
He then put Storm Wall up again, and camped the remaining 2.
It was time to try and kill the damn thing. Ghetto went first, and caused about 45 points, which was above average (average is around 40), and was then made stationary because he ended his activation within 2" of Conquest, who was bonded to Sorscha.
Stalker went and finished off the Conquest handily, also taking a swing at the nearby Great Bear, who he hit, and I think also killing a nearby Nyss. Really, when a beast has Primal on him, unless you need to transfer damage to it, you may as well just max him out.
At any rate, the Conquest was dead. Whew.
Score: 2-0, advantage Circle.
 |
| Another Conquest dead :) |
Khador Turn 4:
Gorman went up and threw oil at the Stalker, hitting both the Stalker and himself and some now-forlorn mechanics, who had nothing left to repair.
Most of Josh's turn was spent killing the objective, which I believe he finally succeeded in, and in getting close to Kreuger in order to spray him, despite needing 11's.
Kreuger was not hit by any of them.
Other units worked on killing my Stones and rightmost Grove, which worked.
Great Bears got the charge off on Kreuger, needing 7's to hit. He missed all 4 attacks again, though I did have a couple transfers on him, which would have made it difficult to kill him. Still, it was lucky, as if he had hit with all 4, I probably would have died.
As it was, it was going to be a tricky turn. for me anyways.
Score: 2-1, advantage Circle.
 |
| So. Many. High-DEF models. |
Circle Turn 4:
First, my frenzy attacks went. Stalker (who had been oil'd last turn) swung and missed a Mechanic.
Ghettorix also frenzied, and as we measured, it was nearly identical: War Dog and Sorscha were both *very* close to equidistant to Ghetto. I kind of wanted to kill the War Dog, as if I did, then I had a reasonable chance to get Kreuger a boosted MAT 8 lightning bolt shot (with 2 more 'sustained fire' shots after that) into Sorscha and potentially end the game there.
Instead, Ghetto chose Sorscha (we randomized it), and he swung, needing a 9 to hit.
He hit.
He needed a "13" to just one-shot Sorscha. I rolled 6, 5, and a cocked dice. I needed anything but a "1", and she would just die, and I would win.
I rolled a 1. Heh.
Still, Sorscha was on one box remaining, and I had lots of things I could do to kill her now.
First, I sent two Stones over B2B with Sorscha. My Keeper took a shot at the nearby stone, hitting, and doing a POW 7 blast damage.
I needed a "9" to kill Sorscha.
I got it, and the game ended.
Results: Win for Circle Orboros via Ghettorix Assassination!!
Post-game thoughts:
First, I will admit that I was lucky to get as much damage as I did against Sorscha with Ghetto. I needed a "9" to hit, which is likely, but not at all a sure thing. Then I needed a 13, which is hard to do on 3 dice. I almost did it.
After that though, I feel that she would have died in a number of different ways - the blast from the Keeper would have worked. I was planning on having Gorax walk up and throw one Great Bear at the other, probably clearing both. Kreuger could then have walked himself and shot a few lightning bolt shots at a stone near Sorscha and killed her that way.
Even if Ghetto hadn't hurt Sorscha, I didn't feel like I was in a bad place, game-wise. Kreuger and the Stalkers were about to get some great/melee attacks on the Winterguard, and once the Beasts woke up (Gorman would make sure that at least one of them couldn't do anything) from Frenzy, they could do a lot of work.
Not saying that I for sure would have won, but I was in a good place at least.
Also, I was playing 9 points down. My Druids wouldn't have done a whole bunch this game kill-wise, though they would have certainly done a good job of keeping Kreuger even more safe via clouds and the like, and probably been good to help tie up some of the infantry floating around.
It was a fun game, and I was glad to have the opportunity to get some revenge on the guy who had annihilated me a couple days prior :)
I do feel like I'm getting better at Kreuger2. I just need to play him more often. I'm guessing that if I do manage to get into the Intermountain Cup (IMC) tournament, I'll be dropping Morv2, Cassius, and Kreuger2, though not necessarily the lists you've all come to expect. I really *really* want to be fully painted for those events, and it's in no way guaranteed I'll be that by then.
If I were to be fully painted by September 13, here's what I'd need to get done by then:
- Druid Wilder (25% complete)
- 5x Wold Stalkers (50% complete)
- 2x Stonewards
- Kreuger2
- Cassius
- Wurmwood
- 10x Nyss (you'll see why in my next batch of reports)
- 8x Tharn Ravagers
That equates to:
- 20x Small Base Models
- 8x Medium Base Models
- 1x Large Base Model
Lots and lots to work on. Can I do that within 40 days? It's possible.
At any rate, here's a list of events I will be playing in, which are coming up soon:
- Tacticon (August 29, 30)
- Hardcore (7-minute turns, 50 points)
- Steamroller (Divide and Conquer, 50 points, 2 lists)
- Inter-Mountain Cup (September 13)
- Masters event (64 players, 6 games (in one day!!), 3 lists)
- Feast of Blades (October 10-12)
- ALL OF THEM (seriously, I'm planning on playing at least most of them)
So, that's all for the next 3 or so months. Seems like a lot of fun though :)
Let me know your thoughts on these games and stuff :)
bottom
No comments:
Post a Comment