Ossyan vs the Mad Dogs of War

Taken from the PP site

Now that the Warmachine Weekend qualifier at the Dice Dojo is just around the corner I've decided to put my Force Wall lists on the shelf for the time being to practice the other lists that I'm planning on bringing to the tourney. This night I intended on practicing my Murder of Griffons list, but when I paired up with Jordan and saw that he was bringing the Mad Dogs of War I knew that I had to drop Ossyan instead.

My list:

Lord Arcanist Ossyan, First of His Name, of House Vyre, Scourge of the Khardic North:

• Banshee

Arcantrik Force Generator

Arcanist

Houseguard Thane

Lady Aiyanna and Master Holt

Max Houseguard Halberdiers  + UA

Max Houseguard Riflemen + UA

Stormfall Archers

Stormfall Archers

I've had my fair share of practice with this list, but my performance in recent tournaments has suggested that I need to get some rust out of my system. Ossyan is my all-comers caster and my first choice for anything involving dude spam or hard targets, i.e. about 90% of the lists out there. I'm still debating whether to keep the AFG in the list, but having a second source of knockdown is oftentimes incredibly useful, plus it provides some nice scenario resilience.

Jordan brought the following:

Kommander Orsus Zoktavir

• Conquest
• War Doge (very counter charge, much defense boost, wow)

Fenris

OH DEAR GOD DOOM REAVERS x 6

Simple, brutal, terrifyingly fast and efficient, the Mad Dogs of War is a simple question of "Can you gun down all of the Doom Reavers before they or the Butcher gets to you?" And seeing as I was playing a scenario with Kill Box, the answer was "not looking good." Still, I have plenty of guns, the only hope is that I'd have enough to make a difference.

We rolled up Supply and Demand and Jordan won the roll and chose to deploy first. I selected the side with elevation, though I probably should have selected the opposite side which contained a bit more cover and rough terrain. I deployed with my Halberdiers in a front rank and the rest of my shooting elements behind, and the plan was, as always, to jam with the Halberdiers and have my Riflemen, Stormfalls and AFG blast away as much as possible.

Round 1:

With his Doom Reavers Advanced Deployed into position Jordan's entire force ran the first turn, clearing the center line with a fair chunk of his Fellblade wielding mad men.

In response I advanced slowly and lobbed Snipe shots from my Stormfalls into the left flank but dealt frustratingly little death thanks to the Stormfalls' abysmal RAT and also jammed up my own Banshee in the process. My Halberdiers received Quicken while Ossyan himself got Admonition. I continued to prove my general unpacking prowess as I really wanted to activate my Riflemen first to clear out the center Doom Reavers but had to activate my Halberdiers first (after receiving Desperate Pace. They received a Run/Charge order and got a few successful charges off but mostly jammed with half the unit. The other half, of course, jammed up my Riflemen, but they were still able to get a few shots off. Finally the AFG transformed a Doom Reaver into some rough terrain.

Round 2:

I hadn't killed nearly enough of the left flank at this point, so Jordan decided to try some charges but only managed to kill a single Stormfall, much to his chagrin, and only managed to get three of the crazies into Reach range. All of my models also passed their Terror checks. On the other half of the board he chopped his way through my screening Halberdiers but wasn't able to get much further into my lines due to some poor dice rolls.

Feeling exceptionally lucky, I surveryed my situation and decided that I needed to clear the left flank and start shifting if I wanted to survive the matchup. My Houseguard Thane and Holt each managed to elminate one Reaver a piece, but it turned out that I had accidentally jammed my Banshee out of stabbing the last engaging Doom Reaver. Having nothing else to do I activated the engaged unit of Stormfalls, aimed with three and advanced the fourth to stab the Reaver in the face… which he somehow succeeded in doing. Balls on that fellow…

Anyway, with the ability to aim the Stormfalls eliminated all of the Reavers on my left flank and started sniping a few out from the center. My Riflemen continued the trend by gunning down the remaining Reavers in the zone that were in range and not engaged and unhorsed Fenris (1 point away from doing so on the first shot! Grr…). My Halberdiers continued to sell themselves dearly and cleared out another five Reavers from the center of the board. Finally to avoid getting Kill Boxed I ran Ossyan up behind his troops (camping all but one with Admonition up) while the AFG moved to the left and transformed another Reaver into a crater.

Round 3:

Jordan measured his control area for a good 5 minutes and then proceeded to murder me. The Conquest backed up and killed a Halberdier (it's only kill of the game) and then Kommander Zoktavir got to work. Thanks to a combination of rolling 7 focus for the turn, Homicidal Maniac allowing him to sweep his melee range clear of enemies and casting both Ravager and Boundless Charge on himself the mad man was able to surf through my Riflemen, killing them down to the standard bearer and generating a pile of Rage tokens in the process. He also managed to finally trigger Admonition at the end of  The remaining Doom Reavers mowed through my Halberdiers or ran behind the AFG, at which point the Rage tokens were dealt out. It took all of the Reavers that he had in range, but a series of fully boosted P+S 13 weaponmaster attacks eventually took Ossyan down.

Da damn Doomies dat done'd me done disappeared!

A defeat for the brave heroes of the Retribution.

After thoughts:

Oh dear Lord is this list terrifying, but I think that my list can handle it. I made a few cardinal mistakes that cost me the game that I can definitely do better next time:

• In deployment I need to have better lanes for the Riflemen and Banshee to get out and contribute early. For the Banshee this is as simple as leaving a space for it, and for my Riflemen I need to experiment with deploying them inside my lines of Halberdiers. Especially in situations where I'm not going to get a charge off on turn 1 anyway it would greatly help make sure that my guns get into position ASAP as well as allow them to get the first few shots off of the game.
• I also need to try and work out a refused flank early. Advanced deploy makes this difficult, but the more I move the better my chances of survival are.
• When targeting the Reavers I need to work from front to back, even when playing with AOEs. The more distance that I can buy myself the better, as it's possible to push the line back even past where they can run to engage. This generally means killing everything in shooting range, but dem's the breaks.
• I need to be more conscious about whether I need to move forwards or not. Getting my Riflemen up didn't do me any favors, it mostly just got them in Butcher charge range. It did not end well for me, so keeping them a bit further back would be best.
• I also need to rely more on the AFG's rapid fire shots in this match up. The rough terrain shot can be key in certain occasions, but skilled players are more likely to run to engage than charge, so the AOE does little to discourage that tactic whereas multiple shots is potentially up to 4 Reavers dead.

That said, I did do a couple of things right, most notably sacrificing the Halberdiers half at a time to hold up the incoming Reavers and in general just shooting everything that I could.

This battle did once again demonstrate that maybe having the Strike Force instead of the AFG would be a good choice, as more shots tend to be better here. They would be another thing that can potentially be scared to death and would potentially add to my unpacking problems, but I think their speed, accuracy and potential to be devastating on the assassination might get them the pass. But since the tournament is less than a week away at this point, I'm probably going to stick with the AFG. Probably.

Thanks for reading, and as always shank a round ear for me!