A Khadoran Tournament Report: Part Two

Continuing on from my close loss to a local Ret player my next game pitted me against an out of town Cygnar player running Haley1 and Caine2. I'll admit that Cygnar was one of the matchups that I was hoping to dodge, but figured that Vlad1 would have the best go of it. He dropped the following Caine2 list into me:

Captain Alistair Caine
- Ace
- Hunter
- Hunter
Alten Ashley
Maxwell Finn
Strangeways
Lanyssa Ryssyl
Trencher Commandos, Min, with Scattergunner
Max Trenchers with UA and three Grenadiers

He won the roll and chose to go first. The scenario had Kill Box, so I measured out the walls that were available and realized that one side had a "trap wall" (that was placed such that the caster would need to suffer the kill box penalty) while the other side did not. I wisely chose the side where my caster could stand in safety.

Unfortunately I forgot to take pics this game. Scenario was Take and Hold.

I deployed my Uhlan pods on either flank, A+H+V on the extreme left flank, my Jacks and Rifle Corps in the center and Vlad on the left side near the wall. He had Caine, Ace, and <mechanic> in the center, a Hunter on either side, AD'ed the Commandos on my left flank and the rest of the Trenchers in the center.

Round 1:
His force advanced cautiously, Trenchers putting up a cloud wall and staying out of my charge range. Hunters edged up on either side of the board and Caine ran up to his wall, throwing Heightened Reflexes on the Trenchers and Bullet Dodger on himself.

My turn I advanced the left Uhlans cautiously all in a three man pod, trusting Wall of Steel to see them through the hail of bullets that would no doubt come looking for them. My jacks ran up the center as far as they could while the right Uhlans huddled around a Blood of Kings/Wind Wall'ed Vlad standing at the edge of the wall and outside of Caine's 19" threat range. My Winterguard advanced cautiously behind the jack wall, trying to stay out of Trencher threat ranges. Joe tough'ed the Winter Guard.

Round 2:
Caine upkept his spells and kept his focus. The Commandos advanced and took some shots, causing a few Tough checks and some splash damage on the Uhlans. The left Hunter killed an Uhlan while the right Hunter got magical weapons from Strangeways and gunned another rider down. The normal Trenchers ordered a Cautious Advance and threw some shots down range and killed a few Winter Guard.

My turn I weighed my options. Stealth on the Commandos was annoying, but I at least had the Spriggan to light some of them up for my Rifle Corps. The two remaining left Uhlans went their separate ways, one taking out the gun arm on the Hunter and the other murdered a Commando. The Spriggan walked up and flared some Commandos and the Rifle Corps finished them off along with a few normal Trenchers. The right Uhlans destroyed the right Hunter while my Juggernauts killed a few additional Cygnaran dogs.

We realized at the end of this turn that my opponent had kill boxed himself, getting me two control points.

Round 3:
My opponent made some big mistakes this round due to kill box. Caine and the Trenchers danced around, but Caine couldn't hide and for some reason he didn't feat to remove my jacks from the table. At the end of his turn he had placed the Cygnaran warcaster within 14" of one of my Juggernauts. I allocated the Juggernaut one, feated, Boundless Charge'd the Juggy and cast Signs and Portents. One boosted Ice Axe later and Caine was frozen on one hit box left, with the Juggy's second initial finishing him off.

Game 4: Irusk2 vs Harkevich in Extraction

The last game of the day was against renowned local Khador player Jordan, who was famous in Mk 2 for bringing exactly two lists: Claws of the Dragon and Mad Dogs of War, and doing extremely well with them.

In Mk 3 he's switched things up and is now running the new "Mad Dogs of War" manned by Harkevich:

Harkevich
- Kodiak x 2
- Juggernaut x 2
- Mad Dog x 2
- Rager
Max Mechanics

After some debate I decided to drop Irusk2 into this, as Battle Lust is great at breaking armor. I won the roll and decided to go first.

Uhlans went on the right with the Juggernaut, Pikemen/Irusk2/Spriggan/Mortar in the center and Rifle Corps on the left. The plan was to try and sneak the Rifle Corps around and work towards an assassination  and stay just outside of his charge range where possible.

Round 1: 
I ran up with everything as fast as possible. He advanced to just outside of my charge range.

Round 2:      
I backed off a bit, but ran the Juggernaut into just outside of his charge range and on the flag to force him to come up. The Uhlans backed off to the middle of my line and the Rifle Corps set up 13" from the left edge of his line.

Jordan feated and ran up with his jacks. Turns out that Kodiaks can run 15" with Mobility, which I hadn't accounted for, leading to three of my Uhlans getting engaged.

 
Round 3:
 Well, that was unfortunate. I went in the tank for a while trying to figure out a way to get through. I considered going for an assassination on Harkevich- I was pretty sure I could get two fully loaded Jacks on him- but at 16/21 thanks to Iron Sentinel I didn't think it would be a winning proposition. So, I tried to go for some attrition. 

My Juggernaut threw the Kodiak away so that I could free up an Uhlan, and the Spriggan speared the Kodiak next to it for a few points. Battle Lust went on the Pikemen and the Uhlans. The Uhlans ripped both arms off of a Juggernaut and the Pikemen stabbed a Mad Dog to death and put some damage on another Kodiak. Meanwhile the Rifle Corps snuck around the one Mad Dog engaging them and eliminated all but one of the mechanics.

Jordan wasn't able to do much damage to me in return- the Spriggan and Juggernaut got punched a bit, over half of the Pikemen were trampled to death, and I lost all but two Uhlans. Free strikes destroyed another Kodiak. Harkevich and the Rager walked over to the left near his flag.

Round 4:
I didn't have many resources left to chew threw all of that armor, so I decided to go for the assassination. The problem was that the Rager in front of Hark was granting him some significant armor bonuses that I couldn't work through. After thinking I decided to eliminate the Mad Dog, then get to Hark.

On reflection I think I would have been better served just running the Spriggan to push the Mad Dog out of the way, but instead I charged it and battered it with my lance. Two battle lusted Pikemen charged in and couldn't finish it, leading to the Mortar having to be used to finish it off. My Rifle Corps aimed and fired... but left him on 10 boxes.

 
And really... that was pretty much it for me. I survived the following turn and tried to assassinate again (including getting a ludicrously lucky hit with the Mortar on Harkevich behind a wall), but I ended up being 3 boxes short. Irusk was killed shortly there after.


End Thoughts

I had a great time at the tournament and certainly did better than the 0-4 that I was planning on. With a few smarter moves I think I could have made a better show of things, but that's just me shaking the rust off.

Thinking more about the jack spam lists I think that actually my Vlad1 list will do much better into it. Signs and Portents is a big deal, and in the current version I have even more heavies to throw at my opponent from a longer range than he can threat. Plus with Harm the Rifle Corps can actually put damage on heavies. During my initial testing it seems to work, but I haven't actually gone against Hark with it yet- guess that'll be for next tourney.

Next time, I tackle Menoth. 
  

Using Makeda 3: My First Impressions

Sorry for the lack of battle report this week.  I didn't play on Tuesday, and I didn't really feel like dredging my phone for ancient pictures.  Life is busy, but I'm scheduled to play tonight, and I hope to have a report written up by next Wednesday.

Now on to the main topic.  As I've said before, Makeda 3 was my favorite Warlock in MkII, and I've been spending a fair amount of time seeing what I think of her in MkIII.  There have been some major changes in the way Mak3da plays, and the way Skorne needs to play to keep up with a meta which - you guessed it - has charged a lot.  So I'm going to try to look at Makeda 3 with fresh eyes, and talk about her in terms of what works with her now.

The WTC Results Are In...

...And it doesn't look great for Skorne.  There weren't a lot of Skorne players, and collectively, they got a 39% win rate (the lowest of any faction).  It's possible that's just chance or a result of good matching against Skorne players, but a lot of people of all factions are saying that Skorne needs something to bring it back in line with the rest of the factions.  In my first post of the new schedule, I said there were a lot of legitimate gripes about Skorne.  I'm not going to write the whole list of grievances - there are plenty in the Skorne Community on the PP forum.

I haven't played enough games to know what the deal is.  I suspect that we're weak into the current meta of 'jack spam and gun lines.  Jacks are just so much cheaper than our beasts for the damage output, that we have trouble trading against them.  We might learn how to build lists that solve this problem well, and we might not.  I started out pretty excited by our anti-shooting tech, and I personally haven't run into a gun line that's blown me away.  But I'm hearing a fair amount about games that end before they begin, and Skorne might have to over-invest in anti-shooting tech that doesn't bring a lot to the table offensively.

I'm still excited about Skorne, and I'm still going to play Skorne.  There's enough good stuff here to keep me interested for sure, even if it's a limited model selection.  I'll have to see if there are any tournaments coming up (I bet there are, but I don't do Facebook often so I don't know for sure), and see how I do.

I'll be trying out all our other 'casters, and practicing hard with Mak3 and Hex2 in the meantime.

Thanks for reading!

Maxtermynd Returns! A Khadoran Tournament Report, pt 1

Greetings komrades! I've finally emerged from my work induced hidey hole and have actually played some games of the new edition! I've chosen to hang up my pointy ears for a bit and go back to my first love, the Empress and her Imperial Fists.

This past weekend I went to a small local tournament, the first that I’ve entered with Khador in Mk 3. In practice testing I was playing a lot of Kozlov, but I decided to “git gud” and play the following lists instead, because who needs practice?

Vlad1

• Juggernaut x 2
• Spriggan

Kovnik Joe

Max Rifle Corps + 3 Rocketeers

Min Uhlans x 2

Lady Aiyanna and Master Holt + Valachev

Irusk2

• Juggernaut
• Spriggan
• Sylys

Kovnik Joe

Max Rifle Corps + 3 Rocketeers

Max Uhlans

Max Iron Fang Pikemen + UA

Winter Guard Mortar

Game 1: Irusk2 vs Wurmwood in Outlast

First round I got a Circle opponent running Wurmwood and Kromac2. We joked around a bit and I asked her to guess my caster choice (Irusk2, obvs), and we got going.

Throughout the game my opponent played very conservatively, setting up her forest wall and keeping all of her troops behind it. On turn 2 she started setting up for the feat turn, but after the second standing stone moved into position I checked to make sure she knew what Irusk2’s feat was as she was putting them in easy charge range of my Uhlans. She did not, and adjusted the rest of her game plan accordingly but still didn’t put anything into the zones.

So, my turn 2 my Uhlans charged out and destroyed the two Standing Stones, allowing me to control both zones. The Pikemen stayed back to guard Irusk while the Winterguard advanced cautiously to put some damage on the Razorwing Griffon.

Her turn 3 saw two of my Uhlans killed but not much else- she tried to do some Hellmouth tricks to get a charge from her Stalker on the other Uhlans, but failed to contest my second zone. So I went to three control points on her turn, then ran Irusk to dominate for the win.

Game 2: Vlad1 vs Kaelyssa in Recon

Second round I got paired against our local pointy ear running Kaelyssa and… Ossyan? I think? It shames me as a former elf that I don’t remember. Anyway, I zeroed in on Kae Baeby being his probable pick and decided to go with Vladimir purely on his ability to raise his base armor with spells. Blood of Kings pushes him up to 18/19, which pushes him to a non-aiming Hydra needing 13s to hit him.

His list:

Kaelyssa

• Hydra x2
• Daemon
• Sylys

Arcanist x 3

Stormfall Archers x 2

Max Sentinels + UA

Eiryss1

He won the roll to go first and I chose a side that had a trench for Vlad to hide in. While it wouldn’t help against Phantom Seeker it would at least make Kaelyssa waste 4-6 focus if he wanted to try to assassinate Vlad. Uhlan pods went on either side with a Juggernaut, Spriggan in the center and Rifle Corps across from the Sentinels. A+H+V went on the left center.

Round 1: He ran up, his jacks in the center, Stormfalls on my left flank and Sentinels on my right. Blur went on the Sentinels and Refuge on Kaelyssa.

I advanced to outside his threat ranges, the Spriggan running right up next to the objective and Vlad ran into the trench and put up Blood of Kings.

Round 2: When reviewing my opponent’s list I questioned his inclusion of a Daemon- here he started to prove it’s worth. I had put Vlad within 2” of the Spriggan, and the Spriggan wasn’t basing the trench. Kaelyssa moved up, hit the Spriggan with a Stationary shot, cast Backlash on it and refuged back behind his objective after feating. The Daemon then moved up, hit the Spriggan with his mini-hellmouth gun and dragged Vlad out of the trench, boosting damage on him and cranking the damage roll, putting some points on him. The Hydras followed up but failed to do much more damage to Vlad, and the Stormfalls lit Vlad and the Spriggan on fire and put some damage into it, and also damaged one of my left Uhlans.

Here my opponent made a slighly suboptimal choice and didn’t disrupt the Spriggan with Eiryss, instead opting to Deadly Shot my wounded Uhlan. The Sentinels ran up in three man pods, threatening my objective.

My turn I was faced with a dilemma- unfortunately my force really needs to get the charge off in order to be effective (dammit cav!). I went in the tank for a few minutes, and while I still didn’t have a great plan I came up with something- use the Spriggan to flare six of the Sentinels and have the Rifle Corps shoot them, while a feated Juggernaut would eat the closest three. The real question was whether I could safely cast Signs and Portents, as with it a single Rifle Corps member could kill a Sentinel pretty reliably, but without it I would need to do two man CRAs.

After thinking about it I decided discretion was the better part of valor and cast Blood of Kings. The Spriggan walked up, flared some sentinels, and the Rifle Corps got to work. Unfortunately my CRAs had some terrible dice and I only managed to pick up 4 Sentinels with them, but blast damage from the Rocketeers was surprisingly effective and netted a further two including the officer. The Juggernaut killed the two Sentinels that were in range, leaving three functional weaponmasters in play.

I made a questionable decision here and ran the left Uhlans and Juggernaut into his Stormfalls, tying up Eiryss in the process. The main reason was I couldn’t get Holt in range to shoot Eiryss, so A+H+V hung back and stealthed

Round 3: My opponent went in the tank for a while, trying to determine where to Vengeance to, but eventually decided to go for a scenario play. The Sentinels charged into the Spriggan and leveled it, the Daemon sucked up five Winter Guard to their untimely deaths, and one of his Hydras fired on the objective. At this point I reminded him that it was a bunker, and his face fell. Still he continued forward, plinking some damage on with the Hydra. Kaelyssa stationaried all of my jacks and refuged to the edge of the zone. His second Hydra took out the Uhlans and put some damage on the left Juggernaut, freeing up the Stormfalls to shoot the objective. This left it on 1 box. This left Eiryss, who walked up, shot at the objective… and rolled double 1s.

To be honest, I was planning on him killing my objective, in which case I was going to try to pull off an assassination on him with my remaining Winter Guard, razor winds from Vlad and A+H+V getting the final damage. With the objective in the way this became much more difficult… though honestly I probably should have still gone for it as he was only camping two.

But, I decided to go for attrition. Due to my incredible strategic planning my left Juggernaut was out of my control range, so he stayed stationary, but I shook the other. I was hoping to have him murder the right Hydra but a Soulless escort in the way ruined my charge path, and I didn’t like the prospect of trampling and chopping. Still, I could at least take out the remaining Sentinels, the Daemon, and a number of Stormfalls.

Vlad put up Signs and Portents and continued to cower in the trench, moving slightly up to get the left juggernaut in his control range. Valachev Zephyr’ed, Holt aimed and shot Eiryss and Kaelyssa, and Aiyanna Harmed the Daemon. The Uhlans crashed into the Daemon and destroyed it, reforming slightly back and into base to base. The Juggernaut advanced up slightly and chopped the soulless in half. My Rifle Corps shot a few Stormfalls to pieces.

Round 4: His left Hydra beat my Juggernaut the rest of the way to scrap, Kaelyssa shot an Uhlan and did some damage and refuged backwards. The right Hydra walked into the back arc of my Uhlans, head butted the Juggernaut and punched an Uhlan to death. The Stormfalls finished off the objective and killed the remaining Uhlan. Sylys ran into the zone to take him to two.

My turn the Juggernaut eliminated the right Hydra and my Winterguard + Holt mopped up the remaining Stormfalls, Sylys, and an Arcanist. Vlad continued to cower. The Winterguard mobbed the zone under Tough.

Round 5: Kaelyssa and the Hydra removed A+H+V and moved towards the left flag.

My Juggernaut eliminated the objective… and I made a terrible mistake. Vlad was sitting on 8 boxes left and I feared for his life. For some reason I forgot about the flags being scorable and figured that if I could keep him out of the zone I would win so long as I wasn’t assassinated. So I left Vlad in the trench and only scored two this round.

Round 6: Kaelyssa gets to the flag and goes to three, killing a few more Winterguard. The last Arcanist runs to contest the zone.

I make another terrible mistake, using the Juggernaut instead of Joe to kill the Arcanist (he has a hand cannon! Remember!). My Winter Guard get Tough’ed and they run to contest the flag. Vlad dominates the zone, taking me to four.

Round 7: The Hydra walks up and throws my Juggernaut out of the zone, leaving just Joe and Vlad in it. Kaelyssa walks up, shoots Joe dead, and refuges into the zone, dominating for the win.

There were a couple of things I could have done to win this: going for the assassination on turn 3, dominating with Vlad the first round I had cleared the zone, or simply leaving the Juggernaut at the edge of the zone. Any of these would have secured me a victory, but my general rustiness with Warmachine due to lack of practice and the little amount of time I had left on the clock (I think I finished with 4 minutes left) didn’t get me there. I am actually pleased with this game for the most part, though, as I thought it was pretty much over after my turn two, but sticking with it (and, to be fair, a little luck) really paid off.

Next two games up later this week- thanks for reading!

Wednesday Battle Report: Makeda 3 vs. Rhyas 1 - 75pts

Hey everyone.  My internet is fixed!  Meaning I can post again from a platform other than my phone.  I didn't get the chance to play yesterday, so here's my second game from last week.  I'd been brainstorming about Makeda 3, and I wanted to try out one of my lists:

Much Delayed Wednesday Battle Report: Hexeris 2 vs. Jakes 2 - 75pts

Hello again everyone.  My internet troubles continue unabated, but I did play a game on Tuesday, and here's the report.  I decided to take Hexeris 2 out for what would be my third game with him in MkIII.  He's unquestionably powerful, and I've had a lot of fun with him so far.  This game, I brought: