Battle journal update and data geek fun with records

So, I think I mentioned before how I am a bit of a data geek. I spoke about the spreadsheet I was keeping track of all of my games on. Well, that is still kind of cool and useful, but I found I wasn’t able to query quite as efficiently as I wanted (probably due to my own inexperience with spreadsheets more than limitations of it but I am better with sql) and since I have been getting in a crazy amount of games I felt that I had enough of a sample set to actually set up a mysql database. None of that is really of interest to most of you, I am sure, but what is cool about this is that I can do all sorts of queries now.

For instance, I can tell you that since the start of the year when I officially started playing Khador I have played 66 games. My current record is 35-29-2.

But the cool thing is I can take a bit closer look.

My record against Cygnar for instance is 9-8

My tourney record overall is 12-8

My best records are, surprisingly to me, with Irusk2 at 6-1-1 and Zerkova1 at 5-1-1.

The faction I have done the best vs. (where there are at least 5 games played) is Mercenaries (where I am currently 5-0) and the one that I have struggled with most is Circle which is 2-5.

I haven’d done as well with Harkevich1 (0-4) or Butcher1 (0-3).

I also just recently added a couple of fields, one of which the scenario played (wish I would have been doing this all along).

Of course the data doesn’t tell the whole story – for instance all of my games with Butcher1 were early on with Khador and there is a significant learning curve in this game but it does give me some interesting numbers to crunch and patterns to seek. In this case, I think it is time to revisit the Butcher.

Anyway, it was just a bit of fun that I had – if you have any questions feel free to shoot me a message.

Kingdom con warmachine weekend qualifier part 2

Game 3 was against Reed’s Legion of Everblight

 

Both of his lists had double ravagores in them so I ended up doing Vlad hoping to get some use out of wind wall and the multi wound guys for moving through scather templates. I hadn’t really ever played against Legion and definitely not against eVayl who he ended up selecting. His list was eVayl, dual ravagores, dual angeluses, scythian, full swordsmen, crockpot with lunch ladies, spell martyr, shepherds. I think that was it.

 

He made a pretty big mistake early on by bringing the spell martyr too close to the widowmakers who shot and killed it. I used my feat to clear out pretty much all of the swordsmen early on and then move back, but the stupid ravagore’s range is so extreme it ended up not really mattering. I also managed to get an angelius (the one with refuge) but had no real way to deal with admonition. Once more I found myself wishing that I had Eyriss2 in this list instead of the other. Reed is a very good player and he was really clinical in his dissection of my army. At the end of the game I had Vlad left and that was it and he won on scenario. Eyeless site, plus long range shooting, plus high speed, plus inexperience vs. an army meant that I was in for it from the beginning and I was really just playing off my back foot the whole game. Reed plays at Game Empire in Pasadena so I see him around from time to time, hopefully I will get to face him some more in the future. 

 

In retrospect I really think that I lost this game on list selection. Some tough WGI and a decent shooting game would have been really nice in this matchup, as well as Eyriss.

 

Game 4 was back on more familiar ground – eHaley.

 

My struggles and, uh, love with eHaley are well documented. Game 4 I get paired up with Greg (maybe Gary? I don’t remember) and his eHaley list. He doesn’t have Stormwall in the list, but does have Thorn and a Stormclad (I think it was), gun mages marshaling a hunter I think?, Eyriss2, Boomhowlers, Jr, Squire, et al. I went with my Vlad3 list since it was pretty much developed by and for this matchup.

 

I bussed up Vlad and the Uhlans and kept Drago to the left side of the bus and the Drakhun to the other. The assassins plan was to sell their lives dearly and close on the boom howlers and gun mages. The widowmakers got hand of fate and blew off the hunter’s gun arm and then also popped a couple of boom howlers. Eliminators moved up the extreme left flank threatening at Eyriss. Everything else stayed WAY back – basically, if he wanted to feat he would have to come out to meet me. Instead he decided to mostly hold back everything advancing cautiously. 

 

On my turn I cast dash and windwall and creeped just a little bit forward again with most things although Thorn did run forward and allow Haley to arc time bomb on to my bus. The drakhun got a countercharge and did some damage but not much. I was fine with that, because that was my big concern and I was just waiting Thorn out. On my turn I gave 3 focus to Drago to make sure he wrecked Thorn (which he did) . I decided at this point to basically sacrifice the widowmakers to get the junior war caster, which they did and as a bonus they even killed some boomhowlers and drakhun ran to engage several gun mages. The unengaged gunmages then had a round of pretty terrible shooting and only killed one of two assassins who were now in charge range. The eliminators continued running around a big forest that was practically in his deployment zone putting me behind haley and the squire. I also managed to get 2 control points.

 

At this point, the writing was on the wall and feat would really just buy him a turn before being tabled so he basically just gave up at this point when I got 2 control points on his turn as well. All that practice against Haley2 paid off big in that I was super prepared for her.

 

Game 5 put me up against Tom Gaun and his Asphyxious2 list.

 

Strangely, as I was deciding on list selection for this game I realized that the only Cryx matchup I have ever played was against a Mortenebra tier list. I was determined not to make the same mistake in this game as I had in game 3 so selected Sorscha2. I have read up on eLich and knew that his assassination threat is pretty legit and long range so I wanted to do my best to RFP what I could. 

 

He got first turn and advanced stuff up and ran his arc node over on my left flank into range of the widowmakers. They all aimed and managed to take out his arc node which basically let me ignore it for the rest of the game. I put shatterstorm on my WGI and they bobbed and weaved forward. I put iron flesh on sorscha and tried to stay far away.

 

I managed to kill the bane thrall UA on turn 2 between a short scatter from conquests main gun and a couple of sprays, but didn’t realize that the banner gave tough so ignored that (I just though that they had it native). I also targeted his bile thralls but he got an exarnate off on one of my WGI who then purged killing several, as well as a few bane thralls for his feat. The Blood witches ran to engage my widowmakers and popped mini feat making them incorporeal. I ran my eliminators in against the bane thralls to set up for some back line action but then Gerlac caused terror on them which they failed. They then failed to rally both times they tried over the next 2 turns. That was unfortunate.

 

The following turn the bane knights charged conquest and wrecked it. I advanced sorscha up and put freezing grip on the bane knights and basically ignored them for the rest of the game. Sorscha kept iron flesh on herself and the WGI and the banes ground each other down with the banes eventually winning the attrition war. My ternion ended up getting into position shortly after to get some great sprays off on the bloodwitches killing all but 2, who the great bears slaughtered in a vicious display of overkill.

 

Unfortunately, I just ran out of ways to contest the flag and so Tom eventually won on scenario. I didn’t get blown out and think I actually had a decent matchup here, just inexperience and, I think, an overly cautious play style cost me this game. I hope to face him at Game Empire as well and I am trying to find some other Cryx players around just to increase my comfort level in what they have available.

 

Game 6 vs. Eric Dietsch’s Menoth

 

I know Eric, he lives on the West side of LA pretty close to my old stomping grounds but we haven’t even played a game. By this point I was pretty much cashed out (no lunch at all, 12 hours of warmachine) so was pretty drained. I decided just to play for pride rather than drop out. Menoth, it turns out, I have only played against twice before – one was Mohsar, and the other was Kreoss2. Eric was running a super fast Feora2 tier 4 list. I ran Vlad3 since that is my anti-huge base list and he had judicator. The rest of his list was Feora2, a couple of units of daughters of the flame, some deliverers, some other stuff.

 

When I say I was brain dead, that is really almost an understatement and I probably should have just dropped, but like I said, I wanted to finish. How out of it was I? Well, on turn 2 I had 10 minutes left on my clock. I placed vlad poorly after a terrible waste of his feat (I think I used it to kill 2 daughters or something) and didn’t really move to a good place. He ignited Judicator and charged at Vlad. It was pretty close as to whether it was in range or not and he offered to call a judge, but honestly I was afraid that they would rule he was short and I just wanted the game to be over. I had no business playing in that last game.

 

My final record then was 3-3. I had lost all 3 games that I had little to no experience against, and won all three that I had faced before regularly. If you remember, my goal was to finish 23rd out of 45 and I ended up in 11th, so was really stoked with how it went. I had a great time, my opponents were all really top notch and with the exception of the last game, none of them were really blow outs from the beginning. All in all, kingdom-con was an absolute blast and you should definitely consider adding it to your list of events to go to.

Kingdom Con WMW qualifier part 1

Here is my writeup of the Warmachine Weekend Qualifier from Kingdom-con.

I had pretty modest goals going in to this tourney because it was my first major con. I do play in a lot of local tourneys so set my goal to finish middle+1 – turned out there were 45 players who signed up so I was shooting for 22nd. I think I have talked before about my concept of private goals in games and how valuable I think they are, that was mine.

Also my apologies for the brevity in these reports and the fact that the enemy lists might be a bit off, but my brain was kind of mushy after and isn’t a whole lot better now.

My two lists were:

Vladimir Tzepesci, Great Prince of Umbrey – WJ: +5
- War Dog
- Drago – PC: 8
Manhunter – PC: 2
Man-O-War Drakhun – PC: 4
Yuri the Axe – PC: 3
Uhlan Kovnik Markov – PC: 4
Iron Fang Uhlans – Leader & 4 Grunts: 11
Kayazy Assassins – Leader & 9 Grunts: 8
- Kayazy Assassin Underboss – Underboss 2
Kayazy Eliminators – Leader & Grunt: 3
Widowmakers – Leader & 3 Grunts: 4
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt – Lady Aiyanna & Master Holt: 4

and

Forward Kommander Sorscha – WJ: +6
- Sylys Wyshnalyrr, The Seeker
- Conquest – PC: 19
Koldun Lord – PC: 2
Kovnik Jozef Grigorovich – PC: 2
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution – PC: 3
Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator – PC: 1
Great Bears of Gallowswood – Volkov, Kolsk, Yarovich: 5
Greylord Ternion – Leader & 2 Grunts: 4
Widowmakers – Leader & 3 Grunts: 4
Kayazy Eliminators – Leader & Grunt: 3
Kayazy Eliminators – Leader & Grunt: 3
Winter Guard Infantry – Leader & 9 Grunts: 6
- Winter Guard Officer & Standard – Winter Guard Officer & Standard 2

Game 1 was against Hadrian and his Bart Galleon list I selected Vlad primarily because he is my anti-colossal list. Hadrian’s galleon is absolutely gorgeous. It has a crow’s nest and an angel masthead figure. Anyway the rest of his list was pretty standard fare, boomhowlers, Eyriss2, wrongeye and snapjaw, dougal, and some other stuff. He jammed up the middle hard and was able to put scenario pressure on my pretty early, but I was able to swing that back around. The Uhlans charged a harmed galleon but still failed to do anything meaningful that I remember. Maybe they took out a side, I am not sure. I was able to put a bit of pressure on the flag and he was forced to start feeding his support solos over to stop me from scoring on his turn. He turtled Bart up behind galleon and I was able to get a mini feat assassins charge and get just a single model on him. He tried to clear off with the boomhowlers but I made the terror check from rage howler and they weren’t able to do much thanks to my high def. I shifted a bit with them on the following turn and cleared a single space for vlad who popped feat, cast dash to ignore the free strike from galleon and then killed, sidestepped, flashing bladed his way next to bart and forced him to make some tough checks. He made the first 2 and had me worried, but in the end Vlad took the win. In all it was a super fun game and I was sweating bullets by the end. I think this is the first time that I wished I had swapped A&H and Eyriss2 between lists.

Game 2 was vs. Andrew T’s Rahn Andrew had won the mageslayer award at hardcore with Ravyn vs. pDenny the night before so I knew he was no slouch. The lists presented to me were a Ravyn list and a Rahn list. Sorscha2 would wreck Ravyn but really struggle to Rahn, Vlad3 was decent against both so I took that. Also, I had been saying on the khador forum that assassins were a pretty good match against Ret in general and wanted to either support my argument with play or disprove it. Andrew took Rahn because of the potential Sorscha matchup. His list was Rahn, Hyperion, Phoenix, Chimera, Sylys, 2 units of stormfalls, 1 unit of battlemages, Eyriss2 and 2 arcanists. Early game his shooting was fairly brutal killing about half of the Kayazy however I managed to jam the kayazy in pretty hard along with the uhlans. I also tried locking him up with Yuri but the phoenix burst into flame killing him. He popped feat on turn 2 to try and create some space to his shooting but enough kayazy survived and with minifeat still in play he ended up having to sacrifice a bunch of his own models (including an arcanist) to phoenix fire to protect Rahn. Polarity shield was up on Hyperion so I just had Drago walk into melee. I wasn’t able to give him any focus thanks to Eyriss but did manage to swing a crit amputation which saved Drago the following turn. The eliminators also charged in and did some damage. The other eliminators charged a stormfall archer and arcanist but somehow failed to kill either. Hyperion beat Drago down pretty hard, but only having a single die on one of his initials mean that he missed and Drago barely survived. I made a pretty big mistake here – I had meant to have the eliminator on Hyperion charge through to Sylys and then sidestep to Rahn (who had moved polarity shield to himself) but had drago go first. Even rolling a single die to hit and damage, he managed to wreck hyperion creating too big of a difficult terrain footprint for the eliminator to charge. Oops. The phoenix moved over and destroyed one of my objectives but left himself open to charge from Vlad who charged and wrecked the phoenix. I didn’t have much focus left, but was sitting at def 19 to shooting an magic. At this point it really turned into a crazy grind fest that ended up with just Vlad, Holt and the war dog vs. Rahn, Sylys and a damaged Chimera before he got clocked with me on 4 control points. This was the most fun game I think I had all weekend and he was a really great tough opponent. I had meant to take pictures but forgot to mostly.

Reports from the painting table

I just realized how close Kingdom Con is and how incredibly unrealistic my desire to only play fully painted models all weekend long whether in the tournies or iron arena. Of course, I also enjoy tilting at windmills so I am hoping for some cheering and cajoling from the fine and friendly folks on the internet. 

First up, something nice that I just finished:

I plan on doing battle damage on all of my jacks after everything is painted. At this point I have decided to just get things to what I consider a basecoat level and then move on – after all, a quickly and cleanly painted model, even if rather basically done, still looks a thousand times better than an unpainted/only primed one. At least that is the beautiful lie I am telling myself.

My current checklist of the things I would like to have done in time for the con is (in roughly the order I want to get them done):

Full Kayazy Assassins with UA
Kayazy Eliminators
2 Vanguard light jacks
Koldun Lord
Full battle mechaniks with UA
Spriggan
Drago
Eyriss2
Ayanna and Holt
Gorman DiWulff
Irusk2
Butcher2
Full Doomreavers w/ UA
Demolisher
Full Uhlans

So yeah, we will see how far down the list I can get and I will try and remember to update things as I do.

Currently on the table is Bad Santa (koldun lord) about halfway done.

 

 

Irusk1 tourney report and a big thanks!

Lets do the thanks first. Thank you all for getting me over 10,000 total hits on this blog! I know that is a small number in the grand scheme of things, but for this kind of hobby blog that is a pretty big deal to me, so thank you so much. Now, on to something you care about.

(My Irusk is painted, but this is not my Irusk)

I played in a tourney that ended up going 4 rounds last weekend. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I hadn’t really played Irusk1 much so decided to give him a whirl at the urging of my regular opponent who wants to practice against him more. I learned a lot about him and about how he is the same and different to Irusk2 (who I love). Here is how I did and what I learned

I took a variation on my usual eIrusk list just because I am pretty familiar with how it should run and the addition of iron flesh should just make it better. My second caster was eSorscha with conquest and WGI/Joe in case I got too frustrated with the “new” caster.

My List:

Kommandant Irusk – WJ: +6
- Behemoth – PC: 13

Koldun Lord – PC: 2
Manhunter – PC: 2

Great Bears of Gallowswood – Volkov, Kolsk, Yarovich: 5
Iron Fang Pikemen – Leader & 9 Grunts: 8
- Iron Fang Officer & Standard – Iron Fang Officer & Standard 2
Kayazy Assassins – Leader & 9 Grunts: 8
- Kayazy Assassin Underboss – Underboss 2
Kayazy Eliminators – Leader & Grunt: 3
Kayazy Eliminators – Leader & Grunt: 3
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt – Lady Aiyanna & Master Holt: 4
Greylord Ternion – Leader & 2 Grunts: 4

Game 1 vs. Skorne – Mordikaar

Mordie, krea, brute, archidon, drake, nihilators, tyrant commander, max ferox, ferox dragoon (can’t remember his name)

Kind of an odd list but had a lot of pathfinder in it ferrox and dragoon and archidon- I don’t think I cast IG once in this game. I ran the kayazy to engage the nihilators and then the next turn minifeated and charged through to take out the tyrant commander, put iron flesh on the ifp on turn 2 and minifeated to jam pretty hard. Eliminators charged and killed the krea, I was choking him out pretty hard. The manhunter was dancing with the dragoon basically keeping him from advancing. The other eliminators and behemoth killed the ferrox over the course of 2 turns. I had the ternion put clouds on themselves on feat turn to block LOS to prevent a charge and irusk put IF on himself just in case. Made a couple of toughs with them but archidon go ghostly and charged at irusk but he wasn’t able to kill him thanks to iron flesh. The great bears killed the archidon. At this point my opponent conceded because he didn’t have much left that could do anything.

Game 2 vs. Skorne – Hexeris2

Pretty standard hexxie list – gladiator, 2 bronze backs, min nihilators, max nihilator, marketh, 2 ancestral guardians (something like that)

IG was up most of the game. For some reason he selected his gladiator as arc node (we talked after the game that he might want to consider a brute for that task or one of the bronze backs). He ran in a fairly tight brick with the nihilators each with an ancestral guardian on the flanks – eliminators and manhunter matched up on one side with them and kayazy assassins with the other. since gladiator was his arc node he put him out a bit far, on feat turn he trampled trying to get a bead on irusk for some hellfire death but ended up engaged at reach range by great bears put there for that purpose. IG made sure that hexxie couldn’t advance into range himself. Took out bronzeback and gladiator on following turn, as well as both units of nihilators and minifeated kayazy to surround him and set up following turn with great bears coming up the middle at him, the eliminators on the flank in range and the remaining assassins ready to follow up into the gap created by ashes to ashes on the guys engaging him. Opponent conceded at this point.

Game 3 vs. Menoth – Kreoss2

His list was kind of crazy, Kreoss2, fires of salvation (I think), the book, 2 units of bastions, a unit of the crossbow hunter guys, a unit of croes with attendant priest, anastacia de bray. Absolutely brutal on his feat turn with everything getting an extra attack and autohitting. This game was over on bottom of 3 – turn 1 we both advanced, turn 2 croe got a shot on irusk to keep him from casting, I upkept superiority, stepped out of LOS behind a forest and feated, he feated top of 3 and de bray ran into the forest I was hiding behind for even more autohitting badness – I had a single kayazy assassin make 4 saves in a row (which didn’t matter but was funny). Behemoth stepped forward and smashed fire clearing a lane for great bears to charge kreoss, dropped bombs on the book to finish him off, my ternion hit kreoss 3 times with ice cage dropping his defense down to where the great bears needed 3s to hit, irusk battle lusted them and they put him down.

Game 4 vs. Trollbloods – pDoomie tier 4

Had I not already decided to take irusk all day I would have taken him here anyway, Mulg makes conquest cry. This list is a pain to play but I hit hard enough where basically any single hit would force toughs on the runeshapers. He got hot on a few clutch tests, but failed a lot of others so it was a wash. I was able to shift behemoth over to where janissa was more than 1″ away from a screening model and put 2 boosted arcing fires on her and killed her. On my feat turn mulg trampled up to irusk and got two hits on him, both hit and wounded, the second one killing him but I was able to make my feat tough check. His earthborn charged behemoth on the same turn but was dismayed to learn about pow 0 weapons. Behemoth had been next to irusk so irusk gave 3 to behemoth, behemoth advanced between mulg and the earthborn, killed mulg with 1 focus left over hit the earthborn. Irusk shifted to behind a wall and put battle lust on the great bears who charged and killed the earthborn who was in range of both the wall and the krielstone, at this point both of us were down to about a quarter of the models we started with. He advanced pdoomie up and cast stranglehold twice at irusk behind the wall and missed the first one but hit the second and with just 1 wound left I died. It was a super tight game against a player who is widely considered one of the best in Southern California (Nathan) with a crazy mean list so I was stoked to make him work so hard for it.

After action review:
I used his feat defensively in most every game because I forgot about the +2+2 in most instances. The list is far from perfect and I doubt I will be pairing him with eSorscha so he will probably end up with the WGI and Joe instead of the Kayazy. I never really used A&H – they were in the list for Menoth shenanigans and I never really faced them. I am tempted to switch them out for Alexia and the Risen with Valachev. IG was certainly useful but is so expensive. Battle lust is always awesome. Gives me a shieldwall order and charge boost on the IFP, makes the Great Bears able to take down pretty much anything in the game.

Ternion continued to shine. I love these guys so much and they have so much utility on the table. In the first game they sprayed down ferrox, in the second game they sprayed down nihilators, in the third game they and the koldun lord knocked 6 off kreoss defenses and cleared a charge lane with a spray, last game they blocked LOS to irusk and sprayed whelps out of the way to clear charge lanes.

I really could have played irusk better – I got him forward too often and a war dog would have been nice – probably better even than sylys in this list so this list is going to undergo some pretty major changes but as a first outing it was pretty good.

If you guys have any tips with him that would be great

Some pics from the paint table

As mentioned earlier this week it is pretty busy here so I am just going to add a couple of pictures of things I have completed and things I am working on.

I didn’t realize until I took this pic that I need to redo her base in the current scheme – this was my test model.

 

 

I probably should mess with the white balance on these, but like I said, I have been busy.

 

Quick update and some thoughts on khador

So, it has been a busy couple of weeks since I was able to most recently post. Between work and a couple of Warmachine tourneys (as well as league nights) I haven’t had much time to post, despite having a lot of good things to post.

I am finally getting my head around how Warmachine in general works (as opposed to Hordes) and find myself forgetting to allocate focus less often than before. I am also finding that Khador is surprisingly well suited to that in that we typically take few jacks and I love the Koldun Lord for some help with the focus load.

I am working on an article on him that I hope to post sometime later this week.

For the 2 tourneys I went to, I went 2-1 in one of them and 2-2 in the other, so not too bad, especially for a faction I am still learning. Remembering to slow down helps a lot. Just because I can run 12-14″ doesn’t mean I have to every turn. 

According to my handy dandy spreadsheet, I am now at a record of 17 wins 18 losses and 2 ties which is a great improvement on my first 15 games when I had a record of 3 wins and 12 losses.

So, there will probably just be a super quick painting update later this week, but I expect work to be insane. 

Vlad3 vs. Haley2 batrep

I took a couple of pics but they are pretty lousy, sorry about that.

So, I got some great feedback from this thread and was able to play the first game using suggestions. One of my favorite casters is Vlad3 so it seemed to be the easiest choice for me despite the fact that I am about 13 models short for the list. Also, my favorite army for the game I used to play was a bike heavy SM list so the style is one that is very familiar and comfortable to me. My dojo sparring partner and I are pretty lax about that when we are testing things out so we found some suitable proxies and went for it.

The eHaley list he has been using lately is a pretty standard and brutal one:

Haley2
Stormwall (bonded)
Thorn
Squire
Gorman diWulffe
Full Gunmages with UA
Black 13th
Journeyman warcaster
Rangers

The list I took was inspired by a conversation with Wargolem (thanks for the tips on how to run it, too)

Vlad3 – Charge of the Horselord
Kodiak
Drago
Max Uhlans
Max Uhlans
Drakhun w/dismount
Drakhun w/dismount
Fenris
Markov

I decided that for this game I wouldn’t really care about the scenario objective – instead I would just try and threaten to assassinate Haley and kind of see how things worked out. The scenario was the disappearing flag one and since we are prepping for a tourney at Game Empire next week we decided to do death clock.

We both rolled a 4 to choose who goes first and thanks to the +1 to the roll thanks to the tier bonus I selected to go 2nd in order to choose the side with more LOS blocking terrain. I knew I would end up in his backfield so wanted to make sure I had nice long swathes of LOS to take advantage of my speed.

[b]Deployment and early game[/b]

Deployment was fairly straightforward – stormwall mostly center, B13 and gun mages on my left flank, junior and stormcaller to the right. On my side of the table I put Vlad center, Drago and kodiak to his right, a drakhun on each side, to my left I then had a unit of Uhlans and then fenris out way wide (forgot Markov’s autopass command and was worried about the uhlan’s failing a terror check.) The final uhlans were wide out on my right flank.

Haley went first and knew that I would be jamming her hard (insert immature giggle here) so ran pretty much everything up and advanced herself. My answer to that was to activate Vlad first, cast Hand of Fate on one of the drakhuns, infernal machine on drago, and dash and then advanced some. Uhlans on right flank did a run, as did both of my jacks (for free which is why i chose them) – just as a quick aside here, infernal machine +2 spd turn 1 for tier bonus is almost like having a Vlad1 first turn feat (one of the jacks it is the same, the others are a bit slower). Drago ran to engage Stormwall in the middle of the table and the Kodiak ended up in some woods ready to charge the following turn. I ran most everything else forward, but forgot that uhlans had defensive line and was pretty sloppy on their placement – still much of my army was just shy of the halfway line, and both Fenris on the left, and the uhlans on the right were over the midway line, which was further than they should have been. The non-hand of fated drakhun had also run to engage stormwall thanks to reach and dash.

Shep was a bit taken aback at the speed and had to feat this turn. I wasn’t as conscientious as I should have been with the flanking uhlans and one of those models was caught in the feat affecting the whole unit. Fenris was the only model not affected by the feat. Stormwall shot at the right uhlans killing one, and then the drakhun he was engaged with dismounting him and then killing him with the third shot (thanks to the feat). He then laid down 2 covering fire templates. The rangers marked the closer uhlans and fenris and did some shooting maybe damaging a couple of things but I don’t think they killed anything. Black 13th and a couple of gunmages dismounted and then killed Fenris and killed another of the close uhlans. The stormcaller disrupted Drago (and would for the rest of the game but I won’t mention it again).

I mostly advanced to engage as much as I could on the left and the uhlans on the right did a full 8″ advance. Vlad activated last and advanced a little and cast windwall to protect markov and the remaining drakhun. The right flag disappeared.

[b]Mid game and end game[/b]

There was a bit more shooting and I lost another two uhlans on the left flank leaving me with just 1. Stormwall shifted slightly which triggered countercharge. I debated on whether or not to take it as it took me out of windwall but in the end decided to take it. I rolled a grand total of 7 on 4 dice proving it was a bad idea. On the plus side stormwall hit the drakhun with the big guns but failed to get through his armor. His second shot did something else I don’t remember. The gun mages really struggled for shots – there was an uhlan in range, but he both in concealment and engaged with thorn so they didn’t do anything to him. Thorn missed the uhlan with his shield and hit with the spear but rolled snake eyes for damage. It was an unexpected bonus – he had done his job in tying some stuff up but was largely irrelevant for the rest of the game. Gorman black oiled the drakhun. Haley backed up basically to her deployment zone – no killbox in this scenario.

3

I measured my control area and guessed haley to be about 19″ away from Vlad so it was feat time. I dropped all upkeeps but unfortunately, due to some of Shep’s positioning, I had a less than ideal activation order. Markov charged Gorman and killed him and 2 gun mages. The drakhun advanced around behind stormwall . The uhlans on the right did a charge order, 1 of them charging and killing the stormcaller and the other 2 ran to try and engage the journeyman warcaster (short) and the stormwall (fine). I knew where I wanted Vlad at the end of the turn and I didn’t want stormwall getting to him so I tried to stagger as many large bases as possible. Finally Vlad activated, cast dash and charged a group of 2 gun mages with one impact along the way. I killed on impact and then my charge target. I sidestepped and hit and killed another target again and sidestepped into a group of 4 (with 1 behind the wall). Critically, the gunmages failed their command check. I had 3 focus left and bought a flashing blade and boosted everything I could.  I ended up with 4 or 5 blood quenched tokens and then sprinted behind haley engaging both her and the squire in their rear arcs.

Haley basically had to try a hail Mary here. She gave 1 focus to the stormwall and pulled from the squire. She ran thorn over to get range on the drakhun and took a freestrike but it didn’t do anything to him. Haley boosted the TK on the drakhun and missed the first time. She boosted a second time and moved him back 2″. She then advanced but stayed within Vlad’s reach range to not trigger a free strike. She telekinesised him 2″ closer to the stormwall and turned his back. Finally, she placed Drago out of the way too. Since Vlad was in stormwall’s rear arc he had to flip around and trample (thus losing all of his initials we remembered as it was happening) but the angle forced by the drakhun and the position of a wall I(the one I had to attack over earlier) he was unable to get where he needed, even with the bond and trample movement. At this point my opponent conceeded since Vlad 7 focus and was standing right next to her on 0 (maybe 1) focus.

Victory to the Motherland!

[b]After Action Review[/b]

Wow, my plan went pretty much as I had hoped and thankfully the dice were on pretty even keel on both sides – there were some hot moments but also some cold ones so it was pretty typical. As to be expected when using a lot of new models/units I made some pretty big play errors. One of the biggest was forgetting defensive line on the Uhlans. 5 wound and 17 armor was causing some heartache for Shep, but had they been armor 19 it would have been a whole different realm of pain. The down side is that they would have been a much bigger time bomb target, but that is okay, I think it still works in my favor. I played Fenris way wrong, and basically threw him away for no gain. Aside from the aforementioned minor issues, I was pretty happy overall. The list is super fast and with dash it is also super mobile in that I can ignore free strikes. If only the uhlans had reach natively…

As far as death clock, my list played really fast, even with me not knowing what the heck I was doing most of the time whereas the questions that if asked Shep really ate into his time. Also, failing to get through armor meant more attacks, etc. I think at the end of the game he had like 12 minutes left and I had 23.

I really appreciated the low focus weight of the two jacks both running for free. If I were faced with a lot of heavy armor I would have been in trouble, but honestly, my other list is most likely going to be either one of the Irusks or Sorscha2 and neither of them have any issue with armor whatsoever. I am not gonna lie, when I went into this game, i was really rooting against my own list – I own very few of the models but am definitely going to be picking up the core of this list. It was great fun to play and when I remember things like hand of fate, drago’s affinity, and defensive line, as well as getting distance and positioning down, I think it will be a pretty legit threat.

Thanks again to everyone who has helped with this Haley hate project – I don’t need to necessarily own the list to beat her, I just need to know that it is possible within faction and I feel pretty good about that now. Obviously Shep would get better at playing this matchup as well, but even so, it is a tough slog for him and it is my hope that if I brought this to a tourney and faced a Cygnar player either than haven’t seen it before so reach for eHaley, or they have seen it before and realize that it is a really difficult matchup for them and consider their second caster.

I think this list would also do really well against most any other heavy gunline army such as many of the ret builds, other cygnar lists, some merc lists, as well as even, possibly, Lylyth2 type lists.

Better pics of zerkova

My friend snapped a couple of shots with his iphone at the game last night and they are much higher quality.  

 

 

And I think we all know how this ended…

Harkevich vs. Strakhov 50pt battle report

Fair warning, this turned into a super long battle report so you should probably go to the restroom and/or brew up some tea.

So, continuing with my whirlwind tour of the casters of Khador I decided to give Strakhov an outing.  

I kept OrsusSmash’s awesome writeup on caster capabilities and win conditions in mind as I was building the list and came up with a plan.  I decided that I would forego the desperate alpha strike that Strakhov is known for and instead work an attrition style game by dominating the flanks early and keeping Strakhov back.  Then once I was ready to redeploy and take the center for clean up.  That was the plan anyway.

With that plan firmly in mind I built this list:

Kommander Strakhov - WJ: +6
- War Dog
- Spriggan  
- Behemoth
Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator 
Great Bears of Gallowswood
Full Iron Fang Pikemen with standard UA
Full Kayazy Assassins with Underboss
Kayazy Eliminators
Winterguard Mortar Crew

My opponent, Josh, also was playing Khador but his army was a Tier 4 Harkevich Wolf Pack list with:

Harkevich
- Conquest
- Spriggan
- Black Ivan
- War Dog
Full Winterguard Infantry with UA
Kovnik Joe
Full Battle Mechaniks
Winterguard Mortar
Winterguard Field Gun

We rolled up the scenario and ended up with Destruction (4 objectives plus zone in the middle of the table).  I won the roll to pick sides despite his tier bonus of +1 and chose to go second and just like that, this training exercise in the Thornwood was under way.

Deployment and early game:

Josh deployed conquest centrally with Harkevich nearby. Black Ivan was to my right of conquest and the spriggan to his left. The winterguard was pretty central with the officer and joe hanging out behind a building, probably smoking some cheap cigarettes.  His mortar and field gun were out on my left flank. Thanks to Hark’s theme bonuses fortune started on conquest and escort started on Harkevich.

For my deployment I put strakhov, behemoth, rienholdt and the wardog all pretty central and put the great bears and the spriggan on my right side across from Black Ivan. The ironfang pikemen went on the other side of a building to the left of center other than the arc node, aka standard bearer.  The eliminators were behind that central building, my mortar was near some woods opposite of his light artillery and finally my kayazy were basically hugging the table edge on my extreme left.

Most of Josh’s first turn was just pushing things up the table a bit, conquest ran, black ivan advanced, the winterguard bobbed and weaved (wove?) up the table and joe told them to toughen up.

My turn saw the kayazy sprint up the table edge spreading out their formation.  The iron fangs also ran up left of center in the table.  The great bears ran to cover.  Strakhov activated, put superiority on behemoth, occultation on the iron fangs and advanced.  Behemoth ran up a bit in front of strakhov, the wardog ran next to him and reinholt behind.  The spriggan just advanced as I had forgotten to give him a focus. The eliminators advanced middle-ish but still hung back.

Engagement and mid game

Hark upkept the spells and gave 1 to conquest. Conquest advanced and took a shot at behemoth.  The def bonus from superiority meant that he missed, but with fortune he not only hit but he got crit devastate off.  Oops.  Strakhov, the war dog, and behemoth all were thrown back 1″ – Reinholdt was just out but he died to strakhov slamming into him.  The wardog failed his tough and died.  Behemoth took a couple of points of damage but strakhov was unharmed.  Conquest then laid down some creeping barrage templates. Black Ivan got a direct hit on Kolsk and took him down to 1 life.  The winterguard advanced again under a bob and weave order and the mortar had a bad drift and didn’t kill anything. Joe gave a tough speech again. Hark feated this turn as well.

On my turn I dropped superiority but upkept occultation and shook.  I also forgot that Harkevich had feated and gave 3 to the spriggan. Since I knew I wanted to advance the mortar took a shot and ended up hitting one of the winterguard but he toughed and was just knocked down.  I was faced with a wall of creeping barrage in front of the iron fangs. I spent a lot of time thinking about it.  Those stupid templates are so low strength that it tempts you to move through it, but if the dice get hot it can be pretty devastating to a unit like the iron fangs.  I eventually decided not to burn any more of my deathclock and just took the risk.  The officer called his minifeat and gave a charge order.  2″ is way more than you think it is, by the way.  I expected to fail several charges but in the end, the only model not benefitting from the order was a single guy who ran.  I killed a couple of winterguard but failed miserably to even damage the monolith and then used the reform move to get into shield wall.  I didn’t press in though as I was pretty much in control of the zone at this point save for a single guardsman that refused to die.  

The assassins ran again and took shelter behind a building near the winterguard light artillery.  Behemoth forfeited his movement to stand up and fired twice at the other monolith and did 6 points to it.  The spriggan charged conquest and attacked over a wall doing a few points to him but not really much.  The Great Bears charged black ivan.  Hark’s feat saved him but I did disable everything but his movement. The Eliminators ran to engage conquest.

I was feeling pretty good about my position at this point…

Josh started shooting at the IFP but the combination of occultation and shield wall saved them from most of it.  It also helped that he rolled something like seven 6s in a row.  Black Ivan got a shot in on Volkov but he made the tough check. Conquest attacked the spriggan but thanks to the obstruction and superiority he missed. 

My turn I had the ironfangs get a shield wall order again and advance and attack.  They didn’t really have any hard targets other than conquest so didn’t really need the extra dice. They killed a couple more winterguard and the Kayazy ran to engage the field gun and some winterguardsmen.  Black Ivan was scrapped by the great bears.  One of them missed with and it was a scary moment for me but he couldn’t quite dodge out of all of their reach ranges.  The eliminators charged through conquest and killed a mechanic and a winterguard and sidestepped to harkevich but didn’t really do anything.  Behemoth walked around the objective and set up for either a double bombard on Hark or charge on conquest.  He lobbed one bombard shot at the mechanics but didn’t do anything but point out to me that my eliminators were in dangerous drift location so I didn’t take the second shot. I got 4 iron fangs including the ua into a semicircle around the enemy spriggan at the long range of reach.  I did a negligible damage but at least I had him fairly well locked in.  Strakhov put occultation on himself just to be safe.

I was really starting to feel comfortable at this point.

And then Joe called boosted attacks…

Being the knucklehead I am, I had already started to shift the ironfangs toward the center and left some guardsmen in rear arcs.  We all know that attacks originating in rear arcs don’t benefit from shield wall… Also, sprays ignore stealth and melee modifiers.  The spriggan also killed 2 of them without the benefit of any focus.  Funniest moment was when the field gun crewman punched a kayazy and hit on box cars but then rolled a 3 to wound!  At the end of the his turn I had something like 2 kayazy left (they passed their command check) and the iron fangs also passed the command check they were forced to make. Conquest killed an eliminator and then behemoth was hit with a crit devastation from a broadside which threw him back 4″ into a building and knocked him down and did some damage.  Harkevich took the free strikes from eliminators and took a shot at Strakhov with his handcannon.  I was suddenly not feeling quite as confident.

End game

This game had to end soon or I wouldn’t have any models left.  Behemoth was knocked down and about a foot away from from conquest.  I allocated 3 focus to the main cortex and had him shake the knockdown.  I dropped all my upkeeps as well.  I figured I may as well get things going.  I had strakhov shift laterally to get conquest in his control area and popped his feat.  I got a very favorable drift (1″ back directly toward himself) so had a pretty decent LOS blocker.   Behemoth charged conquest from about 13″ away – I had hoped to get into melee with Harkevich as well but Josh had positioned his spriggan well so there wasn’t enough space for a back to get through. With a total of 4 attacks I managed to take out the left half entirely with a pretty good amount of bleed over to the other side.  The spriggan poked for another couple.  The great bears charged conquest and the wardog countercharged, killing Volkov.  One of the great bears actually missed his charge attack with another snake eyes, but the 3 remaining attacks were enough to wreck it.

Josh didn’t have many options left at this point and loaded the spriggan up with 2 focus.  Harkevich shot into melee trying to clear the iron fangs and killed the first one.  He used broadsides to take an extra handcannon shot at the last one but missed. The surviving couple of winterguard trying to help out but also missed due to the def bonus for being in combat.  With nothing else to do but try and one shot Strakhov (he would need 1 focus to charge, and 1 focus to try and hit with the spear as the range meant he would need reach) he risked the free strike.

Fortunately for me the last surviving iron fang pikeman rolled a double 4 and knocked the spriggan down, causing the charge to fail. Josh extended his had across the table at this point and conceded the game.

(the blast marker is the cinder bomb smoke)

After Action Review

First off, wow!  What a fun game.  We were both cheering for good dice rolls and moaning at bad ones for both players.  It was a super fun game with a great opponent.  The lists were fairly well matched in power as were the casters.  I was a bit more attritiony in a melee sort of way and he was in a ranged sort of way and the game played out as it should have. 

I am starting to get a hang for what to expect from my units and was pretty happy with most of my plays.  I didn’t ask too much from my units, but what I did ask, they performed.  I was happy to stick to my original plan of sweeping the flanks and saving the feat.  It turned out that I absolutely needed it when I needed it. 

Strakhov was an interesting caster this game.  It didn’t seem like he did much all game but occultation on the Iron Fangs early, and himself at the end was kind of nice. It would have been nice to get some use out of sprint and his melee abilities, but Josh’s list was a pretty stand back and shoot kind of list so I didn’t have the opportunity. The big deal here for me was that I didn’t force it, as I have a tendency to sometimes do.  I was talking with Inyoung from iWargame and he really suffers from bipolar abilities. 

Thanks to crappy deployment on my part I never really had a target for sentry but bouncing superiority around was nice.

The eliminators continue to be rockstars. They haven’t really won me a game yet, but they can be such a huge distraction that their 3 points are well worth it.  In fact, I am thinking of picking up a second unit.

The assassins did what I expect them to do, run, tie something up, die.  They may or may not take something with them, but they harass with the best of them.

Iron fang pikemen were also great.  Shield wall gets dissed fairly often on the forums for being so slow, but reform helps, and twice this game pathfinder on the charge was necessary. I want to try the black dragons at some point, but I think I will really miss both reform and relentless charge.

This was the first game that the great bears really punched above their weight. I think I will start using them more in the off to the side capacity rather than trying to use them as an anchor. I think that was probably my biggest mistake in playing them early was overestimating their survivability.  Tough, steady and defensive line are nice, but at the end of the day they are just 3 13/14 models with 5 wounds each.

Anyway, it was a super fun and tight game, so thanks again to Josh for the training exercise – I look forward to the next one!