Thoughts on… gun boars

We was just about to call a halt for the night when the wagon in front of me shattered into a mess of broken wood and screaming horses. The brigands came at us from the rough scrub bordering the road to the West. The sun was so bright behind them that we couldn’t make them out at first. Then there was another explosion at the back of the caravan. It was then I saw two of those beasts standing almost twice as tall as the biggest farrow I had ever seen. They had cannons strapped to their back and as I watched they fired again, this time in unison. I broke and ran, but the damn explosions and all that screaming haunt me to this day.

Ah, the gun boar. The oft-maligned light warbeast choice for the Thornfall Alliance. He is 3 points cheaper than the war hog (2 in an Arkadius theme list) and I think that is where much of this comes from. It is hard to compare him to the war hog and think, for only 2-3 more points I can have that?!?

So, for the purposes of this writeup we are going to ignore that fact. Instead of looking at what he isn’t, we will look at what he is. He starts off with a decent speed but as a light warbeast his stats are all pretty mediocre across the board up until you come to his armor rating. It comes in pretty high – almost as high as heavies in other factions. When you consider the Carver’s spell Batten Down the Hatches it actually pulls him up to Khador level armor, which is no joke.

Okay, so we know he can take a punch so let’s take a look at how he deals it back out. He has a big gun (seriously, that is what it is called). It is a decent range, ROF 1, 3″ AOE with a pow 13 (making blast damage that critical 7). People tend to underestimate the value of this gun. Do I wish it were a better in any of the categories? Of course I do, but it’s not that bad and does give you a way to deal with annoying high def models and it is boostable.

In addition to this gun he also has 2 open fists. I am not 100% sure on this, but I would be willing to bet that the P+S is among the lowest on warbeasts in the game. As open fists you have the full range of power attacks available but as a light warbeast it can’t throw or headbutt anything on a larger base. His speed (especially buffed) does enable you to get off some nice slams from time to time, though.

He does have the special rule “Bacon” which means that if he is killed, each warbeast in b2b with him heals d3 wounds. Note that “friendly” is not specified anywhere in the description so if your opponent goes all the way to base to base, they will heal too, so it is something to be aware of if you are facing them. You might want to go all the way in, rather than just stopping at melee range and support beasts base to base will also heal, so if you are running two together, may as well have them touching bases.

Finally, his animus – counterblast. The first downside of this animus is that it is a self only animus, meaning that the bonegrinders won’t be able to harvest it. Just as a fluff aside here, it is pretty annoying that we have a unit that lets us use a dead beasts animus, and then half of our animi have a range of self. This is a bit of a digression, though.

This is actually a pretty decent animus however his low command and the fact that it takes 2/3 of his fury means you won’t use it on him very often. It is a really interesting addition to the warlocks, though. Dr Arkadius can use mind control serum and if you get off a hit you can place the attacking model (assuming it is living) somewhere to block LOS or charge lanes to the good doctor. With Carver an extra spray can be pretty brutal. You have to remember that it is an optional use ability so you don’t have to fire at the first thing that comes into range. Note however that you DO have to target the model that triggered it.

Overall, he is a utility beast. He isn’t really great at anything, but he does his job adequately. If he were 1 point cheaper he would be an auto-include but that probably means he is priced correctly. I guess I can sum him up by saying he’s not that bad – which isn’t the same as saying he’s good, unfortunately. He is the only game in town for Farrow when it comes to light beasts though. I had hoped Domination would change that, but apparently it won’t. Don’t be afraid to include him in your lists. He will have a place and do okay, just don’t ask too much of him.

3 quick journeyman writeups

I have really been working on getting my games in quicker lately so haven’t been doing any pictures or video so be warned of a wall of text ahead.  As a pretty new player adding that one extra bit of split attention was really adding to the mental strain of the game.  I know that they are easier to follow and more enjoyable to read and will definitely be getting back to them sooner rather than later.  I have a new top secret plan to try out…

Anyway, last Sunday was a big game day at Emerald Knights comics as it was the semi-official kick off of the Journeyman league.  It is a bit odd, because we actually made the move to 15 point lists on that day as well but the patches were in and it was the first time a lot of us go to meet.

I was able to get in 3 pretty quick games.  Two were battlebox and the the third was a 15 pointer.

The first battlebox game was against Chris and his gators.  Chris is very new to the game but is a great painter.  His gators are all looking really good.  We had been bantering back and forth on facebook for a while so it was nice to get in a game with him.  I won the roll and went first.  I advance deployed as far forward as I could and then put quagmire on the warhog to help counter the high def of the gators and cast batten down the hatches.  Everything advanced or ran.  Barnabas dropped a few mud puddles and the the turtle and the rastler moved forward into it.  The turtle spit and did a bit of damage but nothing major.   I activated Carver first and he advanced a bit and cast mobility and batten down the hatches and upkept quagmire leaving him on 0 fury.

The warhog charged at the wrastler.  The big problem here came when I realized that I forgot to pop my feat and the warhog basically fluffed his attacks.  It was okay though because the turtle had left itself in a beautiful slam lane to hit Barnabas.  Until he missed, that is.  Barnabas activated his countercharge ability and moved forward.  I fired with the other gunboar and hit on an unboosted 12.  I then boosted damage and rolled 18!  5 dice all turned up with 6s!  It was pretty exciting for me and pretty depressing for him.

The rastler was unable to take down the now armor 21 warhog despite using all 4 fury and the other gunboar required all 4 fury and Barnabas’ help to take out the gunboar.

The following turn Carver finished Barnabas off personally.

The other battlebox game was against Shawn and his Retribution of Scyrah.  We setup and played on the same table on which I had just brutalized Chris.  I went second but advance deployed as far forward as I could.  The elves moved forward.  I advanced a bit more cautiously, knowing full well what Kaelyssa was capable of.  I dropped a rift template to prevent any shenanigan charges and made sure Carver was safe from any charge angles.  It worked perfectly right up until his jack apparitioned (or apparated if you prefer) and then slammed the hog into Carver, knocking them both down.  Kaelyssa shot first and stripped me of fury and then the Manticore killed me.  I was seriously just laughing at how throroughly I got stomped.  I just need to always batten down the hatches, even if I think I am safe from shenanigans.

Three days later I realized I forgot to roll Carver’s tough like I always do!  I am going to write up on a 3×5 notecard that CARVER IS TOUGH just so  I don’t forget.  That also made me laugh.

My 15 point game was against Josh and his Cryx.  This was a rematch and I came out on top of that one.  With the extra points he was able to add a couple of solos and I added a min unit of bonegrinders and ran 1 point light.  I have since realized that I can take a max unit for just 1 point so that is what I am doing going forward.

This game was fast and violent just like our first one.  I left a lane out for Deneghra to charge Carver on turn 2 after he fluffed his attacks on the slayer under his feat.  Luckily for me batten down the hatches was up and, more importantly, Josh rolled snake eyes for one of Denny’s attacks.  The combination of the two meant that I had survived her assassination run and put her in a dangerous place.  One of the bone jacks tried to finish me off and put corrosion on me.  That left me with 2 life and a continuous effect so I had to win the game and now.  The failed assassination left Denny kind of hanging out there and Carver was able to finish her up.

I know that this is a really short write up, but it was actually a super fun and tight game.  I don’t expect to come out on top next time we play – my luck can only hold so long!

Thoughts On… Lord Carver, BMMD esq. III

One of the really great benefits of the journeyman league from Privateer Press is that it forces the basics. I am fairly new to the Mark 2 version of the game but I did play for a while way back in Mark 1 so it isn’t something that I felt compelled to do to learn the game. That being said, I really wanted to chance to slow grow this army and learn how to play it well.

One of the things I learned back in another life as a corporate trainer was how much more one learned when writing about a subject. I thought this would be a fun way to start putting down my in-game observations to share what I have learned and, hopefully, in writing them out learn a bit more. I was also curious how many times I could write “learn” in a sentence.  And obviously, if any readers have anything to share that would be great

Since this is my first analysis it might be a bit rough and disjointed but hopefully later on it will be a bit better.

Lord Carver, The Bringer of Most Massive Destruction (esquire the third) is the warlock in the officially recommended battle box for the Thornfall Alliance.

Carver’s stats are pretty decent but nothing great. His defense is a bit on the low side for a warlock but his armor is a tiny bit higher. He is faster than most of his army and with the reach on his weapon his threat range is shy of his control area which means you should never fail a charge unwillingly even with mobility (more on that later).

His weapons are both pretty impressive, however. His melee weapon, Hand of God (or HoG if you want to have fun with pork flavored puns), has a hefty power+strength of 15 and reach in addition to the standard magic that all casters have. This combined p+s is enough that he can reliably kill pretty much any warriors and most cavalry in the game without breaking a sweat. He’ll hit a def. 14 on an average roll. The downside to his melee attack is that it is only a single attack. This combined with his mediocre fury stat of 6 means that he won’t be able to go on a rampage and decimate units of warriors or even a heavy warjack/beast once you figure in the necessity of boosting to hit. If only he had thresher!

If he is in danger of being swamped it is probably better for him to shoot with his sawed-off scattergun. This gun is a non-magic 6″ spray. The power on it is a decent, but not amazing, 12 which means you should be able to deal with lighter warrior models as long as their def isn’t too high. His rat is just okay. Where the gun gets really good is when you notice it has a rate of fire of 2. That is right, he can do 2 str 12 sprays per turn which can really clear out infantry that are trying to jam him. Additionally, if you need a bit extra stopping power, you can fire both barrels and trade that rate of fire for +4 to the damage result as a *attack.

Next up let’s take a look at his spell list. He has 4 spells on his list and as a warlock can also use the animi of the war beasts in his battle group – I might mention the use of an animus, but they will be discussed in greater detail in my Thoughts On… that model.

Batten Down the Hatches – This spell will take up fully half of his fury and in most cases you will be casting it without batten an eye. See what I did there? Seriously, this spell increases the armor of models in your battlegroup (including Carver himself) at the cost of a loss to defense. Additionally it makes you immune to knockdown so I guess you might say that it gives you a better defense than you would have if you were knocked down. It isn’t an auto-cast however. You need to be particularly aware of units in your opponents army that ignore these bonuses as in most cases they will only ignore the bonus but not the penalty. Also, bear in mind that war beasts have a decent defense and the farrow beasts have a decent armor to begin with. There might be times when the only threat to you is a bunch of infantry that are going to be doing dice -4 or -5 without the buff and only hitting on a 7. In that case, you might be better off taking a couple of minor hits and hopefully getting a couple of misses on you. I haven’t actually run the math on this, by the way. If you are good at it, I would be curious what your results are. Immune to knockdown is absolutely brutal against those models whose feat is a knockdown effect. This also helps out against things like headbutts and throws. If you felt like it you could put up batten down the hatches and then have Brine double handed throw the warhog at something to knock it down. The war hog would still have to forfeit his movement but could then pound on whatever was knocked down. It is pretty risky though because you could go out of Carver’s control area and lose the effect from Batten Down the Hatches. Overall it is a great spell though and one you will use a whole lot. It isn’t an upkeep spell so you need to plan on paying the full cost every turn for it. Conversely, since it isn’t an upkeep it can’t be dispelled.

Mobility – Another great spell. As the name implies this spell greatly improves your mobility. Like Batten Down the Hatches Carver casts this spell on himself and it is not an upkeep. This is huge because that means you can stack the effects giving you both more resilient and faster war beasts which are always a good thing. Mobility increases the speed of battlegroup models as well as giving them pathfinder. Since it is a speed bonus it means that your run doubles the bonus rather than adding it straight at the end. Pathfinder is a beautiful thing as well since having our slow war beasts get stuck in terrain is painful. It also allows you to charge over linear obstacles or through forests meaning you can use them for a defense bonus to help offset the penalty from Batten Down the Hatches or give you the option of not casting it for a turn and trusting on a higher defense to protect you. Also it combines well with Rift in giving you more options in activation order as you don’t have to worry about locking your own models down. It won’t leave you much fury left over but flexibility and options are good.

Quagmire – This is a really interesting upkeep spell. It gives enemy models in base to base contact with the unit/model a defense modifier of -2 while also preventing them from moving other than to change facing. The obvious use is to prevent things from trampling over a unit of brigands or locking models in place for a turn since you can’t usually move after doing your combat action. This can be very useful in scenario play for keeping a model out of a control zone. Also the -2 is what I call a “soft boost”. What I mean by that is that it isn’t quite as good on average as a normal boost but still helps break the curve. This soft boost also makes war beasts a good target. Anything that helps your war hog (or Carver himself in a pinch) get more hits can only be a good thing allowing you to save those forces for extra attacks. If Carver were a fury 7 caster I would advocate casting it on turn 1 and upkeeping it for the rest of the game. As it is, there are so many turns in which you will want to cast Batten Down the Hatches and Mobility you will probably be better off having that emergency transfer for whatever sneaky thing you missed that your opponent is about to do to you.

Rift – This is a decent power 8″ aoe spell. The aoe on it is 4″ which is pretty sweet on its own but it also remains in play through your opponents turn as rough terrain. If they are lacking on pathfinder this can be a huge inconvenience and go a long way to making sure that your hogs are the ones doing the charging. Bonegrinders give you an extra 2″ range helping to offset the short range of the spell. It is fairly expensive, but you can still use that and pathfinder and have that emergency fury I advocate which helps with some of the order of activation issues that could come up.

This brings us to his feat – “Hog Heaven”. This feat gives all farrow models in his control area an dice of damage and Overtake. It is important to remember that it is only farrow models meaning that those other support solos like Gudrun the Wanderer and Saxon Orrick will not benefit from his feat. Also it is only while in his control area so it is possible to overtake out of his control area and lose the overtake on future attacks and the extra dice worth of damage. It is a pretty straight forward feat which I like to use pretty early in order to give myself an advantage on big models by taking out opponent jacks/beasts.

I made a mistake in dismissing him as a boring caster when I first read him over. Lord Carver, BMMD esq III can be played in a straightforward manner as a beat-stick but he also has some tools which enable you to play him a bit more patiently and tricky than it would seem at first glance especially by blocking off movement with rift and quagmire. A great thing to keep in mind is that he is a bandit king and play him appropriately. He is not going to stand up in melee to the likes of the Butcher but he has the shenanigans to ensure that he doesn’t have to.

Journeyman game, Carver vs. Kaelyssa

Shawn came over the other evening and we knocked out a journeyman game. Our league is going a bit slower than the standard because most of us are part time gamers at best thanks to kids and full time jobs and school.

I set up the table before Shawn got there in something that would be interesting to look at with enough terrain to interact with. I realized I have about a million and one fences and thought it would be cool to do a roadside inn kind of thing with a wrecked building. I used the fences to suggest roads and to make it feel in the woods I added some, er, woods. And a small green lake. As an aside, I REALLY need to get some kind of better battle mat for these fantasyish setting games. Can anyone recommend any in particular?

Since I did the setup I let Shawn pick his side and he won the roll to go first.

The farrow all stayed fairly close together and advanced with the gun boars pulling off slightly. The Retribution light jacks went out wide on the flanks. Kaelyssa cast phantom hunter on herself and kept it up for the whole game. I put quagmire on the war hog hoping to help deal with that highish defense of the ret jacks. I am also not going to mention it after this, but just assume I am cutting myself for fury every turn thanks to Kaelyssa stealing my beasts’ fury. I took 6 or 7 damage before being the target of a single attack.

The manticore laid down a covering fire template and then bought some extra shots knocking out the mind of the gunboar on my right. Shawn misjudged a charge distance and came up short with the arcnode light (can’t remember the name now) by about a half inch on the wounded gunboar. It is possible that this oversight cost him the game.

The griffon was in range and charged in on that same turn (these charges were before I had Batten Down the Hatches up – I totally misjudged his threat range and after this cast it most every turn). Kaelyssa then popped her feat to prevent any charges on my part.

In retaliation Carver activated first, popped his feat and moved over to the griffin and hit it a few times before casting Batten Down the Hatches. Once more I was reminded how much not the Butcher he is. He did manage to take the shield down do a few other things. The gunboar on the left advanced and hit him but also didn’t kill him unfortunately which meant it was down to my war hog to. He killed him with his initial attacks. The other gunboar closed on the arcnode and did nothing since his mind was out and I had forgotten to heal it in my activation.

The arcnode shifted a bit and then beat on the gunboar knocking him down to 5 boxes. Luckily for me he spread the damage out across multiple spirals and mind was still the only thing out.

Carver activated, shifted back a bit and remembered to heal the gun boar’s mind for 1 and recast Batten Down the Hatches. The newly healed gunboar was up next. He grabbed the arcnode and threw it toward the warhog. The warhog activated, charged the arcnode and destroyed it. The wreck is under the covering fire template.

Shawn was in dire straits but also so an opportunity. He advanced Kaelyssa and Carver was just in 12″ by about a mm. He was sitting on 2 fury and she hit and used a stolen fury to boost and rolled a 16 for damage on the 3d6! I transferred to the undamaged gunboar because she was just going to steal my last fury anyway. He then shot and boosted and got a 15 for damage! With the damage Carver had already taken just to get his full fury every turn he was down to just 5 boxes and Kaelyssa had one shot left. Fortunately for me, his dice swung the other way and he rolled a 4 on 3d6 sparing the farrow warlord.

Kaelyssa had fought with honor so Carver felt she deserved to die by his hand. He advanced into range of his sawed off scattergun and shot her twice. The first one took off a decent amount of damage but I rolled snake eyes on the second one! Yikes! I used my remaining 2 fury to cast mobility and suddenly wasn’t feeling quite as safe.

The gunboar advanced but made sure and left enough room for the warhog if he became necessary and tried to headbutt her but missed. Uh oh. I have one model that can save me.

Luckily the warhog was able to get to her thanks to mobility and with a boosted gore knocked her down before finishing her off. It was a tight game and if I that last gore had failed to get a crit knockdown. He very well could have pulled out a win!

Another win for the farrow and another tight and fun game with Shawn! Batten Down the Hatches really saved my bacon here but I am afraid once we start adding points that it won’t be nearly as good thanks to the mage hunter strike force.

Thanks for reading!

Battle box painted for journeyman league

Here are some pics of the Farrow battle box for the Journeyman league. Not much to say except that I did touch up the warhog so I will post more of him in his more doneness state later.

Journeyman league

So, Privateer Press released a campaign for newer players called the Journeyman League. The complete rules for it are here – http://privateerpress.com/organized-play/leagues/journeyman-league-rules and basically you pick a faction and start with the Battle Box, which is a starter set with a caster and 2-5 support warjacks or beasts. The timing on this is quite fortuitous since, as I have mentioned before, Shawn, Anthony and I have been talking about doing this same basic thing. We even roped Sergio in on it (which, to tell the truth, wasn’t all that difficult). Anthony, not a fan of the Starter box for his chosen faction gave a pass, but I am sure to get games in with him nonetheless.

I chose Minions for my faction, focusing on the Farrow. Now it bears mentioning that there aren’t true Battleboxes for all factions (notably Mercs, Minions, and Retribution of Scyrah) but PP was kind enough to include balanced equivalents. The Farrow one, and thus my starting point, is Carver, 2 gunboars and a warhog.

One of the things I am looking forward to is the fact that this is a slow grow league meaning that you build on what you played/painted the previous week with the goal of building up a full painted army. Growing in this manner gives you a chance to really get to know and understand the pieces in this particular army really well in addition to the basic rules.

I am going to take that just a bit further on my blog here. I am going to be doing a fairly in depth post on each new piece I add to my army. Some of this info will surely be redundant with what is out there on the net, but I feel that the best way to learn about something is write about it – so look forward to those to come.

I have already started painting on my force and here is a WIP of part of my battle group.

35 point video batrep – Farrow vs. Mercs

Welcome to another video batrep – or, as I am calling it, my ongoing Dorkumentary. This one is a bit more shaky than the other – seriously, if you have any suggestions for stabilizing a flip, let me know. Also, it was pretty loud in the store so sometimes my voice get drowned out a bit but I was able to hear everything okay when I was listening to it after I stitched it together. I was getting a bit anxious at the end of the game because it took SO long so I talk kind of fast, sorry.

Okay, I am going to go into a short little rant here. My opponent Joe, is a really really nice guy. Very gregarious and apparently pretty popular (it was my first time meeting him). It seemed like EVERYONE who came into the store stopped by and talked with him and held little conversations.

Some of which went a bit long.

At one point after not less than 10 minutes and trying to get him back into our game I just went with my turn stating what I was doing and putting down tokens. When it was finally his turn he was surprised that I had cast Batten Down the Hatches (despite me having done it every turn, saying I was doing it, and then putting down the token). This game took close to 3 hours.

I will NEVER play another 3 hour 35 point game.

My wife was home sick and I had the time when the girls were napping to run over to the FLGS – I figured 2 hours would have been plenty. It wasn’t in this case.

Please, for the love of God, if you are playing a game with someone or you want to talk with someone who is playing a game, please please please try and keep your attention on the game you are playing and keep the conversation short. Yes, wargaming is a social hobby and it is actually one of the things that I like most about it. However, this game just went from a really enjoyable experience to an incredibly annoying and frustrating one. You can hear in the video at the end how rushed it was. I was basically hitting stop on the recording as I was talking. And yeah, I know recording the game slows it down a bit but in this case, a 3 hour game was covered in 6 and a half minutes of recap, so it didn’t add that much time and I made sure it was okay with my opponent before even showing up.

Again, let me state that Joe is a really nice guy, very sociable, a lot of fun to play. This isn’t a Joe bash so much as an etiquette reminder. Sadly, the fact that it went SO long also meant that there is no wrap up in the video – I will write mine below the video. If Joe sends me something I will happily add it to this post.

Okay, now that that is off my chest on with the real reason you are here. Strangely, I ended up playing against Mercs again at the Aero Hobbies WM/H day in Santa Monica, CA. This list was very different from the previous one I played. The list Joe brought was:

Magnus the Traitor
Mangler
2x Renegades
Vanguard
Croe’s Cutthroats (full)
Steelhead Halbardiers (min)
Orin Midwinter
Gorman di Wulfe

I switched up my own list to try a Carver list with a heavy ranged element:
Lord Carver, BMMD Esq III
War Hog 2x
Gunboars
Targ
Farrow Brigands (max)
Farrow Slaughterhousers
2x Razorbacks

Unfortunately, this list just comes up to 34 points. We really need a 1 point model in the Thornfall Alliance. And now, without further ado, I present the main event.

So, this list started out as a kind of lark when I realized the amount of templates the Farrow can lay down per turn. If I had a 3rd gunboar I would probably swap out the Slaughterhousers for it and then add in a unit of Bonegrinders just to maximize shootiness and give me some magic attacks in case I go up against incorporeal solos or Menoth.

Once again I had absolutely HORRIBLE tough rolls. I am glad the forums warned me about how almost worthless they would be. I never expect to make them so I am not disappointed. And on the off chance someone makes it, it is cool. If you are playing with tough models I recommend that approach. The list worked really well. I was extremely happy with how I was able to dictate much of the flow of the game. The shooting was a big enough threat that he had to advance some and I think it forced Joe to make the mistake of devoting the entire unit of Croe’s Cutthroats to deal with the razorback and gunboar on that flank.

Overall, I felt in control of pretty much the entire game. I was able to ensure I was on the good side of almost any trades and at the end of the game he basically had Magnus left while I had Carver, the War Hog, a Gunboar, a brigand and Targ. I could have played it out to the win, but I was already super late and wanted to see if Carver could take out Magnus on the charge (I am still learning his capabilities).

I made an error in not boosting to hit, but I also realized I messed up and was thinking Carver had Weaponmaster, so it is Karmically appropriate that I missed with pretty much all my attacks. Thanks for reading/watching, and seriously, if you have any tips for stabilizing a Flip, let me know. My search-fu has failed on this, though I did find some pretty cool things one can do with building a filming rig out of PVC…

First video batrep – Carver vs. Kaelyssa 25 pts

My wife and my girls got me a shiny new Flip for my birthday and of course, the first thing (well, second or third actually) that I thought about was how awesome it would be to do video batreps!  I love writing up batreps and taking the pics and everything but they end up taking a really long time.  Sadly I don’t have a ton of time these days so this is really awesome.

Retribution of Scyrah list was:
Kaelyssa
Hydra
Phoenix
Mage Hunter Strike Force (max with UA)
Mage Hunter Assassin

And the Farrow were represented by:
Lord Carver, BMMD Esq III
2 War Hogs
Gun Boar
2 Brigands (min)

Without further ado, on to the main event.

A couple of things I learned as a result of this game (without spoiling the end) are 1. you can cast both mobility AND batten down the hatches – for some reason I thought it was one or the other, and 2. I really need to hit the gym.

I’d love some feedback here since this is my first video batrep

Thanks!

Kromac vs. Dr. Arkadius – 25 points

Ant came over and we got in a couple of games. We bumped the size to 25 points and Ant was trying out a new caster – Kromac the Ravenous. I decided to stick with Dr. Arkadius. I was also timing my turns again.

The circle list was:
Kromac, gorax, pureblood warpwolf, warpwolf stalker, blackclad wayfarer, lord of the feast

The farrow were running tier 2 Dr. A:
Dr. Arkadius, 2 war hogs, 2 gun boars, targ, razorback, 4 bonegrinders

Game 1:
This game was short. I advanced up and tried to play a bit cautious. I decided to be clever and work up the right flank away from the building and the forest (that is what the blank footprint is).

Ant advanced everything also cautiously but swinging way out with the lord of the feast.

I knew that the lord of the feast could hit with his bird and then teleport up so I moved my bone grinders out very cleverly more than 1″ away from the good doctor so I would be out of his reach range. I also advanced the warhog to get nice and close so I would be within 5″ to get off a primal shock at him. I hit with the boost and boosted damage but had HORRIBLE rolls and didn’t even do a wound to the lord of the feast.

Strangely, it never even crossed my mind that he might base to base the REAR of the bonegrinder he hit. Game over, super fast kill and a lesson learned – ALWAYS hang on to 1 fury, even if you don’t think you will need it. I offered up a quick handshake and concession so we could reset and play a second game.

Game 2:
Same lists and just a quick reset. This game I was resolved to not make the same mistakes. I advanced a bit slower and held more fury in reserve.

Ant decided to swing around hard from behind the building using it as cover to get closer to me.

In return I ran the razorbacks into melee with the lord of the feast to try and lock it down for a turn.  Not surprisingly the lord of the feast killed them both in his turn, but it did stick him in place more or less setting up the following turn.

The warpwolf stalker hung back in the woods to take advantage of his stealth as I advanced. The gorax put his animus on the stalker and then the stalker burst from cover and basically flew across the entire battlefield in warping speed and laid a serious hurt into one of my warhogs killing it completely while the gorax and pureblood followed up in position as a second line.

I was reeling from this attack and felt that the game was pretty much over (pic was from before the charge but you can see it coming). I kept my cool though and looked over Dr. A’s card seeking that magic trick that would keep me in the game. I saw my chance though it was pretty shenanigan-laden and order of activation would be very important.

The warhog had pretty good facing as it was and I was undecided on what I wanted him to do. The bonegrinders gave Dr Arkadius an extra 2″ range which was necessary to put crippling grasp on the pureblood.

I decided to get aggressive with Dr. A and he advanced on the stalker that had just completely demolished one of my warhogs. He walked up and boosted with his needle and missed with the first one! Well, at this point he was commited so I bought a second attack, boosted again got the hit. Whew. I did a point to him and had him turn around and go hit the pureblood. He got the hit and thanks to the gorax’s animus and rolling something insane he knocked out 2 both the spirit and the body.

Dr. Arkadius then maltreated a gunboar and popped his feat. The gunboar charged the lord of the feast and totally smashed it.

My original plan had been to just leave the stalker alone and the mandatory frenzy from gorax’s animus would hopefully finish off the pureblood. However, with the damage from the stalker, I decided to take a risk. The warhog frenzied into the rear of the stalker. I got a crit knockdown with my charge attack and then just did what warhogs do best and completely destroy the stalker.

The gunboar activated next and advanced on the black clad and killed it with its meaty fists. It also, critically, blocked kromac and made him have to go around him somewhat to get his full movement in before his leap.

The last turn had completely switched our fortunes! Ant was now in a desperate position but after spending a lot of time eyeballing the distance though that he had the run on Dr. Arkadius if he could just deal with the gunboar. Kromac raged out and went beastform.

The wounded pureblood had to advance and attack without benefit of those 2 spirals since he couldn’t heal him until Kromac’s activation. Luckily for me the missing spiral saved the gunboar.

Ant thought he still had the advance on Dr. Arkadius. He moved up to and around the gunboar and then leapt that final 5″. He was 2 1/8″ away from Dr. Arkadius! We measured several times and he was just short by 1/8″ from attacking him. WHEW!  The gorax charged the warhog and did some pretty good damage to him.

Though I wasn’t in great shape myself and this had to be ended now. On my turn I activated Dr. Arkadius popped psychosurgery and advanced into melee. I missed with my first attack again, but the second one hit and made Kromac stationary and did 1 point of damage. The gunboar then advanced into combat with and pushed the gorax out of combat with the warhog which freed him up.  The warhog charged into his rear and unleashed on him. I had to use all 4 points of fury to finish him off though!

That game had it all, deep lows and super highs! Desperate aggression on the part of the the mad scientist who usually stays WAY back from combat.

Based on this game, I am definitely going to start playing him a bit more aggressively. Basically him advancing and attacking twice during that game completely saved the day.

Dr. Arkadius is an absolute blast to play! He has great buffs and debuffs. He has a deceptively long magic shooting attack. His feat is tricky but is probably one of the best in the game once you start planning for it – an extra 7-8″ movement or a free fully boosted attack is amazing – AND you get to activate the beast either before or after it. His mind control drug is fun and making things stationary is just plain mean.

Carver vs. Ravyn – 15 points

Continuing to hone our killer instincts for this game Shawn and I decided to try out 15 point games with different casters. I went ahead and decided to try out a couple of new small units as well – a min unit of brigands and a razorback, to be precise. Shawn was happy to see one of the warhogs stay in the bag so it was really a win/win proposition.

Here is a look at the army I brought – Lord Carver, min brigands, razorback, gunboar, and warhog.

Facing this Shawn brought Ravyn, a Phoenix, a Manticore, and a mage hunter assassin.

Since I am going to want to do tourney play I went ahead and started timing my turns. I went with an extremely generous 10 minutes per turn (which is what they have at a 50 pointer) and managed to actually keep track and take some pictures.

I won the roll to go first and activated Lord Carver, Bringer of Most Massive Destruction, Esquire, the Third first and he cast mobility and put quagmire on the brigands and advanced. Everyone else ran forward with the brigands calling pathfinder. This turn took 4 minutes.

The Retribution also advanced everything though not quite so aggressively.

Turn 2
Carver upkept quagmire and recast mobility and then everything advanced again. This time the brigands called Heroic and ran to surround Carver and protect him from and assassin shenanigans. The razorback shot hoping for a lucky drift but didn’t get it. Everything else just drove forward with an appropriate amount of aggression (that is to say, a lot). All in all, I thought way too much this turn and spent 8 minutes on what should have been a pretty straightforward kind of turn.

At this point Shawn noticed that I had set him up a nice little bowling alley and slammed the warhog with his manticore a mighty 6″ which blasted through 3 of the brigands and Carver himself! The phoenix advanced and burst into flames filling the air with the delightful aroma of cooking pork.

Here is the view from his side of the table -

Ravyn dropped back a bit to safety and put a veil of mists up to block LOS.

On my turn most of the fires went out (though the warhog continued to burn) and one model died but made his tough roll (we weren’t sure the order of things dropping off so we used the flow chart and had it fall of at the end of maintenance phase. We know that is wrong now) but was still knocked down. Carver and the warhog both shook the knockdown but at a cost of a third of his focus. He dropped quagmire too.

Carver himself felt the rage building at being treated like a bowling pin and there was only one thing left to do. He feated! He then cast batten down the hatches and then charged the manticore, holding on to his last fury for a transfer if things went bad. This is where I really felt the effect of blowing 2 fury during the maintenance phase. He did a lot of damage to the manticore but didn’t destroy it. I wasn’t quite willing to risk that last fury to finish the manticore.

The brigands went hogwild and dealt with the assassin and the warhog charged the phoenix but didn’t destroy but did wreck several systems including field generator and cortex.

My turn 3 ended up taking 15 minutes but didn’t really feel like it. I need to play much faster.

Shawn had taken a pretty serious beating but was still in the game. Both of his jacks were seriously damaged but also still pretty scary – especially when Ravyn popped her own feat offsetting somewhat the diminished capabilities of the destroyed systems.

They caused some decent damage but Batten Down The Hatches mitigated most of it. Ravyn again brought forth a veil of mists to protect herself.

It was time to go for the kill on my turn 4. Carver cast mobility and then put quagmire on the gunboar. Carver then finished the work he had started with the manticore but couldn’t quite do the phoenix but the warhog finished it off in his activation. The gunboar ran through the mists to get base to base with Ravyn and locked her in place thanks to quagmire. This turn took 4 minutes and I was pretty happy with the pacing.

This is where we learned that Shawn was treating Ravyn far too timidly. Since the warboar was locking him in place he just killed it. Then he shot at Carver and almost killed him, even with the transfer he had available! This is what the battlefield looked like – Ravyn had upkept the veil of mists.

And this is what Carver looked like -

I was suddenly not feeling quite so positive about my chances…

The game had to end and it had to end now for it to have a happy piggie ending. The brigands activated first and went around the mists and did a CRA on Ravyn damaging her. With a bit of desperation I activated Carver and he advanced into the mists as far as he could. It was out of range of the Hand of God, even with reach. There was only one chance and he fired with both barrels. His boost just managed to finish her off!

Whew, that was way too close for comfort!

After action review -
Warlock – Carver did great! It is nice to play a bit more of a beatstick than Dr. Arkadius. Carver does support his battlegroup by boosting their speed or making them even harder to kill. His bonuses to the farrow brigands are nice making them both fearless and giving them CRA.

Ravyn does a frightening amount of damage for an elf. Shawn was playing her too much like Kaelyssa. I think next time I face her she will be a bit more aggressive.

Units – I totally misplayed the razorback. I overestimated both their range and their threat priority. I should have run them for two turns and then probably not even wasted the combat action to dig in.

The brigands did great for their first appearance. I am looking forward to using them more. They are a great toolbox unit.

Warbeasts – Again, both farrow beasts did everything I asked of them and then some.

There is a game day at my FLGS coming up and I am hoping to bring them along to eat some new faces.  Thanks for taking the time to read this!