Second Foray Into Warmachine, Cryx vs. Menoth 25 Points.
Cryx List:
eGaspy
Nightwretch
Nightwretch
3 Soulhunters
10 Saytix Raiders w/ Sea Witch
Withershadow
Warwitch Siren
Menoth List:
Reznik
Crusader
Vanquisher
Max Bastions
Min Errants
1 Vassal
Min Choir
This time I’m the one with the proxies (the paper based/spines are the Saytix Raiders)
I am green to the game while my opponent is green to MkII, we maybe fudged up the rules along the way.
For better or worse, we had decided to “just kill each other” again and left the missions to the wayside. I know, bad, but we felt ‘safer’.
.
Deployment Roll Off, I won this time and chose to go first.
I deployed
eGaspy in the middle. Surrounded by the withershadow in triangular formation. The wretches took their flanks.
The Siren was next to the left flank Wretch and the Soulhunters chilled on the opposite flank.
My opponent had the meatshield wall of Bastions in front of Reznik.
The 2 hvy Jacks and their support set up on my left flank.
Advanced deployment:
-My ladies set up across from the jacks and the squishy infantry of course.
-His Errants take up positions on my right flank.
Funny note: the only living models that are not fearless are all the girls in the list.
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Cryx Turn 1
Maintenance: One Focus to each BoneJack.
-Nightwretchs both Run forward and end up side-by-side.
-Warwitch Siren Runs forward close to the trees.
-Soulhunters Run to the forests and hide behind them.
MISTAKE #0.5: I was still playing a bit cautiously with them…and with
eGaspy it’s doubly bad play on my part.
-Saytix Raiders run through the forest a bit to get into combat next turn.
MISTAKE #1: I bunched up a bit, missing that the Vanquisher doesn’t care too much about ignoring blast when it auto-sets them on fire…
-
eGaspy he activates, cast Hellbound, moves 6” and then teleports to hide behind the Wretches.
-Withershadow Run to catch up with
eGaspy.
Menoth Turn 1
I don’t include the Maintenance or go through in specific order of the activations because I can’t remember it all for Menoth’s side.
-Reznik-Iron Aggression on Crusader and Ignites the Bastions and moves up with the Bastion Wall.
-Crusader-Trudged forward.
- Bastions-The wall run as fast as it could.
- Errants-they shuffled around, but they really wanted to stick to the cover. They took pot-shots but were out of range.
-Vassal-Enlived on the Vanquisher
-Choir-Can’t spell this goes up on both.
Main event:
-Vanquisher-Trudges forward and takes a shot on a leading Raider and boosts the hit roll.
Hits and gets 4 other girls in the template. The hit model is now a smear and although the Raiders ignore blast damage, the 4 hit are on fire.
Cryx Turn 2
Maintenance: Guess what, all 4 girls couldn’t put the fire out and all 4 burned to death. One Focus is allocated to the right Wretch.
-Warwitch Siren power boosts the left Wretch and moves to the left flank.
-Withershadow: Hellbound is upkept for free, Puppet Strings was cast on
eGaspy and the Combine move to the left flank as well.
I’m thinking this combo would be nice on that side to deal with the Jack that is on its way.
-Left Nightwretch Runs into the right side of the Bastion Wall.
-Right Nightwretch moves up to the closes Errant, boosts to hit with its gun and kills one, but was self-sacrificed to some dude in the back.
-Soulhunters: Ran through cover a bit and used the end activation move to engage the Errants, it’s only further showing how poorly I used them. They really need the charge and I end up just tossing them to just engage.
-Saytix Raiders: What is left of them charges the Crusader. They all get into combat range and the Sea Witch pops the mini-feat (power swell).
Sadly I don’t have the details but I do 4-5 damage points to Reznik, but I really ding up the Crusader. I take out the Cortex, the open fist, and maybe another system.
Glass Cannons to the max.
-
eGaspy: he moves up and Arcs Death Knell on the Bastions. He hits and gets 3 bastions and Reznik under the template. I do really low damage on my first damage roll of the hit guy… so I used puppet strings to reroll it and did more damage, it went from 1-2 to 5.
I was hesitant to use this power, but I’d thought to mix things up and use something I didn’t think I would use.
My other options were:
A. Death Knell the Jack with the Raiders around it to finish it off and kill the girls which wasn’t a huge issue.
B. I could have thrown more Mists as I wanted too.
But nooooo, I picked the worst option. Not only was the damage minimal, I triggered Rezniks’ Witchhound ability and the Vanquisher moves closer to my lines.
Must keep these rules in mind… ARRGG.
Anyway, he ends the activation with a Mist placed in front of him.
Menoth Turn 2
-Reznik-Upkeeps stuff. Moves up a bit.
-Crusader-Bashes some girls, but they hold.
-Vanquisher-moves up and smears the Warwitch with the Belcher with no sweat…literally, right in the face.
-Bastions-move forward to be in range to attack stuff. 2 Bastions are in range of the Sea Witch but both miss. Three Bastions were in range of the Wretch, one misses, but two connect and do 18 points of damage, leaving 2 boxes in Movement left.
-Errants-miss some, but end up pwning 2 soulhunters and putting 3 wounds on the last.
-Vassal-Enliven…what else?
-Choir-/shrug.
Cryx Turn 3
Maintenance: One Focus is placed on the still functioning Wretch.
-Soulhunter-fails all his attacks on one Errant.
-Saytix Raider and Sea Witch, the last remaining pair flail at the Crusader uselessly. (Though it would not have helped now, I did forget I could combine attack)
-Withershadow-Upkeeping Hellbound, Admonia Charges the Vanquisher (I move everyone first cause they are a unit right?)…and rolls really well to do 12 points of damage.
But wait, MISTAKE #2: ENLIVEN!
The Vanquisher moves away and the other member fails his charge (the last member was in terrain and couldn’t reach).
-Nightwretchs: the neutered one sits to be annoying. The other Wretch moves over to the just moved Vanquisher and shoots it. I question if I should boost the hit roll, I decide not to, and the Wretch rolled snakes-eyes, so it would have been moot either way.
-
eGaspy: right… so it’s feat turn. I move up, but (MISTAKE #3) because I was playing a tiny bit defensively, I don’t move forward all the way to Reznik…
I brought back 2 Soulhunters and 8 Saytix Raiders.
Then the teleports back and throws up 2 clouds to hide him… I don’t know why though…/shrug.
Hunters on Reznik (tall on the saddle) and Raiders on Enliven-less Vanquisher. The mistakes comes in where the right Soulhunter didn’t have enough space to sit on the other side without moving out of his front arc before turning.
The left Soulhunter does manage to get through.
The Saytik raider dog pile the Vanquisher.
(I know these are all solos but they were all so similar…and it took forever in game)
The Spectral Soulhunter either did no or very little damage to Reznik.
The Raiders finished all their activations doing 18 damage to the Vanquisher, leaving it with 2 boxes left and Reznik was down to 6 boxes left
IIRC.
Basically this scared my opponent, but he was still alive and the Spectral Army disappears.
Menoth Turn 3
-Reznik-upkeeps stuff and moves to try and stab the SeaWitch, but misses…my opponent also decides to heal Reznik with focus and was deciding between 2 or 4.
(In hindsight, I’m not sure if we can do this. I was looking through the rulebook, but couldn’t find it afterwards).
-Crusader-the mace smashes the Sea Witch to a pulp, while the open fist misses the last remaining raider.
-Vanquisher-stands and aims at the Withershadow combine being so close…and kills the dude that Granted stealth and lighting the remaining combine on fire.
-Max Bastions-they charged various stuff…they whiff hitting the crippled bonejack, the other is dodging like crazy, but gets hit once and is wrecked into next week.
-Min Errants-They finish off both the crippled bonejack and the soulhunter…and are out of range to shoot the combine though.
Vassal-Makes the Crusader attack one more time to finally kill the Leader of the Raiders.
-Min Choir-They sing the “hit better” song.
Cryx Turn 4
Maintenance: Both Combine Fail to put out the fire. One takes 2-3 damage, while the other is unharmed, for now.
I see an opening…the Bastion wall was open because they engaged both Bonejacks and Reznik is on top of the hill, but open.
-The remaining Withershadow charge the Vanquisher (upkeeping Hellbound). The first wrecks it, while the second attacks a Bastion and does (
IMO) an impressive 8 damage, but obviously it gets spread around.
-
eGaspy-moves max to get a bead on Reznik.
eGaspy drops a boosted to hit Excarnate on Reznik.
I roll, 1, 1, 2.
Even my opponent was sorry for me.
Ok…so it’s do or die, I use my remaining 3 focus for a unboosted anything Excarnate again…I hit crazy enough. I roll boxcars to damage.
I do 8 points of damage crazy enough.
But woe is me as Reznik has 2 boxes remaining. It was a good thing my opponent healed 4 damage points instead of the 2 he initially wanted to do.
Menoth Turn 4
-Reznik- Hex blasts
eGaspy (boosts to hit) to remove Hellbound and do 3 points of damage. He uses Engine of Destruction on himself and moves into combat range of
eGaspy.
After that ONE attack, it causes 13 damage to
eGaspy, BUT, he LIVES with 2 boxes left.
But it’s moot as the Errants charge in and while some miss, it only takes one hit and
eGaspy is down.
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So… it was another really close ending for me…but ultimately I have lost again.
I don’t think it was as much of a pushover as my first game (well it ended the same way of a all or nothing deal).
Unit Run-downs:
CRYX
-
eGaspy-I liked him… he had lots of tools, I may not have used them well, but he did make for a very powerful caster.
The means of taking souls was largely ignored. The errants were unlikely to give up a soul due to self-sacrifice and the Jack support were really out of reach, and the Bastions were not really targeted to be killed.
*Hellbound: it didn’t do much, but it did concern the opponent enough to spend 3 focus to get rid of it at the endgame. It was upkeeped by the Combine so it wasn’t bad.
*Caustic Mist: I prob. used it when I didn’t need to and didn’t use it when it would have been better.
*Excarnate: The secondary effect wasn’t used, but as a primary attack it was ok. I mean it did get me really close to taking out Reznik, but with out extra focus to boost the damage, its best wasn’t enough in the end.
*Death Knell: it was a stupid idea to use it on the Bastions who didn’t care, wasted focus, and then let an enemy Jack move…
*Parasite: I think I forgot about this. Though it didn’t matter end game as I would have used this first and still rolled 1,1,2 to hit with it.
*Teleport: very cool and allows him to keep up with the running army or move back.
Feat: very cool…there’s little else.
It was nice to get in more lacerators…almost unrelenting indirect damage.
While the Soulhunters worked well with a Large base, incorporeal, and tall on the saddle.
Though I need to work on getting better angles.
7 Focus: it was weird. 1 was to the Wretch and the support powers were used.
When the Wretch didn’t need the single focus, more offensive actions were taken.
I didn’t feel as starved for focus as I did with pDenny…but it’s only been 2 games
-Nightwretchs-They could have been used better. I’m thinking it would have been better to just start slamming stuff instead of shooting, maybe this could have done something about the Bastion Wall, maybe even cause collateral damage.
-Soulhunters-/sigh…used poorly again on 2 occasions in this game. I still love them. They need Ghost Walk or Wrathe, sadly, there just isn’t enough points.
-Saytix Raiders w/ Sea Witch-I liked them. It was my fault more than necessary died of fire early on, but they surprised both the opponent and I. Glass Cannons they are…I mean, with swell, they nearly downed a heavy Jack with 7 of the girls with no buffs or debuffs. I can see why a Backlash Skarre / Lacerater combo is pretty cool.
-Withershadow-They were nifty. I didn’t use them well, but their damage output if given the chance is pretty high vs. Jacks and non-bastion like infantry.
I didn’t get a chance to shoot anything (witchhound/out of range) and the puppet strings was only used once, which was meh mostly because of what I was doing with it.
-Warwitch Siren-used not so well again. I will cry tears of joy the day I get to whip out Venom…
I was going to try a Withershadow/Siren combo, but it was poorly done due to positioning all this last minute and then Enliven.
Yea, the out of activation movement of Enliven and Witchhound are great, it screwed things up big.
I think my list needs a ‘main-line’ unit. They Raiders don’t do that, but I really like them. I of course need to experiment more with them and others.
10 Raiders and the Witch are 10 points while 10 Bane Knights or 6 Bane Knights and Tartarus(or Wrathe) are similar points.
The combination of Lacerators and Feat seems ok, and I think it would have worked really well if my positioning of
eGaspy on feat turn would have been better ( a bit more forward and a bit at an angle).
I really enjoyed
eGaspy, but I’m gonna alternate and use pDenny next game.
MENOTH
-Reznik-Witchound: I had forgotten once and a Warwitch died for it. Else I knew he was a hits-hard-wants-to-assassinate-personally. He’s nice with the brick and getting those jacks into position.
-Crusader-Beatstick, but didn’t do a whole lot because I tarpitted it with Raiders (but who cares, it’s a ‘free’ heavy).
-Vanquisher-Nice, the automatic effect is really nice and he didn’t even need to do any combat thrashers…
-Bastions-Wall…I knew about these guys, and I really had no intention of downing all of them, nor even one.
-Errants-they are great all-rounders, great for a flank. Though their shooting wasn’t used much it did give me pause at times and they hit very hard in combat.
-Vassal-Enliven lived up to the hype I heard…it was really good as I forgot about it just once, and once was enough to let the Vanquisher live and kill off a Withershadow Combine next turn.
-Choir-I didn’t really spell/shoot him much, so it was moot.
-Sanct.
