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Finally getting back into warmachine! I have not played a match in well over a year.

I wanted to test out the new caster that khador got, Strakhov. Heres my list:

Kommander Strakhov
-Devestator

AKs
Widowmakers
WG Mortar

Opponents list: I dont know the ret units at all so I am not entirely sure on some of what he was running.

Unknown warcaster, he said it was some spellcasting chick
-Phoenix(?)

Nyss hunters(?) with a UA?
Long gunner infantry(not sure on their name)

I havent looked at the ret units yet since none of my friends play them. I was basically playing blind, without knowing what was coming.

Set up:
There was a fair bit of forests, rough terrain, walls, and a structure on the table. I set up with my Widowmakers and AKs to the left, widowmakers AD into the edge of a patch of forest. Mortar goes right to set up behind a low wall. Strakhov and Devestator are dead center of the field.

Opponent: He deployed his army fairly centralized. The nyss hunters deployed close to some forested area. The long gunners are off to the side, obviously making an attempt at my mortar.

Turn 1:

I cast superiority on my devestator, sentry on the mortar crew and have 1 focus left. Strakhov advances forward next to a low wall. Widowmakers move to the opposite edge of the forest, closest to the enemy and wait. AKs move in behind them. Mortar runs forward behind the wall, a few inches to the side of Strakhov.

Opponent:

He sticks the phoenix with 3 focus and advances into some forest with the caster. Long gunners move up behind a wall and activate sentry on my mortar. Mortar obviously misses his infantry but only scatters 1in, catching 5 of them in the AOE, kills all but 2 models. Vulgar language ensues. Nyss hunters move forward into the forest, getting ready to attack my widowmakers (I didnt know nyss hunters ignored concealment). He also advances his jack to the side of the forest.

Turn 2:

Me: I put one focus on the devestator and upkeep my spells and pop occultation on the widowmakers and recast sentry. I advance strakhov up along the flanks of the forest that everyone seems to be gravitating towards. Devastator runs straight towards opponent's cluster of troops in the woods, one more turn and he will be on them. I activate my mortar and drop a shot on his warcaster, which misses as usual. It scatters back towards me 2in, landing in the middle of the nyss hunters, killing 4. More vulgar language. Widowmakers take some shots at the warcaster, dealing 3 damage and the AKs advance to the wall between the forests.

Opponent:
He keeps all his focus since his jack doesnt lose it's focus at the end of it's turn. First he activates his 2 long gunners, who he uses to advance towards my mortar, they end in range but activate sentry again. This part is sort of odd with sentry. It reads that if an enemy model ends it's movement within LOS of the unit with sentry, the sentry unit can make a free shot, it doesnt specify that you have to shoot the model that triggered sentry. So, I fired at his warcaster, the shot scattered into the remaining nyss hunters and their UA. I rolled high and dropped them all. Opponent quit.

We were both using new stuff that we hadnt used before, he was a menoth player before and decided to switch to ret. This was his first game as retribution. Some rules are sort of hazy for me. Can you move the mortar or shoot with it on your turn and still be able to trigger sentry on your opponent's turn? Can you target any model you want with the sentry attack?

My thoughts on strakhov: He has so much support that you are constantly running out of focus. I played a game with the same guy later, without the mortar that time, and I was constantly wishing I had more focus for attacks and his offensive spells.
I tried out the assault kommandos later that day as well. They did not do well. They dont hit very hard although I never got to charge with them since my ret opponent was running tons of ranged stealthy guys. I had them shield walled and behind a wall and his squad of nyss hunters still managed to drop all but 2 in one round of shooting.

Thoughts on Retribution. They have some nasty units. in my second game, my opponent had a sniper that could do an automatic three damage to jacks, and he had nyss hunters who ignore cover/concealment and do boosted damage to jacks. My devastator was my main killer in the second game. I used it to charge into his phoenix/nyss hunters/mechanic/warcaster. It was sort of foolish I suppose because his warcaster only took the pwr 9 but the ROD took out all but 2 nyss hunters, the mechanic, the phoenix's shield plus put four damage on him. I then spent 2 focus and put the jack down to one box left.

Heh, that's some nice scatters. You pretty much hit exactly the right kind of Ret units that you want to hit with AoEs.

What you fought was the Hydra if it stores focus. It's the one with two very large forearms.

It sounds like your opponent chose squishy units, and then decided to pack them together like sardines. This is a very bad idea, especially when a mortar is around. He shouldn't have taken that many losses, especially with the way unit coherency is handled now.

Remember that coherency (being In Formation) is now handled in a radius around the leader of the unit. All abilities like CRA, now only require you to be in formation. So no need do stuff like be base to base or within 1".

Also, are you halving the power on AoE blasts? Only a model that's directly hit by a blast gets the full attack power, the rest is halved, round up.

He was trying to pack his units into an outcropping of forest to make them harder to attack with my widowmakers/aks/strakhov. Prolly explains them being clumped. Nyss hunters are stealth though, not sure why he had them in there. I was halving the power of the mortar but it is pwr 8 vs his ARM 10s and 11s = /. His ranged units didnt really stand a chance. I showed him my strakhov card before we set up our armies also, he must have forgotten that mortars have rng 20...

He really should have taken some kind of solo that could run around and tie up the mortar. Ret has plenty of affordable solos that could basically take your mortar out of action in turn 2 or so if they run. This forces you to save your sentry shot to use against that solo, or pull forces away from the front to deal with it.

He has to remember that since his army is low ARM, he should be more worried about blast damage than being seen. After all, it only takes LOS to a tiny sliver of your base to take a shot, especially with the mortar's long range.

With the way MKII formations are handled, especially with the Ret infantry which usually has higher CMD, you can spread your troops out quite a bit. These days, the problem I have with blasts is finding clusters of infantry to hit with blasts in the first place, and that really only happens once a big brawl starts in the middle of the table, after an infantry unit has charged in and cleared out something of mine.

Tell him to try the Invictors as well, they're harder troops to put on the front line, have range attacks, and with the unit attachment can get a 14" range for one turn for free. With a natural ARM of 15, and defensive line, they'll always be at ARM 17 if you move them right (clusters or 2 or 3) which means that a POW 8 blast hit on them needs a 10 at least to kill one of them.

Also, when you play Ret, you learn to give up a little ground. It's funny because right at the turn most other armies think they should charge in everything to attack, with ret you should fall back slightly and do another turn of our excellent shooting options, all the while our support stuff and solos are flanking around.

Yes, our second game against each other was very different. I didnt use the mortar and he used two solos. A sniper solo and that guy with the chains, that has a 4in melee reach. That game was much closer, I lost all of my widows and AKs to his nyss hunters (again did not know that his nyss hunters ignore cover/concealment etc.) I thought my widows would be hard to hit in the woods, and my aks would be difficult as well with shield wall AND cover from a wall. He tried to assassinate my manhunter with his chain whip solo dude, but I protected it with strakhov + war dog's counter charge. His sniper solo + nyss hunters did HUGE damage though, they cut my devestator's boxes in half just before my feat turn. He clumped his forces in the woods, again. Again, that was his undoing, being charged by my devastator on strakhov's feat turn. 13in charge + RoD in the center of his entire force spelled his demise.

Again, both of us are green to this game, since my friends and I have very busy lives (all of us are students who work full time). We cannot get together and play too often, and these were his first games as retribution plus his first games facing strakhov/devastator. Much was learned on both sides of the table.

When moving on a small board, clumping units is sometimes difficult not to do but it is essential to avoid. I still make the mistake myslef and against powerful AOE's or spray attacks it is a disaster. With many of the special rules it is a definite advantage to spread out to stop the opponent taking out more than one model at a time with one of his models or using your models as free movement boosters!