Longtime Dakkanaut
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I just played a game against Legion, my first time playing against a Hordes army. I played all my Khador models, which totals 33 points:
Sorscha
- Destroyer
- Berserker
- Wardog
Man-O-War Kovnik
- Spriggan
- Juggernaut
Kell Bailoch
He put together a list that went something like:
Thagrosh
- Scythean
- Ravagore
- Nephilim Bolt-Thrower
- Nephilim Protector
2 Nyss Shepherds
Legionaires
My opponent was actually a Press Ganger, and as I hadn't read the Hordes rulebook (and I'm still new to Warmachine) we were taking it easy and he put a lot of time into explaining to me how Hordes works. It was an interesting and fun game, and things did seem to be going well for me a number of times. I hadn't originally intended to write a battle report, which is why I don't have any photos, but the game turned out to be interesting enough for me that I decided to write one anyway. To the best of my recollection it went somethign like this:
He won the roll off and decided to go first. He put his warlock and warbeasts in the center, and his Legionnaires on my left. I deployed Sorcha's battlegroup with Kell opposite the Legionnaires, and the Kovnik's group a little to the right of center, so I could draw his heavy hitters away from Sorscha or I could converge on them as needed.
Round 1
Everybody ran forwards for a turn, and he shuffled some fury around in order to explain to me how it works. He started to split his warbeasts, with theBolt-Thrower and the Scythean heading towards Sorscha on my left and the other two towards the Kovnik on my right. I ran everyone forwards (except Kell).
Round 2
He put a surprising amount of damage on the Juggernaut and a little on the Kovnik with the Ravagore's AOE spit attack, and continued moving everything else forwards.
In my turn I ran the Juggernaut up to the Ravagore to try to shut down his shooting as quickly as possible, and put some damage on his Protector with the Spriggan's grenades. The Destroyer landed a boosted bombard onto the Scythean and did a few boxes of damage. The Berserker ran into a knot of Legionnaires and whiffed. The Wardog charged a Legionnaire, missed, and came running back with his tail between his legs. Kell sniped a couple of Legionnaires, then Sorscha peeked out from behind the Destroyer and took out a knot of four with Tempest.
Round 3
He used the Ravagore to shoot the Juggernaut again, taking out his axe, but didn't move away for some reason. The four remaining Legionnaires surrounded the Berserker and put some damage onto him, then the Scythean finished him off. Oh, and the Bolt-Thrower killed Kell.
Now that everyone was nice and close together, I popped Sorschas feat, catching the light warbeasts and the Scythean, along with a legionnaire. It was at this point that I made the mistake of charging the Bolt-Thrower and not the Scythean - the Bolt-Thrower was between my forces and Thagrosh, while the Ravagore was farther out, and my natural instinct was to get close to him. I finally got the Juggernaut into combat, but with a crippled axe he wasn't able to finish off the Ravagore, although he did take out it's body. From this point on my opponent kept forgetting to heal the Ravagore's body, and so the two cripples kept flailing at each other till the end. The Spriggan moved towards Thagrosh, I think he did a little damage with his grenades again. Also, I think I killed a Legionnaire with the dog and maybe another with Sorscha's hand cannon.
Round 4
This turn he charged the as-yet untouched Destroyer with the Scythean, getting seven (count them) attacks and scrapping it in a single round. The two remaining Legionnaires charged the Wardog and killed it. His Protector walked over to stand near the Scythean for some reason.
I had been moving Sorscha towards the center to keep her distance from the Legionnaires, and the Spriggan was coming the other way to get to Thagrosh. Happily this meant the Spriggan was close enough to have Boundless Charge cast on him, so he was able to charge over the Destroyers corpse to attack the Scythean, who Sorscha first knocked down (along with the Protector) with Tempest. With only a single extra Jack Marshal attack, he wasn't able to kill him though. The Kovnik took a shot at something after moving closer to the action, and the Juggernaut kept flailing around.
Round 5
After gaining fury to stand the Warbeasts back up, they attacked the Spriggan. He didn't want to max out their fury as he wanted them as potential transfer targets (no doubt the close proximity of my Kovnik to Thagrosh did not go unnoticed), as a result the Spriggan only lost about two thirds of his damage boxes (I think he lost his left arm on the last attack, but his other systems were fine). I think his Ravagore managed to take out the Juggernauts left arm this turn.
The order of activation was very important here, now that I understand damage transfer better I think I may have risked doing it in a different order. First I activated Sorscha to cast Boundless Charge on the Kovnik. I tried to kill the last two Legionnaires as well, but only killed one as I missed the other with either her shot or the spell, and decided to spend her last two focus wind-rushing away (but making sure to stay in range of the action). Then I activated the Kovnik so he could drive the Warjacks, then charged Thagrosh. With boundless charge he had a nine inch charge plus half-inch melee range, Thagrosh was just about nine inches away so that worked out. The Kovnik hit, and rolled pretty well as I recall on his with P&S 15 Weaponmaster charge attack. Of course Thagrosh just transferred the damage. The Spriggan then finished off the Scythean and the bodygaurd Warbeast. The Juggernaut did very little.
Round 6
I though things were looking alright this turn; he was down to a single quite badly injured Warbeast, a Legionnaire, and Thagrosh (and the Shepherds), while I had my Spriggan, Kovnik, Sorscha, and the Juggernaut was still standing. Then he used his feat to bring back his Scythean. Crap. Thagrosh killed the Kovnik and the Ravagore finally finished off the Juggernaut. Double-crap.
The Spriggan was standing on the wreck of the Destroyer so he couldn't move far enough to get to anyone, and with his back to everything he couldn't have charged even with Boundless Charge, my only option was to move him as far as I could and shoot his grenades at Thagrosh, but at RAT 4 and without the Kovnik to boost his attacks he was never going to get a direct hit, and the blast damage from his grenades is POW 5, meaning he needed a double-six to put one point of damage on Thagrosh. He didn't get any double-sixes. All I had left was the Hail-Mary Sorscha charge. It wasn't enough.
Round 7
Thagrosh needed elevens to hit Sorscha after wind-rush. With boosted attack rolls, he got them. Twice in a row. Exit stage left.
So... Warlocks literally bleed fury, can heal their warbeasts from a distance, and can't be killed because they can just pass off damage to their warbeasts? Good to know. I find it funny how after the game two people spent a good fifteen minutes trying to explain how Hordes isn't actually overpowered compared to Warmachine, even though I never said it was - me thinks the lady doth protest a little too much...
Like I said, it was fun game, and very interesting. In retrospect and with a better understanding of how Hordes works, I can see some things that I should have done differently.
First, swapping the Berserker with the Spriggan would let me make better use of the Spriggan with focus, and better use of the Berserker with boosted attack rolls, plus it would have put all my shooting in one place for better effect against infantry - at least it would have worked out better that way in this game.
Second, I loaded up the Destroyer with focus, cast Boundless Charge on him, then charged a light warbeast (the crossbow fellow) instead of the Scythean. The little guy died in two hits, leaving the Destroyer with two unuseable focus, then he got murdered by the Scythean. This was before I realised just how dangerous that monster actually was. It might have something to do with the fact that the crossbow guy had just killed Kell Bailoch and wasn't too far away from Sorscha of course.
Third, the Spriggan should have stuck with the Juggernaut and wiped out the Ravagore. At the time I thought a P&S 19 beatstick could take out a shooty gribbly, but this was before I lost my axe and understood how Warbeasts use fury. I now understand that, because Warbeasts don't have the same focus limits and are extremely easy to heal - at least enough to restore systems (or aspects or whatever they are called), to deal with Hordes you have to use overwhelming power at one point in order to knock out Warbeasts in a single round.
Fourth, on the turn I attacked Thagrosh with the Kovnik, I should have activated the Jacks first in the vague hopes I could have taken out his transfer targets. I could have even tried to charge him with Sorscha as well to try to overwhelm his ability to transfer damage, but of course that would have been an all-or-nothing round. Going by the first plan, I think if I had been lucky enough to take out the two Warbeasts with the Spriggan without boosted attack rolls, he would have had to transfer damage to the Ravagore, which would have killed it and left the Juggernaut alive. The next turn I would have had a chance to move in with both Warjacks, and who knows what would have happened then. The second plan, charging in Sorscha as well, would probably not have been enough to kill him as she would have been down to two focus at best even if she had been able to reach him, and then he would have just killed her next turn.
Basically, it seems that assassination runs don't work so well on Warlocks. Next time I face Hordes, I'll try to focus on taking out heavy Warbeasts as quickly as possible.
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