Anyway…this game was my second for the Blasted Heath league. I won a 4 player King of the Hill game the previous week against Joel, Cory and Jim.

I won the roll, so I had him deploy first. His army looked something like this:

• Adeptis Rahn Shyeel
• Phoenix
• Dawnguard Sentinels (Leader and 9 Grunts)
• Dawnguard Sentinel Officer & Standard
• House Shyeel Battle Mages (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Mage Hunter Strikeforce (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Mage Hunter Commander
• Arcanist
• House Shyeel Magister
• Mage Hunter Assassin
• Narn, Mage Hunter of Ios

The board had two forests on either side of a river crossing the middle of the board horizontally and two hills on either side as well.

Phoenix was all the way to my right, then the Sentinels front and center, behind them were the Battle Mages, Arcanist, and Magister. To their left was Narn and the Assassin followed by the Mage Hunters. Of course, the Advance Deploy stuff was further forward.

My list looked like this:

• Kaya the Moonhunter & Laris
• Gorax
• Feral Warpwolf
• Pureblood Warpwolf
• Druids of Orboros (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Druid of Orboros Overseer
• Shifting Stones
• Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew (Leader and 1 Grunt)
• Lord of the Feast

I fear the Mage Hunters because I thought they could get around my stealthy tricks and forests (the latter turned out to be correct, but not the former), so I deployed most of my stuff (Kaya, Laris, Shifting Stones, Pureblood, Feral, Gorax and Swamp Gobbers) in or near a forest in my left corner. The Druids and Lord deployed in the forest on my far right.

Per the usual, I don’t remember what happened each turn (maybe I need to bring a notebook or something), so I’ll just go over the highlights. In the early parts of the game, the Assassin owned the Lord of the Feast without him having done anything. Narn cleaned house for most of the game, finishing off a Gorax and eventually (spoiler alert!), epic Kaya. At one point, Kaya made three separate attacks against the Magister, needing only 7s and rolled no better than 5. This was the theme of most of my die rolls in this game, except later in the game when the Feral Warpwolf trampled through some infantry to reach Rahn. All the free strikes against him missed thanks to Forced Evolution. He made two boosted attack rolls and didn’t boost damage, missing killing Rahn by 2 points. Kaya then fell the following turn after being chased around the previous turns by Narn and a few other models.

Cory ended up winning the game, and what an awesome game it was! It was a very close game in the end, but I still feel he had me on the ropes pretty early with Narn and the Assassin running around killing my models. Cory is a really good player who is not too competitive, but competitive enough to kick your ass when it counts.

Brian and I decided to play a 35-point refresher game (for him) with his brand new Menoth models. I changed my list up just a tad by bringing the Great Bears of Gallowswood and resisted the urge to bring the Behemoth instead of the Destroyer (and some other things).

His list:

My list:

We rolled off for terrain deployment and rolled off for who went first. I decided to have Brian go first.

First turn was just him moving his models forward. Templar was to my far left, next to the Bastions. The Deliverers and Feora were to the right of them, with Feora taking shelter partially behind the Bastions and Deliverers. The Daughters moved behind a high wall in the center of the table and were mostly out of line-of-sight, but across half the board. The Vanquisher and both Paladins of the Order of the Wall were on the right. The Deliverers tried to fire a few shots into my group and managed o kill a Widowmaker. Feora put up the wall of fire in the center in front of the Bastions. My turn, I moved everything forward, paying special attention to where the Daughters were. I moved the IFP forward, but did not use the “mini-feat” and placed the Old Witch in their midst to prevent the Daughters from getting in contact with her. Of course, I cast Iron Flesh on the IFP, as always. Widowmakers took a few pot-shots at the Deliverers and might have been in range of and killed one. The destroyer tried to shoot a Paladin and deviated into the Vanquisher, which took no damage. The other models merely moved forward.

Second turn, again most of his models just moved forward. The Daughters charged the one Widowmaker on the edge of the woods and did not kill her. Deliverers took a few shots and managed to do some damage to the Kodiak. The wall of fire was placed in front of my Manhunter and Great Bears, protecting the Bastions. In my turn the Manhunter tried charging through the wall of Fire to get to a Bastion, but caught on fire and died. Man, POW 12 hurts!! The Great Bears charged the Templar, barely missing the wall themselves. The two that got in contact did a lot of damage, taking out the cortex and nearly removing the right arm. The Widowmakers took a few shots at the Templar and finished off the arm. The Destroyer tried again to damage the Paladins and failed. The Kodaik trampled the lone Widowmaker in contact with the Daughters and a few of their number, only managing to kill the Widowmaker. The IFP charged the Daughters, killing only one of them. The IFP officer ordered the Defensive Formation and had a few members engage the Vanquisher and place all of them in Shield Wall. Scrapjack moved around to the right of this setup to get lined up with the Deliverers.

Third turn the Bastions charge the Kodiak and attack one of the Great Bears. The Kodiak gets hurt pretty badly, but the Great Bear survives. Paladins charge the Destroyer and one does a whopping 15 points of damage and the other does 10! Daughters leave combat with the IFP to engage The Old Witch. They do little to no damage. Feora attempts to burn all the IFP in front of the Vanquisher to get him disengaged by the IFP, but manages to kill all but one of them. Feora pops her feat, setting all but two Great Bears and The Old Witch on fire. I think the Deliverers fired into the Widowmakers, killing all of them. On my turn, I rolled for all my Fire continuous effects, thinking I was going to lose a lot on this. In the end, I lost three IFP and one of the Great Bears took a point or two of damage. Scrapjack charged into the Deliverers and killed one or two of them to clear a spot for Old Witch. Old Witch uses Unseen Path to teleport next to Scrapjack and attacks Feora with a boosted attack roll that hits. Boosted damage only does 3 points. I figured my goose was cooked at this point. Old Witch’s second attack is boosted to hit and does. Boosted damage rolls TRIPLE SIXES to barely finish Feora! Holy moly! How epic!!

I kinda felt bad beating Brian in a refresher game, but he was cool with it. As always, Brian is a great opponent and Warmachine is over and over, proving to be a great game!

Last Wednesday I finally had the opportunity to play Dave in a game of Warmachine. Up until then, I think we’d only played a couple of games of Legend of the Five Rings and a “demo” game of Uncharted Seas. We decided on 50 points for this game as I wanted to test out my Old Witch list that I made up and started painting over the last few weeks. This being my second ever game of Warmachine using Khador, I figured I’d probably lose badly. Dave has been playing Retribution over hte last little while and seems to be enjoying them and had yet to play against Khador with them.

His list went something like this:

• Adeptis Rahn Shyeel
• Gorgon
• Hydra
• Phoenix
• Dawnguard Invictors (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Dawnguard Invictor Officer & Standard
• House Shyeel Battle Mages (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Mage Hunter Strikeforce (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Mage Hunter Commander
• Stormfall Archers (Leader and 3 Grunts)
• Arcanist
• Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios
• Mage Hunter Assassin

My list:

• Zevanna Agha, the Old Witch of Khador
• Destroyer
• Kodiak
• War dog
• Greylord Ternion
• Iron Fang Pikemen (Leader and 9 Grunts)
• Iron Fang Pikemen Officer & Standard
• Kossite Woodsmen (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Widowmakers
• Man-o-war Kovnik
• Berserker
• Manhunter
• Widowmaker Marksman

Dave had the table already set up by the time I arrived. He used lots of terrain, which I like. The center was dominated by a ruined building with a forest inside, there were his on either side of the table with a forest or two near each deployment zone.

As usual, I don’t remember all the details, but here are some highlights. Manhunter does nothing as he leaves the safety of the forest and gets shot to death. The Greylords nearly wipe out a unit of Mage Hunters with sprays and the Ternion ends up losing one of the three to the Battle Mages. The Kodaik nearly gets wrecked by the Phoenix. Kovnik gets charged by the Mage Hunter Assassin and survives with 2 boxes left. The Widowmakers pick off a few Invictors. The IFP move up the center with Weald Secrets on them and get owned by the Stormfall Archers setting them on fire. The Widowmakers get in the way of the Berserker charging the Phoenix. The Kossite Woodsmen show up behind the Battle Mages and kill all but one of them. The Destroyer works on the Gorgon, but fails to do much. The Berserker gets charged by the Hydra. In the final turn, Scrapjack uses Avatar of Slaughter to go through a bunch of his troops to end up in front of Rahn. The Old Witch uses Unseen Path to be placed next to Rahn and proceeds to attack. She does some decent damage but fails to kill on rolling triple-ones for damage. In return, Rahn attacks the Old Witch, leaving her with 8 boxes prior to his last attack. Dave decides to boost the attack and then damage to kill her.

A really great game, where I felt like I did a pretty decent job of making him work for his victory. Dave is a really awesome opponent who is cool helping out people who may not know all the rules inherently.

Thursday I played another Warmachine game using the Old Witch. This time against Joel’s Mercenaries. We’d agreed on 35 points for this one.

His list:

• Fiona the Black
• Mangler
• Mariner
• Long Gunner Infantry (Leader and 9 Grunts)
• Sea Dog Crew (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• First Mate Hawk
• Lord Rockbottom
• Master Gunner Dougal MacNaile
• Rutger Shaw
• Taryn di la Rovissi

My list:

• Zevanna Agha, the Old Witch of Khador
• Destroyer
• Kodiak
• War dog
• Iron Fang Pikemen (Leader and 9 Grunts)
• * Iron Fang Pikemen Officer & Standard
• Kossite Woodsmen (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Widowmakers
• Manhunter

The real action in this game didn’t happen until much later in the game where the Kodiak charged the Mariner standing toe-to-toe with my final IFP a few inches in from the two lines of Long Gunners. The thought was to do his Smash and Grab to throw the Mariner into the Long Gunners and hopefully kill a few. The first attack worked fine, the second whiffed when I didn’t boost to hit ( I was saving one in case I felt the need to boost damage on someone else). The following turn, the Kodiak managed to wreck the Mariner instead. In the final turn, the Scrapjack mowed through seven Long Gunners, opening things up for the Old Witch. The Old Witch used Unseen Path to teleport next to Fiona and kill her.

Another really fun game and I feel like I’m starting to learn my Khador army pretty well. I look forward to playing again, hopefully in the Shattered Grounds league up at the Game Preserve – Keystone.

I’ve been mostly working on getting a 50-point army for Khador in Mark II Warmachine painted, just so I can play a fully-painted army for once! I also picked up Wood Elves to more or less replace my Ogres as my Warhammer Fantasy army of choice. I even sculpted my own Treeman! This weekend I picked up the Blood Angels codex for Warhammer 40K to replace the Catachan army I started a few months ago. Something about painting a ton of those models really bothered me.

As for the Gallery, I have added the Warmachine models I’ve painted so far. Check them out here.

His list:

• Fiona
• Press Gangers (min)
• Sea Dogs (max)
• Dirty Meg
• Mariner
• First Mate Hawk
• Lord Rockbottom
• Master Gunner Dougal MacNaile

My list:

• Sorscha
• Destroyer
• Juggernaut
• Kodiak
• Iron Fang Pikemen (max)
• Iron Fang Pikemen Officer & Standard Bearer
• Greylord Ternion
• Widowmakers

(looks like I went over by 2!)

I won deployment and had him go first. Not a whole lot happened on his turn. He moved most of his stuff down the middle, with the Mariner, Dougal and Meg moving more or less down my left flank. His Mangler seemed to be keeping to my right. My turn, I merely moved up and I think I tried firing the Destroyer’s bombard into the Sea Dogs, but it missed. Sorscha, Juggernaut and Kodiak moved around his right flank while the Destroyer, IFP and Greylords moved down the middle with the Widowmakers hiding in the woods on his left (after I realized they have Advance Deployment!).

His next turn he tried Influencing several of my IFP to attack each other and managed to kill just one. The Mariner fired on the Juggernaut, causing minor damage. Sorscha was on the edge of the woods on his right flank and took some pretty serious damage. The Juggernaut got Stalled by Meg. Fiona did her feat. The Widomakers managed to kill one or two Sea Dogs, the Ternion reduced the defense of the Mangler by 4, the IFP charged the Mangler and some Sea Dogs, damaging it pretty seriously and killing several of them. The Destroyer fired into the Sea Dogs, killing more of them and they fled. The Kodiak charged the Mariner, causing some damage.

The third turn, Joel set the Juggernaut on fire (while still Stalled) and moved some Press Gangers into the woods where Sorscha was hiding. He then used one of them as an arc node to kill Sorscha. Unfortunately, the wound roll on her was not enough to kill her. In my half of the turn, Sorscha moved up, did her feat and attempted to damage Fiona. The Kodiak left combat with the now-frozen Mariner and squished Fiona to finish the game.

Of course, there may be some places where I got things in the wrong order above, but that was the gist of what happened. As usual, it was a really good game and it was refreshing to play a different faction from Cryx.

Here’s what I’ve got now:

• Butcher (still in blister)
• Sorcha (variant; assembled)
• Sorcha (disassembled)
• Vlad (assembled)
• Karchev (still in box)
• Old Witch & Scrapjack (assembled and primed)
• Kodiak (assembled and primed)
• Kodiak (assembled)
• Kodiak (in the Simple Green vat)
• Juggernaut x2 (assembled)
• Destroyer (mostly assembled)
• Battle Mechaniks x4 (disassembled)
• Doom Reavers x6 (disassembled and need work)
• Greylord Ternion x3 (disassembled)
• Greylord Ternion x3 (assembled and primed)
• Iron Fang Pikemen x10 (assembled; spears replaced with brass rod)
• Iron Fang Pikemen x6 (disassembled)
• Iron Fang Pikemen Officer and Standard (assembled and primed)
• Iron Fang Pikemen Officer and Standard (disassembled)
• Kossite Woodsmen x6 (still in box)
• Man O War Demolition Corps x5 (disassembled and stripped)
• Man O War Shocktroopers x2 (disassembled)
• Widowmakers x4 (assembled)
• Winter Guard x6 (assembled)
• Man O War Kovnik (assembled and primed; missing flag)
• Man O War Kovnik (disassembled)

This all adds up to about 80 points, if I played it all at the same time. There are a few things I want to still get, like models to build up the Winter Guard to full and add the unit attachments and a War Dog, but those are low priority until I get more of this stuff assembled and painted and I play the game more. I also still need to pick up the MkII rulebook.

In my previous post, I listed the army list I was going to be using. Here is Joel’s list:

• Fiona the Black
• Alexia Ciannor and 5x Risen
• Steelhead Halberdiers x6
• Sea Dogs x6
• Bucaneer
• Mariner
• Mangler
• Dougal MacNaile
• Bosun Grogspar
• Lady Aianna and Master Holt

I had originally thought Joel would try to focus on Orin Midwinter right from the start, but he really didn’t do that until later and when he did focus on him, he succeeded in killing him.

I lost the die roll for deployment so I ended up going first. He and I both just advanced our army on our first turn. Most things were doing a Run action. My strategy was to move forward to a certain point and stop waiting to see what Joel would do. I intentionally kept the Mangler back a bit with the intention of him becoming the hammer later in the game.

Probably the first combat was between our two units of Halberdiers. I think he killed a couple of mine, giving Alexia a couple of tokens to use for Risen his next turn. The Halberdier units each hung around for quite a while fighting each other and eventually my Mangler jumped into his unit and killed a few.

The Talon, guided by Meg, charged the Mangler and Stalled him a couple of times. The first time, he was able to get rid of it the following turn. The second time, however, he was unable to get rid of it. The Mangler did finally kill both the Talon and Dirty Meg. Luckily, they were able to distract the beast enough that it didn’t get into the bulk of my army.

I was trying my best to find a way to get a good shot off with the Mule, but that didn’t come until later. I ended up wasting my Obliterator shot from the Renegade on Alexia as I rolled two ones to hit. I should have at least boosted it.

The Vanguard charged and really put the hurt on the Mariner. The Mariner ended up with several disabled systems and didn’t do any damage to the Vanguard from that point forward.

The Renegade, after shooting his wad, so to speak, was trapped in a group of Risen so I ended up trampling through them and Alexia to clear the LOS for the Mule to take shots at Alexia.

The Mule did take some shots at Bosun Grogspar, who was base to base with Fiona and did end up dealing enough damage for him to need to make a Tough roll that Joel passed rolling a 6. the AOE did hit Fiona, but with a POW 8, it wasn’t going to be able to do much.

Twice in the game, Joel created and charged with Thrall Warriors into Magnus, doing little to no damage. Magnus killed off said Thrall pretty easily afterward.

In the end, Joel’s army had done 7 points of damage to Magnus and mine had done 0 damage to Fiona. Based on units and ‘jacks lost, I ended up losing the game. It was a good game that really could have ended up with a dead Magnus or a dead Fiona.

A few things I am finding with the game:

Alexia is still pretty powerful with enough infantry on the board. Just using them to screen or block LOS seems to be really good. She’s not near as bad as back in MK I, but still definitely worth taking and is a threat to the enemy.

AOEs, unless you are able to directly hit the thing you want dead, are pretty underpowered. Several times the POW 15 hit on models in base to base with Fiona would kill the one model it hit directly, but would fail to do any damage to anyone else.

Honestly, the more I play MK II the more I’m remembering why Warmachine is not my favorite game. For now, though, I’ll keep playing for fun when there’s not much else to do.

My list will look like this:

• Magnus, the Traitor
• Steelhead Halberdiers x6
• Stannis Brocker
• Mule
• Mangler
• Renegade
• Vanguard
• Dirty Meg with Talon Jack Marshalled
• Orin Midwinter

Now that I know what some of Magnus’ spells do and with the effectiveness of Orin (who I expect will get a lot of attention from Joel’s army due to last game’s results), I hope to do much better this time. I swapped out the Nomad for a Mule just to get some more ranged attack action since last time his Freebooter(?) kept lobbing AOEs into my troops.

To really make my army choices complete, I need 4 more Halberdiers and a full unit of Devil Dogs, but I am at a point right now that I’m not sure I want to invest more cash in Warmachine. We’ll see what happens the more I play.

Here’s the list I used:

• Magnus the Traitor
• Mangler
• Renegade
• Nomad
• Dirty Meg
• Talon (marshalled with Meg)
• Orin Midwinter
• Steelhead Halberdiers (x6)

Joel brought:

• Fiona the Black
• Alexia w/5 Risen
• Sea Dogs (x6)
• Mariner
• Master Gunner Dougal MacNaile
• Buccaneer
• Mangler

For the most part, I am ambivalent about the way points are done now. It sounds kinda silly saying, “Let’s play 25 points.”, but really it doesn’t seem to matter. At the same time, I think saying one ‘jack at 6 points is the same as another ‘jack at 6 points is a little weird.

Neither of us had played the MKI rules in quite some time, but I had played more often than Joel. I won the deployment roll and had him deploy and go first.

The first turn saw us each move our models forward, but no combat took place. Alexia created a Thrall Warrior. It turns out we forgot to make her roll a skill test to do that. Oh well.

The next turn, Joel moved his stuff forward more.He fired the Mariner’s AOE attack and killed a few Steelheads who passed their command check. On my second turn, the Nomad charged and killed the Thrall Warrior. After measuring, it turns out he could have reached the Mangler. Orin Midwinter cast his Lightning Stroke into the Sea Dogs, killing four of them (Nice!). The Renegade tried to take a long shot to hit Fiona on a hill with the Obliterator and failed to hit her or anyone else. Steelheads charged the Buccaneer and did little to no damage.

Third turn, the Mariner fired again using MacNaile’s Double Powder Ration and targeted the Mangler. He did some damage to the Mangler disabling his movement. His Mangler attempted to Slam the Nomad in an effort to take out Orin, but failed the to hit roll. The Buccaneer Netted my Mangler as well. Foina popped her feat making all my attack and damage rolls one less die – harsh!. The Nomad tried to do damage to his Mangler and failed for the most part. Orin took out the two Thrall Warriors attacking my Mangler.

On the fourth turn, Fiona attempted to assassinate Magnus, doing only 7 points of damage. My mangler died as did my Nomad. On my turn, Magnus kept all his focus, knocked Fiona down with the Mechanical Arm and sliced her up with Foehammer.

All in all, a very fun game. The new rules make things a little less confusing like how terrain affects charges and what happens when a ‘jack’s system is disabled, among other things. I like the game a little bit more now. I’ll definitely be playing it again.

His List:

• Warwitch Deneghra
• Seether
• Deathripper (x3)
• Pistol Wraith (x2)
• Mechanithralls (x7) + Brute Thrall
• Bile Thralls (x6)
• Skarlock

495 points

My List:

• Supreme Aptimus Zaal
• Ancestral Guardian (x2)
• Titan Gladiator
• Cyclops Savage (x2)
• Paingiver Beast Handlers (x6)
• Praetorian Swordsmen (x10)

497 points

Now, to defend myself a little bit here, I haven’t played any Warmachine or Hordes in quite a while plus I’ve never used Zaal at all.

I really liked the potential Zaal had for working with infantry and, had I assembled my second unit of Praetorians, I would have used them instead of maybe the Gladiator or something. I also picked up the Agonizer to use in this game, but after reading his abilities and seeing they all have to do with enemy warbeasts (of which Phil had none), he allowed me to proxy a Drake as my second Ancestral Guardian (which is still in a blister at home).

The game was really good. I never really felt like it was too one-sided, which is what I expected going into this. Phil pretty much neutralized one of my Ancestral Guardians through the use of the Pistol Wraith’s chain attack. As was pointed out later that night, I should have just killed the Ancestral Guardian off myself to activate the Kovass. Never having played against the Pistol Wraiths myself, but having used them many times, I had no idea how to kill them. Now, though, I do have some ideas. Phil’s Seether seemed to do pretty well until the Titan charged it, disabled it, and then chucked it. The Mechanithralls held him down afterwards, though. I had thought it would be a good idea to cast Hollow on the Praetorians in order to keep them alive and to keep them from fleeing, but as Phil pointed out, the Ancestral Guardians then get no soul tokens. Good point. I learned a lot from that game both in better ways to use my Skorne and to see someone who knows the game well play the Cryx. In either case, I think my next game will go much better.

After all this I am now jonesing to paint my Skorne instead of my Bretonnians, especially since the yellow I’m wanting to use on the Brets is pissing me off.