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.

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.