Battle Report against A_Bomb!

Hi all, I am bringing you a lovely little battle report from my last game. It was against A_Bomb!, a very good player down at the club who runs Cryx and has done for a long time. Tonight he was playing Lich Lord Asphixious with his list for the ETC, which we are going to together.

Lich Lord Asphyxious
- Cankerworm
- Deathjack
- Deathripper
- Deathripper
10 Bane Knights
Bane Lord Tartarus
10 Mech Thralls
- Brute Thrall
Necrosurgeon & Stitch Thralls
Necrotech
- Scrap Thralls
Pistol Wraith
Pistol Wraith
Warwitch Siren

A massive list with lots of dangerous units. I have a personal loathing of Bane Knights and Necrosurgeons, so it is not good for me. I am going to be seriously outnumbered, so I know that Assassination is the way to go for the win. Luckily I am bringing the Khador assassin, Strakov.


Strakov
- Beast 09
- Spriggan
Wardog
10 Kayazy Assassins
- Underboss
3 Demo Corp
Greylord Ternion
Drakun + Dismount
Fenris
Koldun Lord
Manhunter

My list is what I am taking to ETC, so I have been trying to get as much practice as possible. I love my jacks, though if I had the time I might paint a second Spriggan and replace Beast, but then again, for an extra point I get to scare the crap out my opponent with him, and normally the spriggan is ignored. The Kayazy work well, but the underboss keeps getting killed before mini feat, so I need to be careful with him.

Deployment

The battlefield has some rough terrain in the centre, with a wood off to the west, and buildings in our deployments. A hill on the east provided a nice feature. I rolled higher for deployment and chose to deploy 2nd. I did this since I wanted to try and time my charges well on the second turn, when we should be pretty close for me to break through, since Asphyxious is normally a backfield caster.

Asphxyious deployed in the centre with mech thralls in front with a deathripper. Necrotech, scrap thrall, deathripper and warwitch off to the east. The bane knights and tartar went off to the west. Deathjack and Cankerworm were front and centre in AD.

I had Fenris and Drakun out to the east, Strakov in the centre with two jacks, dog and Kuldon Lord, and then the KA and Greylords off to the west.

Cryx 1st Turn

Everything moved forward (really fast!) and Cankerworm came sithering through the wood to set up on the flank.

Khador 1st Turn

I kept all focus on Strakov. I ran Fenris and Drakun up on the flank to threaten this side. I ran the Demo Corp forward, Blizzarded 3 Kayazy for my cloud screen, and then ran the KA forward to cover the other flank from charges. Kuldon Lord put 1 focus on the Spriggan, but I forgot to move him. Strakov activated next, cast overrun on himself, Superiorty on the Spriggan, and advanced. Beast ran forward, and the Spriggan ran as well, taking up a postion slightly to the east. Wardog moved up next to Strakov

Cryx 2nd Turn

Faced with two flanking dragoons, the scrap thrall charged and exploded, doing 3 damage to the Drakun. The pistol wraith moved up and shot the Drakun, doing another 4 damage, and got the chain attack off, meaning I could only move or action next turn. The death ripper got a focus from the warwitch, and then charged, attacking fenris, and doing a few damage. Luckily he was in melee with the Drakun for next turn. The mech thralls ran forward into the terrain, followed by  the surgeon. the Pistol wraith in the centre shot beast twice and froze him, which meant he wasnt doing anything next turn. he even did a point of damage, but I forgot about hyper aggressive.

Asphyxious moved up and put down his spell which gathers spells over the KA. Tartarus cursed the KA, then the bane thralls charged the visible KA and killed 2 blizzarded ones. Canker took care of the last one and backed up behind my lines. Deathjack ran and engaged the spriggan on the side.

Khador 2nd Turn

I was not happy with the state of play here, since I did not see how I was going to get to Asphyxious, and if I didnt paste him this turn I was going to get a Ghostly Legion down on my head next turn. I decided to try and go for it with the Spriggan. I upkept overrun and superiority and put 3 focus on the spriggan. I tried to hit the deathripper with the drakun and missed. I then tried to move fenris to melee range of the deathjack and was just short, so I went for the Deathripper and missed with all 3 attacks! it was not looking good.

I then feated with Strakov, charged a mech thrall, boosted to hit and killed it. This activated overrun, which I then moved the spriggan, remembering I had bulldoze and getting the Deathjack out of the way and setting up my charge on Asphyxious. Strakov ran away with sprint. Spriggan went next and charged the Lich Lord. I bumped a couple of mech thralls out of the way and then layed down a Mat 10 power 18 boosted hit, which managed to take off most of his damage. with a shield and an extra lance hit I finished him off.

Conclusions

I pulled off a classic Strakov win, but I think this was mostly because Oli was not prepared. If he has used Gaspy's spell to prevent charging then i would have been in trouble. I used the dragoons really badly and should have split them up some more. I am pretty worried about going up against an opponent who knows him in and out, since it is do or die with him.

a WIN!

Played a game of warmachine yesterday, with my first outing with Strakov. I was playing against Nick, another commitee member down the club. He was running his circle force with Moshar as warlock. I hadn't played against Moshar before, and it was my first outing with strakov, so I was a bit worried. Gringo at Cafe Turbo will be posting up a full battle report, which I suggest you check out, but here is my list of points from the battle and what I learned, a conclusion if you will.

Here is my force:

Strakov
-Beast 09
-Spriggan
Wardog
10 Kayazy Assassins
-Underboss
3 Demo Corp
Drakun + Dismount
manhunter
greylords
koldun lord

50pts

I pulled of a bottom of round 2 win with some clever manovuering and the spriggan's wonderful bulldoze. I set it up with an overrun to position the spriggan, then feat, then a spriggan (with superiority) charged with three focus and bulldozed the gorax out the way (yeah, no reach is great) to lay it down. Here is what I learned

• Superiority is amazing. I have to get used to having a MOV 6 jack, since it makes it so much easier to line up charges. Even my opponent misjudged how much he could move by the exact amount of superiority, so it can surprise as well.
• Bulldoze is very handy. You need to be able to line it up right, which can be difficult, but it just lets you glide past those other models.
• Overrun is amazing for positioning models. Also, if you use it on Strakov to shoot then you get the D3 attacks from rapid fire, which means you normally end up with a good chance of hitting the target to activate it.
• Strakov is very good. all his abilities stack really well, and he has a lot of flexibility. The only problem is that he has to play forward for his feat. If you do not win on feat turn then he can be vunerable to assassination next turn. I am thinking of trying to get him some fast moving escort to make sure he is safe. they just run into position around him to act as a meat shield. A wardog is also pretty good to have along side him since its counter charge and return can be very handy for blocking charge lanes.
• I need to practice against hordes more. I decided to enjoy my turn and leave the spriggan till last. I charged the great bears into the feral warpwolf to kill him off since he killed beast 09 last turn, but ended up giving Moshar 2 fury, which almost cost me the game (it came down to the last roll for damage, which ended up been, luckily, very high)
• Nick is an exceptional player. his familiarity with his force is recognisable. he stacked all his abilities very well, which showed when he killed Beast 09 (with only 1 damage point) with 4 attacks from the feral warpwolf. If I had not pulled the assassination off then I think I would have been screwed.
• Druids are horrible. The ability to mix all their abilities is amazing, with no spells in a big radius, immunity from fire, cold and electricity and a bunch of clouds I had real problems with them.
• Sprays in the new rules are VERY good. I had a surrounded drakun with bloodweavers. 3 sprays later they are all dead, and he is free to run around causing havoc. 
• I wasted the Kayazy with my deployment. They were in totally the wrong position. I must get better at deployment.

Thats all I can think about for now. I was thinking about composition and I might cut the  KA down to a min unit with the underboss since it is difficult for positioning with them. I then drop the GB since in the ETC we can only have one on the team, and Gringo wants them. This gives me enough to buy Fenris and Yuri, which will be good for more scary threats.

I have a feeling with Strakov that you want a wide spread line so that the enemy does not know where the charge is coming from. I would have the Drakun and Fenris at the ends, Strakov centreish, then spread our forces around. You are going to be putting Strakov somewhere the next turn to act as the centre point which everything is going to be drawn to. If you scare the opponent enough then they will go defensive and try to block charge lanes. Next turn you either find/make a hole, or you just mash the whole of the front line with your force. If you do the latter then I am thinking of keeping the kayazy as a second line charge so that they can mini-feat where they want and kill the caster, hopefully. I think I am going to call this the Dragnet.

Gringo wins, I Palm-->Face

Had ym game against gringo last night and it was really entertaining. I have never played a more tense game and it really came down to the wire. It was a fantastic game and it was really fun, though the pressure did get to me, I was knacked afterwards. Here are the forces:

Forces

My force was as follows:

Old Witch

-Scrapjack

-Destroyer

-Spriggan

-Wardog

Doomreavers

-Escort

10 Kayazy Assassins

-Underboss

Great Bears

Greylords

Koldun Lord

Widowmakers

Gringo's Force consisted of some really nasty stuff, but lots of infantry

pIrusk

-Kodiak

10 Kayazy Assassins

-Underboss

10 IFP

-UA

Great Bears

Widowmakers

10 Cylena Raefyll & Nyss Hunters

Manhunter

Manhunter

Yuri

Widowmaker Marksman

Here are my highlights:

After us both doing some fantastic manovuering I proceeded to forget to feat...TWICE! The first time I ended up been really happy. If I had used my feat then I would have killed a few models but not much. The second time I forgot again and this time I lost all three of my jacks!!

At the end of the game I made a last ditch attempt to go for the kill with OW on her own. She had 12 focus so I tried to go through the whole of his kayazy and nyss. I managed to kill 10 but with only 2 focus left I was not able to kill irusk, and she got CRAed to death by the remaining nyss the next turn.

Lessons learnt:

• dont forget to feat
• OW + Cull Souls + Unseen Path is VERY useful. a total of 15 souls reaped in the turn, and I could have probably done more than this.
• nyss hunters are pretty darn good, but make tasty souls
• scrappy is pretty fast (though that is me just playing Khador)

Gringo - Biggest WM MoFo I know - First Game

Going up against my mate Gringo tonight, and he has started up a blog, so I am motivated to get this started again. I am really looking forward to this. He is a good WM player, and I am really looking forward to taking him on. Been a long time coming.

Gringo runs infantry heavy lists, so I will have to be really careful with my placement and get those Greylord magic shotguns out. Hopefully it goes well, I just need to decide between Zerkova or Old Witch for my warcaster.

Here is Gringo's Blog

Blog Change

Right, I am changing this to my general blog since I am so lazy with my Infinity. I will be posting up here all manner of stuff, from Warmachine and Hordes lists to Infinity minis to my future ToXG project.

Test paint scheme

Here are the two line kazaks with white armour plates.



This was done using a base of dheneb stone, highlighting up to pure skull white over 4 layers. It looks good in my opinion. The camo was scorched brown, calthan brown, Macharius Solar Orange, then chaos black. The metal is done with a basecoat of boltgun metal, highlights of chainmail, then barab black wash. I might do another black wash to tone it down even more. The fur is khremi bown, base, then dheneb stone overbrush, and a light overbrush of dheneb stone/skull white mix. The black is still to be painted.

Now I cannot decide whether to leave the packs black, or change them to a light bestial brown. I also need to decide where my turquiose squad markings are going to go. I might do those on a white background as well. Oh how I miss shoulder pads!

Starting Ariadna

I have decided to start playing infinity and am going with ariadna. I have looked at playing the game for a while, but it took me a long time to really get into it. There were two things that really pushed me to start. The first was the Ariadna Autocannon Tankhunter model which I think is so amazing. The second was the fact that my local games club (www.crossgamingclub.com) was getting more and more people playing, and I wanted to get in on the act.

I have chosen Ariadna, though I keep getting tempted by other factions (pan-oceania for the remotes and TAGs, haqqislam for some amazing troops, nomads for some more amazing models.....crap, now I am thinking of changing!). I really love the tankhunters, vet kazaks, moblots, and a bunch of others. I have gone ahead and bought a bunch of models, and thanks to some good deals i have got quite a few.

Vet Kazak with rifle
Vet Kazak with T2 rifle
Vet Kazak with HMG
9 Line Kazaks with rifles
Line Kazak with HMG
Dog Warrior
SAS with rifle
3rd Highlander Grey
Chasseur
Tankhunter with Autocannon
Scout sniper

I have built and based these, and will bring some pictures of these soon. Hopefully I will also get a test model painted up and posted. I am thinking of doing either a night camo scheme or an autumn camo scheme. Which one will I choose? decisions decisions