Shattered Grounds game report – Butcher vs Magnus

I trekked my Khador models across town to Connection Games Renfrew store and got in a league game today.  I played a 50pt game against Smiles mercenary force.  The Butcher of Khardov ended up facing off against Magnus the traitor.  Both of us were playing theme lists.  I used my 50pt Tier 3 Butcher list described here.  My opponent had a tier 4 Magnus the Traitor Most Wanted list, comprised of the following:

• Magnus the Traitor ( -6 pts )
• * Renegade 6 pts – 1 tier bonus
• * Renegade 6 pts -1 tier bonus
• * Mangler 8 pts
• * Vanguard 5 pts
• Steelhead Halberdiers, full, 6 pts
• Steelhead Riflemen, full, 9pts
• Stannis Brocker 4 pts
• Idrian Skirmishers, min, 6 pts
• * Skirmisher UA 3 pts
• Kell Bailoch 2 pts

If forwardkommander is not lying to me, this list actually totals up to 55 – 6 = 49pts, but I guess there are no one point options available to poor old Magnus.  I guess there are downsides to betraying the kingdom of Cygnar.

We rolled for scenario and got Supply Line.  For those not in the know, three large based objectives are placed 12 inches apart on the centre line of the map.  You control an objective if you are the only player with a model base to base with the objective.  Jacks starting their activations within 3 inches of the objectives get a free focus (beasts can remove one fury).  Scoring begins at the end of the first player’s third turn, first to 5 points wins.  I had thrown some terrain down, and with the addition of the objectives and Magnus’ tier-bonus wreck markers, with a map close to this:

I deployed first and took the first turn.  Butcher, War Dog, the Spriggan and the Decimator were all deployed at the 10″ mark, behind the sandbag wall.  The Shocktroopers were on the left, between the obstruction and the sandbag, with the Demolition Corps to the right, between the sandbag and the forest.  The Kovnik and the Marauder were off to my right, aligned with the edge of the forest.  The Widowmakers hunkered down immediately behind the sandbag wall.  The Widowmaker Marksman was in the open between the forest and the sandbag.  The manhunter was parked in the forest, no doubt trying to catch lunch.  My Kossites, always late to the battle, were lost in the forest somewhere.

My opponent lined up all four of his jacks, plus Magnus and Orin Midwinter, to the right (his left) of the forest near his lines, facing off against the Butcher’s battle group.  The Steelheads, halberdiers up front and riflemen behind, and Brocker behind them, were aligned with the sandbags on his side of the map (with their advance move, the halberdiers moved ahead of the wall with the riflemen hunkered down behind it).  The idrians were hanging out near the obstructions, and declared the Demo Corps as their prey.  Kell Bailoch was deployed at the edge of the forest.  Magnus’ spells went up due to his tier bonus.  Snipe on the lead Renegade.  Temper Metal on the Vanguard, buffing the little jack’s ARM up impressively.  Iron Aggression was on the Mangler.

My first turn was simple:  The Shocktroopers ran up in a diagonal line abreast, spaced out a little, next to the Khador gun emplacement that was serving as our large obstruction.  The widowmakers sprinted from the cover of the sandbags off to the edge of the forest, half of them making it into the cover.  The Decimator and Spriggan stormed across the freshly vacated sandbag wall.  The Decimator ended up near the last Shocktrooper, with the Spriggan an inch over to its right.  Butcher cast Fury on the Demo Corps, then advanced to the edge of the sandbags and cast Iron Flesh on the Shocktroops, with the dog trailing along behind him.  The manhunter made a bee-line past the right objective point to nestle in the obstructions and wait to see what popped up to play.  The Marksmen cautiously advanced a few inches and blew away one of the advance moved halberdiers, then used swift hunter to retreat a little.  The Demo Corps rushed up towards the central hill, with two flanking the objective, one behind it and two more off the hill further back.

The mercs first turn saw a run from the Mangler and a cautious advance from a Renegade and the Vanguard behind it.  Stannis Brocker moved up to get all the steelheads in his command. The halberdiers advanced to form a line between the central wreck marker and the wreck marker near the triple obstruction.  They were eyeing the Demo corps and wanting to stay out of charge range.  The riflemen advanced behind the halberdiers, forming a huge clump of models in base to base between the wreck markers.  They took a couple of combined shots at one of the lead demo corps soldiers, but did little damage.  Kell Bailoch, from his position in the forest, double-tapped at a Demo Corps soldier, mildly wounding him to death.  The idrians advanced to the edge of the obstructions, two of them peeking around the corner to smoke the poor innocent manhunter. The final Renegade, with Snipe already on him from Magnus’ tier bonus, waltzed up and targeted the furthest Shocktrooper.  With a focus spent to boost the shot, the jack bull-eyed the trooper, evaporating him in a huge explosion.  No damage was done to the other shocktrooper, but both he and the Decimator were knocked to the ground.  Orin Midwinter ran through the battlegroup to huddle behind the light wreck marker at aligned at mid-field, on the edge of the Steelhead formation.

My turn coming up. I realised that Orin would be a problem that close to my lines. The huge formation of Steelheads also provided a tempting target for my Spriggan’s grenades. The spriggan got a couple of focus, one on the Decimator to shake the knockdown effect. One went to upkeep Iron Flesh on the Shocktroopers and Butcher kept two. The Kossites ambushed on the high right flank, in the back arcs of a bunch of the idrians. They charged and killed a couple of the idrians, tying up a couple more. I ran one of them around the formation to block off easy access to the objective point. The Marauder ran into contact with the right objective marker under the watchful eye of the kovnik, who was off to his right. Butcher activated, shuffled over the sandbag wall and cast Iron Flesh on the Demo Corps. For those of you keeping score at home there are a couple of errors here… Lets list them (or I’ll never learn)!

1. I upkept Iron Flesh on the Shocktroopers, wasting a focus there.
2. I cast Iron Flesh on the Demo Corps before they activated, so… they cannot charge!  Two of them were likely on the edge of their threat range to the halberdiers, getting 4 attacks with backswing.  No more. :(
3. The Butcher is on the wrong side of the sandbag wall and there is a Renegade with an obliterator rocket out there.  Note this for later.
4. I think the Butcher dropped his wallet on the way over the linear obstacle.

PS:  The wardog followed the Butcher, but left a little space between the big guy and him, because he doesn’t want to get “all blown up.”  Realising I’d screwed the pooch with the Demo Corps, they crawled forward three inches, two reaching the far edge of the hill, another just behind the objective with the last trailer lagging behind.  The Shocktroopers issued the shieldwall order, the knocked down member sacrificing action, and they advanced to the corner of the obstacle within striking distance of the left objective.  The Spriggan advanced and launched a grenade in order to try and catch Orin Midwinter with a grenade, boosting to hit.  Due to cover from the wreck marker, the grenade sailed wide of Orin, but caught 5 steelheads, two of which perished.  I launched a flare with the second shot, bullseyeing Orin and cancelling his stealth.  The Marksman took a shot at Orin but missed due to the cover of a wreck marker.  The Decimator advanced and took a hail mary at Orin, but missed.  Crap.  The widowmakers made four steelhead widows.

Smiles gathered his focus, dropping two on the still armed Renegade (uhoh).  Not sure where the rest went, I think Magnus held the rest.  Kell tried to kill another Demo Corps, but only wounded one lightly.  The Mangler charged the shocktroops and threshered, killing one outright but whiffing on the other.  Whew!  The riflemen put a couple of CRAs against the Demo Corps, but they were defence 16 due to Iron Flesh and elevation, evading damage.  The halberdiers charged in on the Demo Corps, killing one but missing the wounded one on the left flank.  The Vanguard advanced and attacked over the halberdiers to target the wounded demo corps, but he again was saved by Iron Flesh.  The idrians issued the assault and battery order, taking shots at the Kossites, killing two, and running four unit members around to contest the right objective.  Didn’t see that feint coming!  But at least the marauder and kovnik are all in their business.  Stannis Brocker advanced behind the halberdiers and looked angry.  The loaded renegade advanced and fired at the Butcher, landing a boosted Obliterator on his head for nine damage.  Magnus advanced and arced an arcantrik bolt at the decimator but caused no damage, so no stationary effect.  Magnus popped his feat, causing his Mangler to shift away from the Shocktroopers and engage the Decimator and the Spriggan.  A renegade came with the big boy.  The second renegade engaged the remaining shocktrooper and stayed in B2B with the left objective.  The Vanguard remained where he was.  Orin walked around the Vanguard and popped his no-fun aura.

My turn.  The Spriggan got a free focus from the middle ground objective, and the Marauder got one from the objective he was parked on.  The Butcher dropped three focus on the Decimator and kept three for himself.  With a bunch of jacks all in my grill, I decided it was feat time, but I needed to kill Orin first.  The Demo corps, three man strong, needed to go first…  One of them died to a free strike due to ranked attacks, but the remaining two moved up, one of whom got Orin engaged.  The other was parked on the middle objective, which would score me a point as no one else was in B2B.  Orin died to a giant hammer, as did two halberdiers.  Butcher advanced to the open space to the right of the near sandbag wall, cast Full Throttle and popped his feat.  His feat would miss the lone shocktrooper, the marauder and the kovnik, but got everything else.  The Kovnik triggered his drive and seriously missed an idrian with his giant axe.  The Kossites killed two more idrians.  The marauder slammed one poor idrian through the chieftain, killing both, but bought a second attack with jack marshal and boosted the hit with his focus… and missed!  Two idrians remained, one in B2B with the objective, one engaged by the kovnik.  It took two widowmakers to kill the idrian, securing a second objective point.  The other two widowmakers, with boosted damage, widowed Mrs. Brocker.  The Decimator, with his extra damage and three focus, ripsawed his way through the mangler.  The Spriggan charged across the newly made wreck to tag the Vanguard, putting two solid spear hits on him, leaving him about two-thirds wrecked, but with all systems go.  A shield blow hit the Renegade in front of the Decimator.  The Widowmaker Marksman killed a rifleman.  The lonely shocktrooper whacked the fresh Renegade in front of him, moving around it to rest in B2B with the left objective.  I finished my turn with two control points in hand, the right objective sewn up tight, the middle in heavy contention with two undamaged heavies, and the left weakly contested with a single Man-o-war.

With my opponent missing his heavy-hitting jack, things were getting close.  The riflemen flowed around the halberdiers and tried a large CRA against the Butcher, but ended up with only three of them in range, dropping the Butcher down to six health.  The two remaining demo corps were cleaned off the field, but the Renegade did not manage to kill the Shocktrooper despite a free focus from the objective point.  Considering his options and measuring his threat range, my opponent moved Magnus just within ten inches of the Butcher and dropped a boosted Obliteration on his head. A good damage roll later and the Butcher was blasted to pieces.

Another loss for me, but an entertaining match against a friendly opponent.  Well done Smiles on your win for the mercenaries in Shattered Grounds, I’m sure I’ll see you on the other side of the table some time soon.

GottaCon 2011 – Steamroller Report from Subhedgehog

As mentioned previously, I have three casters in my Khador collection.  I knew I wanted to bring the Butcher of Khardov, as I have the makings of a tier 3 list with what I have assembled. I suppose I could have gone for a tier 4 list, but I wanted to have some ranged threats on the jacks, as the Butcher doesn’t really speed them up. Here is the list I put together for Axey McButcherAxe

• Butcher of Khardov (-6 pts)
• * Decimator 9 pts
• * Spriggan 10 pts
• * War Dog 1 pt
• Kossite Woodsmen, minimum, 4 pts
• Man-o-war Demolition Corps, full, 9 pts
• Man-o-war Shocktroopers, min, 6 pts -1 tier discount
• Man-o-war Kovnik 3 pts
• * Marauder 7 pts
• Widowmakers 4 pts
• Widowmaker Marksman 2 pts
• Manhunter 2 pts

As with any Butcher list, the whole idea is to make a Butcher Delivery System ™.  The Widowmakers are to help thin out any single-wound melee troops threatening objectives, with the Marksmen there to hunt opposing solos.  The Kovnik and his marshalled marauder are to make directly for a secondary objective target on the weak flank, hoping to knock, slam or kill anyone threatening a flag or some such point of interest.  The rest is a big brick up the middle.  Demo Corps to provide wide area threat, and the Shocktroops as an honour guard until Butcher does his thing.

• Zevanna Agha, the Old Witch (-3 pts)
• * Scrapjack 0 pts
• * Decimator 9 pts
• * Destroyer 9 pts
• Battle Mechanics, min 2 pts
• Doom Reavers 6 pts
• * Greylord Escort 2 pts
• Greylord Ternion 4pts
• Kossite Woodsmen, minimum 4 pts
• Winter Guard Rifle Corps, full 8 pts
• Kovnik Jozef 2 pts
• 2 x Manhunters, 2 x 2 = 4 pts
• Yuri the Axe 3 pts

This list I really threw things in without much thought.  I wanted to try out the Doom Reavers with the escort as the vanguard, and the rifle corps with Jozef is to provide anti-infantry fire around main objectives.  This list wasn’t as well thought out, nor really well understood how it should all work together.

Round 1 I played Phillipe and his Xerxis army of Ferox, Rhadeim and Arcuari.  A Bronzeback, Gladiator and Sentry were the heavy muscle to back up the cavalry.  I joked that I knew the Skorne army much better than I knew my own (hint: not actually a joke).  Even right after deploying, I knew I was in trouble as I didn’t really have a plan, but was very aware that I might not have the tools to take out the heavies.  We were playing Outfight, Outflank and Outlast.  His Sentry parked itself in the left objective across from my frightened rifle corp.  The Ferox and Rhadeim were all over the right objective.  A missed shot at Rhadeim caused him to move out of one of the scenario points  via evasion, and I actually managed to clear out the remaining ferox with the few doom reavers left, to score my only control point of the tournament.  I knew it was coming, but couldn’t do enough to prevent it:  Rhadeim ended up killing the Old Witch pretty easily.

The other rounds are all jumbled in my head at the moment so they are presented in no particular order:

Against Trent (aka Trent) and his epic Krueger list, I took the Butcher.  We had a big terrain feature, sort of a town square fountain with a big menofix in the middle of the board and were playing Sacrifice.  Tharn, Widowmakers, Kovnik, Lord of the Feast, Kossites and a Marauder were all at one point disputing the sacrifice patented explodo-flag, but the circle forces were getting the upper hand.  The rest of the army went to contest the objective zone, flowing around the big fountain.  Krueger and his druids advanced behind Cylena and the Nyss hunters, sending a warpwolf stalker and gorax as vanguard.  There were some constructs lumbering around.  Trent had Butcher hit with his sustained attack  lightning zap and a boatload of fury, but ran out of time on his second to last turn (that’s a hint at what’s coming up).  I had a chance to clear the zone and set off a blast-o-doom on my besieged marauder, so I put some focus on the Decimator and Spriggan, keeping 4 for Butcher himself.  The Marauder buzz-sawed his way through what was left of the Gorax and the Spriggan bulldozed his way into a couple of druids, pushing one out of the zone and leaving his charge target in…  Whiff, whiff and no points for me, so I decided to go for the assassination.  I use Obliteration to nuke a hole through a stonewarden and a couple of druids, leaving Krueger open for a charge.  The Butcher almost killed him, leaving him with a couple health, but no focus for a followup attack.  Three desperate shield-cannon shots from the Shock troops could not tag Krueger, and he quickly electro-fried the big psychopath for the win.  My main mistake was splitting my focus between scenario points and assassination.  Had Butcher had one more focus Krueger may have been ended.  Lesson learned about resource allocation and prioritization.

I played one of the chaotic order folks (I forget his real name, but on the internets they call him Azzurro) and his epic Hoarluk troll squad.  The scenario was Incursion.  Butcher and Hoarluk’s forces smashed together.  I weathered the storm of the feat pretty well and popped Butcher’s feat in return, but missed some key rolls from a demolition corpsman against Mulg.  Whelps actually made me miss three or four attacks, including one with the Butcher against a mauler!  Leaving Mulg near your caster and healthy is a bad plan:  Butcher was soon smashed in half.  Totally fun game though, just raw beating without much subtlety, though Azzurro did manage to get a control point from one of the flags.

My worst performance was against Neil from the Your Go Games crew in Whiterock.  I lost in the top of turn 2 against Neil’s Mage Hunter Strike Force sniper squad and Ravyn’s feat.  The Old Witch was the third least-advanced model in my army, but I was still too close.  I think it took about 12 minutes from the first model being moved to the crying and the gnashing of the teeth.  As we had so much time, however, Neil graciously accepted an immediate rematch (though not for tournament standings, obviously).  We  just set up again to play for fun.  Forewarned being forearmed, the result was different.  The scenario was gaining ground, though that didn’t end up affecting the results.  Kossites were actually the stars of the show in this match – they ambushed Narn (?) to death and tied up and eventually killed two or three members of the Stormfall archers, as well as prevented a couple of members of the Mage Hunters from getting shots away on multiple turns.  The Stormfall archers did manage to set the Old Witch on fire, which lasted some three turns before the end of the match.  Eventually, Ravyn moved up too far and ended up getting shot to death by the Destroyer and Kovnik Jozef from opposite flanks.  At least I was able to avenge my terrible gaffe from before.

My last match was against the snakebitten and voodoo-hexed Ryan and his Magnus the Warlord list.  We had played a game of Magnus vs Butcher (actually, my first with Khador) some time previously, so luckily I ended up with the Old Witch to oppose him this time, in a capture the flag scenario.  Croe’s cuthroats and some idrians advanced cagily against the rifle corp defending my flag, whilst Yuri and the Manhunters, the Doom Reavers, along with some Kossites (but I forgot about them the whole match…) harassed his long gunners and idrians defending his flag.  The jacks kind of met in the middle, with me managing to weather the two obliterator rockets without too much damage.  The game ended when Ryan ran out of time on one of his turns and forgot to pop Magnus’ feat, which left him vulnerable.  Though engaged by a Mangler, my Decimator got fully loaded with focus.  Greylords advanced into combat with the Mangler to have an easier time ice cageing it.  I managed to make the jack stationary, so the Decimator revved up the buzz-saw, broke away from its ice-encrusted adversary and went screaming after Magnus.  The results were not pretty.  And with that win, I took myself out of contention for the Whipping Boy trophy (see Ben’s post for more on the whipping boy scoring).

All in all, four great games, one confused loss against a well prepared opponent and one incredible face-palm (thankfully immediately followed by one of the great games).  My game against Trent could have easily gone either way, had he had more time or had I better managed my focus.  I learned a good deal about my Khador forces in a short period of time and even better, got to meet and play against some fantastic folks.

Magnus v. Shae at One Stop

I had an opportunity to drop down to One Stop and play a game on Thursday. Typically I am busy then but an evening opened up and so I headed down with my Magnus force for a game.

Trent and I arranged to meet to have a 50pt game with his Shea Tier force based on the spoiled tier list from the PP forums. I brought a Tier 4 Magnus list:
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New additions to the Magnus Agenda force

I received a few new minis in the mail yesterday as part of two trades I made on Bartertown. So I now have another unit of, thankfully assembled, Steelhead Halberdiers and the rest of the figs to fill out my min unit of Croe’s Cutthroats.

In my next game with the army I am going to try to use the Halberdiers to protect the flanks of my force. I suspect that they may prove more useful in that roll

Steelhead Riflemen thoughts

I picked up a unit of Steelhead Riflemen for my Magnus Agenda army. The Magnus the Traitor themed list requires two Steelhead units and while I want to get some cavalry I thought it would be simpler to get a unit of Riflemen and this also means that I have a second small-based Steelhead unit to take advantage of the Advance Move they will get as part of the list.

My aim is to get a 4th tier Magnus list with a 35pt army and the Steelhead Riflemen allow me to do that and also add some more firepower to the list.

The figures actually assembled quite easily. All of the figures have a sword and bedroll that fits into a small peg on their back. five of the models were single piece (except for the sword and bedroll) and the other figures had rifles with hands attached which had pegs that fit into an indentation on the model. Assembly was a breeze.

When the preview for the figures was published in NQ 29 there was a lot of commentary on why you would want to take them in a list that could take Long Gunners or Trenchers. There are several reasons to my mind:

• You can only take Trenchers or Long Gunners. If you want more firepower in a list then these are your best bet
• They give you a second small-based Steelhead unit to take advantage of the benefit of the Magnus the Traitor theme list without requiring that you build more Halberdiers
• Their ability to re-roll failed CRA attack rolls makes them quite powerful

It is this last point that sent me to Numbers to crunch some data and engage in a little bit of Statmachine. The Riflemen have a RAT of 5 which means that they need above-average rolls to hit DEF 13 which most infantry tend to have. This is about a 28% chance to hit and a unit of 10 Riflemen firing at DEF 13 will only, on average, generate three hits.

Clearly these are not models that are going to be accurate on their own and Magnus the Traitor provides no real way to increase their accuracy. All that is left, at least without knowing what is available in the upcoming Mercenary book, then is for the models in the unit to combine fire to increase their effective RAT. The downside is that immediately cuts down on the number of shots the unit fires but, and this is the important thing to remember, with their base RAT they are hitting an abysmal number of times anyway.

So the question is when do we want to use the CRA and just how effective is the ability to re-roll misses?

As we can see, the re-roll is what really powers this unit. The CRA on itself is only marginally more effective than straight shooting. In fact, with the reduced number of shots the CRA on its own is not any more effective than single shots. The re-roll adds an additional hit, on average, to the units fire and this continues as the target’s DEF increases allowing the Riflemen to theoretically hit and damage DEF 17 and 18 models.

On DEF 13 infantry models a Riflemen on its own has a 28% chance of hitting. Using the CRA this increases to 58% and with the re-roll it jumps to an amazing 83%. On infantry with DEF 12, like Exemplar Errants, the re-roll on the CRA means that the shots will hit an incredible 94%.

I’ll be trying the unit out this Friday so we’ll see how this statistical exercise works out.

The joy of Magnus

I was down at One Stop for the tournament that was supposed to run today. Sadly Ben and I were the only people to show up. Even Darren cancelled due to other commitments. On a brighter note though Ben and I were able to get in a 35pt game with my Magnus Agenda force against his Cygnar army. I’ll be posting a battle report and photos later (also of the game I got later with Sam and his Cygnar army) but the most important thing that came out of the games today was how much I enjoyed the Magnus force and how dramatically different Ben played against it than he does my Cryx force.

I think that perhaps Cryx was not the best force to use to get back into Warmachine. At least for me. Cryx is more of a rapier force that needs some finesse and planning and I’m still at the “hit it till it stops moving” phase of my tactics.

I had so much fun in fact that I will be expanding the Magnus Agenda force and will be working on using that as my main army for the next while as I figure out the game more and get better at tactics, placement and the game in general. Once I get some more experience under my belt I’ll go back and check out my Cryx army.