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.

GottaCon 2011 – Steamroller Gallery

These photos come courtesy of the dapper and dashing Uehen, who was Johnny-on-the-spot with the snappity-snap.

Your Go Games Steamroller tourney

Dan at Your Go Games held a Steamroller event on April 10th, 2010 and I took my Cryx figs down to test them out.

I took two army lists, using Skarre and Deneghra, that represented the painted figures that I had and not necessarily the best armies I could build with the minis I had. You can see all the photos from the event in this gallery.
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Easter Weekend Gaming at Connections – report part 1

As promised, I have just taken place in a couple of solid days of Warmachine and Hordes gaming.  This post will focus on the game I played on Friday, April 2nd, with a couple of mentions to other action that went down.

Friday saw a middlin’ size group of us show up to throw down.  Old stalwarts Dylan and Trolland showed up ready for battle.  A few players new to Warmachine also ventured forth:  rancidtwinkie, gds23 and lorenz.  If there was anyone else that showed up for a game, I must have been distracted by the carnage on the table in front of me. (more…)