Ravyn batrep 1 vs Epic Morvahna

Had a 50 point game vs Circles new caster, Epic Morvahna

The lists:
Ravyn
MHSF + UA
Invictors + UA + Souless
Discordia
Dahlia Hallyr and Skarath
Magister
Artificer
Destor Thane
Arcanist
Mage Hunter Assassin
Mage Hunter Assassin

I was planning to run Hyperion and the Arcantric Force Generator however I left the AFG at a friends place so went with this alternate list. I like Dahlia Hallyr and Skarath and the anti living tech they bring to the table, Skarath is also a solid beast on its own.


Epic Morvahna
Full Wolf Riders
Full Skinwalkers + Skinwalker Alpha UA
Shifting stones
Shifting stones + Stonekeeper UA
Gatorman Witch Doctor
Stalker
Stalker
Goraxe
Gallows Grove
Gallows Grove

The skinwalkers getting 2 attacks each at mat 8 with the UA and Carnivore now are a real big threat. I was thinking to either shoot them away or get the sprays down on them. Overall I figured Morvahna was failry wek to ranged assassination and planned to use the feat turn to put as much damage on her to either kill her, hurt her beasts and or make it hard for her to feat effectively.

My first turn the Strike Force bunched up around the artificer  for defense as they were preyed by the Wolf Riders. With snipe I landed several shots and manged to kill 2 wolf riders. The Mage Hunter Assassin out the front charged a Gallows Grove and removed it from the table.

Unfortunately in his counter turn the Skinwalkers engaged the strike force, even without their +2 bonus speed, and made the full unit fail its command check, the remaining wolf riders just assaulted, killed a few and engaged more with light cav moves.

Even without the Strike Force I quickly assessed assassination potential. If I was able to clear one skinwalker with say, Ravyn, Discordia, a Mage Hunter Assassin and potentially an Artificer I can get the full unit of Invictors + the Destor Thane under Ravyns feat to fire on Morvahna, camping 5 transfers, that's 5 combines and potentially 5 more rat 7 3d6 power 12 damage at d-3 shots.... seemed good.

The mage hunter assassin missed, Discordia failed to damage it, I left the Assassin too close so when Ravyn moved in and feated she also failed to kill it. I went with the Thane anyway and couldnt clear the hedge while staying inside feat range, so he couldn't contribute.

Considering what was going to happen next turn I went on with shooting Morvahna to soften up the beasts, because with Fog of War up they were perma stealth. With snipe and the mini feat Extended Fire on the Invictors I tagged Morvahna for about 10 damage and made her transfer 4 times.

So the next turn the stalkers come in, wreck Discordia and take a chunk out of the strike force, the Skinwalkers also come in and kill most of the Invictors and Carnivore heals up Morvahna. He has left however both of his stalkers in reach range of Ravyn. The Strike Force rally, now that half of them are dead. Ravyn steps up and threshers the Stalkers and starts going Gun Foo on them, she kills one and leaves the other on about 10 boxes. The strike force step in and leave it on one box, phenomenally bad dice rolls.  Skarath charges accross and boosts and attack, and fails to hit, buys and boosts again and fails again.

So the Magister which was killing and pushing around WolF Riders slams Skarath over the Strike Force engaging the Stalker and into the Stalker, killing Skarath and Killing the Stalker and killing about 3 strike force. Cool move but not what I wanted to really do.

Morvahna responds by feating and throwing more stuff into the zone.

At this point he is on about 3 control points and I have 2. If I could have run Dahlia into the Zone to control and used Ravyn to clear the friendly zone to Dominate I would win, but I pointed out that after I killed Skarath and the rest of the strike force had melted he actually scored a point and took the win on scenario by simply ending his turn.

Failing command checks on Strike force with Ravyn before you Feat is super lame.

Emorv is pretty neat but I don't think she is super sweet, Will Pagani won a tournament with her and with pretty much this same list. He is Will Pagani, I remember him winning this time last year by warpathing a Gnarl Horn and killing Thyra. I think he is just good at applying strategy and tactics quickly to get ahead of his opponents, and EMorv would have been a nice example of a Curve-ball new caster in the hands of a very skilled player. He can also write some semi decent lists and apply them well without much practice.

I mentioned to my opponent that being aware I cant attrition that battle I would be going straight for assassination and a 15/15 caster on a large base that is want to cut herself is a pretty good target, however he seems adamant that he can keep her safe.

We will see in future games.

Beermachine 2013

 With a hiss a roar and a flipping of the bird Beermachine had begun. Luke paced anxiously back and forth while Andrew made his toast for breakfast and washed it down with the first beer of the day. Tim whined about how crap the mountain king was and Alan sat around thinking about anything other than warmachine because his list played itself, he really was just there to move it around and roll dice. As I prepared my lists Glenn showed up late and filled out the 8th place so I could stand around and drink Gin and Tonic all day.

There were 8 competitors and 6 factions represented:

Circle championed by Andrew and Luke
Skorne/Gators annexed/disowned by JS
Trolls trawled by Tim
Mercs hired by Glenn
Cygnar heralded by Josh and Damon
and Cryx who enslaved Alan to physically move them across the table.

 

I believe unintentionally JS may have given Luke an awkward game. I'm not sure why I just picked up that vibe. On the far table the Winner of the tournament is about to auto pilot over Andrews circle list. Ouch.

Product placement.

 I was considering 4 rounds but 3 was enough, especially since JS appeared about to snap after the second. The photo of the game above was the infamous one where he claimed to roll, or roll equivalent to 3 trip ones in a row.
Sometimes dice just screw you, sometimes they bend you over penetrate you in all manner of unpleasant ways and then jizz in your eye.

 Gentlemanly gentlemen go about a literal blue on blue match. Swans vs Cygnets maybe? To be honest I don't remember who won but its a whole lot of Cygnar and looks about as boring as goose poop to me.

Glenn's face says it all really.

Throughout the games I also kept a tally of what I called Bitch Points. These were awarded to players who inordinately complained about their list, dice rolls or general bad luck.  I realised as a TO its a giant douche of a move to do and may be seen as an effort to contain uncontrollable raging and force people to have more amicable games. However I merely did it because I'm a giant douche.

In the end once people learn about it I think they did control their rage, and for some it was probably not a good idea. I am now sure of that many of us play games, just so we can rage about things. Its an important psychological benefit to be able to purge negative pent up energy. Even if all the negative energy you have is about how crap the Mountain King is or how bad the Dice raped you the act of raging about it restores balance, catharsis. I miss not doing Judo because of the violent outlet it gave me and for many people their sports and hobbies are probably the same, I was much calmer when I got to strangle people and throw them around the room. It appears we males all need our moments of controlled and regulated violence or we may just pop.

 So anyway who won

Alan first. Awarded with the Peanut of first place

Josh second. Awarded with the Peanut of second place

No third place cause I'm useless

Peanut of Assassination awarded to Glenn (fastest assassination)

Peanut of the Destroyer awarded to Josh (most kill points)

Peanut of the Tactician awarded to Luke (most scenario points)

Groin Guard of the Defeated (box) awarded to JS for constantly getting kicked in the nuts.

Most Bitch Points was pretty close. I should say you could only make 5 points per game. 3 players maxed points on their first game and then only scored 1 or 2 more points in the subsequent ones. A part of the scoring also went into if you bitched about something, and then went on to win with it. For this fact
Awarded to Tim. His whining over the Mountain King ended up edging out Damon's particular rage over bad dice just before he beat JS who had worse dice. I think his Mountain King did rather well and with more sound tactical application (using him and learning him more and not given the forums any credit) it will do him well.

Overall it was a blaring success, many hangovers were had by all and the pizza that Andrew shouted us did not cause one bout of diarrhea, well done. Everyone had fun apart from JS who will either never play again or murder the neighbors in his sleep. Sorry JS, next Beermachine acquiring Bitch Points will be encouraged not discouraged, and you'll be able to rage as much as you like.

Post Ides Syndrome: The Dissolusioned Underpowered Faction Disorder.

So as the blog title mentions, procrastination is a big part of my wargaming, I need somewhere to do it now that I'm not studying.


Ides was a fantastic tournament in a good location with excellent competition and great people. It was a resounding success, although I didnt win. However there are 2 main gripes. The first was playing against the same Retribution opponent twice. I know some other players had it worse off with their draws but if I'm going to complain about anything that's it.
The only other thing was I found many of the scenarios difficult to score from. Essentially because they required the destruction of an objective before the zones were free uncontested, or what was many times the case, the enemy caster basically just sat in front of my army and forced me to kill him or I would be in a bad position the following turns, because my casters were not the up front kind.

This resulted in one of the two following scenarios.

1: I'm Retribution so killing a caster isn't an issue. I remove whatever is in the way or go around it depending on my caster and secure the kill, failing this make sure his counter turn will not hurt by removing as much vital pieces as I need to and facilitating my armies ability to deliver whats needed where its needed.

or

2: I'm Retribution so killing a caster isn't an issue. I remove whatever is in the way or go around it depending on my caster and secure the kill, failing this make sure his counter turn will not hurt by removing as much vital pieces as I need to and facilitating my armies ability to deliver whats needed where its needed. BUT my dice rolls fail, and / or I forget a key in game effect resulting in me loosing.

Basically I was up 3 wins but on 0 control points. In a fit of panic over the low CP's I tried to take some on the following game. What I learnt was I should have just assassinated when I saw the opportunity. I waited a turn and missed my chance. I was playing against Menoth and I popped Ossyans feat a turn late, I hit Fiora with a Chronophage and 2 arcantrick bolts and followed up with 3 stormfall archers. I left her on one box. Forgetting that she was under the effect of Chronophage she ran behind a wall blocking my armies line of sight to her. herpderp

The other game was against 3lich. We were grinding each other out to similar effect. I feated first, he countered by moving up and feating. With a bit of scalpel shooting and Phantom Hunter I lined up an assassination on Gaspy. I had him on fire, corroded and with 6 boxes after Kaelyssa spanked him with an Arcane Secreted Arcantrick Bolt. However I now derped, with 3 focus left I figured the better option was to step in, start stripping focus and boosting damage rolls, which it would have. If he didnt have his feat up. I would have been much safer firing one more Arcantrick Bolt at him and sitting well well out of range. As it was I didn't put any damage on him and he healed 4 more points, making the effects of the fire and corrosion negligible. He almost screwd up his own counter assassination run but managed to do at least one activation right (his last one) and killed Kae to the box. It was looking reasonably a safe win for me until I walked too close and gave it away, I'll chalk it up to a lack of concentration.

So I came out 5 wins 2 losses. I dont need to recount the wins, it was in most cases MHSF with Phantom Huntered Arcantrick bolts, or Hyperion to face. I did collect one CP but it was after the last game on the first day and we both forgot to record it, so it didnt go down on my record. No big deal my overal placing of 9th out of 36/38 would have been the same anyway, incidentally I was the highest ranked Ret player and I have a suspicion I might have been close to fastest assassination, but neither of these factors were rewarded. Noted I did "smash" Josh and he was above me on the table at the end.

Lessons? Just kill the motherfuckers, screw the scenario points only take them if its going to win you the game. Your better off 7/0 than 6/1 with 50cp's. But I suppose much of this depends on how the strength of schedule is worked out.

I was geared up for Equinox but it was canceled, and now I am going to Lukes thing in my own house. Not so sweet but... well its something still.

I think I did as well as I expected, I knew the top of the field was going to be a rough group, and actually I didnt get to play against any of them in the tournament, although most of my lists were designed around them in mind. The points worked out something like 5th place was drawn with 3 guys, just barely.

The most important thing about this tournament was that I got my regular Gators opponent to admit that despite his brazen hatred for my Faction Retribution of Scyrah is "ok" Having recieved the OK I now feel justified in my selection of them and that I no longer need to champion them as a faction, and as a result have considered taking on Skorne.

Considering his tournament was pretty bad and he got out played and out listed in a few games he was all but ready to delete his blog and melt down his minis, but the gift of the Mug of Mediocrity "he won a cup for bitching at the TO and having a funny blog) deterred him and now he is just wistfully dreaming of playing a faction that is not sub to "ok"

We players of underpowered factions are hanging on to the new books releases to justify our actions in choosing armies that reside below the Brimblecomb Line of Approval. Its a nasty cycle but its a fact that human beings are such stubborn creatures that we tend to justify bad decisions of our own rather than admit that we made a mistake. Thankfully my faction now has the "OK" and I don't have to admit to such folly.

What the future holds? Nicon perhaps, now that the Big Ides is over there is a bit of a void to fill. Maybe I'll go find a new job or something. Or start that Skorne army.