I managed to get in several games this weekend across three different systems. I managed my first Warmachine win and some more losses, a rematch in Malifaux, and a 40K that was pretty close to tournament play in that I made some bad mistakes. Would you like to know more?
My first three games were in Warmachine. Game one was versus Patrick. He had Khador and I had James's Menoth of course. The mission was a bit more doable, and also the first time I noticed the Kill Box rules, where you gain points if your opponent is within 14" of a table edge at the end of their turn. Which would have been huge for me. It was also the last of the missions I have played to use that rule. The game had two flags and a center zone. I Dominated my flag for two turns, then moved up a jack onto his to control for two turns. That is right, I won by the strategy. I did set it up for him to get the kill on the center pillar, but a win is a win. It also means that, while I do have a win, I have yet to do a successful caster kill.
Game two was versus Nabors. This one ended in caster kill, so you can guess how that went. I tried to do the mission like a broken record. He had Stryker, who does a crazy move then charges, then pops his feat, then gets ANOTHER move with an attack on the end. I was doing fairly well on squaring off on his crew, but once again, the Warmahorde mechanic got me. Stryker one shotted Kreoss, and it was done.
Game three was a rematch against Patrick, with a much more aggressive list, for him. He had some unit with twelve guys that can boost one guys attack and damage by the number of guys helping, giving two guys +6 mat and damage. He also had a large jack that uglied up my large jack pretty easily. The mission had three flags, but one disappeared after my turn. I had set the Cinerators on getting the one on the far right. Which disappeared and left them WAY out of position. Then I accidentally marked the damage on the wrong jack, killing one when both should have just been damaged. Instead of trying fixing it I just removed one, and then called the game. I was feeling terribly out matched. I don't know if its me or the models I have, but I tend to feel terribly out matched. Its like playing my Eldar, but with out the speed. Nothing I have seems to stack up versus what they have, so I need to bring more of my force against less of theirs, but I am slower than they are, so the opposite happens. It is getting hard to even bother. Not that it matters terribly, with how painting is being down, I can't win that, which means I can't win overall, and the way things are going, I am fast falling behind in game points. I didn't plan on winning, but this just kinda sucks.
On to a game I can win. I played Nabors in some Malifaux, we did shared Gaining Grounds and flipped the new Beatdown. I have "shelved" Leveticus for a bit, so I pulled out the Viks. I took the Viks, Taelor, Miss Demeanor, two Ronin, and an Oiran. He wanted to mirror match me of sorts, so took Viks, Von Schill, a librarian, specialist, and a friekorpsman. He originally also had a trapper, but when I was shocked he hadn't taken a pool, he remembered that he didn't get a cache and dropped the trapper. We setup down the road on the Boomtown board. I took Breakthrough and Stake a Claim, he took Hold Out and Bodyguard. I moved one Ronin out to the left, going behind the buildings and headed to his deployment zone. He sent the librarian and freikorp that way. I tried to pull in the specialist with the Oiran, but was just out of range. Miss Demeanor and a Ronin moved up the front of one of the stores, while Taelor moved off towards the left to get some cover and back up the other Ronin. The Viks just kind of loitered in the center, daring the imposters to do anything. He spread his crew fairly decently, while I kept in clumps, using different models to support one another. I used the Oiran's Wp aura to get to Wp 7 so the Viks could straight attack his Specialist. I pulled Von Schill off a roof so that my models could gang him. He used a Vik to kill my Ronin, and I swarmed her, taking advantage of his lower starting stones and that he burned so many on trying to save Von Schill. Taelor came around a corner and threw down some ugly on the other Vik. That basically left me just doing clean up, which meant killing only one model per turn to get three points for the strategy. It was a rough game for Nabors, which I usually avoid, but since he had(once again) shown me the pain in Warmahordes, I felt a little vindictive. In the end it was a 7-0 game to me. I am liking the Oiran a lot better when not facing another one across the table. Their abilities are fairly useful, and they are cheap. I am looking to play Ramos next weekend though, but as always, that could change.
Looking to get some more games in with my Eldar, and having cemented the 1750 point level for Tacticon, I set up a game against Shay from Estes. Shaffer wanted me to help him with counter Dark Eldar list, but I don't think I can do much more than throw pointers anyway, since his list works a bit differently than mine. He is running into a similar problem versus armour and his opponent Collin was running a Land Raider full of Space Wolves.
Anyway, on to the important game, mine. I did plenty of damage in this game, but I think I took way more than I should have. Shay was running Blood Angels, with a Storm Raven, three assault squads, a devastator squad with lascannons, and a unit of sanguinary guard. He also had a librarian and a set of priests. He deepstriked the guard and a smaller unit of assault marines. His reserve rolls for the marines and the raven likely won him the game while assuring the death of the rest of his force. My rolling the -1 to reserves warlord trait helps that. Awesome. I made the mistake of shifting my entire force across to the left, away from his combat squaded Devastators and toward his assault marines. The squad that started on that side moved forward, but failed to move far enough back in the assault phase and got munched. The others took shots and got mauled a bit, as I continued to not cut my losses and head for safety. My shooting was pretty abysmal, but my close combat was awesome. I managed to come on with the Hellions and charge into his assault squad, then grab the Librarian on his turn and kill him in my assault. I know that was the wrong way to do it, as I should have Hit and Run with the Librarian on his turn, but it worked out. It did mean I had to weather his shooting on his following turn, and then his assault. It also would have helped to remember my grenades. However, the Baron made saves like a boss. The seer council finished off the other squad in the center, the first squad when it came to play and the sanguinary guard when it thought to have a go. It wasn't enough, though, as his last squad came in his turn four, I didn't have time to deal with it. It mostly just moved onto his emperor's will objective, while his Raven moved on and killed my Razorwing, then hovered on the objective on turn five. I made another mistake and forgot which unit had fortune on it, as I used it on a guardian squad on the final turn for objective snagging. And the unit that had it died, losing me the Big Guns objective, which gave him that one, since the objectives were worth 3 and had we drawn on that I would have won on Heavies killed. We drew on Emperor's will with the other squad. Had I left a trail of guardians up to the objective his Storm Raven was on, I could have won that easily, but I had forgotten about hover.In the end, had this been a tournament he would have finished with 12 and I would have had 5. Not enough to make a good showing. I made a terrible ton of mistakes. I need to play a lot more and get into that more focused mind set that seems to elude me in tournaments, if I am to have a chance at Tacticon.
But lets face it, it Player's Choice that I am after.
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