The Beatdown

With a weekend off, I headed down to the club early, mostly to get the 40K Con terrain repaired. After a couple hours of doing that, and getting all the wreckage repaired from Captain Destroyer, people finally showed up. I then managed to get in both a game of 40K and Malifaux against Troy before Dark Heresy/Deathwatch.

Game one was Malifaux. Troy pulled out Collodi and I took Molly for a spin. We had Squatter's Rights. He revealed A Line in the Sand and Breakthrough, I hid Breakthrough and Power Ritual. My crew was Molly with Tears of the Gorgon, Terrible Knowledge, and Forgotten Life, Necrotic Machine, Rogue Necromancy with Pack, Phillip and the Nanny with Take Back the Night and Unnerving Aura, Guild Autopsy, Crooligan, Rotten Belle, and a Dead Doxy. He took Collodi with Strum the Threads, Bag of Props, and Breathe Life, Stitched, Hooded Rider, Teddy, Shadow Effigy, Lucky Effigy, and three Marionettes. I pulled the Stitched in and Paralyzed it. I also pulled Collodi part way over. Collodi then made the Stitched Gamble Your Life until the Necrotic Machin and Guild Autopsy were dead and the Rotten Bell was at one wound. He failed a Gamble, which "killed" the Stitched, giving him Reactivate to negate the paralysis and then healed it to two wounds. Turn two, the Belle dies to the Stitched from Collodi, same for the Dead Doxy. I summoned a Necrotic Machine and a Rotten Belle, but the Belle is dead before end of turn. Turn three, I get Phillip into the Hooded Rider and am able to drop to scheme markers off of hits against him. Hooded Rider uses his Reclaim ability and all of the scheme markers are destroyed. On turn four the Hooded kills Phillip, Teddy had killed the Crooligan on a flank, and Molly was gone. With just the Rogue Necromancy left and with Troy wanting a 40K game in before Death Watch, I called it.
It wasn't a terribly good test of Molly, but for the most part I found her kinda boring. I'm not sure which models you want to summon into the middle of your opponent at near death, but not the ones I did. Perhaps she is far more effective against a more properly bunched crew. However, this kinda makes me wonder about her link to the Belles, which excel at moving models OUT of position, and less so at getting them to bunch. Maybe that is where the Dead Doxy comes into play, since they can move models into any direction, though their Ca is lower. More playing is likely required. I also can't help but think that Spirit friend Molly may be stronger, but haven't taken the time to really look into it.


So, a reset, and it was my Night Lords versus Troy's new Tyranids. He was running a Flyrant, Death Leaper, Tervigon, Termagaunts, Warriors, Genestealers with a Broodlord, the new shooty face thing, and three Crones. We rolled for book missions, getting Scouring and Hammer and Anvil deployment. I started the Cultists off with the Heldrakes. We were playing on the canister board, so I put the Mace Daemon Prince up forward, behind a large silo, with a Chosen filled Rhino behind. My Warlord DP went behind a canister to my left with a Rhino behind him and another behind a canister behind that, almost on my table edge. I actually had to place it sideways to fit it. The fourth and final Rhino was on my right flank, kinda in the open, but about half way up my zone. He deployed in a standard edge to edge Tyranid horde style. I failed to seize. He moved everything up, with the Crones and Tyrant doing some mess, killing a Rhino, the Mace DP, and immobilizing another. I moved forward, managing to wound the Hive Tyrant and wound and ground one of the Crones, with my final shot of course. Turn two he continued to make me eat it, losing more Rhino, a squad of Chosen, and my Warlord. Turn two I managed to get only one Heldrake in. It screamed up the board, did some damage and was dead by my turn three. My Chosen continued to take damage, leaving me with two squads and a rhino. Turn three, no reserves. I am down to almost nothing, only a squad left, by my turn four. I bring on the Cultists and the Heldrake. I position myself so that I can flame his gaunts and Vector Strike the remnants the following turn on my way to his deployment for Linebreaker and his guants on the four point objective in his very back field. The Cultists are sitting on my three pointer and can move to contest a two pointer in my zone. His warriors are out of position and not likely a threat for VP. None of this was terribly well geared for a win with him up one Fast Attack kill, but I am going for minor loss. On turn five, he straight up kills my Heldrake and only moves to contest my two objectives with his Crones. I didn't bother with my turn, since he was already up the 4 VP Objective and two kills, and all I could do was contest objectives he didn't need. So, I got smashed, again. My list doesn't seem to have much answer to that many flying MCs. Though, I do think my Heldrake in earlier, especially turn two would have helped a lot. As it was, it was very one sided. I think the Crones are brutal, and I don't know how to deal with them. The flip side is that they are on the flying stands, and I am not sure they can contest/control objectives, so that could turn things around(he was using Trygon proxies).

So, it was a full day of beat downs, topped off with my Techmarine getting all but vaped by Chad's character to finish off the Deathwatch session.