Saturday 10 October 2009

Simple Butchery

Foiled once again by Jim's cheesey dice of doom. Someday I will grind those dice to powder, from which I shall make the ink to fill out my lottery ticket. It's almost guaranteed to pick the winning numbers.

Using the finalised MKii rules we played pMagnus against eButcher in a 35 point game.

Magnus the Traitor
*Mangler
*Nomad
*Mule
*Renegade
Boomhowler & Co (full)
Kell Bailoch
Gorman di Wulfe

Kommander Orsus Zoktavir
*Juggernaut (DAMN YOU JUGGY!)
*Kodiak
Doom Reavers
Greylord Ternion
Kossite Woodsmen (min)
Widowmakers
Winterguard Mortar Crew
Kell Bailoch
Manhunter
Jim appears to be one point short, I believe the Kodiak is listed as 9 points from the Field Test, but has been reduced to 8 points in the final release. We should all blame iBodger!

The game lasted four turns, and Jim got to taste some of his own medicine and I danced about shooting Greylords, Doom Reavers and a Widowmaker before it all came down to the hard, nutty, crunchy phase of melee brawling. On turn four I managed to get most of my spectacular assassination run off only to be thwarted (yes, thwarted) by Jim's Juggernaut getting a crit on the free strike my Nomad needed to take in order to get to the Butcher. Nothing but a crit or a *stupendous* damage roll would have stopped my Nomad from mincing eButcher. A Nomad... with 3 focus... charging against knocked down eButcher with 17 health. The free strike didn't even disable anything, stupid crit freeze! So yeah, Magnus died at the end of Jim's turn 4.

My list may have been almost ideal for taking on Jim's list (and would have been if the Juggernaut hadn't got that crit), as the targets he was trying to get Rage tokens from were either warjacks or had 4+ tough. The combination of Kell Bailoch and Greylords is pretty evil too, just something for those Khador players out there to contemplate.

The Wall of Tough (Boomhowler & Co) really impressed me this game, tying up the Kossites, Widowmakers and Kell Bailoch for the entire game (conversely all those tied up Boomhowler & Co). Personally I feel that this was due to having a painted Boomhowler on the table, which appeased the Dice Gods - they always appreciate the painted miniatures, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Despite 4 turns of being shot by all of the above, Boomhowler and 2 grunts survived until the very end, able to engage the Widowmakers in melee and being in a position to kill the last Greylord.

The final pMagnus was also extremely impressive; being able to give Snipe to a Mule is a godsend, now I can actually shoot things with the useless hunk of junk. This moves it from useless hunk of junk into the realms of Sublime Artillery Piece. I did find that pMagnus spends 2 turns out of focus as he's busy putting up all his upkeeps, but I'm sure I'll put it all together better after a few more games. He's just about as fun as Ashlynn now, something I found surprising. He also seems much easier to use, but that may be due to the simplicity of the list I chose rather than the usual Steelhead zerg.

Lessons Learnt:
pMagnus and lots of heavy warjacks is really, really good.
Having an army that can both smash and shoot is a fantastic change.
Jim's dice may be attuned to the greater workings of Karma itself.

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