On Friday, March 9th, I was able to tow my models to my local game store: The Ogre’s Den, for a few games. The Ogre’s Den is an amazing spot with tons of tables for tabletop games (and card games like MTG), and they have a Warmahordes night every Friday. Staff there always make playing on a Friday night a good experience, and so it was worth taking the train in the snow!

My first game at the Den was a Civil War scenario against Cygnar. My opponent was sporting lists with Kraye1 and Nemo3. We played on Recon2, and I decided to drop my Haley2 list as a result. The choice here was relatively easy, as my Stryker1 list has lots of infantry…and all square zones on Recon means infantry don’t do me a lot of good. I’ve never played against Kraye1, and I have little idea what to expect at this point. From what I’ve read: I know Kraye1 makes his battlegroup go very fast and hit extra hard on the charge. One relief I have in this game is that I’m familiar with the stats of all his models except for Kraye (which was a first for me).

Goal of This Post: I want to break down my turns in detail so you can see what I was thinking. Ultimately I hope New Players will get a sense that it’s OK to make mistakes, and get to see how a typical game unfolds (typical as in not played by ultra-veterans). My opponent in this case had been playing for about 2 years, and was much more fluent in the rules than I am. I was coached by both my opponent and on-lookers for some of my moves (especially my last turn).

The Lists

Here are the lists going head to head. I’m on the left.

Right off the bat I’m feeling at a disadvantage. The sheer size of his battle-group means that my opponent is going to have all sorts of options for scoring the square zones.

The Terrain

Picture of the board to give you an idea of what I’m facing for deployment:

Terrain features are fairly simple. We decided to use my home-made 2d terrain (You can get instructions for making them here) and one LOS blocking feature in the middle. There are a couple of acid pools that look nasty, and the craters are counting rough terrain.

Starting Rolls

My opponent wins the roll and decides to go first. I get to choose side. When choosing side I quickly looked at the board and took the side without the rough terrain. Although my Hurricane has Pathfinder – everything else doesn’t. I figured I’m going to need to be able to maneuver around to avoid his melee threat. I learned afterword that his threat range was so friggin long that it was nearly impossible to avoid anyway!

I also thought the acid pool on the corner of the zone might give me a place to hide my stuff around. Most of my opponent’s stuff wants to get into my face, and I was hoping the acid would be a deterrent.

NOTE: If you look closely here you can see that my opponent has a Dynamo on the table – that’s a Hammersmith for our game.

Deployment

On my deploayment I made some fundamental mistakes. Can you spot them? Of course, I can only see them NOW because hindsight is 20/20.

Errors: I should have put my Charger on the right side to threaten any solos that were going to sit on his flag. I also should have put Thorn more on the left as he was way far out. My thought at the time was that I could put Thorn on the right, and the Hurricane on the left (of the LOS blocking piece) to have Arc Nodes to TK on either side to play with the scenarios. However, given my opponent’s threat range – all it did was make Thorn a sitting duck! My mechanics are also in a bad spot with the acid, but I wasn’t too concerned about this (If they walk into it – they die…Just so we’re all on the same page).

I did make sure to put Arlan on the left to score the flag if he could. Although it did not do me any good.

Turn 1 (Both Sides)

My opponent goes first and runs things up. Most notable move as far as I can tell is that his Minutemen run up and leap up the left side to take cover by the wall.

Here’s the game after my turn:

You can’t tell from the picture, but Arlan and the Journeyman are just behind the Charger taking up the rear on the left.

For spells: I put Sidekick on the Ironclad, and Arcane Shield on my Hurricane. Temporal Acceleration goes out from Haley on to the Hurricane.

Biggest moves on my part here are my Charger takes shots at the Minutemen as a hail-Mary. He misses both. Minutemen are just too DEF-heavy, and are gaining the Cover bonus by that wall. Hurricane moves up and uses three (+1 from Temporal Acceleration) Storm Emitter attacks on the front two heavies. Both get knocked down and take about 8 damage between them. Hurricane’s cannon attacks go into the Ironclad on the right, which also clips Kraye in the AOE. Ironclad takes 1 damage from each, and Kraye took 1 damage from the POW7 blast (I’m feeling pretty good about that at this point)

Opponent’s Turn 2

Here is my opponent’s turn:

I lost a total of 25 points on my opponent’s turn (Charger (9)+ Arlan (4) + Thorn (12)). I was praying that the Hammersmith on the right was going to miss Thorn on the charge (allowing him to Dodge) but did not get so lucky. As a result the Dynamo-Proxy’d Hammersmith turned Thorn into a pile of rubble.

My left side doesn’t fair any better. Both Minutemen run/leap up and turn my Charger into scrap. Afterword they Repo to get into my Hurricane’s back arc. Arlan is an unfortunate casualty of this move as well. In hindsight, I needed to be way more wary of those Minutemen!

You also can’t see it, but my opponent puts a Gobber-mech behind the red box with Countermeasures on it. (This becomes important later)

My Turn 2

I’ve got three big problems.

Minutemen are in my ranks; Hammersmith is in a really scary place to wreak havoc on my units. I need to contest/score objectives

Here’s my turn:

I put my Centurion and Ironclad to the task of getting rid of my first two problems. The Centurion turns around to scrap the first Minuteman, and cripples one gun on the second. Then, I got creative with my Ironclad: I energized him two inches forward so that he had a clear charge-line to the Hammersmith (Jakes also shot at the Hammersmith, but this whiffed). Ironclad then charged in, and got the Hammersmith down to one box as well as knocking him down (Got a crit off with one of my hammer attacks).

Haley feats to try to save me from feeling all sorts of pain. I roll and get 7 targets (sufficient for what I needed). For targets on the feat I choose: the Hammersmith, the Charger, the Journeymen, both Ironclads, one Centurion (I can’t reach the other), and the Crew Chief on the left for fun. Haley takes a shot at the Hammersmith to take out the last box and misses. Haley puts Temporal Acceleration on the Hurricane. I camp two focus because I’m paranoid.

Journeymen runs up to sit on the flag. With no Warjack on him I feel I can be creative with him. I camp both his focus hoping he will survive. My other thought was having him try to hurt the Minuteman…but the Journeyman’s RAT/MAT make him pretty useless in this regard IMO.

Finally, both myself and my opponent make a mistake. Behind that red box is a Gobber with Countermeasures that my opponent strategically placed to counter my Hurricane. Honestly: I couldn’t even see him and completely forgot he was there. My opponent forget as well. IF we had remembered, this next paragraph couldn’t have happened!

I decided to bring the Hurricane-Pain: I walked my Hurricane up the board and put all 5 (4+1 from TA) of his shots into Kraye. Kraye has Steady, so he can’t be knocked down, but he goes down to 7 boxes. I should not have been able to do this with the Countermeasures so close, and this mistake ends up turning the game later.

At the end of my turn my opponent scores his flag thanks to his Journeyman.

Scenario: 0-1

Opponent’s Turn 3

My opponent is largely crippled thanks to Haley’s feat. It ends up saving my butt, as my opponents keeps a lot of things fairly static. My opponent on his turn puts Arcane Shield on Kraye to keep him safe, and shifts his Warjacks around to guard him (Including the Charger who is blocked from sight in the picture thanks to my Hurricane). My opponent uses his Minuteman to kill my Journeyman on the flag. I won’t be scoring that any time soon!

My opponent scores his flag again at the end of his turn.

Scenario: 2 – 0

My Turn 3

Give how badly I’m doing on scenario; it’s around now I decide an assassination is my best option. Kraye is already weakened and I am just itching to put more Hurricane shots down field to take him down.

Here is the board after my turn:

With the Hammersmith only having one box remaining – I put Jakes & Haley’s handcannons to work and kill the Hammersmith. With Haley I had to boost the shot/damage to kill the Hammersmith. I then TK my Ironclad to move him into charge range of my Opponent’s wall-of-jacks in front of Kraye. I dished out too much focus to put TA on my hurricane now. Ironclad kills my opponent’s Journeyman, severely cripples one of the Ironclads, and knocks everything there down for good measure. Kraye loses Arcane Shield with the Journeyman’s death, and all of the Jacks blocking him are knocked down – I see my opening.

Centurion also goes up and tries to kill the last minuteman on the left. He fails miserably. I space my Mechs out to try to contest the left zone to buy me some time.

OOPS – My opponent now notes the Gobber with Countermeasures that I can’t see. I’m unable to position my Hurricane far enough away from the stupid little guy to take my shots at Kraye. Frustrated – I walk my Hurricane up and turn the Gobber (who is just behind the red crate) into mush; I also bashed the inert Charger into scrap for good measure.

Thankfully nothing scores at the end of this turn.

Scenario: 2- 0

Opponent’s Turn 4

I’m not entirely certain everything my opponent did here (Memory Failure). But I do know that Kraye used his feat, and that my Hurricane & Ironclad got turned into scrap from the free-charges. Kraye did, however, use his focus to make this happen..

I also neglected to take a picture here – Oops.

My Turn 4

Like a rookie: I see myself simply declaring a forfeit at this point. Pretty much everything I have is scrapped. I’m left with my Mechs, a Centurion (outside control range), Haley2, Jakes, and the Squire. There is no way I can win on Scenario, and I figured the assassination was out of reach.

However, after some coaching from onlookers there was a plan devised to try the assassination anyway. I shouldn’t have given up so soon.

KEEP IN MIND: If the original Countermeasures had been noted this wouldn’t have worked. Everything that follows is therefore largely a fluke, but it demonstrates that Haley2 is almost never completely out of the game.

Here’s the picture of the end-game state:

My assassination run was successful, and here’s how it happened:

I move the squire into the fray for the re-rolls on Haley’s spells if I need them.

Haley with all her 9 Focus charges into the mess of heavies. .

Haley then uses Domination on the Ironclad closest to Kraye, who promptly goes up to smack him (You can see a proxy base labelled with “FEAT” near Kraye that notes the Ironclad’s position). If I remember correctly this rolled super low. Haley then shoots an Arcane Bolt into Kraye fully boosted….Kraye was left with one box remaining!

Jakes comes in like a superhero and uses her fully-boosted hand-cannon shot to finish Kraye off. It only just barely makes it – doing a total of one damage. Jakes is standing on a hill for dramatic effect.

Victory!….Sort of?

What Did I Learn:

This game was an excellent learning experience. I’ve found that each time I play Haley2 I get a better sense for how to use her toolbox, and, most importantly, never to give up. This is the second time I’ve won with H2 on a hail-Mary assassination run.

I would do a lot of things differntly next time:

Take Minutemen more seriously. Really need to keep my stuff outside their leap range. My Charger & Arlan were sad casualties of my underestimating these light jacks. Keep Thorn safe! Thorn is an incredibly valuable model. By putting him far out on the flank I put him in terrible danger just to get supposed arc positioning. In reality, I could have kept him back and run him on the following turn if I was so dedicated to having the Arc in a certain place. Pay more attention to my opponent’s turn Warmahordes has a lot of things going on. You really have to pay attention to everything that happens in order to plan your turns.

Countermeasures would have completely spoiled my attempts at winning here if it had been noticed in Turn 2. I needed to plan my Hurricane’s positioning better to avoid being caught by this, or changed my plan to accommodate for not being able to shoot on Turn 2 & 3. Never Give Up! I feel that I technically declared a forfeit before being coached through my assassination. After losing my Hurricane my morale just tanked and I was ready to call time of death.

In short: I need to harden my resolve, and realize this is a game. You can throw caution to the wind without repercussions – So: Why give up?

Hopefully this game illustrates to New Players that it’s OK to make mistakes. I’ve been playing now for about 8 months and I’m still learning. Plus – I have really low confidence in my play as I am used to losing. I attribute this last fact to why I was ready to give up so easily.

So: Don’t lost hope! Keep confidence up! And remember to have fun!

J

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

Like this: Like Loading... Related