Practice Game, Khador vs Circle, then League Game, Khador vs Circle

On Thursday Emma and I had a practice game, with me using basically the same army she was going to be facing on Saturday morning for her 3rd League game, (4th round).

Spriggan rushes up towards the Monolith, Winterguard spread out and try to kill the druids, Demo Corp are wiped out by Woldwardens, and my Bombardiers (proxied by Shocktroopers) slowly walk towards the Monolith as well.

Most of the Winterguard are killed, all the Demo Corp are killed, Bombardiers shoot the Monolith, Spriggan starts towards the second Monolith.

Bombardiers blow up the Monolith, the last few Winterguard try to take out the Warbeasts, Spriggan is halfway to the other monolith and the Woldwarden destroys my own Monolith.

Game Over - My Spriggan gets to the Monolith despite Baldurs best efforts, and kills it with multiple POW18 lance attacks.

This game was to help Emma get her head around the scenario, and get used to eIrusk's bag of tricks. She did pretty well, but was unable to stop an 11" a turn moving Spriggan from reaching her Objective and take it down. I failed almost all my Tough rolls (two guys rolled tough, out of the 12+ rolls I made) and the Demo Corp were killed way too quick by Earth Spikes and the Woldwatcher. Good game though!


Emma's real game vs Luke and his eIrusk army: (You may recall I played him for my 2nd game, click this link to see how that went)

A massive clump of Khador infantry vs the spread out Warbeasts on the Circle side.

Circle advances cautiously protecting its Monolith, while a Woldwarden is teleported further upfield.


Khadors turn, and he rushes his Winterguard forward, while the Demo Corp protect his Monolith. The Bombardiers are flanking on his left.


Druid magic starts to take its toll, with several Winterguard falling to AOE's from the Circle forces.

A Woldwarden strikes forward - killing two Demo Corp and threatening the Monolith! The Devouring kills 90% of the remaining Winterguard.

eIrusk pops his feat, allowing his Spriggan to charge the Woldwarden - charge attack needs 3's to hit, and ... SNAKE EYES! A groan from Luke as his Spriggan proceeds to do minor damage. He runs his Demo Corp forward to try and threaten Baldur, hiding in the stones.

Baldur shifts into range and line of sight of eIrusk, and hits him with an Earth Spikes, knocking him down and doing some damage. The Blackclad Wayfarer and another massive Devouring finish eIrusk off, and Emma wins by Caster Kill.

An entertaining game to watch, Emma managed to funnel his Winterguard into a small corridor and then hit them with a full power Devouring, which killed just about every single one. The Spriggan was not able to get any decent charges due to the forests being put into play, and the Bombardiers were too far away to effect the game much, especially since "Solid Ground" was negating any blast damage.

Luke did well in advancing as fast as his Man O Wars could, but they just couldnt outpace the speed from Circles Warbeasts and the teleporting of the Shifting Stones. The clumped together unit of Winterguard was a fantastic target for The Devouring, and he ended up losing a large number of his unit. The last Winterguard got an awesome shot on Baldur, doing 7 damage to him, but this was transferred off to the Woldwyrd, negating some of the awesomeness.

Next Two League Armies:

The next two battles to fight (starting from March 20) will be against Christer and his eDenny Cryx list and Martin with his pKaya Circle list.

Christers Cryx: (Current record 1 win out of 2 games)

Wraith Witch Deneghra
>Stalker
>Deathjack
>Skarlock Thrall
Bane Thralls + UA
Mechanithralls
Brute Thrall
Necrosurgeon and 3 Stitch Thralls
The Withershadow Combine
Bane Lord Tartarus

Eww Mirror match... eDenny, as I have found out, is very strong on Scenario. I will have to try very hard to avoid getting done on Scenario. He also has Bane Thralls, which, with Tough, can be extremely difficult to remove. The Deathjack is superior to Nightmare, and will probably kill him if I give Christer half a chance.

The only really deadly magic here comes from the Deathjack and the Withershadow Combine. The Skarlock dies to a strong breeze and eDenny (probably) wont dare getting that close to my army. Im not sure what im going to do about the Deathjack just yet, but the Withershadows are not strong enough to survive a powerful attack - I will need to make them a top priority for Venom or even a Hellmouth.

The Scenario here is #13 - Demolition. This one is an interesting one, its possible to get 2 CP per turn by controlling both the enemy zone and the objective. It will be fairly easy to get a 3 turn win here, but the danger is it will be fairly easy for Christer to do the same thing as well. Luckily he lacks the ability to take out my ghosts easily, and ill be able to use that as an advantage to fend off his attacks.


Martins Circle: (Current record 1 win out of 2 games)

Kaya the Wildborne
>Argus
>Feral Warpbeast
>Pureblood Warpwolf
>Warpwolf Stalker
Lord of the Feast
Totem Hunter

YAY beast heavy circle.... I kid. Basically what we have here is Kaya's dangerous Spirit Fang, a low cost magic attack that will thrash Ghosts - but its not an AOE and she cant use it too often.

The Pureblood Warpwolf is dangerous in that it has a Magical Spray attack (at 10" no less) and its animus will let other models gain magical weapons. This is going to be annoying, as I wont be able to predict which models can kill my ghosts. Lord of the Feast has a magical sword, but not a magical raven, which will help slightly. Also he wont be able to recieve any hearts, since my guys are already dead.

The biggest threat here is certainly the Pureblood, but I will probably lack the ability to kill it and it will be "Yo-Yo"ing back and forth with Spirit Door. I should be able to kill his weaker solos with some concentrated spellpower, but I may lose arcnodes doing so - not a great trade.

The Scenario will be Diversion, radial scenario where you must control a flag and contest a zone - I will be able to get a 2 turn Scenario victory here if I play my cards right - getting a point on my turn and then feating to stop him taking out my guys contesting his zone. I will probably need to kill the Pureblood though, otherwise it will really mess with my Ghosts.

League Game - Round 4 Cryx vs Menoth

Another League game today, this one was Round 4, Scenario 6 - Destruction. This was a very tricky scenario for me, involving killing 2 ARM20, HP20 monoliths.

I really had very few models capable of taking down these monoliths, namely Bane Lord Tartarus and Nightmare. Curse of Shadows would take them down to ARM18, but that still is not enough.

On the other hand, Josh's Menoth list was an excellent counter to my own lightly armoured Incorporeal list.

Grand Scrutator Severius
>Blessing of Vengence
>Reckoner
>Vanquisher
Choir of Menoth
Exemplar Errants + UA
Knights Exemplar
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord
Vassal of Menoth

So many Magic Weapons! Just about everything was capable of putting paid to most of my models, with a scary 15" threat range on his Errants even running Blackbanes couldnt out-threat them.

Sorry for the lack of pics for this game, I forgot to bring the good camera, and thought it would be a waste of time taking cellphone crappy pics.

Basically what happened was I picked first turn, and deployed most of my troops in the middle. There was two houses and some walls in the middle of the map, providing cover to my troops and Warjack. My Blackbanes were deployed opposite Knights Exemplar, and a few solos and a Deathripper vs the Errants. The majority of my forces were in the middle, taking on his Warjacks and Sevvy.

This game started out well for me, got really bad in the middle, and then managed to pull off an assassination right at the end that got me the win.

To begin with, I ran everything forward to behind cover. Josh responded the same way, and attempted to arc Ashes to Ashes into my unit of ghosts. This missed by the narrowest of margins, which really shook me up. It would have severely hurt me.

I managed to retaliate by harassing his Exemplars with ghosts, and attempted to flank around to avoid losing my ghosts with another Ashes to Ashes. I hid everything else behind houses, hoping to avoid being hit by the multiple heavy cannons and spells.

Blessing of Vengeance responded to this by running forward, deep into my lines - ready to arc Ashes to Ashes on my monolith which would have thrashed it, plus my solos hanging around there. Unfortunately for Josh, his caster was 1/2" out of control range and he was not able to arc anything! I also managed to capture two of his Warjacks with Machine Wraiths, which slightly frustrated them. He had shot my Monolith a few times by this point, and damaged it to half life.

Blessing of Vengeance took some heavy hits, a charge from Tartarus (and luckily he dodged Defensive Strike) took off his shield and most of his boxes. I had run the remaining Ghosts into the back of his army, and tried to kill Rupert - but failed. I also ran my Deathripper forwards, preparing to arc Hellmouth onto the Errants - and totally forgot they are immune to enemy spells. DAMMIT! My Deathripper was shot to bits in the next turn, losing his Arcnode and his Weapon.

Then the turn I almost lost on - Sevvy popped feat, catching Deneghra in it. The Monolith took a major beating, and was destroyed. I was no where near threatening his Monolith either. My damaged Deathripper was destroyed, and I also lost both my Machine Wraiths when Severius kicked them out of the Warjacks they were inhabiting. Knights Exemplar were getting into position to charge Deneghra, and they would wreck her face. Deneghra, on my next turn, had to retreat - no focus, no casting, and no arcing. I sacrificed Admonia (from the Withershadow Combine) as the Exemplars charged her.

Next turn was critical for me - with my Focus back, I allocated two to Nightmare and one to a Deathripper, and ran everything I had straight at Severious. Deneghra popped feat, locking his army in place (except one Choir member and one Errant) and cast Venom, killing some of the choir and the damned Vassal. Next turn, my whole army was ready to charge Severious - which I was hoping would kill him before he killed my last Monolith.

His turn, and I held my breath. 10 crossbow shots from the Errants managed to take off 1 damage off the Monolith. Nothing else had range on it, so I was safe. Nightmare suffered fire from being shot at by his Warjacks, but there were not able to get in melee range. Severious cast Ashes to Ashes, wiping out 3 ghosts, and then cast Vision and camped his last focus.

My turn - Vision is removed by the last surviving Blackbanes Ghost. The Warwitch Siren misses on a back strike. (MAT5? Seriously?) Marked for Death and Bane Lord Tartarus charges, reducting Severious to DEF12 ARM13. Nightmare activates and advances on his prey - 6 possible attacks, and kills him with the first claw attack. Cryx wins!

In conclusion. This was a tough matchup for me, possibly the toughest in the league. My best advantages, spell power and Incorporeal models were largely negated by the large number of Magic Weapons, the Errants UA, and Sevvys feat. ARM20 Monoliths were impossible (just about) for me to kill without losing my win condition - Nightmare.

I was lucky with a few key mistakes made on Josh's part, namely out of range for Ashes to Ashes and running Blessing outside of his control area. This game would have been very different if it wasnt for that.

I made a risky manouever, feigning a retreat with eDeneghra in order to bait Severius into coming closer, in range for a two turn feat + army charge. Luckily he advanced just enough to be in feat range and charge range for most of my models, which allowed me to set up the game winning charges.

Josh played excellently, and this was one of the fastest and accurate games Ive played, he really knows his models and rules as well as mine, and vice versa. We rarely had to check what the other players feats and spells did, and we are both quite adept at "5's to hit, dice minus 2 for damage".

Leaderboard as of 2 March, 2012

Go Cryx!

Obviously, not everybody has played 3 games yet, and some of the players with 2 games have had a bye, but ill update every now and then how the leaderboards are going.