pVlad + 5
Destroyer - 9
Kodiak - 8
Greylord Ternion - 4
Widowmakers - 4
Max Winter Guard Infantry - 6
WGI UA - 2WG Mortar - 3
Kovnik Joe - 2
Koldun Lord - 2
I didn't marshal a jack with the Koldun Lord, instead using him to give a point to the Destroyer while just hanging out near by. Marshaling has worked well for me in the past, but I was using a MoW Kovnik to do the marshaling and also running three jacks. Since I only brought two this time, and the Koldun Lord doesn't have Drive like the MoW Kovnik does, I wanted the extra flexibility.
Hentai McTentacles ran a list something like this:
pAsphyxious + 6
Cankerworm - 5
2 Defilers - 10
2 Max Mechanithralls - 10
Min Bilethralls - 5
Necrotech - 1Skarlock - 2
That's what I see in my pictures, and what you'll see in a moment, but I'm only coming up with 27 points there. My list was 35 as that's what we've been playing since moving past battle box games. I have a call in to EV and will no doubt have an update before any ever sees this, but there it is all the same. To my credit I asked him about the lack of any flavor of Wraiths/shooting/incorporeal models, so he should have had plenty of prods if he forgot to field something.
EV won the roll and elected to go second. My setup:
I set up the Widowmakers in the woods for cover, otherwise everything was kinda piled in the middle. I tried to place the mortar where it'd have a good line of fire and kept the Kodiak back a little to make room on the front line, figuring I'd run it through the woods since it has Pathfinder. This is probably a good time to note the big hill in the middle of the board. We played it as open terrain with elevations, so it didn't cost extra to move on or around but you could still gain cover/elevation bonuses, and it would block LoS where appropriate.
EV's deployment was:
His bonejacks are way out on the flank, presumably to come in from the side and arc node it up. I'm not sure what it's called, but the lone model on the far right explodes when it dies. I found this out the hard/fun way previously, so I noted it's deployment in particular. Other than that, again a big pile of troops in the middle.
After the end of my first turn, things looked like this:
Basically I just moved everyone up. I ran the mortar onto the hill to get a better view of the battle field since it couldn't see a whole lot from where it was. I dropped some clouds with the Ternion just because I could. Vlad didn't have much to do, so he camped on all his focus. My plan at this point was to split up my templates, with the mortar on one side and the Destroyer on the other. The Widowmakers had a good field of fire, so I liked them where they were. I wasn't sure which way EV was going to go around the hill, so I stayed in the middle with good options to go either way.
After EV's first turn:
I don't know why this picture got rotated when I uploaded it, but you can see what's going on anyway. EV just came up the middle after me. I think his bonejacks got caught up in the woods, which would account for their off to the side placement. In previous games he had run these things at me full bore, so I had expected them to be much closer. He may have put Scything Touch up on a Mechanithrall unit, but I think he just camped on his focus as well.
A shot from the side to give some perspective on the lines as they drew together. We're on a 3 x 3 board (there's a 4 x 4 on the way for next week) so things are closer than might be expected after one turn.
At this point I saw the big collection of guys in the middle and hatched a plan. I decided to drop some mortars into the group, then move the WGI up and spray/CRA whatever was left. I had a vague notion of bringing the Kodiak around the right of the mortar and engaging the Cankerworm with it, but I thought I'd be out of range.
After my second turn:
Things went about as well as I could have hoped. You can see the big hole where lots of Mechanithralls and the Cankerworm used to be. I dropped S&P with Vlad, did the boosted attack speech with Joe, and just turned the WG loose on the middle. They advanced up the hill and shot 3-4 sprays, taking leaving what looks like 8 Mechanithralls where there had been 20 before. The Cankerworm ate two CRAs to the face, one from the WG Officer with 4 friends, the other from a regular grunt with 3 friends. I think I dropped a mortar or two on it before moving the WGI up as well. The net result of this turn was: bombards, sprays, CRAs, open field. I got a shot of the kill zone from above after I was done.
You can compare with the Cryx turn 1 picture to see the ground that got cleared around the WGI. This was just brutal for EV, though he still had plenty of guys for me to worry about.
After his turn 2:
He charged the remnants of the Mechanithralls up into the WGI. With Bob & Weave they had a halfway respectable defense, so he didn't get many with the charge. He also purged a Bile Thrall before the charge that took out two WG and dinged the Kodiak. The bonejacks moved up as I anticipated, but were mostly ineffectual.
A overhead view of the hill of death after his turn:
You can see the Scything Touch marker on one unit of Mechanithralls as well as the space the other unit cleared in front of it. At this point I was feeling pretty good. I had a bunch of WG left, who passed their command check with a 9, and a target rich environment just begging for more sprays. I was, of course, happy to oblige.
The battlefield after my third turn:
Again with the rotating images. More sprays cleared out the rest of the Mechanithralls, leaving one survivor. I walked up to one of the bonejacks and applied a little axe to face, taking out a few columns but leaving it largely intact. I dropped a mortar on Asphyxious to no effect, then put a couple CRAs into him. At this point EV conceded. I still had the Kodiak (kill some Bile Thralls), Widowmakers (more Bile Thralls) and Ternion (more sprays? maybe an ice cage) to go.
My casualties at the end:
5 Winter Guard Infantry and 3 points on the Kodiak, acceptable losses by any standard. There's a good reason for it, beyond rolling 4 dice with the WGI between Kovnik Joe and Signs & Portents. EV was only playing 27 points. Apparently he thought we were playing 25 points, which he would have still been off on, so it's no wonder his force seemed a little light. I told him not all fights are fair and he agreed, though he said he wished he'd known he'd be fighting uphill before the game was over. Considering I have an 8 point advantage on him, it isn't surprising that I did so well. WGI were the unit of the game in a big way. The massive sprays and CRAs they put out were just brutal, clearing the middle of the board of everything in front of them. I was pleased with the Koldun Lord, even though all he did was run behind the Destroyer and give it a focus point. I wish he could do that and spray or ice cage, but it still worked as intended. The Kodiak didn't do much of anything, but that's because I didn't put him in a position to do anything. I may downgrade to a Juggernaut next time as the Kodiak hasn't bowled me over so far. I love the idea of the chain attack, but without a target that can survive its two initial fist attacks the chain attack is useless. Maybe in the next game EV will bring out his Cygnar or go with more heavy jacks and it'll get a chance to shine, but I'll probably just swap it out for the Juggy and a Rocketeer.
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