Post by daveg on Dec 2, 2018 14:59:22 GMT
Hi All,
I've been traveling a ton for work lately and my skill with Warmachine has been suffering. A general lack of focus on caster/lists and too much whining are the too biggest problems I think. In an effort to maximize my few games and help me move past that initial, unhelpful, "this sucks" feeling I've been trying to take pictures and write a battle report. I figure some of you folks might find this helpful as well.
My goal is to find a caster/general list and start a '100 games' challenge (that might be only 50) in the beginning of the new year.
Jarl is on the list of possible casters and here is a first try at a battle report (the reporting will probably improve as well)
Game1: Jarl vs Rahn (17Nov)
Lists:
Trolls:
Jarl Skuld (Storm)
-Bomber
-Winter Troll
-Ice Troll (proxy by Impaler)
Valka
Fell Caller
Bog Trog Mistspeaker
Battle Bears
Fire Eaters
Kriel Warrors (max) + 2 Cabers
Champions (max) + Skaldi
Retribution:
Rahn (Forges)
-Hyperion
-Discordia
-Chimera
Arcanist Mechanic x3
Magister
Artificer (MegaMittens)
Eiryss1
Battle Mages x3
House Shyeel Arcanists x2
Deployment:
I win the roll and choose to go first. The basic plan is to jam with the Kriel Warriors (KW) and I want to chew up board space. He chooses to take the side without all of the houses so that he can move his Hyperion more freely. Apologies for not having a picture here, I’m hoping to get better with picture taking as I do more of these. You can see his deployment in the picture of top 1 below and can imagine my stuff just running forward mostly.
He starts with Polarity Shield up on the Hyperion.
Top 1:
Runebearer moves up and Harmonious Exultates Jarl. Jarl casts Quicken on the KW, moves up to get line of sight to the Champions, casts Weald Secrets, and then puts two into the stone. The stone activates, pops speed and armor, walks forward 6”, and groggily yawns awake for 1 fury.
The fireeaters move onto the hill and the pyg sprays something off in the distance lighting his buddies on fire doing 2 damage to the right one and none to the left.
The rest of everything runs. I make sure to get both the MIstspeaker and Valka in range of my flag for next turn.
Bottom 1:
He arcane secrets Rahn with Sylys, runs up the Chimera in order to make a line between the right trollkin fire eater and the pyg fireeater behind him. Rahn moves up, boosts and hits the needed 7, force hammering the big guy into his little buddy and killing both. He TK’s Discordia forward so she can walk and spray at the last remaining fireeater.
Discordia works around the forest and tries for the boosted 9 and misses. The Hyperion moves forward, drifts a shot on to the leading two KW, boosting blast damage, kills one and the second one toughs. Importantly, he angles Hyperion in such a way that the bears won’t be able to charge it this turn (Polarity Shield).In the last bit of violence for turn one Eiryss walks up and murders the knocked down KW. His battle mages run and some of his arcanists put focus on the Chimera.
Top 2:
Losing two of my best infantry clearing pieces bottom 1 was not great and to follow it up, the third fireeater went out. I debate if I should ambush the bears in on the right side and just run them into the backfield to be scary but decide to put them in on the left side to murder some battle mages.
I upkeep both Quicken and Weald Secrets for free.
The bears activate early since I know what they are supposed to do and they charge and murder three battle mages. The Fell Caller activates, yells War Cry at the KW and moves up. Two KW charge, one into the Chimera (hits, minor damage) and one into the Battle Mage (miss) in the right zone. The rest go running forward in order to jam.
Runebearer moves up and casts Magic Bullet on Jarl. Jarl moves up puts a boosted shot into the engaged battlemage, killing the battle mage and then killing Eiryss with the magic bullet. He feats, getting 4 clouds and then puts a couple of fury into the stone. He sits on one.
The Bomber moves up, snipes himself and tosses two damage boosted bombs into the Hyperion, doing something like 10 damage.
The rest of things run, with the champs, winter troll, and Ice troll setting up a counter attack in the left zone and the Stone hiding behind clouds/the building with speed/Armor up and 9” of coverage.
Bottom 2:
Rahn gives no focus, gets arcane secrets from Sylys, and moves up to have LOS to the left side jamming KW. He feats and (from himself) hits the 10 to Force Hammer one KW into a second one, killing both. My opponent debates if it is too greedy and in the end decides to do the same thing to a second pair of KW.
His three surviving red battle mages and one of the units of mechanics clear out the bears and handler, the chimera combo strikes a KW under the stone aura (Arm 19), and the solos (Magister and Artificer) murder off some more. Discordia uses her new found un-jammed-ness to walk forward and spray three champs and the winter troll. Dice have some failures but he ends up doing 4 damage to Skaldi and three sanguine bonded damage to another champ. Skaldi is importantly deafened and unless I want to murder my own Skaldi, the champs won’t be able to charge.
On the right side, the Hyperion kills two of the KW and toes the zone and one of the battle mages can get in range of Valka, hitting and pushing him off of the flag.
He scores one from his flag (my champ on the hill is just a smidge over 4” to contest).
1-0 Ret
Top 3:
I start the turn by upkeeping both my spells for free and marking out where Jarl needs to stand to shoot the Artificer on the flag.
Runebearer moves up and gives Jarl Magic Bullet. The ice troll aims and throws a fully boosted spear at the Chimera either missing or doing not much damage. The stone pops strength and armor and declares a press forward. Two of the scribes get into the Chimera doing some light damage. The champs go and even being only able to walk murder Discordia and the Chimera. I would have blocked Jarl’s previously marked LOS with the champ who went into the Chimera but my opponent kindly reminded me and I adjust his position. With his overtak move, I almost foolishly forget again but luckily remember right in time. Those medium bases can be a bit of a problem, just like I read on the internet. Score one for internet wisdom.
Jarl steps into his previously marked spot, fully boosts the shot into the Artificer and does 2 damage to the magister behind him with the Magic Bullet.
On the right side, Valka charges and misses his attack on the battlemage that was hiding behind the house but then kills him with his second axe. The bomber does a total of 2 damage with his bombs on the Hyperion (arm 21 this time from Discordia imprint/Rahn bond) and hides behind the building. The Mistspeaker caps the flag. I score left zone and my flag.
2-1 Trolls
Bottom 3:
I both don’t have any more pictures and I don’t remember the order of activation exactly here. He pulls off another nice Force Hammer play. We look at the rules for self-sac and decide that collateral damage doesn’t trigger it (please correct us if we’re wrong). Rahn hits his arcane secrets TK and moves the champ (represented by the empty base in the last picture) backwards and 2” closer to the stone. He then force hammers the champ into the stone, I spread the champ damage around and he kills the stone with the damage roll. I fail the tough check and it’s a dead stone. It leaves Rahn on a two camp.
At the end of the turn on the left he’s pushed my champs around, knocked down 2, and killed 2. The magister and an arcanist are on his flag which is now uncontested. He also kills my Runebearer somehow.
More importantly, on the right side, he moves the yellow battle mage in combat with my KW away and I kill him with my free strike. The other three members of the yellow unit of battle mages begin to move up to be in melee with the KW so he can use Force Bolt without a melee penalty. Valka countercharges one of them, hits the 7 and kills him. One of them punches the KW and he toughs. The second mage force bolts the knocked down KW to death. Most importantly, the third battle mage hits the 6, followed by the hard 12 (I had 5 hp left) he needs to kill Valka and I fail the tough roll.
With the way clear he can get his 3 focus, concentrated Power Hyperion to my Bomber (facing backwards in the above picture to fit) nuzzled against the building. Needing 8’s to hit, he boosts the first swing hitting at a dice +5 does 21 damage, boosts his second swing and does 16 damage turning my Bomber into paste.
He is in a position to contest my flag, has either killed or pushed my contesting champions far enough away from his flag and scores 2.
3-2 Ret
Top 5:
Honestly, I’m trying to hold down the tilt with middling success. One of the reasons why there wasn’t a picture last turn.
We discuss and with my right flank dying before his left flank, we think he would win on turn 7. However, I decide to try and continue scenario as the assassination run is terrible and Hyperion can’t be everywhere. My fell caller yells standup at the champions who then walk. One champ is in combat with a battle mage, two are in combat with the Magister and arcanist solo on the flag and one is in combat with the objective.
I miss something like 5/6 of the attack rolls on the various elf mages and do 4 damage to the objective. I charge the remaining stone scribes in and do another 3 damage to the objective. At this point, I haven’t cleared the zone or killed the objective.
I decide scenario is now completely screwed and assassination is my only way out. Rahn on two camp will not be dying to Jarl in one turn but maybe I can get him over two turns. I move up Jarl to within 12” and with LOS of Rahm, fully boost both of my shots. I roll 3 damage and 4 damage at dice off 4 and he reduces both to zero.
I still have two turns and I’m Def 19 and Dodge versus where the Hyperion can walk and see to shoot. This is bad but we can still make a run.
Bottom 5:
My opponent decides to go for an assassination himself and in his continued excellent use of Force hammer, slams a Stone scribe into Jarl which knocks him down. That Def 19, dodge plan to survive the Hyperion shooting? Less good when I’m KD.
5-2 to Ret and a Caster Kill for the win.
Learnings:
1) I had several small misplays. I should have put the feat cloud that I had in front of Jarl up touching the building in front of Valka on turn 2. If I do that and have my champion up a smidge closer, I go up on scenario.
2) Losing the Fireeaters early for no reason was really bad. I need to be more patient in general and with them specifically. I needed their infantry clearing power here.
3) I’m still unsure if ambushing the bears on turn 2 and on the left side was correct. Would I have gotten more value running behind his forces on the right? Would I have gotten more value by them being scary off the board and coming on in later turns?
4) His battle mages killed stuff I was not expecting including the entire unit of Battle Bears.
The feat improves their power a ton.
5) I didn’t need Weald Secrets on the champs. I could have yelled pathfinder from the Fel Caller and used those two focus to either expand the stone aura or give the bomber or stone reposition.
6) I think I used the bomber poorly. I didn’t want to throw bombs at the infantry because of Rahn’s control of drift direction, but I could have used snipe, field marshal swift strider, and repo if I had it on him to move up, boost the hit and a blast damage and chip away at his infantry. I was never going to kill the Hyperion and I shouldn’t have wasted two turns of activations on it.
7) I need to use swift hunter on Jarl more instead of relying on snipe as much. His fury needs are still rough even with free upkeeps. Really puts a premium on getting the correct spell on the correct unit turn 1. There never seems to be enough fury to move it later in the game.
Hopefully this report will be helpful to other people, for me it definitely took a “Stupid Dice!” game and turned it into improvements I can make in my gameplay.
I've been traveling a ton for work lately and my skill with Warmachine has been suffering. A general lack of focus on caster/lists and too much whining are the too biggest problems I think. In an effort to maximize my few games and help me move past that initial, unhelpful, "this sucks" feeling I've been trying to take pictures and write a battle report. I figure some of you folks might find this helpful as well.
My goal is to find a caster/general list and start a '100 games' challenge (that might be only 50) in the beginning of the new year.
Jarl is on the list of possible casters and here is a first try at a battle report (the reporting will probably improve as well)
Game1: Jarl vs Rahn (17Nov)
Lists:
Trolls:
Jarl Skuld (Storm)
-Bomber
-Winter Troll
-Ice Troll (proxy by Impaler)
Valka
Fell Caller
Bog Trog Mistspeaker
Battle Bears
Fire Eaters
Kriel Warrors (max) + 2 Cabers
Champions (max) + Skaldi
Retribution:
Rahn (Forges)
-Hyperion
-Discordia
-Chimera
Arcanist Mechanic x3
Magister
Artificer (MegaMittens)
Eiryss1
Battle Mages x3
House Shyeel Arcanists x2
Deployment:
I win the roll and choose to go first. The basic plan is to jam with the Kriel Warriors (KW) and I want to chew up board space. He chooses to take the side without all of the houses so that he can move his Hyperion more freely. Apologies for not having a picture here, I’m hoping to get better with picture taking as I do more of these. You can see his deployment in the picture of top 1 below and can imagine my stuff just running forward mostly.
He starts with Polarity Shield up on the Hyperion.
Top 1:
Runebearer moves up and Harmonious Exultates Jarl. Jarl casts Quicken on the KW, moves up to get line of sight to the Champions, casts Weald Secrets, and then puts two into the stone. The stone activates, pops speed and armor, walks forward 6”, and groggily yawns awake for 1 fury.
The fireeaters move onto the hill and the pyg sprays something off in the distance lighting his buddies on fire doing 2 damage to the right one and none to the left.
The rest of everything runs. I make sure to get both the MIstspeaker and Valka in range of my flag for next turn.
Bottom 1:
He arcane secrets Rahn with Sylys, runs up the Chimera in order to make a line between the right trollkin fire eater and the pyg fireeater behind him. Rahn moves up, boosts and hits the needed 7, force hammering the big guy into his little buddy and killing both. He TK’s Discordia forward so she can walk and spray at the last remaining fireeater.
Discordia works around the forest and tries for the boosted 9 and misses. The Hyperion moves forward, drifts a shot on to the leading two KW, boosting blast damage, kills one and the second one toughs. Importantly, he angles Hyperion in such a way that the bears won’t be able to charge it this turn (Polarity Shield).In the last bit of violence for turn one Eiryss walks up and murders the knocked down KW. His battle mages run and some of his arcanists put focus on the Chimera.
Top 2:
Losing two of my best infantry clearing pieces bottom 1 was not great and to follow it up, the third fireeater went out. I debate if I should ambush the bears in on the right side and just run them into the backfield to be scary but decide to put them in on the left side to murder some battle mages.
I upkeep both Quicken and Weald Secrets for free.
The bears activate early since I know what they are supposed to do and they charge and murder three battle mages. The Fell Caller activates, yells War Cry at the KW and moves up. Two KW charge, one into the Chimera (hits, minor damage) and one into the Battle Mage (miss) in the right zone. The rest go running forward in order to jam.
Runebearer moves up and casts Magic Bullet on Jarl. Jarl moves up puts a boosted shot into the engaged battlemage, killing the battle mage and then killing Eiryss with the magic bullet. He feats, getting 4 clouds and then puts a couple of fury into the stone. He sits on one.
The Bomber moves up, snipes himself and tosses two damage boosted bombs into the Hyperion, doing something like 10 damage.
The rest of things run, with the champs, winter troll, and Ice troll setting up a counter attack in the left zone and the Stone hiding behind clouds/the building with speed/Armor up and 9” of coverage.
Bottom 2:
Rahn gives no focus, gets arcane secrets from Sylys, and moves up to have LOS to the left side jamming KW. He feats and (from himself) hits the 10 to Force Hammer one KW into a second one, killing both. My opponent debates if it is too greedy and in the end decides to do the same thing to a second pair of KW.
His three surviving red battle mages and one of the units of mechanics clear out the bears and handler, the chimera combo strikes a KW under the stone aura (Arm 19), and the solos (Magister and Artificer) murder off some more. Discordia uses her new found un-jammed-ness to walk forward and spray three champs and the winter troll. Dice have some failures but he ends up doing 4 damage to Skaldi and three sanguine bonded damage to another champ. Skaldi is importantly deafened and unless I want to murder my own Skaldi, the champs won’t be able to charge.
On the right side, the Hyperion kills two of the KW and toes the zone and one of the battle mages can get in range of Valka, hitting and pushing him off of the flag.
He scores one from his flag (my champ on the hill is just a smidge over 4” to contest).
1-0 Ret
Top 3:
I start the turn by upkeeping both my spells for free and marking out where Jarl needs to stand to shoot the Artificer on the flag.
Runebearer moves up and gives Jarl Magic Bullet. The ice troll aims and throws a fully boosted spear at the Chimera either missing or doing not much damage. The stone pops strength and armor and declares a press forward. Two of the scribes get into the Chimera doing some light damage. The champs go and even being only able to walk murder Discordia and the Chimera. I would have blocked Jarl’s previously marked LOS with the champ who went into the Chimera but my opponent kindly reminded me and I adjust his position. With his overtak move, I almost foolishly forget again but luckily remember right in time. Those medium bases can be a bit of a problem, just like I read on the internet. Score one for internet wisdom.
Jarl steps into his previously marked spot, fully boosts the shot into the Artificer and does 2 damage to the magister behind him with the Magic Bullet.
On the right side, Valka charges and misses his attack on the battlemage that was hiding behind the house but then kills him with his second axe. The bomber does a total of 2 damage with his bombs on the Hyperion (arm 21 this time from Discordia imprint/Rahn bond) and hides behind the building. The Mistspeaker caps the flag. I score left zone and my flag.
2-1 Trolls
Bottom 3:
I both don’t have any more pictures and I don’t remember the order of activation exactly here. He pulls off another nice Force Hammer play. We look at the rules for self-sac and decide that collateral damage doesn’t trigger it (please correct us if we’re wrong). Rahn hits his arcane secrets TK and moves the champ (represented by the empty base in the last picture) backwards and 2” closer to the stone. He then force hammers the champ into the stone, I spread the champ damage around and he kills the stone with the damage roll. I fail the tough check and it’s a dead stone. It leaves Rahn on a two camp.
At the end of the turn on the left he’s pushed my champs around, knocked down 2, and killed 2. The magister and an arcanist are on his flag which is now uncontested. He also kills my Runebearer somehow.
More importantly, on the right side, he moves the yellow battle mage in combat with my KW away and I kill him with my free strike. The other three members of the yellow unit of battle mages begin to move up to be in melee with the KW so he can use Force Bolt without a melee penalty. Valka countercharges one of them, hits the 7 and kills him. One of them punches the KW and he toughs. The second mage force bolts the knocked down KW to death. Most importantly, the third battle mage hits the 6, followed by the hard 12 (I had 5 hp left) he needs to kill Valka and I fail the tough roll.
With the way clear he can get his 3 focus, concentrated Power Hyperion to my Bomber (facing backwards in the above picture to fit) nuzzled against the building. Needing 8’s to hit, he boosts the first swing hitting at a dice +5 does 21 damage, boosts his second swing and does 16 damage turning my Bomber into paste.
He is in a position to contest my flag, has either killed or pushed my contesting champions far enough away from his flag and scores 2.
3-2 Ret
Top 5:
Honestly, I’m trying to hold down the tilt with middling success. One of the reasons why there wasn’t a picture last turn.
We discuss and with my right flank dying before his left flank, we think he would win on turn 7. However, I decide to try and continue scenario as the assassination run is terrible and Hyperion can’t be everywhere. My fell caller yells standup at the champions who then walk. One champ is in combat with a battle mage, two are in combat with the Magister and arcanist solo on the flag and one is in combat with the objective.
I miss something like 5/6 of the attack rolls on the various elf mages and do 4 damage to the objective. I charge the remaining stone scribes in and do another 3 damage to the objective. At this point, I haven’t cleared the zone or killed the objective.
I decide scenario is now completely screwed and assassination is my only way out. Rahn on two camp will not be dying to Jarl in one turn but maybe I can get him over two turns. I move up Jarl to within 12” and with LOS of Rahm, fully boost both of my shots. I roll 3 damage and 4 damage at dice off 4 and he reduces both to zero.
I still have two turns and I’m Def 19 and Dodge versus where the Hyperion can walk and see to shoot. This is bad but we can still make a run.
Bottom 5:
My opponent decides to go for an assassination himself and in his continued excellent use of Force hammer, slams a Stone scribe into Jarl which knocks him down. That Def 19, dodge plan to survive the Hyperion shooting? Less good when I’m KD.
5-2 to Ret and a Caster Kill for the win.
Learnings:
1) I had several small misplays. I should have put the feat cloud that I had in front of Jarl up touching the building in front of Valka on turn 2. If I do that and have my champion up a smidge closer, I go up on scenario.
2) Losing the Fireeaters early for no reason was really bad. I need to be more patient in general and with them specifically. I needed their infantry clearing power here.
3) I’m still unsure if ambushing the bears on turn 2 and on the left side was correct. Would I have gotten more value running behind his forces on the right? Would I have gotten more value by them being scary off the board and coming on in later turns?
4) His battle mages killed stuff I was not expecting including the entire unit of Battle Bears.
The feat improves their power a ton.
5) I didn’t need Weald Secrets on the champs. I could have yelled pathfinder from the Fel Caller and used those two focus to either expand the stone aura or give the bomber or stone reposition.
6) I think I used the bomber poorly. I didn’t want to throw bombs at the infantry because of Rahn’s control of drift direction, but I could have used snipe, field marshal swift strider, and repo if I had it on him to move up, boost the hit and a blast damage and chip away at his infantry. I was never going to kill the Hyperion and I shouldn’t have wasted two turns of activations on it.
7) I need to use swift hunter on Jarl more instead of relying on snipe as much. His fury needs are still rough even with free upkeeps. Really puts a premium on getting the correct spell on the correct unit turn 1. There never seems to be enough fury to move it later in the game.
Hopefully this report will be helpful to other people, for me it definitely took a “Stupid Dice!” game and turned it into improvements I can make in my gameplay.
