August Purchases

At the start of August, I set my limit on purchases for the month. At first, it was a very short list of items. But now that a bit of overtime at work came up, I knew I could somewhat expand that list to a few more items. Yayy for me.

I was really keen on expanding the Cygnar army with the Gun Mage UA, Squire and the Black 13th squad. It was enough points to round out my basic Cygnar force.

With more and more games of Dystopian Wars coming up at the club, I thought it was about time to round out my basic Navail and Air force by also purchasing an EotBS Sky Fortress. It was also tempting to get more Bomber units in the air as well, but I thought I would stick to just the Sky Fortress for now. With the Flyer Tokens from the starter box along with tokens I would be getting from this blister, I was sure to have a bit of aerial prowess.

As for the Menites, there was a bit of indecision as to what I needed compared to what I wanted. Running a bunch of Flame Guard and Exemplar Errants, I knew there had to be a way of making them last longer during the game. That's where Rhupert Carvolo sprung to mind - with the ability to give Tough to the unit. He was definitely on the cards.

Everyone also reckons that a Vassal of Menoth and a Vassal Mechanik is essential. OK, I'll note that down as well. Finally, with a bit of extra cash to splurge after working a Sunday shift (which in Australia, is a worth double your regular pay) I decided to get myself a Covenant of Menoth, epic Eiryss and an Executioner model for my Malifaux crew.

After working out all the costs (including shipping from the U.S.) it came down to $100.97. All those sweet minis at that price. Might as well buy it from the U.S. too while the Australian dollar is going great, afterall, that isn't going to last forever.

WHFB Orcs & Goblins VS Tomb Kings

This was actually my last practice game before The Pilgrimage, taking on Matt's beloved Tomb Kings.

 The scenario we played was just your basic Battleline scenario. Nothing too fancy. I felt as though I deployed the Savage Orcs too far from the General and BSB and looking at what they had in front of them (which was a unit of 3 Carrion and the dreaded Casket) I knew I had to get them in the centre to where the fight would be.

Things were not looking healthy at the start and middle phases of the game when I lost the Squig Herd cheaply to the big block of Skellies with his characters. Tried to allocate some attacks on the Necrotect and his Heirophant with the Squigs, but failed to kill any of them only wounding the Necrotect, but leaving the Heirophant with 1 wound. The rest of the Squigs and Night Goblins slaying a few skellies. The big skellie block then reformed to face the ensuing charge from the Warboss and his Big Un unit.

Both the wolf Chariots were taking a battering from the Tomb King bows, leaving both with 1 wound. One of them broke from the same combat as the skellies and the Squig Herd, falling just short of the Nehekharan statue. That chariot would later play a big role....

The Black Orcs copped a charge from one of the Sphinxes and while they managed to hit it with a couple of wounds, they eventually broke. I think Matt's mistake was not pursuing them, opting to reform to face the centre of the battlefield where the big fight was.

Slowly but surely, the game started coming back my way. Charged the Big Uns into the Skellie block, declared a Waaagh! and got in there. Somehow managed to rally the wolf chariot also. This is where it got interesting...

In the ensuing combat, I decided to accept the challenge called out by his Tomb King with my Warboss. Didn't seem like a good idea as the King had Fencers Blade and Glittering Scales, making him hard to hit. But my reasoning was that I would rather let the Warboss soak up all the hits and wounds with his 4+ ward save. The big challenge saw both Lords taking a wound each. I eventually killed the Necrotect and more skellies with some regular Boyz, taking minimal casualties in return. The BSB was proving hard to kill when his allocated attacks failed to do anything. After winning the fight, the combat resolution allowed me to take down more skellies.

Next turn saw an eventual charge on the Big Uns' flank by one of the Sphinxes. Magic didn't do anything of great importance. In the shooting phase, he failed to leave a mark on the Wolf Chariots. Straight to combat, the Warboss was left with 1 wound left, while I failed to even scratch the Tomb Kings armour. He allocated more attacks on the BSB with his Warsphinx crew, but failing to wound the tough nut. I'll have to give this Orc BSB a new name. I finally killed the Heirophant, meaning that he would have to start taking tests for crumbling, but I did little else that round. A few more Orcs dead from the Fiery Roar and Thunderstomp of the Sphinx, I was testing on Leadership 10 and being Steadfast with the ranks. Passed. Phew.

This is where it really started to come back my way as Matt started rolling really high for his crumble tests. Wiped out his Catapult, crippled his Chariots (taking out 2 chariots), a host of archers and most importantly, removing his Casket. That was huge.

It was now the most critical part of the game where the some of the key positioning and lucky rallies of the chariots would come to play. Firstly, I charged the Wolf Chariot into the rear of the skellie block. Then charged the Savage Orcs into the other Sphinx with 3 wounds left. Meanwhile, the remaining 2 Black Orcs were still running for the hills....

Magic did its part, casting magic here and there.

The first combat we fought was the Savage Orcs VS the Sphinx. To put it simply, the Savage Orcs absolutely pumped it, taking the last 3 wounds off the Sphinx with ease. That opened up an overrun into the rear of the other Sphinx which was in combat with the Big Uns. Needing a 7 on the overrun, unfortunately, I fell just short.

The next combat was with the skellies, Sphinx and Big Uns. I knew that my Warboss would not last long in the challenge and unless I got some kills with the impact hits, the Big Uns would no longer be testing on Steadfast if I were to lose the combat. Luckily for me the chariot did his business and knocked off  5 skellies.

The Warboss eventually died after finding it hard to hit the Tomb King. The Sphinx failing to graze the Orc BSB, did little with its Thunderstomp. The Wolf Chariot died to some skellies, but the 7 or 8 skellies that it knocked off was more than enough to prove its value. When the dust settled, I had won combat with enough combat res points to make both units crumble. Yup, it went pretty pear shaped for the Tomb Kings from here on in.

On his crumble tests, more Chariots went down along with some archers. The Heirotitan was extremely resiliant in passing all its Leadership tests. The crippled chariots were not willing to charge the remaining Big Uns and the BSB. There wasn't much else to do...

On my last turn, I had declared a long charge with the Big Uns into his chariot, which failed.

The Savage Orcs charged the unit of archers and made it with ease.

Meanwhile the Black Orcs were nearing the edge of the table, needing double ones to save myself a huge chunk of points. Rolled the dice and wouldn't you know - SNAKE EYES!! The look of dismay on Matt's face was priceless...

We didn't bother going through the rest of the phases, especially in combat where we knew the Savage Orcs would just tear Archers a new one.

So it was a big win in the end, thanks to some very fortunate rally rolls and charges that helped hold off the Tomb King and his skellie unit from running amok.

Up next will be quick summaries of all 6 games at the Pilgrimage. Without pics unfortunately...

The Menites go to town

In between games of Warhammer, I’ve managed to squeeze in some Warmachine games with a mate down at the club and the other with a mate who wants to get into it.

I’m starting to get a better idea of what I want to include in my eKreoss themed force. Plenty of Exemplar models to make use of his abilities, his feat and of course his tier.

The first game played of the two was against Davor who wanted to use my small Cygnar force. I didn’t have enough models to make a 35 pt list for Cygnar, so we thought we’d go for 28 pt lists.

The Cygnar list looked something like this:

pStryker

Thunderhead

Thorn

Charger

Gun Mage Team

Dirty Meg

Arlan Strangewayes

Not an optimal Cygnar list, but that’s all I have and we were happy with that – considering Davor doesn’t have any models whatsoever.

My list was:

eKreoss

Vanquisher

Redeemer

Knights Exemplar

Knights Exemplar Errants (base unit) with UA

Choir (base unit)

Heirophant

The game did take a while to play. Constantly looking up rules, showing rules, advising on which move would be better, phone calls, lunch at the kebab shop, etc etc – the game took about 3 and a half hours to play. Anyway, to put it simply, the Menites won, but it was good showing Davor how to play. He’s mainly a Warhammer player, so I’m not too sure if I had him hooked onto Warmachine, but at least he showed a bit of interest and had fun along the way. He advised me that if he ever got into Warmachine, he would definitely pick Cygnar as his faction.

The latter game was against Ross down at Unlimited Hobbies. After a long night shift and 2 and a half hours of sleep, I decided to come down and give him a game since he was keen on trying out his Khador force.

His list was:

eSorcha

Destroyer

Juggernaut

Kodiak

Widowmakers

Man o War Demo Corps (base unit)

Battle Mechaniks

Winter Guard (full unit) with UA

I didn’t think I would prove too much of a challenge after such little sleep. Coming up with a list was hard enough itself, but I gave it a go and found myself running a Tier 3 list.

eKreoss

Crusader

Redeemer

Repenter

Exemplar Bastions (full unit)

Exemplar Knights x2

Exemplar Errants (base unit) with UA

Exemplar Errant Seneschal

I think this was the first time I was running a list without a Heirophant. Also worth mentioning that it was my first game with the Errant Seneschal (ok, ok. It was unpainted. I feel so dirty...).

I think this was the first time I’ve come up against Widowmakers. And let me just say, they are the bane of my Knights Exemplar. I lost 5 Knights in one round of shooting and while that last Knight survived the whole game (after the round where his friends got pummelled by shooting, I hid in him behind a piece of terrain on the middle of the table), I’ll never put my Knights within range of Widowmakers again...

I had the upper hand for most of the game. I must admit that my deployment has gotten better since I started. I crowded the middle and ensured that the Bastions weren’t deployed in the flank and were with Kreoss for the most part of the game.

During the latter phases of the game, I had exposed Kreoss to his army after using his feat to allow the Exemplar units to go to town on his Kodiak, Man o Wars and Juggernaut. Ross aimed his Destroyer at Kreoss first. Luckily he missed with a boosted ‘to hit’ roll as a Power 14 (with an extra focus ready to go for damage) would’ve meant bad news. Then the Widowmakers took 3 wounds off Kreoss. Then Ross  managed to sneak in a cheeky cyclone move with Sorscha and charged Kreoss. I thought it was game over right there. But some terrible dice rolls proved the difference as Sorcsha failed to hit twice (with boosted dice).

The dice Gods can be cruel indeed. And to make matters worse, the dice where he only had 2 dice to hit (and no focus left) actually hit and scored quite a few wounds on Kreoss, leaving him with only 6 left.

I did the honourable thing in the following turn by activating only Kreoss to smack Sorscha sideways for the win.

WHFB Orcs & Goblins VS Skaven

The second game of Pilgrimage practice was against Matt's Skaven army of DOOOOOOM! (Sorry, just had to).

He brought the usual 'cheese' - Grey Seer, Warlord, BSB, a rat with that bloody doom rocket, a plague priest on furnace, hellpit, doomwheel, big unit of clanrats and a BUCKETLOAD of Skaven slaves... ughh.

My plan was to drag him near the forest and hope I picked up some Fungus forests to help make my Goblins Stubborn or that he would be foolish enough to charge in and have a majority of his models inside it, making his units unable to use Steadfast.

We played the Meeting Engagement scenario, where you roll for reserves for each unit and each character. Luckily, most of my units stayed on the board, however, my BSB, Level 1 Night Gobbo Shaman with Scroll and a single troll rolled 1's and had to come on as reserves.

This is how the Skaven army was deployed. Nice long battle line with the plague furnace on the far right flank where my Black Orcs were. I should let you know that the Black Orcs (named 'Da Rusty Blades') also had the flaming banner, hence the Hellpit's deployment on the far left flank.

Knowing the potential of a Furnace with a priest and its Monks, it was the first thing that had to go. I put the Mangler Squig full speed ahead towards the unit and targeted it with some Poisoned arrows and the artillery. By the end of my shooting phase on Turn 2, I had taken out the Furnace and the priest....

So my wolf chariot got smacked by the Doomwheel, which came as no surprise. I eventually took out the Doomwheel with Great Weapon wielding Black Orcs aided by a Doom Diver which pummelled it with 2 hits on the previous turn...

I used the troll as a Diverter/Charge speed bump for the Monks. Unfortunately, when the Monks overran, they didn't make it to the Black Orcs, which is what I was hoping would happen. If the Monks had made it, I would've simply charged the Monks in the flank with the Savage Orcs...

His Hellpit went to town on my Squig Herd unit, wiping them out in one turn. The Squig bomb didn't do much. I then parked my Troll as another speed bump for his Hellpit, which he happily charged and smacked in combat. He then overran into my Warboss and his unit of Choppa wielding Big Uns. Took 2 turns to take out the Hellpit, but a Warboss, BSB with Great Weapon and some lucky hits by the Big Uns was enough to take down the hideous monstrosity...

Things were getting quite interesting in the end, where an opportunistic 6 on the animosity table came up. The 6 result on the animosity table allows the unit to pivot to face the nearest visible enemy followed by a charge declaration. The Savage Orcs managed to pull it off after some Skaven slaves hurled some insults at the brutes, prompting a charge on the flank.

The game went to 6 turns this time around and while I didn't kill any of Matt's Skaven Lords, nor the BSB, it was still a resounding victory to the Orcs and Goblins.

So Game 2 out of the way of Pilgrimage Practice. Really looking forward to another game sometime soon as the Pilgrimage is only around the corner...

WHFB Orcs & Goblins vs Beastmen

Officially kick started off my practice games for Pilgrimage with a game against Richards Beastmen. This battle was actually played a couple of weeks ago, but I've been busy by work, life and other misc. things that I haven't had time to put the pics up.

I must add that this was Richards first game with the Beasts and was using models that he had - except for the Ghorgon which was proxied by a Shaggoth model.

Without blabbing on too much about the game, I did manage to win, after Richard conceeded on Turn 4. It was definitely a good start with this new army list.