Sunday, May 20, 2012

Weekend Roundup

Quite a bit of gaming done this weekend on two fronts: 40k and Warmachine!

Read on...



Comics Mart 40k League
Got in game against Red's Mech Angels today. I fielded my Mech Double Deathstar list from before and Red's Mech Angels (as I remember) were as follows:

Reclusiarch, Sang Priest, Assault Terminators and Furioso Librarian Dreadnought in a Stormraven
5-man Assault Squad in a Lasplas Razorback
5-man Scout sniper squad with sniper rifles, camo cloaks and a missile launcher
2 x Assault cannon Baal Predators with Heavy Bolter sponsons
2 x TLLascannon Predators with Lascannon Sponsons

Mission: Annihilation.
Deployment: Spearhead. I won the roll-off and deployed first,
The Battlefield:

I reserved the Stormraven with a Furioso in it. Red elected to reserve everything.After deployment, I infiltrated my scouts into the ruins near the table centre, Red infiltrated his on top of the grey ruins on his side, and off we went.

There's not much to tell about this battle, really. Turn 1, my army moved up and mauled the Scouts. Turn 2, my Stormraven came in and Red's Scouts were wiped out by the combined gunishment of my whole army. After that, Red's forces trickled in piecemeal, and man, the dice gods simply did not love him this day. My Stormraven flitted about the battlefield, moving flat out and nuking things with the twin-linked multimelta, Red's Stormraven got shot down, and the squad inside was rendered near useless after I focused the bulk of my guns into the squad, killing 3 Terminators and the Reclusiarch. The game ended on turn 6. I had maybe 6 killpoints to Red's 2, and that was that.

Warmachine


Been getting in a couple of trial games of Warmachine, using Terminators to stand-in for my Man-O-War Shocktroopers (which still haven't arrived, surprise, surprise). Just a couple of tiny 15 pt games with Jin's Scyrah and CK's Khador. Nothing worth chronicling, just a couple of trial games with proxy armies to get a firmer grasp of the rules and help figure out how best to build our armies. At 15 pts, this is what I've been using:

Butcher
Destroyer/Decimator
5-man Man-O-War Shocktroopers (8 pts only thanks to Butcher's Tier 1!)
6-man Winter Guard

It's more or less the equivalent of 40k at 500pts, but somehow it feels more brutal. It's like the difference between 2 lightweight boxers going at each other and 2 lightwieght boxers going at each other with sledgehammers. Played correctly, each turn really HURTS! In Warmachine, a lot more forethought is required in planning the allocation of focus points deciding the order of attack. And oh, man, this game has lots of combos.

I find there's a lot more synergy in army building in Warmachine. In 40k, when a handful of different units and characters work well together, you clump them together and hurl them at your enemy in the form of a Deathstar, for example:
  • Assault Terminators + Sang Priest + Reclusiarch/Librarian with Unleash Rage + Land Raider
  • Tyrantstar
  • Jetbike Seer Council
  • Mordrak + Friends
  • Draigo + Friends

In Warmachine, it feels like the entire army is a cohesive whole, it's composition and strategies completely dictated by the choice of caster. For example, my list above is, like the caster himself, a blunt instrument. It marches straight to the enemy in an impenetrable wall of steel, Winter Guard guns and the Destroyer's bombard soften up the foe on closing, the enemy breaks themselves on the Shocktroopers, then the Butcher unleashes his feat and does what he does best, i.e. kill whatever he's pointed at. All the while, the Butcher is casting and removing buffs with the ebb and flow of battle.

I like this! I like how the army has a clear central figure which constantly has an active part in the battle, whose death means the death of the army. This element of assassinating the caster is such a breath of fresh air for someone like me who's been at 40k for years and seen countless battles where the HQ unit is just another big gun/beatstick. Still, I'm far from an expert, so take what I say with a pinch of salt. I'm really looking forward to seeing our armies build up and then we can get to dealing some *real* violence.

 So yeah, the CM Warmachine scene looks like it's still finding it's legs, but when it does, you can be sure we'll approach it like any other game (notably 40k) we will find the most messed-up combos and builds we can and have lotsa laughs doing it...

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