And then she pretty nearly killed me. Her Nyss annihilated my Fenns (Fenns can't hit DEF15 for the life of them, without a Fell Caller), her feat completely neutered my Champions and clogged my charge lanes. The only reason I pulled through was from the Mauler putting the rage animus on Madrak and the Impaler. Both took a shot, Madrak feated and they both shot again, and a Kithkar got lucky on the charge and finished her. It was the only model I killed all game, compared to my Champions, Fenns and a smattering of solos.
So she challenged me again today, and decided to bring Strakhov again. 35pts, mostly the same army (Essentially all the models she owns). We proxied a Spriggan in there instead of the Juggernaut (So be not deceived), and rolled.
Strakhov
*Sylys
*Spriggan
*Destroyer
Max Men-of-War Shocktroopers
Max Nyss
Reinholdt
I brought back eMaddy, but brought a Fell Caller this time. I brought a Slag for more damage on Jacks, and +2 STR animus on Madrak and the Impaler, and the Impaler because... he's the Impaler, and can benefit from the feat, with reach, and just good all around.
eMadrak
*Runebearer
*Slag Troll
*Impaler
Max Fenn Blades w/UA
Fenn Kithkar
Max Champions
Fell Caller
Kriel Stone Bearer w/UA
She won the rolloff, chose to go second. I put the Fenns on the right side of the board with lots of room to run, and put the Champions in the woods, with everyone else center, maybe being able to use the building as cover for Madrak and the KSB, not that the Nyss care.
My wife put the Shocktroopers across from the Fenns, and the Nyss across from the Champions. Not the best matchup for either one, but the Shocktroopers would struggle with the woods. Everything else went center.
Turn 1. Fenns take off across the clearing. Slag runs and riles for 2, Impaler runs and riles for 1. Madrak drops Warpath, puts fury to the stone and charges a Nyss. The KSB runs in behind him and pops aura. The Runebearer runs in behind them. Mistake 1 for the game, not using Moses first to make Warpath cheaper. The Fell Caller puts pathfinder on the Champions, and they run into the woods.
My wife sends the Men-of-War forward at the Fenns, the Nyss run to the edge of the wood, and the Destroyer advances up all of it's 4''. She pops a shot off at my Fenns, hoping for a good deviation. It is, but fails to kill anything. Reinholdt reloads Strakhov. He puts Superiority on the Spriggan, Sentry on the Destroyer, and throws two shots downrange at the Fenns again. Both deviated away from them. The Spriggan pushes forward 6'' and fires twice, again, hoping for deviation, but luck is against my wife. Both deviate towards the MoW and do nothing. Sylys walks up behind Strakhov, and the tape measure comes back to me.
Madrak pulls in his fury, upkeeps Warpath. Moses activates (did it right this time), cheapens a spell for Madrak. Madrak then activates, puts Blood Fury on the Fenns, and drops the Impaler's animus on the Slag, and dumps the last fury to the stone. The Fenns open the ball, minifeat, and three charge into the Men of War, and the rest run. One engages the Spriggan (But not the Devastor, like I hoped), and the rest space out. Sentry triggers, and my wife's Destroyer murders a Fenn. Two of the three that charged kill their targets, and remove the two Men of War on the right side. The Champions move up to the front of the woods, daring the Nyss to charge them while they're within the KSB and base to base.
The Slag activates, moves up, and I realize that I engaged the Spriggan with my Fenn... Adding 4 DEF. So I throw at the Destroyer instead, and miss. Buy another shot, chuck it at the Spriggan, boosts to hit, hit, boost damage and roll 4 dice at -8, doing 4 pts of damage to the 5. The Impaler moves up, throws at the Spriggan as well, misses, kills the Fenn, but he toughs. The Krielstone runs up, pops Aura, and the Elder does "No Continuous effects". Fell caller shuffles in behind them, and the Kithkar tucks in with the rest of the Fenns.
My wife thinks long and hard about feating, but decides to activate what wouldn't be affected by it first. She puts 3 focus to the Spriggan, 1 to the Destroyer, and kept 2 for Strakhov. The Nyss decide to open fire on the Krielstone and ignore the Champions. At dice -5 though and tough, she only killed one. If it'd of worked, I'd of lost my +2 ARM, which I really liked. It was also my functioning buffer for keeping Madrak alive with Grim Salvation because we were both aware that the Spriggan was in full charge range of Madrak between feat and Overrun. If the Nyss had cleared out the KSB, I'd of probably lost Madrak.
The Destroyer tries, and takes a shot at the KSB behind the wall, needing an 11. Gets a 9, but the deviation covers 2 of them. With the KSB aura though, they're at -10, and neither of them die. The Men-of-War don't need the charge bonus, and shuffle around with a charge order to get the bonus. All three hit Blood Furied Fenns at DEF10, and all three break ARM, but 1 toughs.
Strakhov steps up. Jess decides not to feat, since she's pretty sure she can get the charge off with the Spriggan without needing the 4''. Instead, she rolls 3 for ROF on the gun, and with Reinholdt's reload, she's got 4 shots. Strakhov shoots the Fenn that's KD in front of the Spriggan, and breaks ARM. He toughs. She shoots him again and he dies, and the Spriggan shuffles forward 6'' with Superiority. She shoots the other one that's KD in front of the MoW, breaks ARM, and he toughs. Shoots him again and he finally dies.
She hates tough, incidentally.
Spriggan charges. He goes after the Slag, hits, and is at dice even with the KSB nearby. She hits, does mediocre damage, hits with the hand, does very little. She buys an attack, and it misses with snake eyes. Buys the last one, hits, and does seven or eight damage. He's left with seven boxes. He should have died, but the missed attack and bad dice on the charge attack leave him standing, but he's engaging both the Slag and the Impaler. She did manage to drop the Mind in the slag though, so no regen, and no forcing him.
I feel like I have the game in hand but I have to deal with the Spriggan. Unfortunately, I ran my beasts hot, and the Slag has a fury left on him. He passes his threshold check. Fenns vengeance up, and one has reach on the furthest right MoW, and takes a swing at him. He does decent damage, but not enough to kill. The Kithkar shuffles up with his Vengeance, but doesn't have reach on anything.
The Champions charge the Nyss, because I'm a moron, and forgot to activate the Fell Caller first and give them +2 MAT. Out of the two attacks at MAT7, they kill 4 of the 5 Nyss they engaged.
The mindless slag hopelessly pounds on the hulk of the Spriggan for a few boxes of damage. The Fenns charge into the Men of War again, and annhilate them easily. The Kithkar takes advantage of Tactictian and barrels through them into Strakhov. At dice -3, he does 16 boxes of damage, leaving Strakhov at 1 box.
Now I'm debating. I want the Spriggan dead, but I want Madrak safe too. The KSB move up, activate aura, and do no continuous effects. I should have done +1 STR, because both the Slag, and Impaler were under the aura, but I didn't think of it.
The Runebearer does his minifeat and puts Blood Fury on Madrak for free. Madrak charges the Spriggan, hits with the charge and at dice -6, I roll a 6, two 1s and a 2.... I buy two more attacks, eating away at the jack, and have two Fury left. I really need this thing dead now. He feats. The Slag beats on him for a few points, and the Impaler does a few. Madrak hits him, and completely whuffs the dice again. No choice. Madrak buys two more attacks, leaving the jack at seven boxes.
The impaler activates, shuffles as far back as he can around the jack, staying in melee, boosts damage, buys, boosts damage, and FINALLY kills the jack, triggering Warpath. The Impaler walks forward three inches and injertects himself between the Destroyer and Madrak, who is sitting at DEF 12 (Blood Fury is -2 def), 0 transfers, and only 1 Grim Salvation target nearby.
Do or die time. My wife has it, and she knows it. Sylys has nothing to upkeep, but makes himself use-
PS7, and reach. All I can imagine is this guy with a weapon as powerful as a tennis racket, but it's like, ten feet long. He takes a swing at the Kithkar engaging Strakhov and does one box of damage. Strakhov inches forward, just BARELY getting Madrak into feat range, feats, kills the Kithkar, and triggers Overrun, which the Jack uses to move around the Impaler. The Fenn engaging him swings, but fails to knock out any systems.
The Nyss ignore the Champions again. There's six left. They push up and around as much as possible and get range/los on Madrak. 6 shots later, (All of them hitting), only one breaks ARM, and Grim Salvation kicks in, killing the KSB dude next to Madrak.
The Destroyer charges. He charges for free, has range all day long and slams into Madrak. The charge attack hits and he does a whopping 5 damage... Buy, hit, 5 damage. Buy, hit, 3 damage. Buy, hit, 4 damage. Madrak is still standing with 1 box. That's all she's got left.
...Yeah... I don't even mess with fury. I roll a charge attack with a fenn against Strakhov and put him in the dust easy.
Thoughts on the game:
So, I lost to my wife, basically. She got diced bad at the end. All four attacks hit. It was dice -2, and Only because of the KSB Aura. Dice averages should have been 8 damage on the first attack, and five to six after that. She should have done a total of 23 damage, easy, and she simply got diced. Bad. All game long, really.
The Nyss did the best they could. We realized post game that if she had targeted the KSB bearer himself, the next pawn in line would have been far enough away that the +2 ARM aura wouldn't have reached Madrak, and that would have killed him. Unfortunately, it was only the very last Nyss that hit that broke ARM on Madrak, and managed to kick in Grim Salvation. Maybe she should have started with the KSBs instead in that case, and looking back, probably. They were dice -5, so much easier to kill. They would have had to target the bearer next to Madrak then, but still, -5 is easier, and after that, maybe have a shot at Madrak. Either way, the Destroyer would do much better at Dice even.
Strakhov is a no-go. She doesn't like him, and I don't blame her. She had the Sorscha game like I had this one. By the end of my 2nd turn this game, she was pretty sure she was going to lose and started thinking assassination, which was the position I was in last game. Sorscha wipes the Trolls in the dirt. She shuts their charges down, freezing grip kills my tarpit, she's terrifying. Strakhov has some cool things going for him, but he has very little support for infantry, and while Occultation is nice, Trolls really aren't shooting anything. pGrim maybe, but this is Madrak. Occultation's one of his best spells and he never needed it.
So it's back to Sorscha for her. She's probably going to get eSorscha here before too long, who seems like all the best parts of pSorscha, but with anti-trollbloods in mind. Until then, she's determined to go after me again, but with my own Cygnar, and eHaley at the helm. As far as other Khador, the Great Bears are an option, and another jack kit. With Strakhov unpopular at the moment, it might be the new Kodiak plastic kit (hopefully) that comes with Vengeance. I also need to find a cheap WGI unit running around somewhere.
Valachev would also be a serious boon to the Nyss. I hate that guy.
Thanks for reading! Throw comments and questions below and be jealous that I have a wife that challenges me to Warmachine games
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