Who’s back, baby?

All right well it’s been far too long, and some great friends have been nudging me to get back into it and make some things happen, so let’s get going, shall we?  No time like the present and all that!

As an update, I’ll just let you know that I am working on my lists and play for Templecon, which is coming up soon in Warwick, Rhode Island February 6th to 9th, 2014.  If you haven’t yet got tickets, then WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU????  Seriously (Or “for serious” as my daughter likes to say), it is such a great social weekend that people occasionally play games at, you should come and hang out with us.  I am bringing my Legion of Everblight with me to TC, and to that end I am playing some lists and casters that I haven’t used before, and need to get some thoughts down and get some discussion going on what I am doing right, and what I am doing wrong with my lists.  In an effort to get more traffic and more discussions going I am going to get the message out there of what I am playing and how it is going, as well as try to showcase my efforts to improve as a painter with my Legion models.  So here comes the deluge of players and comments I hope!!

Okay so my two casters are likely going to be Thagrosh1 and Saeryn, as I hear such good things about them both.  Anyone who knows me will know that I adore Thagrosh, always have, and the fact that I get to play him may be what tipped me to the blighted side for the trip to Templecon.  He gets to play beast-heavy as well as take some amazing infantry in his Theme force, so he hits all the right buttons for me as a player.  Saeryn I have looked at and not really “got” before, but part of that is lack of play experience with her I’m sure.  A lot of what makes her great is her Feat, and being immune to melee attacks for a turn is a HUGE boon to an army that likes to hit hard and fast, but I need to learn how to apply that in scenario play and under the pressure of timed turns.

So, before I get to an abbreviated battle report, let me just do a few bits of housekeeping:

• I am participating in Movember in an effort to raise awareness and funds to help with Men’s Health issues like Prostate Cancer, Testicular Cancer and other illnesses that affect males.  Please take a moment to mock my moustache and make a donation on my MO Page.
• Recent cheerleader and good friend Plarzoid has renovated his site and been putting out some very interesting content for Warmachine & Hordes, Magic the Gathering and programming, I highly recommend you check out his site and engage the man in some serious conversation or congratulations.

Bitchez be Blighted, yo!

So I played a 50pt game at The Friendly Troll last night, had to wait for a bit till we got started, but that was okay as I have been saying I would play this guy for a few weeks now and have missed my chance repeatedly.

Played Incursion scenario.  Opponent rolled off for what list he was going to play, I already knew I was going to try Saeryn at 50pts.  He rolled his Harkevich list with Conquest, which made me nervous as to how I could crack the armour of that monster.

Anyway he won the roll and made me go first, chose table edge with a forest giving me the linear obstacle in the middle of the table and slightly towards my table edge.  Good positioning for me, a huge obstruction on his right flank sort of determined how he had to deploy and go.  Had some good attrition going, I went aggressively up the table turn one, had to run to engage Black Ivan and Conquest turn 2 and used Saeryn’s feat to prevent him from killing my heavies.  He counter-feated to add armour and make it harder for me to take his heavies, so we were at a bit of a standstill, though his stupid Bulldozer allowed him to push me around and free up his things to shoot again.  A very ranged-heavy Khador list (typical of Harkevich?), it was the Iron Wolf tier 4 list.  Anyway I started to lose my heavies, lost Anyssa, lost the Forsaken to a lucky blast damage roll, and was on the losing side.  Angelius with 4 health had to risk the free strike assassination run on Harkevich, Conquest hit and took the Angelius off the table, so Shredder charged him and missed the hit.  I got two CP for dominating the flag then Saeryn was squished horribly by a Conquest.

I identified the following issues:

• High-ARM opponent with a Conquest means I should have played my pThags list, and in a competitive format I would have dropped him as he has a STR buff to deal with High ARM.
• That being said, I failed at identifying the biggest threat and removing:  Two Angels and Two Scytheans should have been able to remove the Conquest and I should have saved the Feat until I set that up so that I would keep the heavies when retaliation happened.
• I spread out and did not re-set after the flag on my left disappeared.  Anyssa, two Deathstalkers and an Angelius could have quickly come back around and been more help on the central melee (Though it was fun watching Kovnik Joe flee in terror as Anyssa had Prey’d him)
• Even if I had not identified the concentration of force issue, I think I used my feat too early and defensively.  Should have been saved until a charge where I did a bunch of damage to things and then used the feat to keep my stuff safe from the melee retaliation.
• Running Heavies quickly get out of even a 14″ CTL area, have to watch that and maybe do tramples or charges instead of running too far too fast.
• Have to watch walk and shoot ranges of infantry when Deathstalkers and Anyssa have Stealth and RNG 12″.  Should be safe from those turds, but they were able to shoot me with boosted attack rolls from Joe.  With Snap Fire, light cav move and the 2″ move after a kill, these models should always be safe from ranged attack retaliation.

This conversion renders your argument invalid. Also, Legion Harriers. So there.