Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Warmachine/Hordes Battle Report: Morghoul meets Hoarluk

After what seems like a long hiatus from Warma-Hordes, many of us in the local club Ordo Ineptus are starting to reacquaint ourselves with the game, and are loving it!


 

I played a game on Saturday against Tim’s Trolls. Here’s a quick rundown of the action!



Saturday’s game was against Tim and his Trollbloods. Tim is a VERY skilled painter, and his stuff really made my metal and primer look lame and shabby…I’m such a horrible gamer, I always procrastinate my painting!

He was using:
Hoarluk Doomshaper (epic)
Dire Troll Mauler
Earthborn Dire Troll
Mulg the Ancient
Troll Axer
And two Troll Welps (giving him a million welps to fall off damaged trolls!)

I was using:
Master Tormentor Morghoul (prime)
Titan Bronzeback
Titan Gladiator
Rhinodown
Cyclops Brute
Aptimus Marketh
Agonzier
4 Paingiver Beasthandlers
6 Nihilators

We decided we didn’t want to do a Steamroller scenario…just to play a game to get back in the rhythm of how it works: a good old fashioned slug-fest, and two armies that excel at slugging!

I have to confess I had little idea of what his things do. I’ve played against Tim a few times, and against Trollbloods on Vassal a lot, but it had been so long I’ve completely forgotten what I knew. I went in to it with the idea that if he charges one of my beasts, it will die..and if I charge one of his beasts, it will die. I had the advantage of having a little infantry screen (which I kind of squandered), where he had a tremendous advantage in speed tricks and buffs…go figure, Trolls!

So we set up a table, and deployed our toys. I’m not sure who won the roll and chose but I went first. I set up a little line of Nihilators that all my beasts packed in behind.


Tim set up behind some rough terrain near a swamp, hoping to take advantage of the Earthborn’s buffs.


My plan was to sneak around to the right, on to the hill, where I could hope to keep him away from the terrain he wanted to use for his buffs. There were no great targets for the Nihilators to try to attack, so I hoped to use them to run forward and clog up the heavies, but this was complicated by the presence of the Threshering Axer. I had little for the Rhinodon to do, either, so he was going to be front and center to hopefully die a glorious death and set up the bigger beasts to do something exciting. I knew he had a lot of movement buffs…Tim was very fastidious about explaining all the ways he could get extra movement. I was a bit concerned, but even so I still grossly underestimated how far they could move!

Our first turns were pretty dull. I snuck forward and started shifting to my right towards a big hill, while he went straight forward to stay near the swamp.




At the start of my second turn I felt I was still too far away to run in with the Nihilators to clog things up and set up charges, so I played a bit more reserved, sticking to my plan of using the Nihilators and Rhinodon to suck things in for the big beasts to kill.


As such, I shifted around to my right a bit more, going up on the big hill. I expected at this point that his next turn would be him moving up to Axer some Nihilators while the rest of his beasts moved to be ready to counter-charge whatever I sent after the Axer. This was a near disaster, as I’d said, I grossly underestimated how far these Trolls can move.

He used his Feat, put Rush on…well, everything, I think, and away went the charges…and sadly I didn’t get a picture of this turn…I was a bit taken aback by the charges, and really disaster was only avoided because one of the charges fell a bit short.

The Axer did charge in to some Nihilators, killing several. Mulg and the Mauler went in to the Rhinodon, annihilating him. And to my good fortune, the Earthborn was a bit short on his charge on the Gladiator. I used Admonition to back the Bronzeback away to set up a charge on Mulg, but did not counter-charge…I wanted to get him nice and buffed and didn’t want Mulg to be able to use his copious Fury to beat me up! The Earthborn, already speed-buffed to the gills, was able to advance again, getting behind my lines.

Well, I really underestimated how far they’d go, but losing the Rhinodon didn’t really hurt me here. The Paingivers handed out Enragement to everything. Morghoul and Marketh Abused the Bronzeback and Brute. Admonition went on the Bronzeback, to keep him from dieing to the Mauler next turn. Morghoul used his Feat. The Agonizer cried piteously, reducing the damage of the surviving enemy beasts next turn. The Brute charged the Axer, taking a few big chunks out of him. The Bronzeback charged Mulg, killing him. The Gladiator charged the Earthborn, but wasn’t able to deal too much damage.


We traded heavies, and I felt I came out ahead. He put the Mauler and Earthborn on the Gladiator, but with the reduced damange from the Agonizer and no Forcing from Morghoul, they couldn’t pull the elephant down. I used Admonition on the Bronzeback to line up a charge on Hoarluk, and that was all she wrote.

On my next turn I Enraged and abused the Bronzeback, and sent him at the enemy Warlock. With only 1 fury to Transfer, Hoarluk went down in just a few hits from the POW 21 Titan!



Admonition is so powerful, I love it!

Thanks for a great game, Tim! I hope I can get my stuff done half as pretty as yours so our battles will look as good as they should!

And like the 40k game, Tim did a time-lapse video of the game. It’s a bit fast, but you can get the gist…lots of fun!




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