More Warmachine MkII madness

Hi I’m back again, because Andy and Alex were ill last week I was all alone that week for warmachine, this week however it was another fight between Alex’s Khador and my Cryx, this time the bar was raised from 25 points to 35 points

Cryx
Warwitch Deneghra
1 Defiler
1 Deathripper
1 Seether
Satyxis Raiders (6)
Satyxis Sea Witch (UA)
The Withershadow combine
Blackbane’s ghost raiders (6)
Skarlock
1 Bloat thrall

Khador
The Butcher of Khardov
War dog
Behemoth
1 Juggernaut
Doom Reavers (6)
K(r)ayzay assassins (6)
K(r)ayzay assassin Underboss (UA)
Widowmakers (4)
Mage hunter Eiryss

Rolling on the initial turn I just managed to get away with the roll, and elected to go first!

Cue a little confusion on advance deployment on my part I eventually got them deployed a little further ahead
(activations in no particular order unless it really matters for a particular event)

Wary that there was Eiryss on the left flank but widowmakers on the right flank, I started Blackbane’s ghost raiders down the right to tackle the widowmakers

Knowing full well that Eiryss is a sod to hit I felt I was gonna need a template to do the job of turning her into a stain so I made the bloat thrall who was at the back of the battlegroup waddle over to the left, way out of range though

The defiler advanced forward towards the Kayzay assassins, with only ruins between it and Eiryss

The seether walked towards the hill in the middle

Deneghra’s skarlock hovered at the back just behind the satyxis

Deneghra advanced forward, to a position where she would be judiciously screened by plenty of satyxis and the defiler from the attentions of the mage hunter

The deathripper walked down the right flank too
Satyxis stayed put.
The Withershadow combine stood still as well

Alex
Alex decided he would make Eiryss run a 14” past the ruins and into the open close to my side of the board (hmmm)

The butcher applied generous amounts of iron flesh to the Kayzay and stayed put with his pet doogie

The Kayzay iron fleshified advanced straight towards me

The jugg started towards the hill

Behemoth plodded forward looking to cause trouble with his dual bombards but found nothing to shoot for the moment

His Widowmakers didn’t have a clear shot on anything so they advanced into the ruins on the East (West to Alex) side of the board, taking advantage of the cover to get even higher DEF against ranged attacks

Turn 2

Me
Decided what the hell and attempted to charge the widowmakers with blackbane’s ghost raiders, clocking a 10” charge 3 of the unit were able to use incorporeal to phase through the cover to get stuck in with the snipers, nailing a whole 1 from 3 attacks due to naturally high DEF of widowmakers.

The bloat thrall advanced closer to Eiryss and arc’d its 5” Aoe despoiler shot at Eiryiss, falling short of her and the deviation took the blast backwards harmlessly

Concerned by this, on an off-chance I sent the defiler after Eiryss with its sludge cannon spray, seriously not expecting it to hit considering I forgot to give it focus (even if I put focus on it wouldn’t of done much) I somehow rolled double 6 to hit and was just able to box her on the damage roll! Sorry Eiryss, sorry Alex

The Satyxis hadn’t really done much, and they were gonna sit there some more

Ol’ Seether charged on towards the right hand side of the hill, with the deathripper following closely

The Withershadow hovered directly forward not doing much else


Alex
Dropped iron flesh on the kayzay
Speaking of Kayzay, they charged forward to try and find something to stab, most of them fell short of anything but 2 of them did manage to just get in on the defiler, causing some damage but disabling nothing

Behemoth fired his bombards at Deneghra, both unable to damage her overboosted power field and the sea witch stopped the satyxis from suffering any blast damage from the inevitable scatter from attacking a stealth model from more then 5” away

The doomreavers wanted to get in with the action (as most homicidal maniacs with insanity metal chained to their person do) so they went barging over the hill to stand 2.1” inches apart right in front of my army, 2 of the reavers were just able to reach a couple of the satyxis and I think they were cleaved by the reavers who passed the abomination check, as did the nearby kayzay.

The juggernaut was stood just behind the doomreavers, wisely protected from being mobbed by crippling grasp/parasite/withering feat, satyxis sea witch mini-feat 4 die damage roll feedback critical knockdown smackdown

Quick thinking by the unengaged widowmakers saw them no-scope Blackbane himself because he was unengaged, he was promptly boxed and sent on his way!

Turn 3

Me
The Deathripper was dangerously close to the edge of Deneghra’s control area so I had to quickly move him back in, putting him close to the doomreavers in a thin attempt to try and block 1 of their charge lanes

Deneghra popped her feat, withering all except the butcher who was JUST out of its damning range and the widowmakers who were isolated in battle on the edge of the board
She then proceeded to charge and unload a can of witch-fu on a pair of doomreavers, claiming both souls with her soul cages

Because I moved Deneghra to the right I was able to get the Seether back in the control area and he advanced back towards the hill

The Satyxis passed the check for abomination and whipped 2 of the doomreavers to death, leaving the one stood in front of the juggernaut and managed to take an assassin with their attacks as well

The Defiler’s bash did nothing, as can be expected from a bash attack

Another widowmaker burned instantly from the ghost raider’s cutlasses

The Withershadow combine shot and burned an unengaged doomreaver into oblivion with darkfire and Tremulus took the soul from the darkfire attack

The bloat thrall managed to melt an assassin at the back of that unit when his 5” only deviated 1”


Alex
The butcher fired off his extra damage die feat!
He also cast fury and iron flesh on them for effect

The now buffed Kayzay swung viciously at the satyxis and boxed the sea witch and 2 normal raiders, prompting a CMD check which they just passed

Behemoth fired his bombards at the seether, which required boosting to hit, Alex scored well with the to hit roll and was able to scuff the Seether’s metal hull

The lonely doomreaver thought “Insanity sword says RRRAAAAAGH!” and charged into reach range of Deneghra and her high DEF flummoxed the git’s attempts to hurt her

The widowmakers somehow killed 1 of the ghost raiders in close combat

The juggernaut shuffled forward a little bit more

Turn 4

Me
Withering expired!
Little deathripper who was in attack range of the doomreaver who tried to shank Deneghra, shanked the reaver with its teeth- no more reavers

The satyxis tried to attack the assassins but the stupidly high DEF of 19 stopped me totally from doing anything great

Deneghra leapt towards the ailing satyxis and flung crippling grasp at the juggernaut

The skarlock leapt forward and applied parasite to the juggernaut as well, making for -5 ARM

The seether’s charge lane was clear and that’s what he did, he went barrelling right into the juggernaut, crippling its left arm and in fashion of an enraged mead drinking machine, picked up the 9 ton robot and tried to double-hand throw it at the Butcher’s dog on its left and fell short, somehow deviation took the juggernaut the opposite way to the dog landing 3” away from the seether on the right instead of the left. It was like as the Seether was throwing it decided to immediately alter its throwing angle, because your not telling me a Khador warjack has some sort of pinball power…

The Ghost raiders finally stuck it to the other 2 widowmakers

But the Withershadow were a lot of help, biiiig help, apart from randomly casting Puppet master on the downed juggernaut on the hill

I tried to get the defiler out of combat with the kayzay which prompted a free strike, which was a very bad move for me to make! Because that single free strike took out the sludge cannon, arc node and his movement: he was almost useless!


Alex
Blood frenzy expired!
Behemoth charged at the seether on the hill and rather amusingly his initial attacks bounced off the seether’s DEF 13, he was able to nail it with a couple extra attacks which took out the cortex and both arms

Then his Kayzay underboss popped his mini feat which I had no idea existed at the time, which allows him and his gang to move through intervening models (they ignore free strikes as well), surrounded Deneghra and a good hit roll landed and wounded her, the underboss hit her and triple 6 for damage later had left Deneghra gutted like a Cornish game hen on the floor

Khador 2
Cryx 0

After-battle thoughts

• Poor Eiryss, soooo sad, all that power for 3 points and she goes and dies on a freak hit roll without actually doing anything other then running a bit… -sniff-… HAHAHAHAHA!

• Kayzay assassins it turns out are aka as crazy assassins, not as crazy as in mkI but still, I had no idea about the under-bosses mini feat. That ability has been noted and saved in my brain's database

• Blackbane's ghost raiders spent the whole game fighting widowmakers, not optimal use of them but it beats being sniped!

• Battle college totes the bloat thrall's performance as all-or-nothing, this match it decided to be a nothing unit

• Sea witches really do make Satyxis live longer as far as blasts are concerned

(don't forget the Harrower Alex )
when i get more Cryx for Christmas i should have different ways to play, if i want to change my Christmas request from a reaper (because of the new multi-part plastic kits coming out at the end of January next year) to something else such as Nightmare, I'll have to drop Banelord Tartarus from my Christmas request list as well, ouch!
I'll have to get him myself some other time...

Update:
Nightmare is approaching
Banelord Tartarus is preparing to enter the field
Forget the Stalker, banes is where its at!

sounds like another great match - up. Hope to see you at some tournaments soon bud

Neal Orange peel wrote:

sounds like another great match - up. Hope to see you at some tournaments soon bud

agreed, it'd encourage me to paint my army. I'm still trying to decide what colours to fly on them though

Alex appeared to find it hard to believe that the Seether is MAT 8 base...
He'll like Nightmare even more then

Just had a look at those jacls on battlecollege, and the nightmare has a great write-up. It s ashame Menoth doesnt even have write-ups yer for most of its stuff :-(