Battlereport Cygnar vs. Protectorate of Menoth

High Allegiant Amon Ad-Raza

This was a pickup game with David Villareal over at Dragon's Lair here in Austin during its weekly Warmachine night. David and I played a 15pts game of Mangled Metal first - which David cleverly won - until we noticed that the store is open till midnight, so we decided to go for a 2nd larger game, too. We decided to go for a 35pts game and I was to face Amon Ad-Raza, a warcaster I had never faced before.

Warmachine night at Dragon's Lair in Austin.

David definitely is one of those guys you wanna play with. He greatly enjoys the fluff behind his Menoth army, he is beaming when his mischievous plans work, he is a great sportsman where both players can learn from their mistakes, he also plays units in Menoth you usually don't see, and he also knows to tell interesting stories outside of Warmachine. If you have the opportunity to play with this guy and you don't take it, then you're doing something wrong.

Just a quick remark concerning the Amon Ad-Raza model: I briefly touched it during last night's game and immediately felt how delicate it is. It has to be handled very carefully for the chain not to break off. I guess that puts it into the same cathegory like the Kara Sloan model.

David goes first and runs everything to/up the hill. His warcaster is running with his Warjacks on my right flank, so that's why I had pEiryss hide in the ruins in the hopes of at least disrupting one warjack so they won't punch me all at the same time.

I am always having a hard time with those Exemplar Errants so when it was my turn, I did two things: I just walked my army rather than ran (to stay out of charge range) and I moved eCaine aggressively forward in the center in hopes to kill at least a few of them. It paid off better than I thought; eCaine killed almost the entire unit and could also have killed the remaining officer if the last two shots had been more lucky. On the right, pEiryss was in range to shoot the warcaster so she disrupted him rather than a warjack.

Because of the disruption, David had basically no choice other than walking everything forward.

This was probably the decisive turn. My Gun Mages on the right used their Thunderbolt ammo to push back David's warjacks to buy even more precious time until the hammer hits. pEiryss on the right was not engaged in close combat with the monk, so she moved back and disrupted the warcaster again. The Stormclad ran to tie up the Knights Exemplar in close combat with his reach weapon.

In David's turn, the monk charged pEiryss and Amon Ad-Raza charged the Gun Mages. The Stormclad suffered wounds from the Knights' attacks.

In my turn, my infantry on the left flank first moved forward to open up firelanes. Then the Gun Mages disengaged from close combat with Amon Ad-Raza. Amon Ad-Raza killed all models with his free-strikes except for the officer who passed his Tough roll (from Rhupert Carvolo), so the officer lay knocked down on the floor still engaged in close combat. The two remaining Gun Mages (on the right) that never were in melee range stood and shot their very own officer, so with their aiming bonus and the officer's defense of 5 on the ground they were able to kill him off despite the penalty of firing into melee. However, adrenaline rushed into my blood when I had to make the Tough rolls again and it was the first time in my life when I thanked God for failing a Tough roll.

With all firing lanes open on Amon Ad-Raza, eCaine simply popped his feat, stood, shot, and killed.

So this was another great game with another great player. I guess David will do much better next time if he consequently hides his warcaster behind his warjacks, kills pEiryss as early as possible, and makes it very risky for me to move eCaine forward so aggressively because the return fire may kill him off. David also noted that he has Deliverers and yes, I don't like those. :-)