Wargames Con - Classic Hardcore

Well, the first day of wargaming is officially over with the winners of the Warmachine/Hordes Classic Hardcore tournament. For the Classic Hardcore you basically had to bring a 50pts list with all miniatures in your army painted and there was a 7min turn limit. Here is a brief rundown of my games.

Game 1 vs. Jordan Braun (Cryx - Mortenebra)

Well, this was my first game ever against Cryx so I was in for a ride.

We set up everything in a pretty standard way with Jordan's Deathjack in front. 

Jordan went first and ran pretty much everything forward. 

Well, I wasn't lagging behind and ran everything forward, too. 

At the end of my turn when I was done shooting, I did some minor damage to the Cryx on my right flank. Ryan was also able to get her AOE off so I considered my right flank to be secure at least for a while. eCaine swung to the left so he wouldn't have to walk through the wood und put pressure on Jordan's warcaster on the left flank.

The rest of the story is easily told: in his next turn, the Deathjack charged the Gun Mage, killed him, used some magic ability to close in towards eCaine and killed him as well.

Jordan was both an excellent and a fun player just like any other I met that day. My conclusion of this game is that you shouldn't run Caine in the second row if I don't know exactly what my opponent can do, so it's better to have him in the third row or even more in the back. However, since Classic Hardcore also used the Killbox extra rule, having eCaine hang too much in the back was not an option either.

Game 2 vs. Lyle Lowery (Khador - Butcher)

Originally I was supposed to play against Will Pagani, a guy with accomplishments such as Lock 'n Load master champion. He is another absolutely great guy though (I wonder where the stereotype comes from that WM/H players are less friendly and more intense, I yet have to meet one) and he tried to comfort me by saying he brough his fun list. However, as Will was just a filler to get an even number of players, it was decided that he had to do some judging and his Butcher list was played by Lyle Lowery, the Marketing Manager of Privateer Press. Now the marketing manager is always the guy in the company who doesn't really have a clue about the products but a great ego to sell them to anybody, right? Well, not so Lyle Lowery. He grasped the list immediately, did really well at handling that many models in 7min, and he just crunched numbers and rules in his head at an enormeous speed - while being a very friendly and social player at the same time, too. Truly, if your company has a guy with these congnitive and social skill as a manager, your company did something right. Well, on to the game:

I ran everything forward, Lyle was busy doing the same with his infantry. 

I didn't pay enough attention to the Widowmakers as their templates started to kill my Gun Mages on my right flank...

...although they even were in cover. I don't know anymore what element of stupidity even made me eCaine there. On the left flank, Greygore Boomhowler & Co. (with the 4+ Tough Fellcall and Heightened Reflexes) were about to enter close combat with the Nyss Hunters that took pretty much the rest of the game so we had almost a stalemate there.

Back in his turn, Lyle took the opportunity to move his Widowmakers even closer and shoot eCaine. However, by some miracle only Rheinhold got killed, Caine didn't take a scratch due to his high camped focus and unlucky rolls on Lyle's part.

In my next turn, eCaine tasted blood and revenge and instead of running, he moved into cover and started to gun down the Winterguards - every single one of them.

However, slowly but surely Khador's mighty infantry started to kill my Warjacks and infantry in the center of the field while Greygore Boomhowler & Co. slowly started to loose the attrition war, too. Caine decided to stay where he was and make a stand there.

Butcher moved everything he had accross the field towards Caine... 

...but when it was Caine's turn to shoot again, he wasn't waiting to keep his bullets for a better day either. At this point, Will Pagani yelled "Dice down!"

So this was a weird and intense game where infantry just died in hordes - and all this with a 7min time limit! Lyle was awesome to play with, as mentioned above, and I was lucky to get a tie after I positioned eCaine so stupidly. Had the game gone on for one or two more rounds, Butcher would have killed Caine, but I guess this was a well deserved draw for both of us. However, since this was Classic Hardcore, the draw meant that we both lost automatically. ^^

Game 3 - bye

Well, this was my first game for the simple reason that it didn't happen. According to the table we were supposed to have the lunch break, but the judges decided to move the time table forward and continue the game. There were not as many players as expected so just one additional game could determine the overall winner. Well, I had wandered away from the tables to get lunch and failed to hear their annoucement over the loudspeakers when they were looking for me, so the games started without me. I wasn't upset that this meant an automatic loss for me, I was just sad that I missed an opportunity for another game.

Game 4 vs. Austin Madert (Protectorate - pSeverius)

Well, what's to say about this game? Austin is an excellent Menoth player and I did have my typical problems with that faction as I lacked a concept to deal with that much infantry and Warjacks at the same time. Also Severius feat that let me go for one round without focus was devastating, so my army simply dissolved faster than Austin's.

We set up everything...

...everybody ran forward...

...until we clashed on a hill in front of Austin's deployment zone. 

Severious was pulling to the left...

...so eCaine followed in hopes of flanking everything on the left and pull off an assassination on Severius. However, I failed to realize that the Warjack to the left was an arcnode so in his final turn (unfortunately no picture) Austin simply advanced his Warjack and channeled Severius' spell against Caine. Game over.

After the game, Austin and I talked the game through and he was so nice enough to help me on where I could have done things better. For one part he was afraid in this situation that eEiryss (barely seen behind the house on the left) would attack his Warjacks. Since this was Classic Hardcore asking for caster kills, I wanted her to flank on the left and go for the caster instead, just like I attempted later with Caine, too. I guess one thing I should really start to do is having Eiryss run against Warjacks more often if the opportunity arises and not be so totally focused on the enemy caster.

Well, this is it for day one. :-) I still have to add the names of the winners, but this piece of information will either be added here or you can get it from the BoLS site.