Warmachine Batrep: Terminus versus Ravyn

Last night was an epic match coming after a week off just playing teaching games with new players.  Chad, who is now just days away from his first kid, had one last night out for gaming and we decided to throw down fifty points.  Chad brought his big nasty Terminus list, and I brought my mass-infantry Ravyn list from two weeks ago.

It's probably important to note I have never played against Terminus or seen him played.  Patrick offered me one, solemn piece of advice, "Kill all his infantry... before Terminus gets to you."  Eep.

Chad's list was:

Lich Lord Terminus

* Leviathan

* Leviathan

Bane Thralls (full+UA)

Bane Lord Tartarus

Withershadow Combine

Necrosurgeon & 3 stitch thralls

Mechanithralls (full+Brute)

Darragh Wrathe

Madeline Corbeau

Saxon Orrik

And my list was:

Ravyn, Eternal Light

* Discordia

Arcanist

Houseguard Halberdiers (full+UA)

House Shyeel Magister

Mage Hunter Strike Force (full+UA)

Mage Hunter Assassin

Mage Hunter Assassin

Stormfall Archers

Stormfall Archers

Aiyana & Holt

Eiryss, Angel of Retribution

Narn

Setup

We rolled the Close Quarters scenario.  Surprise, surprise.  This mission has two eight-inch diameter scoring zones, one for each team, just over the mid-field line.  First two two points (and more than the opponent) wins the match.  The 40K buildings were declared rough terrain with impassable obstacle walls.  We called the hill on the left a surmountable obstacle, and there were a couple of small forests along the centerline.  Chad won the roll-off and went first.

Setup complete

Turn 1 (Cryx)

Terminus cast Malediction on himself.  Most everything ran.  The swarm of thralls reached almost to mid-table with Terminus and his utility solos just behind.  His helljacks headed around the large building thinking they'd squish Narn and the assassin.  Darragh gave everyone another inch of movement. Saxon stepped gingerly through the forest.

Die, thralls, die

Turn 1 (Retribution)

Ravyn cast Snipe on the mage hunters.  They, Eiryss, and the right-side stormfall archers lit up the thralls, killing ten and the brute.  The necrosurgeon's bounty overfloweth.  There were perhaps four Tough rolls passed out of fifteen shots, which is about right.  The left-side archers dropped templates onto the bane thralls, killing only one.

Assassins moved very wide to flank.  I wanted them to either force Chad to spread his army out to kill them, or risk them getting behind him and either (a) hitting his utility solos or (b) scoring once the Cryx were engaged in melee.

Everyone else moved up.  Eiryss, Aiyana, and Holt took a central position in and near the forest.  I very carefully measured that the bane thralls could not reach me via charge.

End of turn 1

Turn 2 (Cryx)

Despite the thrall carnage, Chad's still feeling pretty aggressive.  Terminus swoops forward, about ten inches from my front line.  Darragh and Corbeau move him forward another four inches and then Terminus surrounds himself, bodily, with thralls.  The the remaining five mechanithralls and two bane thralls join his dark entourage.  The bane thralls advance, but well out of melee range.  One Leviathan advances, hoping to shoot Narn, but he's still too far to counteract Stealth.  Saxon swings over to my right side (not sure why).

Turn 2 (Retribution)

There's a pause, and I look at Terminus about four inches from my front line, entirely within the threat range of my entire army, and say, "I think I've got this."  I spend a couple minutes doing infantry Tetris in my mind and concoct a Great Plan – which I immediately proceed to cock up.  Let me tell you what I did and then what I should have done.

Halberdiers activate mini-feat and charge in, placing themselves within melee reach range of Terminus' meat shields but outside of Terminus' melee reach.  Four of the twelve can't make the charge and just pile into bane thralls.  Halberdiers' have Brutal Charge, granting them +2 to damage on charge (great).  Their mini-feat grants them +2 to hit and another +2 to damage on their activation (when attacking something that's in range of another model in the unit).  So they're messing up thralls left and right with 14+3d6 damage rolls.  Then the Toughness rolls began.  The bane thralls pass eight Toughness checks in a row, fail one, and then make three more!  Immortals!  And Terminus still has two banes, two WSC, a mechanithrall and a stitch thrall to pass hits off.  It's looking bad, but there's a lot of shooting yet... and we still have Discordia.

Aiyana casts Kiss of Lyliss on Terminus.  Ravyn pops feat and takes a few shots, but can't beat Terminus' armor.  Eiryss misses.  Mage hunters open fire into Terminus, but five miss even with Ravyn's feat.  The hits are directed into the thralls, clearing all but one.  Only the WSC and one bane thrall remain to shield Terminus.  Eight archers fire, but four of them miss even with Ravyn's feat.  How hard is it to roll a seven on three dice, guys?  More training for them.  At the end, Terminus has seven boxes remaining.

Discordia has a 9.5" threat range on charge, and it was close.  I probably had it, but it was too close to risk.  I'd bungled Ravyn's focus away shooting at Terminus when it could have moved Discordia closer. Too late.  Instead, I decided the Magister would cast Whip Snap on Terminus to get Discordia extra movement.  He needed a 6 and missed.  And... (weeping sounds)... he was about 1/8th inch mispositioned and blocked Discordia's charge lane to Terminus.

Okay, we can still recover from this.  Discordia advances and fires her spray attack.  Through some careful positioning, it hits Terminus, all three WSC, and Darragh.  Still getting free boosts to hit from Ravyn's feat, remember?  Need an eight on three dice.  And miss.  Chad's just shaking his head in disbelief, "You so had it this turn."  ... The spray proceeds to hit and destroy the entire WSC and knock a few boxes off Darragh.  But now the pain is coming.  All the people standing around the table say so, in ominous voices.

Okay, some hindsight.  Unit activation was a total shambles.

• The ordering was almost backwards.  I should have activated Aiyana, then Ravyn to feat, then eEiryss to strip focus off Terminus, then the archers to cast AoEs onto Terminus, hitting all his little base-to-base squishy buddies.  Then the halberdiers should have charged in, and only then should the mage hunters have started firing.
• I forgot to have the arcanist put Concentrate Power (+2 strength) onto Discordia.
• Ravyn should have cast Locomotion on Discordia to mover her closer.
• The Magister placement was to risky and entirely unnecessary.

And, hey, we're all clumped up for Terminus and Tartarus.

End of Turn 2

Turn 3 (Cryx)

Terminus does not disappoint in melee.  Egad.  Chad cast Ravager on him, granting him Berzerk, and he  killed about five of the halberdiers, two mage hunters, and knocked out ten boxes on Discordia.  Tartarus charged in, killing three more halberdiers and creating three new bane thralls.  The bane thralls on the left cleared out all but two of the remaining halberdiers.  At the end of the masacre, Terminus had twelve soul tokens and two focus remaining.  That's ARM 32 for those of you keeping track at home.  Saxon moved back to midfield and the Leviathans finally made it back around the giant building into the scrum.

Turn 3 (Retribution)

Okay, we're still in this.  We just have an ARM 32 melee-monster caster in our face.  But the score is still zero-zero, right?  Terminus' armor is impenetrable, but we can still hit him.  I'm thinking about the various good things that can happen if Discordia grapples and throws Terminus somewhere – probably into Tartarus so Narn and the assassin will auto-hit him – when Patrick suggests just trying to kill him with Narn first.  Patrick's advice is not to be ignored, so... whack, whack, dead Tartarus.  Hey, that went well.  The assassin charges into a Leviathan, doing a staggering sixteen boxes of damage from Decapitation.

Now for Terminus.  There is a rules check about whether myrmidons can weapon lock a warcaster and we decide they cannot.  So she's going to grab that beast and throw him right into Corbeau.  Discordia boosts to hit and can't roll an eight.   Chad says, "Ouch.  That was huge."  I console myself by setting the entire bane thrall unit, Corbeau, Darragh, and the necrosurgeon on fire with starfire archer shots and finishing off the Leviathan with brutal shots from the archers.

The left-side assassin advances, kills the bane thrall standard bearer and scores a point.

Ravyn backs off behind the woods camping four focus.

End of Turn 3

Turn 4 (Cryx)

Oh, the burning, burning fire!  Chad cleverly uses Corbeau's Maintenance Phase ability to move one unit before dealing with continuous effects.  She scoots Terminus out of melee with Discordia and closer to Ravyn.  Discordia's free strike hits, but can't break Terminus' now ARM 39 (ARM 18 + 15 soul tokens turned into focus + 6 normal focus).  We resolve the fire attacks, and now the dice go my way.  Darragh, Corbeau, and four of the six remaining bane thrall burn to death.  Fortunately, Terminus is now too far away to reap those two souls.

Now Terminus activates, carrying twenty-one focus and Chad's decided it's time to strike.  He plans for a minute, being careful to avoid a free strike from eEiryss that would strip all that lovely focus and decides to risk jumping over two of the remaining mage hunters and Holt.  Holt's attack is irrelevant against ARM 39, but the mage hunters have Arcane Assassin and see a plain ole ARM 18 caster flapping overhead.  Two free strikes hit and the damage is solid.

Terminus dies.

End of Turn 4

Postgame

Wow!  What a game.  So close both ways.  We went ahead and played out the turn as if the mage hunters had failed.  Terminus was out of melee range, but with twenty-one focus he tried casting Annihilation (POW 10 AOE 3) four (or five?) times.  Ravyn was DEF 15 ARM 20.  He missed several of the casts and the two that hit only put eight boxes on Ravyn.  We thought through the rest of his turn: how he'd deal with the scoring mage hunter assassin (decided it would take both bane thralls and Saxon to be certain of killing her) and then we decided that with a fully operational Discordia, six mage hunters, an assassin, eEiryss, and Ravyn, that we would probably have been able to do seven boxes of damage in the bottom of 4 – or clear the contesting models off the scoring zone.

This game felt like "Inspector Clouseau Plays Warmachine", more bumbling and luck than actual skill.  Or maybe we make our own luck.  Or maybe elves are cheaty.  Or maybe, "good will always triumph because evil... is dumb", if you'll permit the paraphrase.  Or maybe I made enough good decisions to overcome my bad ones.  Or maybe Chad's list just couldn't deal with this much infantry.  Or maybe eighteen points of helljacks got lost behind a huge building and didn't really participate in the game.  You make the call.

Sorry, Chad.  I tried my best to shoot myself in the foot there on turn two.  Thanks for a great game.  See you at the hospital this weekend!