Warmachine Batrep: Skarre2 vs Rahn

Malice

With the League and Unbound out of the way, Chris and I thought it was high time to throw down a fifty point game.  Chris brought his Skarre2 list, upgraded and improved for fifty points.

I've played Chris' different versions of this same list at 35 points a few times now, and knew what to expect.  Cryx is full of nasty little tricks, but one of the dirtiest plays out like this: Malice harpoons one of your warjacks and tows him across the board, and spends a soul to possess it.  He then activates the 'jack and sends it running deep into the Cryx lines where the Withershadow Combine uses their Dark Industry power to wreck it and replace it with a new helljack.  Hooray.  What could be more fun?  He fills the rest of the army with units you can't really ignore, like The Deathjack and a full unit of satyxis raiders with UA and solo support.  And at fifty points, he throws in some pistol wraiths to ensure your 'jacks are easy pickings.

But it didn't quite play out that way.

Skarre, Queen of the Broken Coast- Deathjack
- Deathripper
- Malice
- Skarlock Thrall
Bloat Thrall
Gorman di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist
Pistol Wraith (x2)
Satyxis Raiders (full+UA)
Satyxis Sea Witch
War Witch Siren
Withershadow Combine

At the other end of the spectrum, I decided to play something new tonight.  For the ten weeks of the Journeyman League I played Kaelyssa with a pretty consistent list (chimera, griffon, manticore, one or two mage hunter assassins, and full mage hunters with commander).  By the end of that run, I felt very confident with that list and understood its strengths and weaknesses.  Now, with no more list requirements, it was time for something new.

Over the holidays I read about how Steve Garcia (AKA San Antonio's PG TorkaThor) won Lock 'n Load Hardcore 2011 with Retribution.  He wrote about this on the forums and was interviewed by BOLS.  His list was:

A Phoenix Worth Possessing

Adeptis Rahn- Manticore
- Phoenix (x2)
Arcanist (x2)
Dawnguard Sentinels (full+UA)
- Soulless Escort
House Shyeel Battle Mages
House Shyeel Magister
Mage Hunter Assassin (x2)
Narn

This struck me as quite odd.  Rahn with a single unit of battle mages?  Narn?  Really?  Well, who am I to armchair quarterback.  The best way out is through.  This list is just begging for a test drive.  So, down to the Baxcave.  Together went the second phoenix.  (Did a bit of a two-handed conversion on him based on this guy's work, which I quite like. Sadly, he sold out all his Retribution last April.)

Strategy

The game was Steamroller 2012's Close Quarters mission with the Kill Box artifice.  We already covered Chris' strategy up above.  The army looked like it wanted to play smash mouth.  Rahn's 16" control radius was enough to cover both objectives, even if he never left the safety of the forested hill on my left flank.  So, I decided to play the battle mages back, defending the objective Chris had to take, and to storm the sentinels and myrmidons up the left side towards the my objective.  The assassins would run far left, hoping to get behind the Cryxian lines using the little building on Chris' right flank for a pick as he came towards my front likes with his Malice trick.   Well, at least that was the plan.

Early Game

Retribution pushed forward, but not too far.  Steamroller 2012 adjusted player one's deployment back from eight to seven inches.  I moved the army close enough to be about twenty inches away from the satyxis and dropped a Sustained Fire template in the board center to encourage him to break left towards my battle mages.  Rahn cast Force Field on the army to counter the bloat thrall, and Polarity Shield on the Dawnguard to prevent charges.

Turn 1, after Retribution move

Oddly, he became confused and instead of running full tilt at us, advanced his entire deployment formation forward only about five inches and advancing his bloat thrall onto the hill.  At this point, I thought I would sieze the tempo by pushing forward to the objective and beginning my flank behind the little building.  The phoenixes tossed a couple halo cannon shots into the deathripper, taking out everything... except its arc node and movement systems.  Polarity shield would prevent charges against the Dawnguard.  The covering fire template would keep the deathripper back, and Mage Static from the soulless escort would prevent Skarre from casting against them.

Turn 2, after Retribution move

Or so I thought.  There's this little spell called Perdition... and that figure between Deathjack and the little building is an incorporeal model.  You probably see where this is going.  The pistol wraith popped through the building and sniped a sentinel, triggering Vengeance.  This made enough room for the Deathripper to get close enough to cast Perdition the sacrificial sentinel, allowing Deathjack a full advance.  He then killed the sentinel, took the soul, and healed all the way up.  Satyxis ran, mosting into my battle mages, but one to each of my Phoenixes and three into the Manticore.  And then it got interesting.

One satyxis critically hit the (unpainted) phoenix, triggering a knockdown.  The second pistol wraith materialized and shot him three times, triggering Death Chill.  Then Malice swooped in, hit with his harpoon, and it was away to the races.  The poor phoenix, who was down only about four boxes crashed into Malice, who failed to do much damage to him, and then tried to possess him for the aforementioned run-to-Withershadow Combine trick.  At this point I mentioned to Chris that the phoenix was knocked down and wasn't going to run anywhere.  Poor guy.  He looked like I had kicked his dog (who, incidentally is an adorable six month old Pembroke Corgi).  He was just crushed.  He tried to charge the Withershadow Combine in, but one couldn't see and one couldn't make the charge, so it all just failed.

Skarre popped feat and marked Deathjack, Malice, and one satyxis raider as untargetable.  Then she marked my manticore and Narn as unable to attack.

Now we had a big, messy game.

Late Game

The last two turns were a giant scrum.  Battle mages cleaned up the raiders and bloat thrall.  The assassins double-missed the deathripper.  There was a fun moment where the Dawnguard's Vengeance move triggered Admonition on Deathjack, allowing him to move into melee with the (painted) phoenix, denying me a much needed arc node and blocking charge lanes.  Sigh.  Three sentinels made an assassination run against Skarre and took her down to two boxes.  The others cleared out the pistol wraith and skarlock thrall.  The "captured" phoenix spent focus to stand up, forfeited movement to satisfy Death Chill, and then triggered his *Action to set Malice and entourage on fire.

Turn 3, after Cryx move

On the botton of turn three, pistol wraiths, and the warwitch siren killed the sentinels engaging Skarre and Gorman.  Gorman tried to throw something, but took a free strike from the other phoenix and left the table.  Freed, Skarre cast Perdition again, killing another sentinel and moving Deathjack away from my phoenix (taking a decent free strike hit)*.  Deathjack, full of souls and focus, tramped to Rahn, who was camping four focus.  At DEF 14, ARM 20, Deathjack could only do twelve boxes.  The monstrosity had only about fourteen boxes left, and was now outside Skarre's control.  After Deathjack's activation, Chris conceded.

* Edit: 23 February 2012: A careful reader noticed that this Deathjack move is illegal under Perdition.  The target of the spell, someone in Skarre2's battlegroup, must advance towards the nearest enemy.  Since he was already base-to-base with the Phoenix, there was nowhere for Deathjack to move.  This would have changed the rest of the game had we played it correctly.  

Deathjack fails assassination

We went ahead and scored it all up.  It was close.  Neither army had any victory points.  Neither army had any scoring units in the scoring zones.  We went to points, and where Cryx had killed five sentinels, an arcanist, and one mage, I had killed the skarlock and bloat thralls, Gorman, a pistol wraith, satyxis raider captain, and over half the raiders.  Not a strong or pretty victory for such an august list, but I'll take it.

Lessons Learned

So many this game.

Linear obstacles provide +2 DEF in melee, even against chain weapons.  We learned this after much consultation with Monte and Doug, and with a thorough review of page 87.  Despite recent discussions that decided oppositely, we are confident this is the correct rule.

Admonition triggers on an advance, even one made during the Control phase.  Whoops.  Actually, Deathjack with Skarre2's feat marker and Admonition is pretty frightening thing to face.

The unit with Polarity Field needs to completely screen the 'jacks without it.

Deathjack has 360-degree vision, which means casting Telekinesis on him at the top of turn two through an arc node doesn't really help.

Thanks for the game, Chris.  What a mess.  That really could have gone either way based on some dice rolls. Let's play this again sometime with lessons learned.