Cryx vs Khador, 50pts, 9/4/10

Wow.  Took me over a month and a half to post this.  Usually if I'm that far behind I probably wouldn't bother... but I took pictures, and I feel cheated if I don't actually use them.

So here we go. Thankfully it's a quick one.

Rob and I played Warmachine the Saturday listed, deciding to go for a 50 point game to add some variety to our armies. I chose to use Goreshade, since he was 'next' in line for warcasters for me to try under MkII. Rob was determined to throw something new at me, so chose epic Butcher.

We set up and started our first game, which I won't post much information about here. About 2 turns in, I pointed out that Rob had chosen an army that probably wasn't going to be very effective- a LOT of shooting units in an army really not intended for them. After a few minutes of deliberation, we decided to start over, with a different army under Rob's command.

My list:
Goreshade the Bastard
- Deathjack
- Leviathan
- Slayer
Bane Knights (Leader and 5 Grunts)
Bile Thralls (Leader and 5 Grunts)
Mechanithralls (Leader and 9 Grunts)
Bane Lord Tartarus
Bloat Thrall
Pistol Wraith
Pistol Wraith

I wasn't really sure if those would be an effective list, but I figured that the Cryx choices are strong enough to work with any caster.

I don't have Rob's army list handy, and since Rob proxies some, I can't really piece together what he was using from the pictures. I do know it was epic Butcher, some Doom Reavers, and a few combat oriented models.


Deployment

The game started with Rob going first, and basically just moving everything towards my lines.



I follow by doing about the same, although spreading out some.



On Turn 2, Eiryss and a unit of Widowmakers drop 6 Mechanithralls, and the Khador army continues to advance, to prepare for some charges.

I begin to take chunks out of his army at this point. My Bloat Thrall kills Eiryss, my unit of Bile Thralls kill 3 Doom Reavers and their Escort, and my Leviathan deals a few points of damage to Beast-09. I run my Slayer up into melee range of his Widowmakers to prevent them from shooting at me. I manage to catch 2 or 3 in melee range.



Rob decides to go aggressive, and sends Beast-09 rushing into combat with Goreshade, dealing 13 damage. The non-tied up Widowmakers kill 2 Mechanithralls. He then drops the Mortar right onto the Slayer, getting a direct hit, and doing 10 damage.

I begin to kill everything on the table on my 3rd turn. The Widowmakers die, and everything over there moves close enough to the Mortar to stop it from shooting. Beast-09 dies. Most of the infantry Rob owns dies as well.



On turn 3, Rob doesn't have a lot left, so chooses to charge the Butcher into the Deathjack, bringing it down to 7 boxes. He couldn't really do much with the DJ threatening his advance, but sadly he couldn't put him away. Rob concedes at this point.

I wasn't very impressed with Goreshade. He's effective, since Mage Blight is so annoying, but there wasn't much Goreshade had to do from turn to turn. I didn't use many of Goreshade's spells, however, so I may have to force myself to play Goreshade without Mage Blighting every turn, and hope for some good tactical choices from him. We'll see!