Last night saw my Silent Bob take on Sorscha in a club campaign game last night. This was a tough game against a fairly new member of the club, Jaden. We agreed on a 35 point game but still ended up running out of time in our session, meaning we only played 3 turns each.
Jaden took (adding additional points for territories owned):
Kommander Sorscha (*5pts)
* Beast-09 (11pts)
* War dog (1pts)
Great Bears of Gallowswood (5pts)
Winter Guard Infantry (Leader and 6 Grunts) (4pts)
* Winter Guard Infantry Officer & Standard (2pts)
* 3 Winter Guard Infantry Rocketeers (3pts)
Fenris (5pts)
Kovnik Jozef Grigorovich (2pts)
Kovnik Markov (4pts)
Man-o-war Drakhun (with dismount) (5pts)
To which I answered with (again with additional points for territories):
The High Reclaimer (*6pts)
* Crusader (6pts)
* Vanquisher (8pts)
Exemplar Errants (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
* Exemplar Errant Officer & Standard Bearer (2pts)
Flameguard Cleansers (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
Holy Zealots (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
* Holy Zealot Monolith Bearer (2pts)
Holy Zealots (Leader and 5 Grunts) (4pts)
Vassal of Menoth (2pts)
Having barely won the roll for deployment, I let Jaden set up and go first. He set up his Fenris and Beast to my left and his Drakhun and Markov to my left in menacing flanking manoeuvres. The Winter Guard were set in front of the Great Bears while Sorscha and her War Dog sat behind slightly.
For me, I set up a brick of Zealots (the larger unit) with UA and Vanquisher to keep an eye on the Fenris and warjack. Near my centre I placed my Cleansers just ahead of my smaller unit of Zealots. Then I put the Errants and UA to cover the other flank, utilising the woods on that side. Silent Bob and his bonded Crusader sat behind the brick to my left.
First turn saw a general advance on Jaden’s part with the Rocketeers taking first blood, but wasn’t able to do much else. I mirrored the general advance with the Errants taking position in the woods ahead of them and keeping an eye on Markov and the Drakhun.
Next turn saw Markov come down the extreme flank looking to pull away my Errants. The Rocketeers took a few more casualties while everything else shuffled forward slightly. My turn came around and I had to get the Errants to charge Markov, which they did with ease. The Vanq pressed forward and took aim at the War Dog hoping to catch Sorscha behind it. I scored a hit and put it and Sorscha on fire but didn’t do damage to either. The Vassal gave the Vanq another go and this time went for Beast who also caught fire but with minimal damage. The Zealots moved forward to plug the gap between the ruins to their left and the Vanquisher and popped their mini-feat. This was to prevent the nasty Fenris from charging my caster. The Cleansers started to spray the Winter Guard with Menoth’s Fury and were largely unsuccessful, though they managed to set a few on fire.
The third turn saw the continuous effects cause very little damage. Sorscha suffered only one point, the War Dog suffered three while the Beast started the turn unscathed. The Winter Guard also suffered a few casualties in the same way, but they also made a couple of Tough rolls. Sorscha kicked things off by pooping her feat making a lot of my force stationary (over half of the larger unit of Zealots, the Vanquisher and Vassal, and half of the Cleanser and smaller Zealot units), before using Windrush to jump back to safety. The Winter Guard advanced to within shooting range of the Cleansers and managed to gun them all down and also take aim at the Vassal who, unfortunately, was not in B2B contact with the Vanq in order to get a DEF/ARM buff. It was time for Beast to come out and play and it promptly smashed the Vanq to pieces. Fenris just sat behind Beast as he had nothing he could go for. Drakhun took advantage of the open area that now appeared and moved close to Silent Bob and just look threateningly at him. This was looking a bit bad for me as I had lost a lot of troopers. Bob started the turn, now with a total of 18 focus, and feated bringing back 5 Zealots back from the dead. He then proceeded to cast Ashes to Ashes and put heavy damage on Drakhun and some Winter Guard. The Drakhun’s mount then perished to a well aimed swipe from the Crusader, but the Drakhun himself survived. The Zealots who came back to life went to work on the remainder of the Winter Guard and killed a few more. The Errants came towards the centre of the field and got rid of a couple more Winter Guard.
This is where we ran out of time and called it a draw.
The look of the game might have changed in the next turn with a lot of Continuous Fire on several models, most notably Sorscha and her Dog. The Dog would have died while the caster would have suffered 2d6-2 damage which would have left her very vulnerable. Drakhun would have kept the Crusader engaged while Beast could have gone after the Zealots next to him. This could have left Fenris with a good opportunity to come and engage Bob (the way Bob was positioned, he couldn’t have been charged anyway). What was left of the Winter Guard would probably aimed at the smaller Zealot unit and softened them up for the Great Bears, who smartly stayed clear of the action. But then my Errants could have covered the Zealots and give the Bears a fight.
Once again, I was very pleased with my force composition, so I will now briefly rate my force:
High Reclaimer - did well with his spells and moved away from trouble.
Crusader - didn't see much action apart from squishing Drakhun's mount.
Vanquisher - set things on fire and provided a nice distraction (there was nothing he could have done about Beast '09).
Zealots (max) + UA - blocked vital charge lane and made Jaden think about waht he wanted to do with Beast and Fenris.
Zealots (min) - took out some Winter Guard only after they had come back from the dead. I had hoped to keep them behind the Cleansers and launch bombs over them towards the enemy (it helps that the Cleansers are immune to Fire).
Cleansers - put some Winter Guard on fire but didn't have the chance to shine before they were wiped out.
Errants + UA - were pulled out of position by Markov (who paid for this dearly) and then came towards the fray and took down a few Winter Guard.
Vassal - did what he had to twice by urging the Vanq to take extra shots.
I do wish we had not taken so long in each turn, so we could have found a winner. So neither of us gained territory or lost it either. This is a shame as I had my eye on a particular piece of Jaden’s land.
Next game: more Khador under the command of my nemesis, Marcus.
aha, didn't notice this nice blog before. Good report on the game. Sorscha being on fire was the most annoying thing that driven me during the game. A reason we were running out of time was that both of us were sort of infantry heavy:) What I planned to do in the next turn was actually wreck crusader with beast, clean the rest of your zealots with winter guards and fenris. Charge your warcaster with dismounted drakhun if the crusader was destroyed -- stay focused on crusader if not.
ReplyDeleteGreat bears were actually badly moved because they are even behind Sorscha at that stage -- guess I was too afraid of your fire. These guys would not be a big threat to your large unit of errants because they are better on killing jacks.
Now with that being done, my best bet during the rest of the game will be on fenris but still, you can hide your warcaster behind the errants and I definitely would miss the chance to catch you with fenris that turn:)
-- Jaden