Circle Double Header 22 Jan

Last Tuesday, I got two games in. Originally I had booked up to play Tom and his Circle in the second gaming session of the night. I arrived in time for the first session so I could watch some of the other games that were going on. The games looked interesting, so I went upstairs to the bar to get a pint and then began to watch my fellow club mates throw down. When I got back to the basement, one of our newer attendees, a guy called Darren, had bought his new Circle army with him and was looking for a game. So we grabbed a free table and got down to business. Darren had bought a pBaldur list which included the Woldwrath, Megalith, Woldguardian, a unit of Druids, Sentry Stone and Mannikins, Sentry Stones and a Blackclad Wayfarer. My Intercessor Kreoss list had been re-jigged from it's previous outing: the battlegroup consisting of Fire of Salvation, Sanctifier and (making it's debut) Guardian and these were supported by a maximum Choir, maximum Errants with UA, Knights Exemplar, maximum Vengers and an Errant Seneschal. Without anymore playtime thia week, this will be the list I will settle for Saturday's one day event.
I had won the roll off and opted to go first. This would't have had much effect on the game except maybe if I had got Darren to set up first. I basically fed the Vengers to a unit of Druids while he core of his force shuffled up through the middle of the park. I tried to get my Errants to outflank Darren's force but I had placed them too far out and movd them up too slowly. That left the central blob of everything else in red and cream to get slowly chewed up by Megalith and Woldguardian. pBaldur's feat was really annoying and Megalith kept popping Undergrowth which meant that he could laugh at the threat range of my Knights. With the Vengers gone very early and my centre being attacked at will, the game slowly ran away from me, eventually resulting in Megalith giving Kreoss a solid beating.

Next up was Tom and his Kromac flavoured circle. I wanted to give my eFeora list another run out before Saturday. Feora bought along: Judicator, Sanctifier, Reckoner, maximum Temple Flameguard with UA, Daughters, Rhoven and Co and a Mechanic.
Things did not start well at all with the Judicator missing wih it's rockets and secondary deviations resulting in one of the objectives and a TFG set on fire. Tom's Warpwolf Stalker had successfully got the drop on my Reckoner and totalled it, here Tom had managed to secure himself a shed load of CPs, making it very hard for me to now win on scenario. The Daughters were killed off early on after being Preyed on by some Bloodtrackers and I started losing stuff bit by bit. The Judicator did see some mele action, so fully loaded up with Focus it went to town on Tom's Stalker and Ghetorix. However, Judicator fluffed it's charge attack roll. Still it took the Staller down with ease and put a fiar amount, but not enough damage on Ghetorix. Needless to say that fluffing the charge attack was critical here. Tom ploughed through the rest of my army and scoring enough CPs to win the game as both Feora and Kromac were safely out of assassination range.
Misfortune played a part in this game when Feora decided to get her hands dirty. She positioned herself to fry four Bloodtrackers with her Flamethrower. At RAT 5 she needed to boost all of her attack rolls. She fluffed two of the rolls, one of which was a triple one.
No doubt it was a harsh night but one or two things lodged themselves in my mind like the positioning of Judicators's human shield and forgetting about having one of Kreoss's jack advance move before the game. It was encouraging however to see the melee damage the Judicator can cause and using Kreoss's feat a tad more efficiently.
Considering the two defeats (which takes my streak to six losses), I didn't actually feel that bad.

The start of Round 4 of our campaign would see me get a large, and I mean mega, dose of Circle Orboros.

So for the first week of round 4, I was challenged by Martin and a Kromac led list featuring mostly pretty much all beasts. There were some hairy moments especially when a Pureblood took out a total of 12 Zealots and a Monolith Bearer. But the Menites prevailed dealing heavy damage on the three large wolves. With things looking iffy for Martin, he decided to wait until the High Reclaimer wasn’t buffed with over a dozen souls before making an assassination run. The Lord of the Feast caused little damage due to bad dice while Kromac weighed and took Silent Bob down to three boxes left. It was now up to The servant of Menoth, now boosted by a few more souls, to lash out at the Circle ‘caster. The first attack failed, but the second and third attacks didn’t giving me the win by ‘caster kill.


The second week saw me challenge Nick and his Moshar led force. I took pretty much my standard Bob plus two full units of Zealots, Crusader and Avatar of Menoth. I changed a couple of bits from last week taking out the Knights Exemplar and something else I’ve forgotten and replacing them with a minimum unit of Errants plus UA. We both tried to dictate the way each other played by trying some flanking moves. My Errants speeding down my right and the AoM traipsing up the left. The Errants had better luck but did nothing all game going down Nicks extreme flank, while the AoM Was hindered by not only a unit of Bloodtrackers, but by Moshar’s Pillars of Salt. In the end it was put out of it’s misery by a giant wolf of some description (my mind just cannot retain names). This left my core quite vulnerable to Nick other beast’s whom suffered a lot of damage between them, but not enough to put sown one or more of them. I did however manage to keep them on fire at one point or another in the game which was enjoyable if not effective enough. Nick was shrewd enough no to kill too many of my Zealots enabling the High Reclaimer to collect souls and give himself a nice pile of Focus for more spells/overboosting powerfield. This enabled him to give me more than enough threats to put me in check, and go on a successful assassination run.
The only saving grace from this game is that the Crusader survived, thus keeping up his bond with Silent Bob. But the worst thing was actually not killing any of Nick’s force.

Bob has really grown on me during this campaign and is now one of my favourite Menoth ‘casters. I have found him fairly easy to use and love taking the mandatory 20 Zealots and Monolith Bearer. I am now not sure whether Vindictus will make an appearance in the last round of the campaign having only featured once, so I’ll be wanting a strong finish from the High Reclaimer.

Sunday gaming.

I managed to get a Bank Holiday weekend game on Sunday down at the club. Sunday sessions are much more quieter than out regular Tuesday night sessions which means there are more tables free. After a few messages, I hooked up with a new Hordes player called Usman. He and I agreed on a 35 point game with my Menoth facing his Circle. For the afternoon, Usman used the following:


Kaya the Moonhunter & Laris (*3pts)
* Argus (4pts)
* Feral Warpwolf (9pts)
* Gnarlhorn Satyr (8pts)
Druids of Orboros (Leader and 5 Grunts) (7pts)
* Druid of Orboros Overseer (2pts)
Tharn Bloodtrackers (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
Blackclad Wayfarer (2pts)

Facing that I used:
The High Reclaimer (*6pts)
* Redeemer (6pts)
Avatar of Menoth (11pts)
Choir of Menoth (Leader and 3 Grunts) (2pts)
Exemplar Errants (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
* Exemplar Errant Officer & Standard Bearer (2pts)
Holy Zealots (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
* Holy Zealot Monolith Bearer (2pts)
Knight Exemplar Seneschal (3pts)
Vassal Mechanik (1pts)

We chose not to play any scenario and just go for ‘caster kill (truth be told, I was not up to another scenario game after Scrap Metal – additionally, this would be my first game since the tourney). Usman set up first with the bulk of his force arranged in the centre of the table, while the Bloodtrackers set up to my left. To counter the Bloodtrackers, I put my trusty Zealots in their way. My ‘jacks, Choir, Mechanik, Senny and ‘caster all set up in the middle facing Usman’s main force. My Errants Advance Deployed to my right hoping to box them in.

A general advance was made by both sides in the first turn with the Redeemer taking first blood by aiming at the Gnarlhorn. The Avatar and Errants advanced in relative safety as they are both immune to spells. As the Druids couldn’t get at their most obvious target, they aimed for the Redeemer and started taking points from it and then went on to target the Senny and Mechanik (who both died without doing anything). The Bloodtrackers made a few hit and run attacks on the Zealots (taking a few down) before coming under heavy fire themselves. The Errants drew in on the Druids while the Avatar got smooshed by both the Gnarlhorn and Warpwolf. With not much else to go on, Usman went on an assassination run. Kaya appeared behind the High Reclaimer and proceeded to attack. Fortunately for me, she used up all of her Fury and managed to take the Reclaimer down to 3 points of damage. Before the Reclaimer hit back, the Zealots finished off the Bloodtrackers and Blackclad while the Errants finished off the Druids. The Reclaimer, with a full allocation of Focus plus a few more from Souls turned, ignoring the heavily wounded Gnarlhorn and Warpwolf, and struck out at Kaya. Two boosted hits was enough to finish her while having some Focus to spare.

Overall, my force felt good but it was a shame that I lost the Senny and Mechanik cheaply. I could have easily have used a Vassal and maybe the Covenant for the same points. The Covenant would have been really useful against the Druids. The positioning of the High Reclaimer could have been slightly better so as to prevent the assassination attempt, but his Burning Ash spell certainly came in handy. The Redeemer made an excellent debut by hitting the beasts hard. The Avatar didn’t manage to do much except draw unwanted to himself. The Errants and Zealots both did their job wonderfully, although if Usman had attacked them more with the Bloodtrackers I may have had a little more to worry about.
This was a very good game against a new player who looks to have grasped the game far quicker than I have. I’m looking forward to giving Usman a rematch sometime.

General impression and self (loathing) assessment.

The whole event was very good, very friendly and very relaxed. This was made even more so as there were only twelve players. I thought it was nice with all the banter and just hanging around other game tables while you were waiting for your opponent to come back from the loo or grabbing a cuppa. The venue itself is a great space and I can only imagine it when there are lots more games going on (especially from what I heard about the European Team Championships a couple of months back).

The journey up to Mansfield wasn’t that bad and got to my hotel ok. The hotel itself was tidy, if a little noisy and was within walking distance to The Eye of the Storm (it took just about twelve minutes and not the five minutes that Maelstrom stated in their tournament pack). The main thing was that they made good on their promise of “as much tea and coffee as you can drink”.
All in all it was a good time and I will go to another weekender.

Now for the self assessment.

My record stood at P6 W0 D2 L4. This placed me at the foot of the table and secured me the Wooden Spoon, although I missed out on 11th place by a mere 800 or so points. I cannot whinge about anything that happened to me over the weekend (apart from record numbers of Tough rolls being made) as I was my own worst enemy most of the time. Each overall performance might not have been anything to write home about, but there were few individual efforts that were praiseworthy. I’ll just review each model/unit briefly:

Errant Seneschal – Granted Hunter which came in useful occasionally but I didn’t really make the best of his abilities.
Vassal Mechanik – Was called into action three times (I think) to heal my ‘jacks before he was taken down nearly every game. Out of those three times, he past his skill check just once healing a solitary point. This happened to give the FoS back it’s movement.
Vassal – Did his job frequently mostly with Ancillary Attack, although the extra effort was frequently wasted.
Choir – Did what they do best and give their buffs, although in the later (especially the last game) I inexplicably started to activate them after the ‘jacks.
Errants with UA – Mostly performed well but fell victim to my deployment. I kept putting them straight in to the frontline, and therefore, into danger. I probably could have eased them into the fray on the extreme flank and kept them safer. I know I didn’t always have to put them Advance Deploy them so far forward.
Bastions – Took a lot of damage and kept standing a lot of the time, which is what they were designed to do. I failed to utilise them in capturing Control Points/Objectives and also forgot that their weapons are Blessed (this fact would have helped clear one side of the table in my game against Tom and his Khador). I mostly had them trailing behind the intrepid Zealots.
Zealots – had a lot of fun with these guys as always, whether they were dealing death to the enemy or themselves. Their highlight was dealing a lot of damage to eMadrak. Used these as a frontline unit to hopefully soften up the enemy for the Bastions.
Monolith Bearer – Was good for giving +4 ARM with Holy Monolith, but usually used Greater Destiny a turn too late.
Devout – Stayed very close to Kreoss and was never destroyed. Didn’t really stop Kreoss from being smooshed (there is only so much damage a Devout is allowed to take) as my positioning was not all that.
Vanquisher – Rained down fiery death which is good. I didn’t take advantage of the Thresher attack from it’s Blazing Star in combat. I mostly preferred to shoot rather that fight which is sad as the Vanq can be really durable.
Fire of Salvation – Kreoss’ eager puppy fully loaded with Focus can be a scary thing, ask Beast 09. Using a point of Focus to activate the Imprint giving boosted attack rolls and use to rest to boost damage rolls is utterly devastating. Alas, I was not aggressive enough with him. With Defenders Ward (making him DEF 12 ARM 21) and a choir singing the hymn of Shielding, he should have been the first (and last) thing that the enemy saw. I also forgot that the FoS’ weapons have Dispel, which could have been useful a few times.
Kreoss - was handy for Defenders Ward and Lamentation. Used Purification only once, but probably could have used it more. His positioning could and should have been a lot better, (the first couple of games he was too far away to allocate focus on the FoS).
Painting – I’m not really a painter which showed, but did enough to heave everything looking cohesive if not fully based and painted.

I really started to get fatigued and it showed in the last game. I forgot my synergies a lot of the time and could have helped myself a lot more. I still need to sit down and read everything properly and work things out.

Scrap Metal game results.

The first game of the weekend was against Rob and his Seaforge Commission. I enjoyed seeing an all Dwarf army, even though it broke all my preconceptions concerning their slowness. The scenario for this game was Revelation, which involved capturing control banners on the halfway line on the field. I lost the dice off (the first of five failed rolls in all six games), I think Rob went for the Defenders role (his Seaforge could in fact extend their Deployment Zone, which put them closer to the Control banners). Rob took a fairly ‘jack heavy army with three Blasters (total nuisances) with a good choice in troops. All this led by Gorten Grundback. The game itself saw my Zealots rushing straight to the Dwarven front line only to wonderfully implode by having a few bombs scatter into their own ranks (they wouldn’t be fun to use if they didn’t do stupid things like this). The Errants ended up being shot to pieces right at the start, while the Bastions fared far better with their durability. Everything else got caught up in a wall of ‘jacks being very ably assisted by Lord Rockbottom and Thor Steinhammer trying to get at an extremely evasive Gorten. Rob looked to win by scenario (he cleared me away from both control banners), but went for caster kill to rack up a very high score.
Next up was Andy and his Circle. Here, again was a nicely painted set of warbeasts led by pKreuger. This time the scenario was Close Quarters which involved taking to Control Zones. My Errants had a good time taking on the Bloodtrackers before taking a Warp Wolf and a Pureblood close to their deaths. Kreuger stayed too far away to even think about damaging and his feat really hurt my hopes of moving forward to capture either of the control zones. The Bastions did their best to try and control one of the zones but Andy had scored the more control points than I did by that time.
In the last game on Saturday, I faced Dill and his Trollbloods led by eMadrak. A lot of the killing was being done by three Impalers and a unit of Troll champions which tore through my line with alarming speed. This scenario, Kill Box, turned out to be just a standard (but bloody – Menoth blood sadly) ‘caster kill. Zealots almost took the glory and went for ‘caster kill and dealt some damage, but Madrak was left standing with 8 points left. Kreoss was killed by Impalers.

Sunday’s first game I was pitted in a game of Capture the Flag. My opponent Tom took Khador led by eSorscha and a wonderfully posed Beast. Things were going well to start with, the Fire of Salvation (loaded up with four Focus) made straight for Beast in the third turn and turned it to junk. As the game wore on I found my situation getting a little more desperate. Fortunately for me, we ran out of time to play another turn and ended with a draw. If we had I surely would have lost the game by scenario.

Game 5 was against Craig and yet more Trollbloods led this time by pMadrak. Craig could have won in the first turn as I didn’t follow the scenario (Process of Elimination) properly. I hadn’t placed my Zealots in one of the Control Zones properly and were subsequently cleared from the Zone. As that would have meant that the game was over right there and then, Craig let the game go on. I wish he hadn’t as everything went wrong (including Craig making 7 consecutive tough rolls). My ‘jacks were taken down by a couple of Impalers and some Troll champions. The Errants ran away from Pygmies and during Madrak’s feat turn the Earthborn went to town on my entire force. Kreoss fell yet again to Impalers. I had scored my lowest total of battle points so far.

The final game of the weekend was against Dan and some more Mercenaries, this time from the Highborn Covenant. Without me paying attention to Dan pointing out what everything in hiss force was and what they do, I soon lost the plot. My Errants got tied up by chaff consisting of a unit of Press Gangers (who also happened to be very successful with their Tough rolls) and Zombies. The rest of the force were engaged by more Press Gangers and Pistol Mages. I started to get things totally wrong, and Dan very helpfully (and extremely kindly) stepped in and made some suggestions. Without these hints, I would have lost any ability to destroy Dan’s Objective Markers instead of drawing.

Self assessment will follow as soon as I have got over how lame I was.

Honours even.

After a few weeks off from gaming, I was back in action this Tuesday with a new player at the club called Marcin. He is quite new to WM/Hordes and certainly wants to make an impression (and with an all beast Circle list he certainly did). We agreed upon a 35 point game in which I modified my previous pSeverius list:


Grand Scrutator Severius (*6pts)
* Blessing of Vengeance (7pts)
* Vanquisher (8pts)
Choir of Menoth (Leader and 5 Grunts) (3pts)
Exemplar Errants (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
* Exemplar Errant Officer & Standard Bearer (2pts)
Holy Zealots (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
* Holy Zealot Monolith Bearer (2pts)
Exemplar Errant Seneschal (2pts)
The Wrack (3 wracks) (1pts)
Vassal of Menoth (2pts)

I wanted to see the enhancements that were brought by the Exemplar Errant Seneschal and UA. With their new skills my trusty Errants would be seen in a different light. I swapped the Knight Exemplar Seneschal for the Errant Seneschal (and a set of Wracks, Sevvy loves extra Focus), while the Reclaimer stepped back to make room for the Errants UA. Looking at Marcin’s list of five beasts (four heavy and one light or three heavy and two light I cannot remember) led by Kromac, I felt a little apprehensive. So we went into the game and Marcin had the first turn in which he moved through forests rather speedily towards my line. My turn saw a steady advance the Blessing, Choir, Zealots and the Old Man. I followed up with the Vanquisher who happened to be in range (range 14 thankfully) and launched the Flame Belcher towards a forest containing a heavy beast (I always forget which are which, also it was a proxy for another anyway which confused me more). Unfortunately, this beast had Stealth so I had to go for the model next to it. Kromac. I hit and rolled quite a bit of damage which was nice. I was then wondering what to do with the Errants as they were not within charge range but could advance and then shoot their crossbows (the Seneschal gives Hunter) only to be charged afterwards. I then realised that the Vassal hadn’t yet activated yet, so I put him behind the Vanquisher and used Ancillary Attack so the Vanquisher cracked off another shot with the Flame Belcher.

GAME OVER in one turn.

This was a nice situation where the right models were in the right place at the right time. As the game was over far too quickly we swapped table edges and began again. This time Marcin gave me the first turn. After a general advance on my part, Marcin used his Warp Wolf (or Feral Wolf) to head my Errants of at the pass while the other four beasts and Kromac advance towards my line.
Once again I won’t, or can’t, go into detail because of the piece of Swiss cheese I call a brain, so I’ll give a brief review of how everything played more or less.

Sevvy: … I’m still angry so I’ll come back to him.

Vanquisher: played it’s part in causing some damage on the oncoming beasts, ably aided by Vassal, Choir and Eye of Menoth.

Blessing: did what an Arc Node should do (although I forgot the +2 to damage because of it’s bond with Sevvy) until it got pummelled by four beasts.

Choir: sung their songs with gusto, and one even put two points of damage on a beast.

Vassal: Helped the Vanquisher with Ancillary Attack a few times.

Zealots: Only had one turn of bombing causing quite a bit of damage, although not enough, before the Monolith Bearer popping his mini-feat and becoming human shields. Sadly this didn’t stop them from getting picked off with magic.

Wracks: used two out of three for their focus, both blew up sadly next to no-one.

Exemplar Errants: I put them too far out in their flanking manoeuvre. The Pathfinder ability given by the UA was extremely useful, as was the Hunter ability conferred by the Seneschal. Running and shooting through forests is so cool. Half of the unit got wiped out by the beast that came towards them, but Marcin didn’t know that they were all Weapon Masters. The beast was torn to pieces by the remaining five Errants, the UA and the Seneschal. Unfortunately, this distracted them for too long and they were not involved in the rest of the game.

Bloody Severius: Started off with upkeeps and allocation of Focus. Used the Blessing’s Arc Node once, but was then hampered by Kromac’s Bestial Spell which stopped all spell casting. Hid behind the Zealots out of the eyes of the oncoming beasts. Once the ‘jacks, Choir and Zealots were dealt with, Severius faced the remaining four beasts with Kromac behind them. With the all the beasts in bad condition (one had two points of damage left, another had five while another was half dead) Sevvy had the opportunity to finish them off. With a full compliment of Focus, plus another borrowed from a Wrack, He went to cast Ashes to Ashes (in the hope of hitting the first and then hitting the d6 closest targets). He needed a five on 2d6 and rolled a three. Ashes to Ashes was expensive to cast so, put off by that, he changed to Immolation. Rolled a four. Tried again and rolled four again. No more Focus. In Marcin’s turn, Sevvy was in base to base contact with three beasts. Kromac and the last beast were just behind them. Two meaty hits and Sevvy was done for.

As you can imagine, this was a fairly big anti-climax. One of the better Warcasters in the game and he couldn’t come up with the goods when it mattered. I can offer no excuses for the Old Man. If he could have got rid of the nearest three beasts, he would have just been out of threat range from Kromac and his last companion. This may have given the Errants time to rush in and distract Kromac, but it wasn’t meant to be.
I have to say it was a fun game against a new player, and I was learning the differences between Hordes and Warmachine. But I have never come up against an all beast (or all ‘jack) army before except for Battlebox demo games. I asked myself on the train home that if I knew I was up against a force without infantry, would I have changed the composition of my own force? I have enough in the way of Warjacks to do so, both heavy and light, and I was thinking that maybe I would have changed. But sitting down to write this, I know that Zealots used properly with their UA can be bad new for heavy ‘jacks or beasts. So can my Errants, especially with their new friends. So maybe I wouldn’t. Looking back to the game, the Zealots held up play which may have given the harder-hitting Errants time to make their mark at my opponents rear. I realise that my list can comfortably compete against this type of enemy.

Next week I have a game against Mark, who I played a few weeks ago when he realised he was 24 points light when picking his force. I’ll think I’ll give Kreoss a go this time as I hope he’ll be leading my force when I take part in the Scrap Metal II event in the second half of August.