In a return to the Mondastms, into the Hippy Brigade. In theory it's eCaine/eStryker into p/eMorvhana. Thinking that Purification makes Caine really, really, really sad and he's liable to die if anything gets to him which, historically, whenever I verse Circle that happens, I drop the angry Ginger.
eStryker - 'Ol Rowdy, Lancer, Squire, 2x Sword Knights + 1x UA, Hammer Dwarves + Murdoch, Gun Mages + UA, Journeyman, Runewood, Tinker
Objective: Effigy of Valor
pMorvhanna - Stalker, Gorax, Witch Doc, Bokor + Shamblers, Druids + UA, Trackers + Nualla, 2x Stones + 1x UA, Sacral Vault
Objective: Armory
Rocking on Incoming.
Cygnar Deploy: I won the roll, got around the having to think part by picking first. A Jack went near each Sword Knight Unit, other stuff went into the middle.
A word of warning at this point, neither Chibbs nor I had played with these lists before, so prepare for numpty ness.
Circle Deploy: That large PP marker is the Vault. Nearly every turn we'd forget it until the end of the turns. The Trackers put Prey on the Gun Mages.
Cygnar 1: Everything runs up, Arcane Shield goes on Rodinator, I cast Deflection. I try to run up to be out of range of shots on the bottom of 1, as I've lost half a dozen smucks on the bottom of 1 to Circle before when I didn't expect to.
Circle 1: Circle moves up, not as far as I thought. Druids puff on some hash and make clouds/antimagic. Resurrection spell of doom and Zombify goes on the Blood Trackers.
Cygnar 2: After about 5 minutes staring at the table without a clue, I decide to try to wipe out the Blood Trackers with my feat getting the Sword Knights in range.
The Gun Mages take shots, they do abysmally, killing a Blood Tracker. Both Sword Knights units run up as does the Lancer. Stryker does a Lightning Field through the Lancer, targeting a Sword Knight to bypass the antimagic, hoping to wipe out the clump of four or so Trackers. It misses, instead killing a couple of them and a Sword Knight, so he then casts Positive Charge. Stryker/Rowdy fall back, as I'm convinced they'll Stalkered otherwise. The Dorfs are forced to awkwardly try to run behind them.
The Feat attacks achieve little at best, popping a pair of Trackers.
Yikes that didn't go to plan. In any case normally a Tracker would be held back to stop this sort of shenanigan, but that didn't matter to much. I am now fully aware of Trackers being Def 14, not 13. Needing eights is rubbish incidentally.
Really I'd suffered from not contemplating at any point how the list plays out, so ended up just going with the first plan I got. Hindsight, I think the go is to not kill any of the Blood Trackers as without finishing off the unit all I'm doing is providing El Chibo the chance to ideally place them.
I'm guessing it'd be best to have held feat, keep Stryker a bit more central, cast Deflection, have the right Sword Knight unit go into triangles and get Arcane Shield. Dorfs to then run/charge up behind to threaten the zone edges with a Go To Ground mini-feat, Left Sword Knights run in front of them and Rowdy as throwing them into the zone will achieve nought.
Circle 2: Trackers/Shamblers spawn. It was awful.
Kaya feats and toes the left zone. Druids and Stalker murder the left Sword Knight unit.
A couple of the right Sword Knights and half the Gun Mages die to the Trackers, the Shamblers perform miserably.
Circle go to 1.
Cygnar 3: Things to do:
1) Kill the Bokor, because this recursion nonsense is maddening.
2) Pop the Blood Tracker engaging the Squire so the little Wall-E wannabe can get back to doing his job.
Gun Mages shoot some trackers to see if its worth popping the unit along the way.
Lancer gets a couple focus. Stryker moves up, but a poorly placed Dwarf stops him getting into the zone. He is out of range to cast Positive Charge on the Lancer, ends up throwing a Lightning Storm out that clears the Shamblers and Trackers hedging him in. The Lancer then goes forward and pokes the Bokor, killing half of the Shamblers and leaving him on one box.
The Dwarfs charge in, two go to free up the Squire, the rest pulp Shamblers aside from the one who gets to the Bokor and finishes him off. The Dorf pair that try to clear the Tracker off the Squire fail abysmally.
The Journeyman throws Arcane Shield on Stryker.
I fail at life, so Circle go to 2 CP.
Circle 3: Stalker gets Primalled for reasons? He goes and kills the Objective and the Tinker. Morv hides behind Stones in the friendly zone. Vault kills a Gun Mage. Druids line up next tot eh wall in the middle and pull Rowdy away from base to base with Stryker. Trackers finish off the Gun Mages, move Prey to Stryker, ping him for seven points as well.
Circle goes to 4 CP.
This was the turn I discovered Counter Charge wasn't as awesome as I thought, as
Cygnar 4: No Pic, we'd both pinged around the 10 minute mark. I've got to contest the zone with as much as I can. The Lancer tries to walk in but is 5 mm short, Rowdy gets Arcane Shield and takes half a dozen free strikes from the Stalker and Druids to get to the left zone, he takes about a dozen damage points. The Sword Knights and Dorfs try to get stuck in, kill a few incidental models and bounce off the objective.
Cygnar go to 1 CP.
Morv had one fury, I thought I'd get a Stryker assassination in until I killed a model and she gained a fury, which made me realise I had no chance of that at all.
Circle 4: Stalker kills a Tracker in the Frenzy. Gorax throws the Lancer away. The Druids move around Rowdy, the first two relevant push attacks miss...
The Trackers kill some of my infantry, two get shots on the Journeyman in the forest and miss. Three make attacks on Stryker and fail to hurt him.
About this point Chibi clocked himself, which was unexpected. Rowdy had about 6 odd boxes left.
Me on the left.
Played it out a little bit after that, Morvhana goes in personally and leaves Rowdy on one Cortex box. The turn after that there's pretty much nothing I can do to stop the win though, I stared at the board for a good 5 minutes but the chances of doing much where well and truly gone at this point.
The Swan Camry bounced hard off the Circle Wombat, will actually have a think about what the list should do BEFORE the game next time....
