Battle of the ius'! (There is no way that joke works, think of something better before copying to forum)
Exhausted from the powerhouse that is Midas Razor Boar Spam, we have a Darius into Cassius follow up from ye old Monday night.
Darius + Halfchumps - Sylyss Wyshnallyr, Stormwall, Centurion, Defender, Ol Rowdy, Junior, Black 13th
Objective: Fuel
Cassius - Stalker, Gorax, Stones + UA, Blood Trackers + Nualla, 2x Croak Raiders, Gallows Grove, Swamp Gobbers, 2x Effarits, Witch Doc Croc, Pendrake
Objective: Effigy of Valor
Two fronts, because that is the default in my warmachining life, now displacing Incursion I guess (Down with flags?)
Word to the wise, I was a little unimpressed with my play decisions and had hammered myself with filling skips on the danger ramp over the weekend, so instead of hashing a quick draft while details were fresh I decided to whip up Crusader Kings 2, net result being that at 5 am I nabbed an hour of sleep before work, so this is going to be blurry. On the plus side that no one cares about, in a very historical based game I think one of my kids is the closest you can get to being the anti-Christ, so that was nice (?!).
Circle Deploy: PROXY DOOM.
eKromac/eMorvhana = Efaarit scouts, those two flanking large bases.
The crossbow dudes on the left and the elves on the right, either side of the blood trackers, are Croak Raiders.
Alten Ashely, standing up the back next to the Witch Doc Croc, is actually Victoria Pendrake, applying some maybe its Maybelline.
Cygnar Deploy: I lost the roll, so situation normal for Darius. I called my spirit animal, the sloth, for guidance, so promptly stuck on the side I'd packed out on. Pro plays.
Stormwall, as the pathfinder model in the army, sits in front of the forest. Rowdy/Defender to the left, Darius, 13th and Centurion to the right. I had no AD, so counter deploying the central beasts and outlying Efaarit wasn't really full of impactful choices.
Circle 1: Look my horde,, isn't it amazing, give it a lick, it tastes just like raisins.
So you know, everything ran. Grove, Wormwood, Stalker all sat in the Gobber cloud and mocked me. The Blood Trackers become zombies.
Cygnar 1: Oh Croaks, why you want to hurt me so? Plan is to use the objective to shield against some of the croak on the left and kill as many as I can, have stuff hug terrain or the Fortified Stormwall to not be Hellmouthed forward.
Fortify goes on the Stormwall, Arcane Shield on the Centurion. Ryan gets craned forward,
Stormwall puts covering fire around the Cygnar objective, kills a pair of Croaks on the left. Defender aims and pops a left side Croak.
13th move up, Ryan waaaay out front, Magestorm and a snipe shot kills four Croaks.
Centurion runs to the wall on the right to contest the enemy zone next turn.
One Hlafjack holds back, one runs behind the right wall, one goes to a pointless mine position at the bottom of the left zone.
Circle 2: It's kill the Stormwall time (noooooooo!) apparently.
Cassius gets teleported forward, then the Stalker becomes a green proxy base and pushes him forward an inch. Cassius then casts Curse of Shadows on the Stormwall, having now got in range, then teleports back and grabs his tree and feats.
At this point it turned out the Croaks didn't have pathfinder for the Cassius forest of doom (Marked by the blue tokens as the outside rim of the forest).
Blood trackers surge forward, ping the Stormwall, the Croaks scatter a blind forward onto the Colossal, both units have trouble getting all their shots in, the Stormwall took about 25ish boxes spread amongst its sides and columns. The Efaarits also ping in, the left one holds back, the right one light cavs to engage the Centurion.
One Bloodtracker also engages Ryan.
Cygnar 2: This turn is where the flubbing began. I had loads of time after such an activation heavy Circle turn, but I hadn't and apparently couldn't conceive of a plan.
Killbox was an issue, and none of my positioning was great for it.
The Centurion walked into the right zone, engaged some Craks and Polarity Fielded. The Stormwall went left, poded a Tracker to tough and whirled up shots to kill the left unit of croaks. I roll one shot either side, then proceed to only kill one Croak. Effective 19 point activation right there.
Rowdy ran to the front of the Colossal and screamed "Kill me instead".
The defender took out a Croak on the left unit.
The Black 13th killed one tracker and missed both shots on the Efaarit scout.
Darius feated, walked into the forest to get in the killbox, feated back to heal the Stormwall. The Halfjacks ran around like ditzes, two of them try to annoy the right Efaarit.
Junior moves Arcane shield to Darius.
So the play error that was annoying me was I'd be an activation out before I'd remember to lightning pod. I'd already given some take backs, so wasn't orally troubled by it but irritated at the poor play on my behalf.
Had I turned the Centurion, he could have been in a position to free strike the Efaarit and stop it just walking away. I could have fed more focus to the Stormwall to ensure Croaks died, but I have a paranoia about being killed by Stalkers. I'm sure there's some math about keeping Darius safe, but it wasn't good times regardless.
Circle 3: Curse of shadows hangs around. The trackers and Croaks hit the sotrmwall for a point under half its health, all systems active. The Stalker gets Primalled by Cassius and kills Rowdy. The Gorax kills the Objective. The Gobbers move up and cloud. Cassius toes the Cygnar zone.
The Efaarit on the right engages the back 13th, Ryan gets stabbed by a Bloodtracker and dies. One tracker also gets a javelin shot on Junior, hits but doesn't break armour.
Circle goes to 3 CP.
Cygnar 3: I have to contest the left zone or lose and get rid of more of those damn croaks.
Darius fails to repair the Stormwall, buys jackhammers until the two blocking Blood Trackers are dead.
Stormwall walks up, Powerstrikes the Stalker and kills four Croaks. Defender pot shots the Gorax for a chunk of damage. Lightning pod causes a tracker to tough and kills the Gobbers.
Watt does three points to the Efaarit, Lynch misses, hits Watt and kills him. Passes his command check for his friendly fire.
Circle 4: Stalker stands up, kills a Stone with a Frenzy attack. Fire takes out the Gorax' mind. Cassius heals it for a point, primals it, charges the Stormwall and does a bunch of damage. Gorax charges and finishes it off.
Circle go to 5 CP.
Me on the right.
Well ahead on time, El Chibino doesn't normally run an infantry heavy list so time was always going to be on my side, but he actually had plans for his turn whereas I just waffled.
Time for a list experiment.
Going to drop the Defender/Sylyss, add Squire, Ace and Gorman.
I like the Defenders big gun, but Ace should, in theory, be better at infantry sniping, and Infiltration could be something Darius would like from time to time. Squire added control range likely to be more handy with the light jack sniper, Gorman gives me the worst two points in the game after the errata (FACEBOOK POSTS ARE NEVER WRONG MMMKAY), hopefully adding damage against collosals and a Def debuff against this Def 14+ beasts, the worst spot to be to Jackhammer most of my jacks.
A part of this is also my own armchairism, I've stated since release that Ace isn't the right choice with Caine, but maybe he plays better than I read. The James Bond list isn't changing, so the WC man can take him for a spin (By god that 7 points is agonising though).
