Holding true to my intent this time, I brought Thexus. Ostensibly there was a second list of Bart with jacks, I never intended to drop it, ultimately that wouldn't matter to much as we will get to.
Thexus - 2 Wardens, Subduer, Agitator, 3 Slavers Max, 2 Benders Max Alexia + Risen Seervants + Dominator Evil Vizier
First game into Soup Company man, leaving his Mercs/Skorne behind to try some priestly lunatics (Yes! my Snowflake quotient is raised another notch!).
Kreoss1 (Exemplar Interdiction) - 2x Reckoner, 2x Bastion Seneschal + Redeemers, Errant Seneschal, Errants (Max), Errants (Max) + CA, Choir (Max), Wrack, Vassal of Menoth
Yeah, Exemplar Interdiction gives Blessed to the jacks guns. Bart, you ain't the Menoth drop I thought you were. Good to know.
Scenario is Barbell again, so two side circles for units and a centre rectangle for battlegroups.
Terrain was once more throw stuff down in a vaguely jumbled way. Cause lazy.
I lose the roll, get given first. My side has a blob of inconvenient water, Rubble in the left zone, a long hedge in the centre Rectangle and a shorter iteration in the right zone.
Menoth have a not so great forest on the left, a very good wall in their centre and a long trench on the right that pokes into that sides zone.
Deployments are essentially informed by the list sizes. Mine is long and spread out with flanking Overlords, Menoth is a central block of jacks with Advance Deployed Errants.
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Merc 1: The Errants can assault forward a good distance, I opt to not care about it. Deceleration is doing nothing for me this game aside from Kreoss' nukes, so that isn't worth casting.Thexus allocates out all of his focus to the Monstrosities.
Everything runs forward then, heedlieslly into the danger of Errant pew pews.
The Overlords mirror each other by going up either flank. The Drudges split up to go around either side of the water blob. Subduer is out front, going to the left of the water, one Warden goes up the centre to the right of said theoretical liquid with the third out to the right. The wardens Slammed for the free movement.
Alexia only walks up, I spawn a Thrall off an outlying Risen who runs up into the Rubble in the left zone. I'm mildly hopeful that the irritant that is the forest will keep attacks off him so he can be an annoying model in the Menoth backfield in two rounds.
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Menoth 1: The Errants come forward, most of them Assaulting. A Pink Drudge dies, as two a pair of Green fellas on the right. One Green Drudge also toughs it.
Kreoss puts Defenders Ward on the right Exemplar unit (The one with the CA), charges up to be behind the wall. The Reckoners run up next to him, Redeemers and their controling solo chumps go either side. The Vassal goes up behind the forest.
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Merc 2: The Exemplar unit didn't pop their mini feat, so I reason this is the easiest turn to get rid of the hard unit.
I ambush from the right, it's a line of doodz staring at the Exemplars.
Thexus mostly hangs onto his focus, he's got stuff to do.
I put Risen agressively up front, we then catch an error from last turn in which the left Errants didn't have Assault, so a Pink Drudge returns to life and a Risen vanishes in unceremonious fashion.
Thexus moves forward and toward the right, he feats catching about 70% or so of the Errants, they get pushed around. The right unit end formation isn't super great, the left does get a nice blob of five them hugging together.
I then have have an IQ crash, as Thexus goes to cast spells. He misses the Hex Blast on the Errants, I then decide that he will cast Deceleration instead of trying again. Decel. The spell I worked out at the start of the game is functionally useless. Happy Birthday to the Ground!
The Agitator floats above the water, pops Instigate. This helps out the Subduer, who assumes the role of "Sacrifical Pawn", advancing to toe the rectangle zone and knocking down the clump of Errant knights, plan essentially being for them to either do nothing next round repositioning or stay in spray victim formation.
In the left zone, the Thrall Warrior runs to be behind the forest. Two more rounds until this Thrall loan pays off! The Overlords in that zone float forward, they spray down three of the left errant unit.
Slaver Drudges all run up, with a fewe members of each unit contesting the centre and right zone. Bender Drudges follow up behind, the left blue unit pretty firmly backfield, the right unit get half it's squad in the right zone.
Also on the right, that sides Overlords advance and spray at Errants. The Defenders Ward bungle starts to be felt pretty badly as they only kill a couple Menites.
The ambush Drudges charge in, I luck out on the Menite inexperience as I get to Prep Surgery some Errants and create a couple new Drudges. I utterly fail to kill the unit leader, leaving him on a couople boxes after fourish attacks inclusing Overlrod sprays. Imph.
Alexia moves up the centre, spawns a centre Thrall who walks into teh right zone and kills an Errant who sacs to the Standard bearer.
Yeah, I'm hoping this style of Thexus feat doesn't become the norm for me, that was pretty bad.
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Menite 2: Time for a magic trick. See that horde of Slaver Drudges? Just watch!
Defenders Ward upkept.
Kreoss stays chilling behind his defence wall and feats. A part of running Thexus here (Beyond Bart not having a great time) is that he can sit in Sac Pawn range of both Wardens and relax, so the feat is an attrition play. It gets the Subduer and a stack of the forward Slaver Drudges, including the full ambush unit (Somewhat expected).
Choir Battles, the Reckoners then shoot the Subduer (I straight up didn't believe they had a base POW of 14. Weird how that has never come up, think I've just always thought of them as POW 16 without really processing the Choir aspect. Oh well.). They do some good damage.
The Redeemers and Errants don't really move around, the knocked down blob in the centre size standing up with one dude toeing the left zone to stop my Overlords triggering the score. After all teh gun shots, I've lost 5 Pink Drudges, 4 Green, 12 Yellow + the Cephalyx unit leader, a Risen and the right side Thrall Warrior. The Subduer is also left on 12 boxes. Ouch.
Insult to injury, the Vassal walked around the back of the forest and pew pewed the round 1 Investment Thrall Warrior.
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Merc 3: Damn Old Faith scum. Killing all those innocents I blinded and forced to run at pointy/explody things. Monsters.
I've lost a lot of Slaver Drudges, which is saddening. Fortunately this is alleviated somewhat by the Menites remaining extremely static, so even though I think I can still fight this out the scenario play is extremely strong for me at this point. Yeah yeah, words were said about SR2017.
Seven Risen reinforcements pop out like weasels, they go out as a blob in front of the rectangle zone.
Thexus advances a short distance for future Sac Pawn positioning, this time he manages to Hex Blast off Defenders Ward. He then Pscho Surgeries and chills out, far further up the baord than I have become accustomed to.
The mission then becomes clear out and score zones.
For the Rectangle, the Subduer now has his gun and was lucky enough to keep a Brain box, so has his focus. He should have shaken to stand to get the aim bonus, he just has to live with Instigate and a boost. He re-knocks down the five fellas he got last turn.
The Left Overlords walk across, they spray at the left msot Errants, killing the one toeing their zone to free it up and killing most of the unit, aside from two of them that got snake eyes on the to hit. So much for knockdown I guess.
The Risen then go in, they CMA and get the centre zone Errant kills to clear the zone. Alexia spawns a Thrall Warrior from one of them, I promptly forgot to actiate it. Oh well.
For the right zone, the Overlords move in and spray down the Errants that are contesting. This zone then gets a bunch of Purple Benders run into it to make it hard to reclaim.
The Wardens move up, stay in Thexus Sac Pawn range. One toes the Rectangle, the other the right circle zone.
Mercs go up 3 CP.
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Menite 3: It's an uphill turn for the Religously inclined.
The Vassal of Menoth moves to toe the far edge of the left zone.
The Reckoners finish off the Subduer without to much issue.
Redeemers ping the right Warden, hurt it somewhat. It Hyper Aggresives Forward, promptly gets blased by Kreoss.
The handful of Errants and Seneschals go into the centre and right zone, killing some Bender Drudges and an Overlord.
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Merc 4: It's clear two zone to win.
The left Overlords spray down the Vassal, so that's done.
The Risen surround and kill the Errant Seneschal with a 6 man CMA.
Thexus arcs a TK to move the central Bastion Seneschal out of the zone, everything else doesn't activate and I get the win on CP's. Both sides have 14 and a half minutes left.
Definitely forsee Menoth as being a Thexus annoyance in the future, will be a much harder game after Soup Man gets some more reps with them.
