Sunday, July 26, 2009

This is Khador! Multi-caster gaming

On the weekend of July 25th-26th, I attended a Mark II Warmachine event with three of my friends at St. John's. I had determined to play three separate casters. It was my first time playing Mark II and I had never played one of the casters (eVlad) before. All games had one victory condition...caster kill.

The first game was against a beautifully painted Kreoss army played by Ken. I was playing Sorscha. Also Sprach Zarathustra was playing during these first few moments:
In this picture I had just moved up, used Sorscha's feat defensively, and Windrushed away.
In this picture the full results of my folly are apparent. Sorscha no longer has a defensive feat. Shake-it-Off has Finished it Off. Sorscha is now apparently a finesse assassination caster. If I wanted that I'd play Deneghra. It's not a big deal and I won't use any dreaded words of winge, but I expect it reasonable to forsee that we will see less and less of her at gaming conventions from now on, which is too bad because she is one of the archtype characters of this game. By the way, this was a crushing defeat, with my caster killed during Kreoss' feat by the shooting attacks of two warjacks.
My next game was pVlad playing against the Iron Lich list of Mark. I think myself and Mark were probably equally apprehensive about the other's toolbox. This first picture shows my forces advancing towards a boneturkey and the dreaded DeathJack.
My initial solution to the problem posed by these adversaries was to run Beast-09 up to them under Vlad's feat (Forced March). Mark's initial solution to this was to attempt to get the Death Jack to double-handed throw Beast-09 into the lake. He rolled 6 on two dice, I rolled 6 on one. Both jacks have Strength 12 so it was a no go with the throw. Whew!
A huge maul developed for a while, until dissipated somewhat by the lethality of the participants.
Further bloodletting ensued.
By this point, the Great Bears had wrecked the BoneTurkey, Beast-09 had destroyed the Slayer and the DeathJack had finished off Beast-09. This left Vlad a charge lane to the Lich which he took thanks to Boundless Charge. I played a limp game against Kreoss but that led to me displaying proper Khador agression in this match. My third match was against Jason playing eHaley. Another fantastic painted army to face off against. This is the tabletop view through the gully to the foe. Gulp!
This is the main part of my force ready to enter the fray.
This was probably the high point of the game for me. Jason did not know about the Drakhun's countercharge rule so I actually got the shagging thing into melee on this last of my three games. In the first game Ken had killed it with one shot from his Reckoner. In the second Mark had spelled it to death before I could charge. Anyways, here I was, ready to lay down the smack. But a Charger has defence 16. And I missed. Which sucked. Big time.
I advance Beast-09 and the heart of my army to the lakeside. Yes, that's deep water there. And right across the deep water, a free Charger.
Where is Beast-09 you ask? Well, as I discovered, eHaley has this little spell called Telekinesis, and she used it to give Beast-09 swimming lessons. Now, I don't know about you, but I'd much rather not know about a Drakhun's Counter Charge than not know about eHaley's Telekinesis. But that could just be me, I suppose.
One of the great truths of playing Khador is that every Vlad army is nothing more than a Vlad delivery system. Mine worked to get me up close and personal with eHaley. She turned out to be something of a Black Widow, if you take my meaning.
I had a great time. I can't wait to play again, and I really want to get a better understanding of eVald. He's cool.

4 comments:

45caliberidea said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
45caliberidea said...

Actually the double-handed throw should have been successful. The defender has to beat the attacker's roll.

--Norbert

Keir said...

Hi Norbert,

Yes, we changed that rule because, as written, it allows an attacking player to win the roll-off on a roll of snake-eyes.

Which is just wrong.

45caliberidea said...

Hooray for house rules! :-)