Friday, October 23, 2015

Warmachine Battle Report - Khador eSorscha vs. Khador eZerkova - 50 Points Steamroller



This is a straight up Khador vs. Khador civil war battle between two of coldest and sexiest Warcasters in the game. They're probably fighting over who ate the last Yoplait in the fridge.

In this game, Scott plays the brand new super magic assassin Warcaster eZerkova vs. my new to me but old to everyone else armor cracking Warcaster, eSorscha.

eSosrcha - Cold as Ice (50 Points)

Warcaster: eSosrcha (-6)
Warcaster Attachment: Sylys Wyshnaylrr (+2)
Warjack: Conquest (Bonded) (+19)
Unit: Winter Guard Infantry (+6)
Unit Attachment: Winter Guard Officer & Standard (+2)
Unit Weapon Attachment: Rocketeer (+3)
Unit: Kayazy Assassins (+8)
Unit Attachment: Kayazy Underboss (+2)
Unit: Battle Mechaniks (Min) (+2)
Unit: Great Bears of Gallowswood (+5)
Solo: Kovnik Jozef Grigorovich (+2)
Solo: Ogrun Bokur (+3)
Solo: Saxon Orrik (+2)
Objective: Effigy of Valour

List building: This is the paring to my Butcher 3 list in the last battle report. It seems to cover the bad Cryx match ups I have with old Butch with its Grape Shot Sprays, high DEF Kayazy with Iron Flesh and the ability to crack armor. The Bonded Conquest is my favorite because if you fail to kill it in melee you will become stationary at the end of your activation. Everything is highly accurate which is what I love. You've got Winter Guard rolling either 3 dice on Attack or combining shots, the Kayazy Assassins are MAT 9 with Gang, the Great Bears are 8, and Conquest... is Conquest at MAT 6/RAT 4.

The thought is to put Conquest out there and shoot a bunch forcing your opponent to charge him with jacks/beast killing it. Then eSorscha pops her feat and the Great Bears charge through the Wreck Marker with Relentless Charge and smash everything. The Kayazy are there to jam and soften up important models and the Winter Guard handle large groups of infantry.

VS.

Scott's eZerkova List (50 Points)

Warcaster: eZerkova (-4)
Warcaster Unit: Reaver Guard x2
Warcaster Attachment: Sylys Wyshnaylrr (+2)
Warjack: Behemoth (+13)
Unit: Greylord Outriders (+9)
Unit: Greylord Ternion (+4)
Unit: Greylord Ternion (+4)
Unit: Kayazy Eliminators (+3)
Unit: Great Bears of Gallowswood (+5)
Unit: Lady Aiyana & Master Holt (+2)
Unit Attachment: Koldun Kaptain Valachev (+2)
Solo: Koldun Lord (+2)
Solo: pEiryss (+3)
Solo: Harlan Versh, Illuminated One (+2)
Solo: Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator (+1)
Objective: Bunker

List Building: Scott's army can put out 15 boosted Magic Spray Attacks in one round and on his feat turn can shoot 30 of them. Crazy, right? It looks like the Behemoth and the Great Bears are there to take out high ARM targets that get close to Zerkova and everything else is just going to spray everything to death.

warmachine battle report khador

I had never played against eZerkova but I felt that that Conquest could dominate the board if I did two things:
  1. Take out the Great Bears early
  2. Kill or jam up the Behemoth.
It seemed easy enough with the Kayazy, my own unit of Great Bears and eSorscha's feat. My plan was to position myself to dominate my opponent's zone on turn 2. I positioned Conquest, the Mechaniks, Sosrcha, Bokur, Sylys, and the Kayazy Assassins to the right and left zone for the Winter Guard Infantry to handle.

I then ran up my Winter Guard Infantry with Desperate Pace and figured that they could they could easily outlast the Outriders with Tough and Bob & Weave. Twas not the best of ideas.
 esorscha battle report 
On Scott's turn he positioned his Behemoth and Great Bears in the center of the battlefield and waited for me to come into his threat range. He lobby a few Behemoth shots into my Winter Guard but they came out unscathed. He then runs his Outriders on my left flank along with pEyriss who is able to kill one Winter Guard Infantry. 

On my second turn I continue pushing forward on the right side with my Conquest and I am able to land a crit Devastation on his Great Bears killing two. My Winter Guard were able to do some work and kill two Outriders which I thought was pretty good. The Kayazy ran up my right flank and I try to position them for an assassination run next turn. I played Sorscha far back in fear of his feat but it was my first time playing with her and I didn't realize that she was pretty much immune to most of Scott's army. This is something that Scott reminded me after the game was over, lol.

At this moment I feel I'm in a pretty good position to win the game... until Scott started spraying...

Scott let loose his super boosted sprays and wiped out almost my entire unit of Kayazy Assassins on the right side. His Outriders then used ride by attacks and sprayed down about 8 of my Winter Guard Infantry. He then positioned the Outriders to take out my Mechaniks behind Conquest the next turn with his Light Calvary move. The Eliminators charge in and kill a couple of Mechaniks.

He gets 1 good charge off with his last Great Bear and really hurts my Conquest. Things totally flipped to Scott's favor and he hadn't even popped his feat yet.

The scenario pressure is on me so on my third turn I kill his objective with my Great Bears and try to clear the Greylord Ternions with Conquest but fail and leave 1 in the zone. I do remember the Bond on Conquest and I'm easily able to kill his stationary Eliminators with my Bokur and the last Great Bear that charged in. The rest of the Mechaniks repair the Conquest. At the end of my turn I tried to hide Sorscha behind Conquest and await Zerkova's feat.

Scott continues his rampage and wipes out my entire Winter Guard unit with more crazy boosted sprays. He also is able to Hoarfrost a Great Bear and charge the Conquest with his Reaver Guard which does a bit of damage. His Ternions wipe out my Kayazy and he positions his Behemoth to charge Conquest next turn.

He does make a slight error and positions Zerkova in the center of the map. This could be my big opportunity to swing the game.

ezerkova battle report

If Scott decides to play super cautiously he will win on Scenario so I realize that the only way I can win is by assassination. I try to position Sorscha to Freezing Grip Zerkova but realize she is immune to Cold just like me. Scott was nice enough and let me take my move back which made up for one I let him take back earlier in the game. I just end up taking a shot with Sosrcha at Zerkova and missed. I pop my feat but also realize that it is cold based and does not effect her or the Outriders. 

At this point I'm all in because Scott can easily win on Scenario. My only out is if I use Conquest to clear out the Greylords blocking Zerkova and clear a path for my last remaining Great Bear. I get a good deviation and I am able to clear the path early. I use my remaining Conquest shots and do a little bit of damage to her. I actually did not want the crit Devastation because it would have pushed her just far enough that my Great Bear wouldn't be able to reach her. I had to shoot her though because I needed every last bit of damage.

I then activate my Great Bear and charge into her with Backswing. I need 7's to hit and I am able to make the charge attack. Zerkova is only camping 2 and is fairly hurt so a POW 12 with 4x dice is able to take her down.

Final Thoughts - Even though I won totally messed up and forgot about everyone being immune to cold. I didn't ever need eSorscha's feat anyway because Scott kept his Behemoth out of ranged and I was so scared of the Outriders and Ternions which I didn't need to be because they had cold attacks.

If I had known about the immunity I would have been far more aggressive and just dominated the right side instead of playing so cautiously. If I had focused on the Behemoth and Great Bears as originally planned I would have dominated with Conquest.

Scott most likely would have won the game if he had played more cautiously. He had cleared my zone of Winter Guard Infantry and could have moved his army to Dominate a turn earlier than me forcing me to run to horrible positions just to contest.  He told me that his mistake was declaring a charge order on his Reaver Guard against the Conquest. This forced him to play Zerkova more to the center.

As far as my list goes, I do like it but would make a few changes. I don't particularly need the Freezing Grip on Sosrcha because all my models except the Conquest are quite accurate. I could probably drop Sylys  and maybe 2 Rocketeers for Lady Aiyanna and Master Holt. This would really pack a punch on feat turn with Kiss of Lyliss. They Kayazy could probably take out anything that was -2 ARM and I wouldn't have to put my Conquest in danger. It would be really great on Trolls which are prevalent in our Meta but I most likely would drop Butcher 3 against them.

Either way, it was a great learning game and I am now more comfortable with eSosrcha and eZerkova.

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