As time has gone on, I've gotten more and more into the visuals of the game. The design of this site might have tipped you off. I like to set up 3D scenery and make sure as many of my models as possible are painted.
I brought Nemo1, my favorite Cygnar caster, and my friend brought Ossrum and his Rhulic Hammer Strike theme army.
Cygnar - pNeumatic
Commander Adept NemoSquire
Centurian
Thorn
Hammersmith
Dynamo
Journeyman Warcaster
*Sentinel
Storm Lances (min)
Tactical Arcanist Corps
Arcane Tempest Rifleman
Gobber Tinker
Field Mechaniks - Crew Chief & 3 Grunts
Mercenaries - Operation Rhulic Swarm
General OssrumGhordson Earthbreaker
Hammerfell Siege Crawler
Thor Steinhammer
Ogren Bokur
Horgenhold Forge Guard (max)
Horgenhold Forge Guard (max)
Horgenhold Forge Guard (min)
Horgenhold Artillery Corps - Gunner & 2 Grunts
We roll, and Nemo wins, opting to go second. The terrain was a blasted landscape. Cygnar chooses the side with a big rock for Nemo to hide behind. This side also includes some convenient rubble, although it would be nicer if Cygnar had brought anything with pathfinder. The Rhuls get a small stone hill, and there's a large stone wall formation dead center between the zones, which ends up being the most relevant terrain in this game.
With no Rhulic jacks other than the collossal, Nemo was basically going to get no feat this game.
For the following images, you'll need to click to get a good look at the full size version.
Deployment
The dwarves hide dozens of forge guard behind the two massive bases, hoping that Cygnar won't realize they're there. Six forge guard deploy to head for the small hill as a decoy.
Cygnar deploys storm lances to head for the small contingent of dwarves. (If I'd deployed them on the other side, the earthbreaker would have had a grand old time knocking down lances while the low-RAT artillery crew cleaned up the mess with brutal damage direct hits) The hammersmith deploys on the far flank, intending to go after the Earthbreaker, and the rest of the Cygnar jacks deploy centrally.
Rhulic Turn 1
The six-pack of hammer dwarves takes the hill, and the rest march up slowly behind the two huge bases. The artillery lumbers up on the far side of the map. Ossrum puts up bullet dodger on himself and snipe on the Earthbreaker.
Cygnar Turn 1
Rhulic Turn 2
Cygnar Turn 2
Thorn gets allocated one, shakes the knockdown, and runs out of the rough terrain bubble he's lying in so that the repair crew can run up and repair him. They repair something like thirteen boxes, leaving him with only 5-6 damage on him.
The storm lances charge and kill furthest-out couple of dwarves and reposition back away. The sentinel boosts two shots and kills another couple taking cover behind the other rock formation. The journeyman re-casts arcane shield on the centurian and boosts a shot into the siege crawler, which critically leaves the journeyman naked of focus. She positions carefully within shield guard distance of the sentinel, but not close enough to get hit by a 4" AoE that the sentinel might absorb. This unfortunately means that she cannot enter the rubble for cover. The now-shielded centurian, at ARM24, moves forward boldly, but does not attack because it's staggered and has lost its initial attacks. We had a discussion at the time about whether a jack with no initial attacks could charge at all. I argued that it could not, which only hurt myself, and found out later that I could have spent two focus - one to charge, and another to buy an attack.
Dynamo lets loose with four damage-boosted shots and one-rounds the siege crawler. Nemo casts a one-point locomotion on Thorn, activating his reaction drive and moving him far enough forward that an AoE hitting Thorn wouldn't kill the entire repair crew.
The hammersmith, critically, does not outthreat the earthbreaker due to the potential extra movement of Ossrum's feat, and so he holds onto his lightning shroud and waits outside the zone for an opportunity, fairly sure that his seven POW20 attacks can severely cripple the collossal. Hanging back like this was probably a mistake - I should have brought him within the extended threat range of that feat. Had the colossal come forward, I could have retaliated with multiple jacks and been up on the trade.
So as to not lose a point, the gobber tinker toes the zone. The lances in the other zone score a point.
(Mercs 0, Cygnar 1)
Rhulic Turn 3
The Rhulic army stands stunned for a moment when the massive siege engine in front of them falls apart in a smouldering ruin. Then their eyes drift upward from the sizzling steel plating to the distant Cygnaran warjacks. "Hey!", Ossrum's voice sounds from behind them. "Get 'em!!" A deafening war cry erupts from the forge guard mob as they surge forward as one.
Ossrum feats.
The earthbreaker decides that arcane shield is a problem. He focuses fire on the journeyman, who is camping nothing. The first torpedo is shield guarded by the sentinel, who is of course knocked down. The second torpedo misses and drifts to hit Arlan for 4 out of his 5 damage boxes. It takes repeater cannons to finally kill the journeyman. The sentinel is left inert, and the centurian's arcane shield vanishes.
The two forge guard on the hill charge the storm lances and kill two. All the other forge guard run forward, positioning for devestation next turn.
(Mercs 0, Cygnar 1)
Cygnar Turn 3
This was the round in which my mistakes got more serious. I was left with a very difficult problem here. There were a lot of forge guard here, very well spread out, and it would only take 2 or 3 of them to deal with a warjack. There were 23 left.
The lone remaining storm lance charges through a forge guard and kills a second, repositioning with a stone formation between himself and the dwarves. The field mechanic leader moves up and reactivates the sentinel, who sacrifices his movement to stand up and then realizes he can do nothing. He's engaged by forge guard so cannot shoot, but can't reach with his shield.
The hammersmith gets just his power-up focus and moves forward, killing two dwarves with his initials, and using beat back on the second attack to move forward and buy an attack to kill a third dwarf. A tactical arcanist moves up and throws fire at some dwarves but fails to harm them.
This is when I realize what was perhaps my largest mistake of the game: not allocating more focus to the centurian and Thorn. They each have only power-up focus and end up taking out one forge guard each. Had they been able to deal with the forge guard in their immediate areas, Dynamo could have used the stack of four focus he'd been given on the earthbreaker instead of dealing with the forge guard. Even still, I was not able to kill enough dwarves to save my jacks. Nemo shot off some chain lightning, but the POW 10s weren't enough and only the ones I boosted damage on killed dwarves. And using 5 focus to kill two forge guard isn't the best use of focus. I'll be analyzing this turn quite a bit in the coming days to determine what I should have done differently.
(Mercs 0, Cygnar 1)
Rhulic Turn 4
The dwarves rush forward and destroy everything that I love.
Dynamo is wrecked. Thorn is wrecked. The hammersmith is wrecked. It's hard to tell in the photos, but I think at some point there used to be another rock formation in the zone, but the forge guard destroyed it just because they couldn't get their hands on enough Cygnaran warjacks. The centurian survives because, pfft - hey, it's a centurian. And the gobber tinker, who I think repaired the hammersmith last turn, is out of position and gives the mercs a point, not that it matters anymore.
(Mercs 1, Cygnar 1)
Cygnar Turn 4
My options are running thin and I begin examining my few remaining paths to victory. The centurian is the only thing I've got left on the board that can hurt the earthbreaker. If that wall wasn't there, then assassination might be a possibility.
The repair crew chief marches up and re-activates the sentinel under jack marshall while the rest of the crew repairs the Centurian back to full. Nemo and a tactical arcanist kill a couple dwarves with fire and lightning.
I'm examining options for the centurian. I've got three, two of which I saw at the time. First, I could have him attack the earthbreaker. He wouldn't wreck it, but he could probably do some decent damage. Second, I could have him go after forge guard, who are my biggest immediate threat. The third option, which I hadn't even seen, is running up towards Ossrum for an assassination attempt next turn. With locomotion, I probably could have run and engaged him.
I opted to go after forge guard. If I could kill enough, the centurian would likely live another round and could maybe deal with the earthbreaker later. I did fail to see that we were running short on time. While we don't play on deathclock (I'd auto-lose) the store closed at 11pm, and that was deathclock enough.
The centurian tramples over one forge guard, hitting but doing no damage. He was then in position to attack and kill three others. I'd committed Rhulicide: there were only six dwarves left on the board. However, the earthbreaker remained unscratched, and Nemo's jacks were mostly gone.
(Mercs 1, Cygnar 1)
Rhulic Turn 5
My opponent must have seen the assassination threat from the centurian that I hadn't last turn, because he ran the bokur up to block the centurian and hid Ossrum on the other side of the earthbreaker. A few forge guard rush the sentinel but fail to kill it, mostly because not all of them were able to get there through the rubble's rough terrain. The earthbreaker lumbers forward and kills an arcanist but fails to kill the gobber tinker.
(Mercs 1, Cygnar 1)
Cygnar Turn 5
With 30 minutes until the store closes, we're ready to call it, but I want to try my hail mary assassination as I could see a way to get five attacks on Ossrum, who was camping two.
I cast three chain lightnings at the earthbreaker, planning to boost damage on two of them when they arced to Ossrum. I also had the gobber tinker's shot and one arcanist flame burst. I should have done the chain lightning first, since it auto-hits and Ossrum wouldn't have been able to dodge away. Had I done this correctly, oddsmachine says it would have been a sweet 2.4% chance of a successful assassination. (LOL!) Instead, I screwed it up.
The gobber went first, walked into Ossrum's back arc, and actually hit with his shot, doing zero damage. Next, the arcanist went and missed, allowing Ossrum to dodge further away from the earthbreaker, which would now mean no e-leaps. I tried to maybe take out the bokur and get one leap into Ossrum, but wasn't able to. This is when we called the game. Victory to the Hammer Dwarves!
Final Thoughts
- The massive turn 4 forge guard alpha that wrecked 43 points of warjacks was the huge turning point. Nemo's best way to deal with infantry is chain lightning, and POW10s don't do much to ARM18 wall-of-steeled forge guard unless they're boosted.
- Had I given focus to the centurian and thorn on turn 3 instead of Dynamo, then Dynamo could probably have shot out three or four forge guard with only his power-up focus, and the other two could have done some work.
- I probably could have been less cautious with my hammersmith and put him in charge range of the earthbreaker earlier. Had the earthbreaker actually charged, I'd have been in a position to retaliate with multiple heavies, and the piece trade would have been in my favor.
- The MVPs on the mercenary side were undoubtedly the forge guard and - of course - the earthbreaker. On Cygnar's side, Dynamo did well to one-round the siege crawler, and the repair crew was especially useful - they must have repaired thirty boxes over the course of the game.
- I played very well early on - I should have forsaken that boosted shot from the journeyman and kept her alive, I should have cast fewer chain lightnings and boosted damage more, and above all I should have allocated to Thorn and the Centurian that one round, and possibly hotswapped lightning shroud onto one of them.
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