Butchered

So yeah, I went and had myself an actual warmachine battle yesterday. Considering how infrequently I play the game I'm actually kind of proud of how I did. It was me and my Magnus theme force against Niek and his Khador. We went for a killbox scenario with 2 objectives.

The deployment. Niek's Khador (above) vs my Mercenaries (below).

I've mentioned Niek in a post from august back when we were having a couple of games for a Journeyman League. Niek's brilliant Butcher army is one I've faced before. So far I've never quite been able to win. I've come close a couple of times, but the raw power that is The Butcher Unleashed (the third and most powerful incarnation) keeps catching me off guard. 

The army he used yesterday was something new he was testing. It used a group of 2 devastators and 2 demolishers to block LOS to the Butcher and serve as a very literal wall to his opponent's troops. He also took some pikemen, orrick, corbeau, a wardog, a greylord solo and a gobber tinker (if I recall correctly).

The Butcher stands behind his Clam Wall and some Iron Fang Pikemen.

I was using my old Magnus army. It's a cool feeling to be able to use models that you painted at least 2 or 3 years ago and still have them (kinda) work on the tabletop. True, this army definately needs some extra love and care before it's tournament worthy, but for a casual pickup game in the local store? Why the heck not?

Cuthroats/Saxon Orrick in the woods, a line of Long Gunners, Magnus, Gorman, Jacks and an assortment of Steelheads.

Since we were sort of pressed for time, we went fast into the game. Niek moving his stuff forward almost immediately and after his turn 2, we already had a couple of dead long gunners and halberdiers. I spent my first turn moving forward, setting up and used my cuthroats to take some potshots at one of the butcher's dogs, hoping to take one out early. Unfortunately that didn't work. 

I needed a very good turn 2 to turn things around in my favor and get his caster in a vulnerable position. Which, when you're talking about the Butcher Unleashed behind a wall of devastators, is not an easy thing to do.

End of Niek's Turn 2.

My turn 2 went pretty well despite a couple mistakes in activation order. I'm incredibly rusty after all and still unclear on some of the basic warmachine rules. I wasted a lot of time trying to kill corbeau, while I could've just been killing pikemen. 

Completely forgot about Gorman DiWulfe, who could've made my Mangler's job of denting the clam wall a lot easier. I had a good plan though and with a little luck from the dice I was able to silence the Butcher with Croe and get Magnus behind a wall of his own Jacks, not giving any points away for the scenario.

Oops.

Alas! Once again I underestimated the maelstrom of destruction that is the Butcher Unleashed. Apparently this guy is able to march through his own wall, completely smash a temper metal boosted renegade and hack Magnus apart with focus to spare. 

To be fair, we were pressed for time at that point and with a little more thinking and planning I probably could've foreseen this and positioned Magnus a bit better. At least far enough back that the Butcher wouldn't have been able to reach him after hacking appart one of my jacks. Oh well... Maybe next time. 

All in all it was a great game. I learned a lot and we finished the whole thing just in time for me to make my night shift.

Death to the False Emperor!