Wednesday 09 April, 2008: Warmachine

This week’s Wednesday evening gaming session was given over to the Privateer Press game of Warmachine, based on the Iron Kingdoms role-playing game and adapted into a tabletop war game with an extensive range of 30 mm miniatures. As I said in my last post, this is a new edition to our gaming repertoire. Johnny finally seduced us after a disastrous game of Epic Armageddon in February and it took off from there.

Unfortunately, Olly was a little late in joining us this week due to unforeseen work commitments. Unperturbed, Johnny and I set out to play a quick 350 point game with his Mercenaries, led by their caster Magnus, facing off against a proxied Khador list of mine led by The Butcher. So as to start playing as quickly as possible, we didn’t stop to juggle precise points values but used the warjacks (or just jacks) from our respective army starter boxes. I substituted the starting Khador Caster for the Butcher because he seemed more fun at the time. We chose to play the Mangled Metal scenario, the object of which is to kill the enemy caster. Also, in Mangled Metal games, only a caster and their jacks are allowed, no infantry units or independent characters (known as solos) may be fielded.

Mercenaries (Johnny): Magnus, Mangler, Renegade, Talon.

Khador (Carl): The Butcher, Destroyer, Juggernaut.

Both deployments were unsubtle with us both placing our small forces in clumps in the centre of our deployment zones on opposing sides of the large castle/cathedral which still survived (due to its size and architectural diversity) from the Warhammer game the week before. The two forces edged around to my right hand side of the cathedral and a ferocious close quarters battle broke out. I played rather cagily for Khador, keeping out of charge range and attempting to do some damage with the bombard gun on my Destroyer jack. Eventually however I was unable to hold the mercenaries back any longer and I found myself surrounded by their little jacks. I grinned to myself as I declared the Butcher’s feat. The feat is a special ability that all Casters have and can use once per game. Each Caster’s feat is different and they are usually ludicrously powerful and bizarre powers. The Butcher’s feat is to allow all friendly models near him to roll an extra dice on their damage roles in combat. With their weapons extra sharp, my barely-scratched jacks retaliated. One of his jacks collapsed into a heap of mechano and another tenacious one took a pounding but stayed in the fight. Still Magnus and his remaining jack hung on but when the Butcher clambered over the wrecked jack and focused his energy for a mighty blow with his axe, Magnus was unable to resist. Several bits of him conceded the game. This was my first outing with Khador and I was pleased. They seem more uncomplicated than my main army, Cygnar, and I shall certainly at least experiment with them in the future.

By this time Olly had arrived so we quickly set up for the main game of the evening. Johnny played his main army, which is Cryx (undead guys), Olly used a heavily proxied Menoth (religious fanatics) list, and I continued with Khador (big armoured stuff). I’m very sorry but I can’t remember the army lists properly.

We played a Hordes scenario in which there are a number of fires burning around the board and you must hunt through them to reach the enemy caster. To make the job harder, the fires spread randomly throughout the game and can engulf models or cut you off from either the main battle or the rest of your forces. This is one of the most fun game scenarios I have ever played and we often return to it in our Warmachine moments.

In this game, Olly was at a distinct disadvantage. His deployment zone was sandwiched between mine and Johnny’s and, what with the fires denying us the middle of the board, he experienced a dose of good old pincer attack. He held out remarkably well considering but was pretty much holding off both armies at one point and so could do nothing but crumple. Johnny’s fire spread quickly and effectively cut a reasonable chunk of his force off from the main battle. The Khador army once again did me proud with Cryx pressure from the other side and unlucky dice preventing Menoth from mounting a coherent defence. The Menoth army was driven from the board entirely leaving behind several ruined warjacks. Unfortunately, it was not possible to determine an over all winner as play was curtailed once again by a need to sleep because of work in the morning. Even so, it was a close run thing with the potential to go either way. Again I was pleased with the Khador army which aquitted itself adequately. I used a unit of mechanics who are able to fix warjacks and the few points of damage that my jacks took were almost all removed again by the end of the game. I was also pleased when a Khador Solo, called a Man Hunter, caused 60 points of damage in one turn. Obviously the final damage was much lower than this with the armour of the jack being subtracted but the machine was still torn to pieces by his furious axe blows. I really could come to like this Khador army. They are different from Cygnar in that they are a little more unsubtle. They have their tricks and “buffs” just the same but they seem less complicated. Experimentation will definitely continue.

Next week – which is last week now of course – Warhammer Fantasy Role-play will not happen and Olly and I will have played a game of Warhammer instead. Check back to see how that went.