Sunday, November 20, 2011

A small battle report... with errors


After my post last night about not being able to play Warmachine, my wife decided to go ahead and give me a small game today before dinner (because she loves me), so we decided to do a 15 point Warmachine battle. The forces were:

  • Adeptis Rahn
  • Discordia
  • Phoenix
  • Arcanist

vs

  • eSkarre
  • Reaper
  • Slayer
  • Satyxis Raiders (full group)

This was the first time I have ever played Retribution, although I had the basics of the rules down, and this was the first time my wife has been playing for a while so she was rusty. There were lots of mistakes to go around.

The first thought through my head when seeing the board was 'I am so boned with Rahn'. I would have felt far more comfortable with almost any other warcaster at the start of the match since Rahn's feat was almost worthless to me. Either way I set up across the board from my wife, intended to make use of her willingness to game with me.

I won first turn, but there was simply no way I was going to get into reach with eSkarre. Everyone ran up the field of battle as far as their feet could take them. Rahn cast Polarity Shield onto Phoenix since I could see that the Raiders were going to run straight forward in hopes of burning my warjack down.

The wife did as expected and everyone moved up the field. Discordia's force field manage to divert a large amount of damage from the Reapers harpoon. Mistake # 1: We assumed that to damage meant to actually cause damage, so did not do the drag ability of the harpoon since the force field negated the damage. This is incorrect. eSkarre used a shot with her hand cannon towards Discordia and missed. 


The Raiders moved forward towards Phoenix, while the Slayer slowly made his way through the forest he was walking through.

My second turn I started off giving Discordia a full array of Focus to use, and charged her forward into eSkarre. I headbutt my wife's warcaster, knocking eSkarre to the ground. At this point Discordia opened up, bring eSkarre down to four health. 


I decided this was as good a turn as any to use Rahn's feat, and I tried to slay eSkarre offhandedly with a Chain Blast spell. I had to draw LoS to the Reaper that was next to eSkarre in order to get the spell off. The first AoE put only a couple points of damage on both the warcaster and the warjack, and the deviation only hit the Reaper. not the best outcome for a feat turn at all.


I charged Phoenix into the Raiders on the other side of the forest. Cryx, being the wily bunch they are, managed to not get hit by a single blow. I was not at all happy about this at all since now I had a group of Feedback lash wielding women knocking on Phoenix's front door.


My wife attacked Discordia with eSkarre and the Reaper, almost destroying Discordias left arm and completely lowering the force field. eSkarre also knocked down Discordia with her Great Rack and chose to push the warjack back one inch.

The Raiders on the other side of the of the fight managed to keep pegging Phoenix, but not enough to actually harm the warjack. Only once did an attack actually hit the force field. Mistake #2: The Feedback from the damage caused to the force field should have hurt Rahn, but like the harpoon, we didn't read it as such. Mistake #3: Wife also forgot to use her CMA ability which would have potentially wrecked Phoenix, and severely wounded/killed Rahn.

The Slayer finally freed itself from the forest and came out behind the Raiders.

My turn started with Phoenix healing the two damage to it's shields and Discordia standing up very unhappy. I went straight back into headbutting eSkarre who was still in melee combat with Discordia, knocking eSkarre to the ground again. This time I finished her with quick slashes of Discordia's weapons. 

Against a much larger force, and because of some rather glaring mistakes on our parts, Rahn and his force came out successful. You might note that the Arcanist wasn't mentioned... That was simply because I could never really find a purpose for him. he simply didn't do anything.

It was a fun little casual game. Found out a few mistakes post combat which we'll have to remember for next time. A few spells that could have been useful right away slipped through our radar, and a few rules we simply misread or forgot. Horrible die rolls on both our parts sure didn't help. It has been a long time since I've seen that many 1's being rolled.

Oh well, live and learn as they say.

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