More Hardcore Practice! Terminus vs. Kromac w/ Pictures!

Since I always want to play more games, and Micah and I haven't had a game in ages, I drove down to his place this morning before work in the lab for some more Hardcore practice. Handy since Micah hasn't had any practice with the short time limits. I forgot my 4'x4' foam boards, so we ended up playing on Micah's ~3'x4' table. We still managed to get the killbox marked on the table, so no biggie. Micah also took lots of great pictures which you'll get to enjoy instead of my crappy sketches.

After we threw down terrain, it looked something like this


We rolled for turns, and Micah won. Sadly, he didn't want first turn... :(. So I unwillingly deployed first. Before we get too far into this, here are the lists of what we played.

Points: 50
Lich Lord Terminus (*4pts)
* Reaper (7pts)
* Seether (9pts)
Bile Thralls (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
Mechanithralls (Leader and 9 Grunts) (5pts)
* 2 Brute Thrall (2pts)
Necrosurgeon & 3 Stitch Thralls (2pts)
Revenant Crew (Leader and 9 Grunts) (9pts)
The Withershadow Combine (5pts)
Captain Rengrave (2pts)
Darragh Wrathe (4pts)
Machine Wraith (1pts)
Machine Wraith (1pts)
Madelyn Corbeau, Ordic Courtesan (2pts)

Points: 50
Kromac the Ravenous (*4pts)
* Argus (4pts)
* Feral Warpwolf (9pts)
* Pureblood Warpwolf (9pts)
* Warpwolf Stalker (10pts)
Druids of Orboros (Leader and 5 Grunts) (7pts)
Tharn Wolfriders (Leader and 2 Grunts) (6pts)
Wolves of Orboros (Leader and 5 Grunts) (4pts)
Druid Wilder (2pts)
Tharn Ravager White Mane (3pts)

I deployed the McThralls in the front row, w/ Biles & Necrosurgeon taking up the 2nd. Then Termy was right behind the front two rows in order to get as far forward as possible. Machine Wraiths & Jacks tok up the wings with Rev Crew & the Combine in the rear. The other assorted solos smunched in wherever they could fit.



Micah deployed his Wolves off to one side, with his Wolfriders & Whitemane on the other, while the Druids took the center to cover the advance for Kromac & his heavies.



With both armies deployed, they proceeded to run headlong at each other.

Turn 1:
Starting with Termy, the Reaper got a focus while the Seether just had the 1 he always gets. Then Termy casts malediction on himself, and "charges" at Kromac. Oh noes! He failed his charge! Everything else runs up. The Mcthralls form up in the front to take the charge, while the Rev Crew bunch up around Termy to be good Sac Pawn targets. Darragh moves up and casts Death ride to fix the spacings a bit, and get more Rev crew in front of Termy. Machine Wraiths end up camped out slightly less than a large base away from Terminus in order to prevent tramples and such. In short, everything runs.




Turn 2:
Micah runs up the Wolves into the forest on his left side, while moving up the Wolfriders and Whitemane on his right side. The Druids walk forward and pop smoke, while Kromac throws Wild Aggression onto the Stalker and Warpath on himself.


So round 1 ended looking like this





Turn 3:
I run stuff up some more, and try and cover any threat lanes to Termy. Not quite close enough to get a Bile onto the Druids or Wolves yet, so I hold off on the feat. Since I have the Seether out on the flank, I run him into melee with the Wolves to prevent them from charging and taking out a bunch of McThralls (and using up more of my time regenerating). He actually failed his command check, so I didn't even need to worry about them! Rengrave ghost shotted at a Druid, but missed. Everything else just tries to set up for next turn while minimizing the damage.


Turn 4:
Micah upkeeps Warpath and Wild Aggression while the Wolves keep quaking in fear of the big bad Seether. He starts by targetting a Machine Wraith with his magical spray, kills 1 McThrall and 2 Rev Crew while 1 McThrall toughs it out. This triggers a Warpath movement on the Stalker, which eyes the growing charge lane to Terminus hungrily. Druids kill the other Machine Wraith, the toughed McThrall, and not much else, but it was enough to get a line for the Stalker to charge Termy. The Stalker charges Termy for free, and warps for Strength. He's only able to get into Reach range of Termy, but that's okay. He's rolling at Dice-5 against Termy this turn, and with 4 fury, manages to put 16 damage onto Terminus. Micah finishes this turn with bare seconds to go without using his extension.

Lots of pics of this turn cause it looked way cool :p









Turn 5:
Time for me to retaliate. I allocate 2 focus to the Reaper so that it can help finish off the Pureblood, while Termy keeps 4 to wreck the Stalker. With Malediction upkept for free by the Combine, the Stalker is only a DEF 12, ARM 15 heavy to deal with. Termy takes it down to 5 life with 3 focus, and pops his feat to nab some souls/ARM this turn. The McThralls charge the Pureblood, and bring it down to 4 life. The biles then walk up, 2 purging on the druids (in order to not hit the Seether) and 1 purging onto a Druid (and nothing else). I still have a heavy sitting in front of a low-life Termy with mere seconds left, so I use my 3-min extension. The Rev Crew charge the Stalker and manage to finish it off thanks to Malediction. Rengrave aims and takes a pot shot at the Pureblood. With a 10, he actually hits it, but only manages 1 damage point. Darragh then activates and closes the hole in front of Termy thanks to Death Ride. Then my time runs out before I can activate the Seether and the Reaper.





Turn 6:
Micah beasts out with Kromac & drops Warpath. The pureblood walks away and dies to a free strike to make room for Kromac to leap. The Argus pushes Kromac forward 1" (although I don't think it was necessary), and then he walks up to the McThralls and leaps into Reach of Termy. 6 Fury and 1 failed Tough roll later, Termy's dead.



My thoughts:
Well, I lost again, but I think I learned a valuable lesson (well, I hope I'll remember it next time). The jacks are there to be much harder to remove than infantry, plus they resolve attacks against other heavies much faster. They shouldn't be on the flanks, but in the middle of the brick being a big pain in the ass.

Micah's thoughts:
Damn why is the Gorax sculpt so ugly. If the resculpt was out by now, I'd have that instead of the Argus/Wolves. Then my Stalker would have killed him on my 2nd turn!

and then I scurried of to the lab.