I managed to get in a couple of games over two weeks, and have made some progress painting–managing to finish up a Cyclops Shaman for my Skorne forces.

The Shaman is a great support and shooting light warbeast for Skorne, and his 5 points brings me to 18/29 for February and 50 points total so far in 2016. 

I was pretty excited about the newest issue #64 of No Quarter as it had a fun Three Player (sorta) mission in it: Fury of the Wurm. The idea of the mission is that the Great Devourer Wurm is striving to break loose, and two factions are battling to contain it in ways that benefit their ends (the original was Circle versus Trollbloods in the fluff). What makes the mission three players is that a third player has an investment in keeping each of the casters alive to a certain point–if the game reaches Turn 7 and both casters are alive, the Wurm player wins the scenario. Otherwise, the player who assassinates the other caster is the winner. The Wurm has two special powers per turn that it can use, all of which hinder and denude both forces’ ability to cause harm to each other. It’s a fun take on a mission, as it gives a different sort of impetus to get to the enemy caster without being to wary with your own.

I fielded 35 points of Skorne led by Void Seer Mordikaar against Colton’s Khador, led by Sorscha2. The battlefield was mostly woods, with three central obstacles–the emerging multitude of maws of the Devourer Wurm itself.

My Bronzeback and Void Spirit flank the cluster of forest, and draw the line of  battle close to the emerging point of the Wurm’s gibbering mouths. 

The might of Khador advances in formation toward the site of danger. So many Winterguard, supported by the Great Bears and two deadly Warjacks in the distance. 

Spacing, my old foe. I got too aggressive with my Warbeasts, and lost both the Bronzeback (to two Warjacks) and the Gladiator (to the Great Bears) in a single round (thanks to Sorscha2’s feat). Leveraging threat was hard in this game because of the unpredictability of decisions being made by the Wurm player (placing huge spots of rough terrain, clouds that blocked line of sight, and simply removing key support models by swallowing them whole.

With both my heavy warbeasts lost, and Mordikaar standing way too close to danger, I had to make a play to assassinate Sorscha2 before it was too late. The good news was, I had a void spirit that had been lurking amidst the magic weapon-less Winterguard. Within Mordikaars control area, it received boosted attack rolls, and with a high MAT and Annihilator to do an extra dice of damage to living models it was able to take a healthy chunk out of Sorscha2 when it charged her. She was on zero focus from powering her Warjacks to reach and take out the Bronzeback, so the hit certainly hurt. Then Mordikaar simply did what he did best: an essence blast spray attack using the Void Spirit ended the game with an assassination of Sorscha2. 

It was a good, fun game, and a fun mission. Mordikaar did as he does best–turn a bad situation into a success, and have his feat counter and blunt the enemy for a turn to give me position advantage. Now to just not get too aggressive with that approach. Finding a way to get a bit more pressure on the Winterguard early would have helped as well.

I also managed to sneak in a quick, smaller-points game against against Kevin’s fledgling Talion Charter force, led by the inestimable Captain Phinneus Shae.

There were some shining moments for the force and their deadly old character cannon, but Morghoul and his rampaging Titan Gladiator proved to be too much for the piratical forces. 

Two good games and at least some painting progress. Pretty good.

366 Points Challenge Progress (2016):

50/366

Battles (Privateer Press):

Overall Totals 2016: 12 (Win/Loss: 8/4/0); 2015: 43 (Win/Loss: 29/14/0)

Skorne:

4 Wins (Butcher, Deneghra, Shae, Sorscha2)/ 1 Loss (Rask)

Cryx:

4 Wins (Caine, Karchev, Skarre, Vlad)  /  3 Losses (Asphyxious, Lylyth2, Goreshade3)

• Warmachine/Hordes