Despite my prior post discussing that my focus lately was Skorne, my first battle report on this site (after migrating) happens to be Menoth. This clash was a 50 point rumble between Dan’s immaculately painted Retribution of Scyrah force and my Protectorate of Menoth army. I wanted to field the Menoth because a team tournament is coming up in early November that I’m entering. I’m leaning toward bringing my Skorne to the tournament, but I wanted to give one last “check” on whether I felt like rushing the painting on my Menoth made sense instead.

Dan’s force was the brutal tier four “Force Wall” tier list using Kaelyssa. Not only does it deny running or charging on the first turn, but on her feat turn she prevents even more charging. My force was led by High Executioner Reznik, meaning that both forces had Witch Hound in effect–magic users could expect some nastiness. 

Dan’s Force Wall, looking impressive on the field. Two units of Battle Mages a bunch of light skirmishing warjacks and a fair number of heavies, plus an abundance of free (thanks to tier) Arcanists to power all the jacks. 

 My force, in crude and partially painted fashion (ugh). Reznik was accompanied by a pair of Crusaders, a Castigator, and a Revenger. Then there was the throng of infantry followers: Holy Zealots with a Monolith Bearer, Exemplar Cinerators, Deliverers, and the ubiquitous Choir. It was rounded out with a Vassal Mechanik, a Reclaimer, the Covenant of Menoth, and Reznik’s favorite: three Wracks. 

Kaelyssa’s force is difficult to face because it is so focus-effective and it puts so much pressure on the opponent in an objectives game like this one (three objectives, playing to seven points). With the first turn slow-down, and then a later turn of charge protection, it stole three quick points on turn two before my Menoth were even up close. Only my Holy Zealots were able to get anywhere near the objective. And while they were resilient with their devotions and monolith, there was no way they were shifting a unit of Battle Mages and an Arcanist-supported Griffon.

Thus, my immediate strategy went to ignoring the objectives and just going for the caster kill. I still had to play somewhat to the objectives, so that the elves wouldn’t bunch up and provide Kaelyssa with more defense via obstructed charge lanes. But I knew that any chance of scenario win was unlikely at best. The Deliverers, supported by the Reclaimer and the Covenant actually managed to triumph over the Battle Mages that they ran up to meet. As the Deliverers started dying to the enemy infantry, the Reclaimer got soul tokens and his Soulstorm ability started burning the foes down in retribution.

Reznik’s spells and abilities proved to be decisive in balancing the battle for my force. Kaelyssa had slowed my force down with her feat, and was laying down patches of rough terrain with her Rift spell. Thus, I got my warjacks into a loose line across the middle where she needed to target them with the Rifts to slow their advance down. Although the Castigator and a Crusader were in combat with two Manticore heavies, once Kaelyssa targeted a  different battlegroup jack with the Rift, Reznik’s Witch Hound ability activated and I took a free strike from the relatively crippled Manticore to burst the Crusader into the back ranks. With their Warcaster hanging in the breeze against a Choir-fueled, Inferno Mace-wielding Heavy, the Elves had to scramble warjacks and other models to block its assault. When it got back to my turn, Reznik sucked the remaining Wracks of focus which gave him enough to load up the Revenger with focus, buff it with Iron Aggression, and advance it with his Perdition spell (toward a convenient close Arcanist). With the Choir chanting the hymns of battle, it rushed right into Kaelyssa and demolished her to very narrowly win me the game.

Overall I was greatly helped by terrible dice rolls by my opponent (his Battle Mages seem utterly cursed to never connect in their attacks–no matter what number they needed, they seemed to roll one less, except when killing a few Deliverers). I was also really lucky to have just the right movement abilities and spells with my caster, as the objective points stood at 5 for Dan and 0 for me at that point in the game–he would have won the next turn by scenario if I hadn’t pulled off the assassination when I did. That’s just how brutal the Force Wall tier list is to face… double so with a slow force with minimal shooting like I brought.

I was glad to get a chance to test Reznik out, and I think he’s my favorite of the Menoth Warcasters in terms of theme and story. I know that he’s got some major weaknesses, but this battle at least was a spot where he could play to his strengths. That said, I decided that I’m going to focus on preparing my Skorne for the November doubles tournament. With Menoth, I’d really only have one list–mostly the same models and just swapping between two Warcasters. With Skorne I can field two far more dynamic lists that can adjust to opponents more effectively. So expect more purple from here on out.

Speaking of purple, I also finished up my Bronzeback Titan for my Skorne force. Dan built a cool new water tower scenery piece from a laser-cut wood kit he got from Australia, so I figured a combo photo shoot would be nice. 

I keep a running tally of my Warmachine/Hordes wins and losses, as well as which generals I’ve faced before (in both solo, team, and multi-player games). I figured I might as well continue that tally here.

Battles (Privateer Press):
Overall Total 2015: 16 (Win/Loss: 13/3/0)

Skorne:
6 Wins (Fiona, Sorscha, eMorvahna, Ossrum, Borka, Kaelyssa, and Stryker)
2 Losses (Kromac, Kaelyssa, Kaya)

Protectorate of Menoth:
3 Wins (eMorvahna, Kaelyssa)
0 Losses

Legion of Everblight:
4 Wins (eCaine, Kaya, Sorscha)

1 Loss (Fiona)

Author’s note: It was finally time to migrate my gaming onto one single blog for simplicity’s sake (and because of my shiny new domain). The first few posts here will be combination posts that summarize my prior blogs. They’ll be maintained, but all new posts will happen on this site. You can check out all the older stuff at my 40k Blog, my Warmachine/Hordes and Pathfinder Blog, and my Warhammer Fantasy Blog–but be sure to follow this site for the one-source thoughts, comments, and records of all my gaming. 

I’m a bit of a Warmachine/Hordes fan (as followers of this blog will find out), so I can’t resist putting up a few photos of my models from my three main factions onto this blog. Currently, I’m focusing on my Skorne and Protectorate of Menoth armies. I also have a somewhat sizeable Legion of Everblight force that I’m holding onto, and a small demo set of Circle of Orboros for teaching people how to play Hordes. In the past I had a decent-sized Khador army, a small Trollbloods contingent, and a relatively huge Cryx force–all of those have migrated to new homes now.

Skorne

My Skorne are probably what I consider my “main” faction currently. I’ve got more than a few warbeasts painted up and I’m finishing some more infantry and support pieces. But I’m also oddly mad about collecting all of their warcasters. My plan is for casual games to get a carnival spinner, and bring general lists–then right before the battle spin the “Wheel! Of! Skorne!” to see which warlock I’ll have to field at random. My distinct problem is liking them all too much–so one of each named character is high on my list of “things to finish”.

My newest Warlock addition: Void Seer Mordikaar. The lanterns light with the souls of the fallen to power his cruel magics. I’m still working on painting some units to accompany him on the field. 

Another of my Skorne Warcasters, Lord Assassin Morghoul. Here he’s in a bit of dire jeopardy from a recent three-player game: he got knocked down and then finished off by a charging Retribution Arcanist. What an ignoble fate…

My Skorne beasts and infantry face down some advancing Circle warbeasts–a lovely paint job by my pal Roger. I went with a pretty standard Skorne color scheme, and just swapped the deep red for a dull purple.

My Cyclops Brute dealing with the push-and-pull of Dan’s amazing Retribution Battle Mages. Skorne has such variety in the warbeasts that they’re a fun faction to paint and model. 

The Void Spirit shows the color scheme I’m using for “magical effects”–all the gems on warlocks and energy elements of the army will be in varied yellow tones. 

Protectorate of Menoth

I’m hardly as far along with my Menoth painting as my Skorne painting, so you’ll see far fewer of these models until I get more work done. I’m going for a “religious anarchists” theme, of neutral colors with bright red menofixes (the cross-like symbols on all the models). I’m also going with a non-standard Warjack colors (browns and dull oranges) and using greytones instead of metallic paints for the metal bits of the army.

The Monolith Bearer is such a silly-cool model I had to include a picture of him. He shows the tones of the infantry pretty well, and the striking reds of the menofixes and the dust-masks of the models. 

And of course, I got my Wracks painted up right away. What good is playing the “religious anarchists” if you don’t add in their modes of torturing their foes? 

Legion of Everblight

I’m just sticking one photo in here to show the color scheme I’m using for my warbeasts. While I have a fair-sized force painted up (three heavies, four lessers, four different warlocks, and the Throne battle engine) and some more to assemble, I’m a lot less enthused with Everblight than the other two forces so expect them to be a bit more rare in the posts of this site than the others.

My Scythean blades its way through my buddy Stu’s immaculately painted Cygnar forces