OOPS

'oops' seems to punctuate too many of my games of late, a series of commas and a full-stop delineating the end of a verbose and grammatically fucked sequence of herpa-derp moves.

At least I can have fun while doing it ^_^

Instead of rolling out the Rasheth bus, I ended up using the revised Zaal list mentioned in the previous post. My opponent was Chas Roberts, a man of epic proportions and immense good vibes. He's pretty much the personification of this:

God gave a thumbs up and he named it Chas

He also runs Cygnar, and I didn't fancy my luck chucking a chain-gang list at either pHaley or Sturgis. In reflection, Rasheth would have been fine against the Sturgis list he faced me with, but I still think Zaal was the better choice for either match up. I could be horribly wrong? Maybe beasts and heavy infantry really is the way to go? Bugger.

In any case, he brought a Stormwall, two full units of Forgeguard, pAlexia, Lanyssa Rassum-rassul-something, the Black 13, squire, Rupert, Ragman, and a journeyman.

And we set up on a table with a goddamned water feature in the middle of everything.

First Oops.

Turn one we run shit up, I kind of traffic jam myself a little and pull stupid charging stunts to get an Extoller up far enough to dump souls into Hakaar who I decided would be fine to run up from the AD line before anything else. Oops 2.0. Also charged up Zaal to get Inviolable Resolve out on him, so now my spearheading Character Ancestral Guardian is sitting at Armour 23. other stuff dances around the way, and then the responding Cygnar run up and get Arcane Shield bullshit out etc etc so on and so forth.

Turn two consists of me setting up by trying to swing to my left away from the enemy zone a bit: I figured my deployment was a bit shit, but I had accidentally manufactured a move where I could contest his zone easily, but otherwise forget about the Forgeguard and Black 13 who had set up over there, while I concentrated on my zone and the forces Chas had there which included Sturgis as well. Aha! A feint! Good thing there isn't a large terrain feature that'll slow or complicate my advance! Oh wait.

Lake Sturgeonis 

Turn two for Cygnar rolls around and the pain was brought - it was kind of hilarious that the Journeyman had to cap a dwarf to open a gap for Lanyssa to poke her head through to slap Hakaar with a hunter's mark. He goes down to two dwarf swings and out pops Kovass with three souls ready to go. The other dwarves whack-a-mole a few Immortals, and that's pretty much them done. The Stormwall pumps a shot into one of my Ancestral Guardians and rolls frikkin box cars for damage leaving it on one box. I began removing the model before doing the math, but fucking hell... 

From there, covering fire templates were placed, and then it was time for Sturgis to go; charging a storm pod I didn't even notice was there (so ninja), Sturgis feated and started pulling my models around. 5 Swordsmen died to being dragged through the covering fire templates, and other stuff was jostled around. Sturgis then whacked the storm pod and put Kovass into the dirt. After teleporting back behind a wall the Black 13th drifted that 4" plate of doom onto a couple more Swordsmen, and the turn was passed over.

My turn three things weren't looking great; both my units were sitting at 50% or below, and I otherwise had my light beasts and solos to try and manufacture something. But things were too spread out and there was still that piece of shit lake in the middle of everything to contend with. OOPS OOPS OOPS. There was the chance to get a Savage into Sturgis though, with only a few dwarves, Ragman and a Squire in my way. Vengeance moves from the Immortals actually dusted more dwarves then they had any right doing, and I then began the process of clearing the lane to deliver my Savage; and Extoller and Zaal tried to shoot him down, but little did I know that Ragman can sac-pawn shots into Warcasters (Sturgis on ARM 21 doesn't mind getting tickled by Extoller zappy rays). Popping feat, one Savage made his way over to bop a few dwarves on the head and clear a lane for the immortals to finish what Zaal and the Extoller started. After committing three immortals to Ragman and another two to the squire, I thought I had enough of a lane to Sturgis. 

Here's the big OOPS; there's still a dwarf there with reach that I thought wasn't a problem. It wasn't until halfway through all this that I realised he had to go, after I decided it wasn't necessary to boost a damage roll from the one immortal next to him. I had also blocked myself out of getting to the offending Forgeguard with any of my other units. The Savage was going to have to eat a weapon-master free-strike. Good thing for Chas his dice were on fire tonight and rolled a 20 on four dice, one shotting my Last-Standed Savage under feat. I called it there because it would be a simple matter for his force to mop up what was left, and I would have squat to retaliate with.

For fun I rolled out the attacks from the Savage, and if he had got there Sturgis would be cyclops fodder. Chas also discussed how there was no reason for him to be where he was either, where he could have just teleported back out of the Savage's 11" threat range, and indeed the situation would be the same for me - I guess my beasts could have gone to town on his units and secured me that zone, and in tournament play that's what I probably would do if the assassination opportunity wasn't there.

Still, I walked away from that game feeling happier about the beast load out and the ratio of that against how many units I had. I left that game feeling more confident about how the list plays despite the loss and the confounding terrain. It feels like this list will grind and practically kamikaze itself against the opponent, in order to deliver a fully boosted Savage, Ancestral Guardian, or Kovass into the caster. if that's the case, my beasts and solos need to work in a tighter group, so deployment is going to be the next thing I work on.

And I'll get around to using that Rasheth list some day. oops.

PS: I really want that second unit of Immortals. Stupid POW12 shit killing my stuff grumble grumble