[Warmachine] In the service of the Creator

Hi,

Firstly seasons greetings to all, I hope you've had a nice time. I had a great relaxing day with the family.


My Menoth Army Grows

My Menoth army has been slowly growing, so much so that I've nearly filled the small Army Transport case that they're in. I think I've nearly got everything I want to get (as if gamers ever stop). I just want to add some Wracks (to complement Reznik, and give the High Reclaimer extra focus), a Reckoner (cause they seem cool) and Vilmon (to compliment my 2 paladins).


Although I bought Rhoven and his bodyguards I've never been able to build a list where I'd be tempted to put them in so I'll probably sell them on ebay, but if anyone thinks that's a mistake do pipe up.

Here's a list of what I have so far:

High Reclaimer
Epic Kreoss
Prime Kreoss
Reznik

Vanquisher
3 Crusaders

2 Revengers
2 Repenters
1 Redeemer

10 Flameguard
6 Delivers
6 Errants
5 Bastions
6 Choir

Reclaimer
Knights Exemplar Seneschal
2 Paladins

If I add the reckoner I think I have the models to do various balanced army lists. Do you think I'm missing any crucial elements that something I have can't partially make up for.

Another strange points to my collection is the lack of unit attachments. In most cases when I'm building a list I find that it's better to have more models that have the sometimes situational ability of a unit attachment. Maybe this comes from playing 40k where I'm ruthless in deciding whether to spend points on upgrades. So far in my games I haven't felt that having an unit attachment at the expense of having a smaller army would have been better. Has you playing experience shown you otherwise ? Other fractions unit attachments I can see their worth, but the ones of the units I have seem very meh to me.

The 35 pt list I've been using has performed well, and I think it's more my tactics than the list that needs to improve. Here's the list I'm using let me know what you think of it, particularly any weakness I may not have had exploited yet:

eKreoss -6 pts
2 Crusaders 12 pts
10 Flamerguard 6 pts
6 Errants 5 pts
6 Delivers 5 pts
5 Bastions 8 pts
6 Choir 3 pts
Reclaimer 2 pts


Too Much Aggression Can Kill

My local club had the last week of it's warmachine campaign. To get more games in the last week was just mangled metal, so I took eKreoss, 2 Crusaders & the Fire of Salvation. As I expected it was nasty being on the end of enemy shooting without having any response.

However the biggest learning I got was losing both games I played because I was too aggressive with my warcaster. The temptation to get your warcaster stuck in, especially when they have nice melee skills (such as eKreoss' P+S 14 armour piercing attack), should be avoided in the early game at all costs.

In my second game I was against a Khador list using a Witch with 2 shooting heaviers and a light arc node. I ran the Fire of Salvation into melee range of both the heavies (otherwise they were just moving away and shooting every turn), with a +2 Arm buff I was hoping he'd survive. Next turn I feated and charged one crusader into one heavy and eKreoss and a damaged crusader into the light jack. Kreoss did 19 points of damage to the light jack with his charge attack, and finished it off with the second bonus feat turn attack, leaving the damaged crusader with nothing to do. The other crusader and the damaged fire of salvation with lots of focus did a number on the 2 heavies (killing one and damaging the other significantly).

Although it was nice to do nice damage with the Kreoss the light jack was no threat with a crusader who would get 3 attacks (auto hitting) next to it. Kreoss should have only moved up far enough to make sure he was in feat range. Because of my aggression, even though I was "winning" the game (I had an untouched crusader, and 2 damaged heavies against 1 heavily damaged heavy), my opponent was able to get a charge on my caster with his and with full focus kill him off for the win.


Next steps for the Army

My local club are starting up another campaign in the new year, so I'll be able to get in more games, and there's lots of interest in warmachine at the club with about 8-10 players wanting to plat in the campaign.

I've also bought come resin bases for the army to match the initial battlegroup I bought off ebay, so I'll be working on getting the army painted over the next year (click here to see the company that makes them). Over the next year, as well as painting up my Menoth I'll be starting my second warmachine fraction which is Cryx. As I've got my Menoth in a state where I can play vaious army lists I'll be only assembling what I'm painting for the Cryx to give me an incentive to get them painted.


I'd love to take my Menoth to a tournament next year, but I'll have to see if there's a local one (suggestions appreciated), however my main tournament playing will be with 40k next year.

Rathstar

First Warmachine Games & Initial Thoughts

After dithering on my choice of Warmachine faction (I really like some of the Retribution models) I decided to actually start with one of the 4 main factions, and in my case it was Menoth. The models for the jacks, bastitions and errants caught my eye. I also liked the fact they have to use synergy between their unit abilities to make the best use of their army.

I was lucky in that after winning an auction on ebay for the metal starter set (plus a unit of errants) and posting for army list advice on my local club's forum, I found out that someone at my local club was selling some Menoth models, so I was able to pick up a choir, delivers, flameguard, 2 heavy jacks, 3 light jacks & the high reclaimer for £70. To finish off I won another two auctions on ebay for another crusader and 6 flameguard to finish off the unit.

First Game

My first game of Warmachine was with a 35 point Epic Kreoss list:

Epic Kreoss -6 pt
Crusader 6 pt
Crusader 6 pt
Repenter 4 pt
Temple Flameguard (Officer, Standard, Leader & 9 Grunts) 8 pt
Exemplar Errants (Leader & 5 Grunts) 5 pt
Exemplar Bastions (Leader & 4 Grunts) 8 pt
Reclaimer 2 pt
Choir (Leader & 3 Grunts) 2 pt

I was up against another Menoth list using Amon and loads of light jacks:

Amon -6 pt
4 Dervishes 16 pt
3 Vigilants 12 pt
1 Devout 5 pt
2 Choirs (each consisting of Leader & 3 Grunts) 4 pt
Covenant 2 pt
3 Wracks 1 pt

The game was fun, and was very bloodthirsy on both sides. My flameguard took the brunt of the initial fighting, and Amon's ability to give his jacks +1 to hit and damage for each previous hit in the turn made them very destructive, but it was bit of overkill against my infantry.

When I feated and charged in my crusaders they smashed light jacks easily, and the choir meant that on the further turns my jacks were still hitting the opponents light jacks (even with their poor MAT stat).

One nice combo I did with the flameguard was to put a +3 armour buff on them from kreoss, and trigger the UA's mini feat which game them +4 arm while they were in shield wall formations the turn before they were charged by a few of Amon's jacks

In the end Amon ran out of jacks. I think my opponent list suffered from having too many so that he couldn't give them all enough focus, while I had two heavy jacks which I could give enough focus to to ensure they wrecked which ever light jack they were attacking. I discussed the game with my opponent and he said he should have put a couple of heavy jacks in the list, as his lights lacked the strength to dent my heavy jacks enough before they were wrecked.

I wasn't too impressed with the light jacks (especially considering when it was only 1 or 2 pts more for a crusader). I also liked the abilities of the covenant, but I thought I would try using the models I had before I bought too many more models.

Game 2

The following week I was against a Khador list with widowmakers (stealth snipers), supporting them was eiryss, the mercenary that throws bombs. To bring the hitting power was some troll type models with a character. So overall the army was quite small with the expensive combat troops and all the solos and characters.

I liked my crusaders so much I decided to put 3 into the list, at the expense of the repenter and the flameguard unit attachment. The final list was:

Epic Kreoss -6 pt
Crusader 6 pt
Crusader 6 pt
Crusader 6 pt
Temple Flameguard (Leader & 9 Grunts) 6 pt
Exemplar Errants (Leader & 5 Grunts) 5 pt
Exemplar Bastions (Leader & 4 Grunts) 8 pt
Reclaimer 2 pt
Choir (Leader & 3 Grunts) 2 pt

This game I had to run at the enemy being snipered by the widowmakers. Luckily Kreoss had the spell that if you killed a model in the unit you were knocked down which stopped the widowmakers moving away if they wanted to fire and stopped a character the enemy had from firing twice if he stayed still to get the aiming bonus.

However once I got accross the board the window makers died to combined melee attacks from the remaining flameguard. The enemy combat units were also outnumbered and eventually dragged down by crusaders and bastions.

This game I really lacked any shooting power and facing such a shooty force showed me that I might need to add some firepower to have a more balanced force. I also loved the bastions ability to spread damage, it can keep models in combat from dying by spreading the damage to other models further away from combat or you can just let the models in combat range die to waste the opponents attacks, in my case the front two bastions had been charged by two enemy models, so I let them both die from the first model's attacks by first spreading the damage to other other one and then letting the first one die to the second hits, meaning the other model that had charged the bastions had nothing to kill.

Game Three & Four

For games three and four I decided to drop one of the crusaders to get a min unit of delivers, and with the spare point I increased the choir to 6 models, as a few stray AOEs could easily take out most of the unit and they were essential for buffing the crusaders.

For my third game I played Merc force that spammed AOEs. My first rude awakening was when I advanced forwards ensuring that when my opponent advanced the AOE would still be out of range, only to find out in my opponents shooting phase that AOEs don't automatically miss if they are out of range like in 40k, they just scatter from the maxiumum range.

In the first couple of turns I got a bit lucky with the AOE scatter and didn't lose too many models. The match ended with one crusader smacking some infantry that was next to the other one, allowing the scond crusader to be loaded up with focus from the reclaimer and charge enemy caster and lay the smack down :)

My fourth game was against Circle, my first Hordes opponent. Nasty druids kept pulling my models forwards and backwards. Kreoss' upkeep spell was very useful knocking a few down when they killed flameguard.

The early game changing event was a beast charging my furthest forward bastion. He had an ability to make a full advance after he killed a model (ie. get away from any retribution). After checking the rules I transfered nearly all the damage to the rest of the unit, meaning the beast couldn't get away. One charge from a full focus loaded crusader with choir buff and the beast was dead.

I made a mistake this turn and before I feated and charged the crusader I charged some of the flameguard into another beast that had flamed half the deliverers, so unfortunately they didn't benefit from the feat and didn't do much damage.

Late game, I'd killed most of the infantry and 2 beasts were dead, and still had quite a sizable army left. Unfortunately I strayed to close to the action with my caster, and the druids shot him and dragged him forwards to be charged by an unwounded heavy beast. Even though he'd camped most of his focus, after the attacks I only had 5 hit points left. Counter charging with a crusader and attacking with kreoss failed to kill it.

Note that I had fogotten that Kreoss could do a special action attack that would push the beast back so I could have put models between Kreoss and the beast.

Next turn the beast did the final few hit points and I lost. Point to learn is always be careful of your caster, particularly around units that can move opponents models.

I also made a couple of more mistakes. I left the delivers too far forwards and a beast was able to move forwards and flame most of the unit killing half of them. Better positioning of them would have allowed them to make a much better impact by throwing 5" AOEs into the druids (even though they had stealth such a large AOE would have killed a few). I also left the errants on the right flank away from the action (I was thinking of the mission objective which was to control areas of the battlefield). If they had been able to be more in the action they could easily have helped Kreoss from being killed with their weaponmaster attacks. I think I should concentrate on keeping my caster safe and stopping my opponent from getting the mission objective win above trying to get the mission objective so early.

So far I've had lots of fun playing warmachine, and will definetely be trying to get more games in. Unfortunately the main group of mates I game with are not interested in starting Warmachine, but there's a campaign at my local club which I'm involved in, and a few people in other Berkshire clubs which have started up playing.

The main thing I've learnt is that Menoth is a counter attack army, due to it's slow speed. The cheap flameguard are essential to receive the first enemy attacks. However it is essential that they are not thrown away, and that they are used to ensure that the counter attack is as destructive as possible. If it's timed well and the counter attack is combined with Kreoss' feat it can be game over. However as always you must be careful not to overextend your army in the mopping up process which might put your caster at risk.

What's your thoughts on Warmachine ? Have you got a fraction and what are you thoughts on Menoth ? I've just bought a second fraction, and will be detailing my choice in a future post. What are you favorite fractions, and/or Menoth casters ?

Rathstar

First Steps in Warmachine

I've been getting into Warmachine lately. If you read my previous Warmachine post you'll remember that I was waiting to start Retribution, well things have changed since I last posted.

Years ago before the retribution fraction even existed I bought a Menoth starter set, but with no-one to play against it eventually was sold on ebay. A well painted (but simple color scheme) Menoth army came up on ebay. It was just the starter set plus a unit of errants but the different yet simple (ie. I could copy it) paint scheme inspired me.

Buying the Menoth fraction book I liked the synergy of the units which was essential to overcome the weakness of the jacks; slow as khador but with the armour and damage grids of cygnar.

Luckily for me, when I posting on my local club's forum for list advice someone mentioned they had some Menoth they wanted to sell, so I was able to pick up some more models. The models bought are nicely painted, but I'll have to repaint them to match the the starter I bought off ebay.

With the purchase of a unit of bastions (absolutely gorgeous models, that happen to also be good on the battlefield) I had enough of an army to join my local club's Warmachine campaign. I've played 3 games now (the last of which was the first game of the campaign), and I'm learning loads.

An upcoming post will go through what happened in my first 3 games and what I've learnt so far, plus I think I've found a fraction that really appeals to my playstyle (even more than Menoth) with models that will inspire me to paint them. Can you guess it ?

Rathstar