I had my very first game of Warmachine this week. I played the local press ganger (a dude who recruits for WM/H) who brought Trollbloods against my Mercenary army. I go to deploy and realize I have no idea what I'm doing, so I got beat in three turns because I played too far back and didn't rush into the center to challenge the objectives. Apparently, WM/H is like the battle of Pearl Harbor.
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They say you should expect to lose your first 20 games or so. Hoo boy! I find it amusing how the guns are supposed to be all killy, but have ranges lower than you could throw a baseball, so they can't be shooting at a very high velocity.
No matter. Judging from the number of comments WM/H posts get on other 40k blogs like 3++, most of you probably don't give a toss so let's talk about this weekend's tournament.
Blackmoor and I played in a highlander team tournament this past Saturday. The highlander format is essentially "there can be only one". So one Chapter Master (Calgar would count as a CM), one Librarian, one squad of Bikers, etc... There is an exception for troops in that you can field a second squad of a particular troop type if you have already take all available troops. So you could take a second squad of Boyz if you already had Boyz and Gretchin.
In this tournament, all teammates were allies of convenience, but were allowed to bring a CAD plus an allied detachment or formation if you could squeeze it in to 1250.
The highlander format cuts down a bit on the nastiness and adds a lot of variety. While I didn't know the missions going in, the TO hinted that first turn charges would be allowed and encouraged, and that there would be two objective missions, meaning one KP mission. With that in mind, here's what I brought:
Be'lakor
Herald of Khorne, Greater, Lesser, Exalted Locus, Juggernaut
10 Daemonettes
12 Horrors
9 Screamers
20 Flesh Hounds
1248
It's a rock list that is hard to remove, which would be good during the KP game, and since it scouts, I figured first turn charges would be easy if he allowed us to scout and charge. Invis on the Hounds, shrouding on the Screamers. Maybe summon in the late game for objective grabs, which I did.
Allan brought a Draigowing with Coteaz, a Storm Raven and Interceptors. We were not allowed to pool our dice. Instead we each got our own pool plus D6, and the opponent got the same, but couldn't combine dice to dispel anything.
The actual rules turned out to be that anyone could assault on the first turn even if they infiltrated or scouted, but the opponent got full BS overwatch. You could also do it after deep striking, so any Daemonettes I summoned got to charge immediately. There is a reason GW doesn't allow this, but everyone knew to expect first turn charges going in, so you'd better build accordingly. Also, there was a KP game, so I guessed correctly on all fronts.
All Lords of War were legal, and you could bring a Revenant Titan, theoretically. No one did, but we did have to kill a Stormsword with its big bad S10, AP1 ignores cover 10" blast. We also downed that one character Knight Titan from the WD (Be'lakor, Screamers, and Hounds with rending from Misfortune cast by Allan.). All super heavies were worth five bonus points if killed. Since we downed three over the course of the day, we had an absurd score at the end.
The second round was the championship round where we faced the only team that could have beaten us. They had Pask in a Punisher with an Executioner, a Stormsword, a Vendetta and some Infantry Squads, Obyron teleporting a bunch of Warriors around the board, and both kinds of Knights. Highlander doesn't completely cut out the nastiness.
The deployment was unusual with all of us in a 12x18" box in opposite corners from our partner. This worked to our advantage since the Knights wouldn't be able to support the IG. We lost the roll to go first and so I volunteered to set up across from the Stormsword. Allan rolled the warlord trait that gives him plus 1 to seize, and with Coteaz, a rerollable 5+ is a 56% chance to pull it off, so he told me to assume we would seize and scout my Hounds towards the IG tanks, daring the big guns. There wasn't much LOS blockage on the board anyway, so I did, and sure enough, the second roll to seize was a five and suddenly Pask is taking 20 invisible Flesh Hounds and a Khorne Herald to the face, the Screamers are shrouded and lined up on the board edge 2" apart, and Allan has rerollable reserves with thunder hammers and psycannons coming in on turn 2 who can charge legally when they get there. Despite all this, they put up a hell of a fight and it was not a total rout.
The Stormsword killed all of two Screamers and an Interceptor before our combined efforts brought it down. A psycannon to the rear armor got the killshot. Allan killed one Knight with Paladins charging off the deep strike, but the explosion scattered right on top of them and wiped them out too. Ah well.
I sent my invisible Screamers at the other Knight and got 5 HP off it before they died. Be'lakor was on his way to finish it off, but we ran out of time before the game ended with us up by a large amount with two dead super heavies, plus first blood, warlord, linebreaker and objective points.
Anyway, this format is quite a lot of fun. I recommend telling your local TO about it because it makes for some interesting games. I don't recommend allowing all lords of war or first turn charges, however.
PS- Invisible Flesh Hounds with Khorne Heralds is sick nasty. Be'lakor does get it done when all goes well. We'll expound on building around him later. Folks have been asking about 1500 point lists. I'll work on it.