Warmachine Battle Report: Ashlynn v Absylonia (Mercs v Legion) 30pts

Last week I settled down for my fifth game of Warmachine mkII, once again against my regular opponent Luke. This time, he was paying Legion (at my request) as I've never played with or against Hordes, whether in Prime or mkII. We also played Death-Clock, for much the same reason.

Afterwords, Luke got in a Starter Box game against Ben and we fielded some questions from other members of the local gaming group. It looks like our plan to wean our fellow gamers away from GW and into Warmahordes is definitely paying off. 

No photographs for the second battle report in a row. We were playing in the pub basement again. While it's a great venue for the club, the lighting wasn't made for taking photographs.

My List- Ashlynn/HighBorn 30pts

Ashlynn
-Nomad
-Vanguard
Gun Mages plus UA
-Mule
Max Forgeguard
Reinholdt.

Absylonia:
-Typhon
-Angelius
-Shredder
Min Strider +UA
Strider Deathstalker
Shepherd

Luke won the dice roll and elected to go second to pick some favourable terrain. He sent his Striders through the woods on my left, forgetting that my Gun Mages had True Sight. In the initial exchanges, Luke came off worst, losing several Striders to my Mule and Gun Mages. However, he managed to wipe out my ForgeGuard with some brutal sprays from Typhon. I wasn't particularly bothered, since they were there to act as a bullet shield in the first place but I was surprised at how quickly they went down. Absylonia disrupted my Nomad which I'd positioned just slightly father forward than I'd intended.Luke then charged my Nomad with the Angelius and did some brutal damage. But in so doing, he left Absylonia open to what I thought was a potential assassination from the Gun Mages (not being familiar with Hordes, I hadn't realised just how hard Warlocks are too kill). The end result being that I ended up taking just two boxes off of her. My Vanguard joined the fight against the Angelius but in on the Legions next turn the beasts maxed out their focus to bring down both my jacks. Absylonnia popped her feat to heal them both back up, then killed two Gun Mages (despite Roulette being up) and ate them for full health.

Ashlynn then moved in, dropped all upkeeps (including admonition) and went to work on Absylonia with double-boosted Gallows. She lost 14 out of her 16 boxes and couldn't transfer to a nearby beast because they were all maxed out on fury. Reinholdt had given me two shots with the Handcannon, but I missed once and failed to knock off any boxes with the second shot.

My surviving Gun Mages and the Mule all miss their shots as well.

Next turn, with Admonition down, Absylonia moves in on full Fury and slaughters Ashlynn. Luke has about six minutes left on the clock. I have more than twenty.

Learning Points:
*Typhon has THREE Sprays.
*Might have been better to knock down Absylonia with double boosted Twister rather than dragging her with gallows (leaving me with two focus) and THEN shooting her with boosted damage Hand Cannons while she was down.
*Absylonia has an AoE Disruption.
* REMEMBER Warlocks can transfer.

Since then, I've played two more practice games, using pVlhad and pSorscha as my Casters. Normally I would keep playing a single caster (Ashlynn) for a good dozen games while I got to know how she plays, but I need to swap out casters and factions from time to time in order to keep things fresh for Luke, my regular opponent.

I lost the pVlahd game against Luke's eCaine, but won a pSorscha Battle-box game against Ben's pStryker.