We did not play a scenario, my opponent had his daughter with him (who not only rolled all his dice, but was rolling well!) so we just played a friendly game.
The list he brought was:
Maelok, the Dreadbound
* Bull Snapper
* Blackhide Wrastler
* Ironback Spitter
Gatormen Posse (Leader and 4 Grunts)
Gatormen Posse (Leader and 4 Grunts)
Spellstarved Thrullg (League Model)
He won the roll, but opted to go second, so I deployed first. I put Maxwell Finn and the Sluggers on my left flank. Jarl, the Mauler, Impaler, Trollses, and Krielstone Bearer + UA were deployed a little more centrally, with the Secluded Savage to their right, looking to punish anything that came in. The Scouts and Chronicler decided to attempt an extreme flanking maneuver to my right.
My opponent deployed most of his units dead center with a unit of Posse leading the way, trailed by the Wrastler and Spitter. Thrullg was deployed on my opponent's right (my left) facing the Sluggers.
My turn one:
The Scouts activated and advanced, then the Chronicler brought up the back and gave them Concealment (which does not trigger Prowl unfortunately). Maxwell Finn ran forward, and now in LoS of all the Sluggers, they charged him (using Relentless Charge) to setup in some Rough Terrain. The Mauler moved cautiously forward, wary of threat ranges on the Posse facing him, the Impaler came up and put Far Strike on Jarl. Jarl moved forward (keeping charge lanes blocked) cast Magic Bullet and shot a Posse member, failed to kill him, Magic Bullet'ed the same model, STILL failed to kill him, took his second shot and finally managed to drop him. Stone moved up and popped aura (+STR as I did not realize the Spitter caused Corrosion).
His turn one:
I learned two very important lessons:
- The Spitter causes Corrosion!
- I had SERIOUSLY underestimated the threat ranges on his Posse.
He activated Maelok, through out some buffs and Revives his destroyed Posse Member, after which the Spitter moved up, boosted to hit, and launched his AoE on the Krielstone Bearer (catching the Bearer and 2 Scribes). AoE killed 1 of the Scribes, Bearer and the second Scribe lived, but had the Corrosion effect on them. His next move was to charge the Mauler with the first Posse group, but only three make it into Melee (the second Posse group was keeping my Scouts in check; not wanting to charge in, but keeping the Scouts from having juicy targets). Snapper also puts his animus on Maelok.
Mauler takes some damage, but doesn't lose any aspects.
My turn two:
At this point it was time to see what the Sluggers could do. They could see Finn still, so they were a RAT 7, they sac'd their Movement and aimed, bringing the 5 of them to a D3 shots, now at RAT 9 versus the remaining 2 Posse members. 3 were in range of Posse Member 4, and 1 + Finn were in range of Posse Member 5. Shots did not go as well as you would have expected based on averages. I managed to kill Posse member 5, but left #4 with 1 box, which meant...
His turn two:
Snapper frenzies and hits Maelok for 4. Maelok moves up, and revives a Posse member from the forward unit. He throws Death Pact on the Wrastler, who moves up again, but does not get into range on anything. The forward Posse unit charges again, this time one going at the Impaler and the other going after the Secluded Savage. They kill the Savage and put some hurt on the Imapler.
2nd Posse/Scouts continue to have their standoff. I am just outside of his range, but if he moves toward those Scouts they will counter-charge next turn. Bull Snapper puts his animus on Maelok and the Spitter, well, spits. He hits the Impaler, does some solid damage and kills him.
My turn three:
Stonebearer succumbs to Corrosion. At this point I have lost one of my two beasts and I have Posse members in my grill with a Wrastler coming behind them. The Posse member that killed the Impaler is close enough to the Mauler that he can't charge the Wrastler without taking a free strike, and he is still hurt enough that I am concerned a good damage roll will end him, so instead he eats that Posse member and gets his d3 back.
Finn activates and realizes Thrullg is nice and close. He sac's movement, and gets 2 shots that turn, which is all it takes to remove Thrullg. The Sluggers follow suit, all targeting the Wrastler, and despite getting a large number of shots, are at Dice minus 8 for damage. They drops some 1s and 2s on him but don't do anything substantial. Jarl casts Magic Bullet on himself, shoots at the final Posse member from the front group, misses, shoots again and misses. At that point he buys two more attacks for 1 Fury and misses for a third time in a row, finally hitting (and killing) the Gator. He moves 2" away from the Wrastler and pops feat.
So it turns out I didn't know how Cloud Effects and targeting worked. I centered my clouds on models I wanted to protect, but then found out that if they are in the cloud they are targetable, the clouds only block LOS from one side of it to the other. Live (or don't) and learn.
His turn three:
Bull Snapper makes a Frenzy check, fails, and charges Maelok in the back doing 14 damage; Maelok transfers to that same Snapper. Maelok pops feat, puts Death Pact on himself, and moves forward.
Wrastler charges the Mauler, and drops him on the first hit. Second Gatorman Posse runs from the back of my opponent's half to mid-table.
Everything else is too far away/does not have LOS, so his turn ends.
My turn four:
Jarl moves forward and cuts himself for 4 to bring himself to full, hoping to end Maelok (who is down to 1 Fury). At this point, Maelok is DEF 14/ARM 21 with 13 Boxes on him still. Based on averages, Jarl's best option (at Dice minus 9) was to hope to land 4 shots, with 3 of those Boosted, doing an average of 4 damage. I don't remember the exact numbers, but things worked out a bit better, Maelok had ~7 boxes left. The Sluggers move forward and take 1 shot each at Dice -8, but they could not close the deal. The Scouts charged Maelok (who was out of range), but got their Assault throw, only two were in dange, but at Dice minus 10 they couldn't put any boxes on him.
His turn five:
Wrastler charges Jarl, Jarl fails his Tough roll.
Thoughts:
I made some pretty big mistakes in this game. That said, I think I learned from all of them. I was playing a bit too conservatively, part of that is because most of my experience being with Calandra, and the other part is probably missing my 12 Fennblades between the enemy and my caster.
This was also my first game against Blindwater, so there was a lot of things that I did not expect (which I enjoy) and I think next time I would be more prepared for some of the things that caught me offguard. Running those Scouts up the flank was good and bad. On one hand, they tied up a 9pt unit for literally the entire game, but that was 7 points committed to doing that (Scouts + Chronicler). If I had kept them closer to home, they could have laid down a bit of smack between Gang, the +1 Str from the Krielstone UA. That would have given them an Assault throw at POW14, and a followup Melee Charge attack at P+S14. I don't know how things would have changed, but I feel like they would have earned more than 5 points of tradeoff.
Finally, the table had no Forests. This list is not a permanent list, but I wrote it based on the Thornwood Fluff/Scenarios, and when not playing them, all of the Camouflage and Prowl was wasted.
Moving Forward:
I wasn't a huge fan of the Runebearer, which is to really say, I was not a fan of how I played him. I didn't do any Quicken shenanigans or anything like that. All that said, I think versus Hordes I will probably bring out Alten Ashey, and keep Trollses in there for vs. Warmachine.
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