The Motherland is thrown from the Thornwood

So, I brought The Jarl List to the FLGS last night, and as my mortal enemy good friend is thinking about getting in to Khador, so he had a 50pt list that was mostly proxies.  I am not a huge fan of proxies of course, but I understand the need in circumstances like this.  Just keep that in mind as you check out a few of the photos.  We decided to play Incursion.

His List:

Kommandant Irusk
* Spriggan
* Sylys Wyshnalyrr, the Seeker
Cylena Raefyll & Nyss Hunters (Cylena and 9 Grunts)
* Koldun Kapitan Valachev
Doom Reavers (Leader and 5 Grunts)
* Greylord Escort
Iron Fang Pikemen (Leader and 9 Grunts)
* Iron Fang Pikemen Officer & Standard
Man-o-war Kovnik
* Demolisher
Manhunter

My opponent won the roll and opted to go first.  Doomreavers and the Greylord Escort ran to the flag on my left, IFP advanced into Shield Wall toward the middle flag with Irusk, the Spriggan and Sylys in tow.  The MoW Kovnik and Demolisher played shortstop between the middle flag and the flag on my right.  Finally, he sent the Nyss Hunters & Valachev to the flag on my right.

I deployed placing my bets on the flag on my right disappearing.  My first objective was to clear the Doomreavers and Greylord Escort.  My Fennblades were on the 10" line, so I knew that if I cast Quicken on them and mini-feated they could charge 13" and threaten to 15" which would bring them right to the Doomreavers, but not the Escort. Doomreavers are enough of an issue, I didn't want to let them keep Tough.  One thing was for sure, I did not want to be on the receiving end of a Doomreaver charge.

I took a look at the board and felt like my best bet was to take the Escort out first first.  Doing some quick control zone measuring with Jarl, I found my answer.  The Troll Runebearer activated first and used Power Glyphs to cast one of Jarl's spells, Quicken, on Jarl himself.  After that was done, he moved up a bit.  The Impaler activated next, moved out of Jarl's way and cast Far Strike on Jarl.  Jarl himself then activated and advanced 8" cast Magic Bullet on himself, followed by declaring a ranged attack at a Doomreaver, measured distance and found him at about the 14" mark.  Jarl boosted the hit on the Doomreaver (killed) as I really needed that Magic Bullet to go off. Hindsight Mistake #1: I thought that Magic Bullet was a Magic Attack with an unboostable Damage roll, and as such I boosted the hit on the Greylord Escort; it actually autohits and I am a moron.  I put 4 damage on the Escort, but that wasn't enough to kill him.  At this point I had a hard decision, I could cast Magic Bullet again and shoot again, looking for the Escort kill, or I could cast Quicken on the Fennblades and charge the Doomreavers.  I decided to drop the second Magic Bullet, targeting a Doomreaver 16" away, killed it, and bounced it to the Escort again, killing the Escort.

At this point, the Fennblades couldn't get a charge off on the Doomreavers, and would be Doomreaver chow next turn, so I did what I thought was pretty much the only valid move there, I ran them into melee range of the Doomreavers.  This accomplished a couple things, it brought me into contest range of two flags, the one on my left and the center flag, brought the skirmish line to the middle of the table, and controlled how I took the Doomreaver attacks.  Tuffalo followed them, setting up as a second wave, or charging through them on Feat Turn.  Horthol moved up mid-field looking for opportunities to... well, be Horthol.  He also blocked some line of sight from the Nyss to 0 Fury Jarl.  Janissa moved up and dropped a wall incase those Ironfang Pikeman has shenanigans/additional Defense for Jarl.  Earthborn set up a charge at the right flag if it stayed in play and riled for 2, Bomber smiled at the Nyss but riled for 2 instead of, y'know, killing some (Hindsight Mistake #2).

We rolled flag removal and lost the middle flag, because that is how Incursion always seems to happen.

By the end of turn 1, things looked like this:

My opponent's hand is covering pIrusk (who was proxied by pBaldur) and Wysh (proxied by Druid Wilder).

Second turn saw some heavy damage to the Fennblades, which was expected; on a special note, they probably toughed 80% of the attacks that came their way this turn.  My Tough rolls never go that well, and it certainly was nice to see a tarpit unit be a tarpit unit.My oppoent moved up and Feated, making everything but some of the Nyss and all of the remaining Doomreavers Super Tough (4, 5, or 6) and Immune to Knockdown.  With that he passed the turn to me, and my Fennblades were down to just the Officer and the Drummer.

I took my second turn, moving my Fennblade Officer over to the nearest Doomreaver and killed him with my Vengeance attack.  After that I activated the Fennblades, charges the Officer at the Manhunter and dropped him while the Drummer, a trooper to the end, put himself in harm's way to slow down any advancing units.  Next up was the Longriders, they charged the last of the Doomreavers, but due to positioning couldn't get to one, even with Reach.  They dirtnapped what they hit, Impaler put Far Strike on Jarl, then Jarl cast Quicken on the Bomber and then advanced up (instead of running to dominate unfortunately) and shot the last Doomreaver contesting the flag.  The Bomber walked forward his 7 and threw a bomb at pIrusk falling .5" short of him, deviation didn't do much; through a second bomb, same story.  Earthborn hung back, ready to charge if my opponent tried to bring pIrusk over to dominate the flag on my right.

Horthol charged the Iron Fleshed IFP; who were Def 16/Arm 19, Super Tough and couldn't be Knocked Down.  He didn't manage to kill anyone, thanks to Super Tough.  Janissa walked forward and put up a wall.  I looked down and said "Man!  This would be a great time to feat... damnit!" (Hindsight Mistake #3).  I pass the turn to my opponent, we both score a Control Point.

The best thing to happen to me this in Turn 3 was Horthol.  It took both Warjack's activation, pIrusk, and half the IFP to take him down from Mounted to dead.  He moved some more of the IFP into contesting position for the flag on my left.  The Nyss dropped 8 damage on the Bomber but stayed near their flag.  He ended his turn and scored his second control point, but none for me due to contesting, so it was now 2-1.

I had to redo my turn 3 as  (Hindsight Mistake #4) I forgot to heal my Bomber, who was missing his Spirit, but was boosting shots on pIrusk, so what follows is the results of that.  Jarl activates, heals the Bomber, grabs the Impaler animus, walks up on to a hill and takes a shot at pIrusk with boosted hit and damage and puts a bit of damage on the Pride of the Motherland, leaving Irusk with 7 health.  Bomber walks forward, boost his first barrel, needs a 10 to hit on 3 dice and misses.  Bomber buys an attack, boosts the hit, needs a 10 on 3 dice and... hits.  Boosts the damage, needing 7 on 3 dice to end the game and the dice come up with a 9, bringing the reign of terror in the Thornwood to an end.  Here is how the table looked when all was said and done: