First Wednesday Night

Went down to my FLGS tonight and had a wonderful time, battling Philodox from PA forums (thanks man!). I'll get the gist of the battle down, but we didn't really keep track of turns or anything.

Me: Khador
Kommander Sorscha
-Destroyer
-Juggernaut
Winterguard Mortar Crew
Manhunter
Total: 349 points

Him: Legion of Everblight
Lylyth
-Carnivean
-Seraph
-Shredder
-Shredder
-Shredder
-Shredder
Total: 358 points

We started off on a standard 4'x4' table, put down terrain, he won initiative and chose to go second. I put my 'jacks and Sorscha on my right, and Mortar and Manhunter on the left. He grouped his stuff mostly together in the center, with Seraph on my left.

First couple turns went by somewhat uneventfully, with my mortar and bombard scattering a lot, and hitting on Shredder for a few points. His Seraph took off to kill my Mortar, and his troops swung to my right, so the Manhunter carefully tried to cross the table diagonally. (At this point it should be noted that he forgot about his power to see through Stealth, and I did not know about it).

As my caster and jacks and his warlock and beasts closed, he used his Carnivean's breath to damage my Juggernaut, just barely reaching with the 8" spray template. This of course filled me with glee - I proceeded to cast Boundless charge on my Juggernaut, and give him the max amount of focus. When the dust settled after 3 or so attacks total, the Carnivean was destroyed (as well as frozen from a crit, for good measure).

About 7" away on the other side of a small rock formation, my Destroyer was facing 4 Shredders, one somewhat hurt. Figuring "Hey, I can take care of the little buggers" I stepped into melee. One round later, the Destroyer had lost movement and Bombard systems, and had only three (3!) boxes left undamaged (One hull, one cortex, one right arm). At this point Sorscha had to step in and freeze the little guys, but it was too late. I definitely learned to respect Shredders.

During all this the Seraph walked over to my Mortar crew, vaporized them, and returned to where the Shredders were, but it took him a long time, being outside Lylyth's control zone. By the time he got there the Shredders expired, thanks only to Sorscha's feat (Which ironically also stopped them from frenzying and killing each other.), and he easily finished off the Destroyer.

While Sorscha was busy exterminating Light Warbeasts, the Juggernaut and the Manhunter were chasing Lylyth away from the action. She fired her bow damaging the 'jack's tough defense, and was finally backed into a corner, facing a free strike from the Manhunter if she were to continue retreating. She dealt out quite a bit of damage in melee, actually disabling movement on the Juggernaut and filling in a lot of boxes, but at this point Sorscha had met up with the melee group, catching Lylyth from behind, and the combined force of the three models finally brought the Herald od Everblight to her knees. (It is also worth mentioning that Sorscha was sneaking up on Lylyth just as much as she was running away from the fast-approaching Seraph)

I really enjoyed the battle, and my opponent said he did as well, so we agreed on having another match soon. We both forgot a couple rules, but it was a learning experience, and I don’t think we missed anything game breaking.

We did a 3 player free-for-all after this game with another Khador player who wielded simply The Butcher, a Marauder, and a Behemoth (!), but unfortunately Philodox had to leave before the game was over. Before he actually reached me and the other Khador player (With the exception of a vicious Seraph spray that took down the better part of the Marauder) Sorscha had already been gutted by the Butcher, and my Juggernaut destroyed. I won’t really do a detailed report as all I did was advance my jacks and caster towards the other Khadoran, shoot a couple times, pop the feat and use tempest, and get my guys killed in melee. That Behemoth is crazy, in melee AND ranged!

Here's my overall experience with each of my units:

Sorscha was a lot of fun to play.

Wind Rush did wonders for her defense and helped her gain a significant edge in mobility, especially for its low cost.

Fog of War made little difference in the game against Legion, and helped a little against the Behemoth’s Bombards, but it was worth the 1 focus of upkeep, until I got into melee range.

I was very pleased with the effectiveness of Tempest, I just need to work on my timing with it.

Last but not least for the spells, boundless charge was a key part in the Juggernaut’s performance – that extra 2” goes a long way with Khadoran ‘jacks.

The impression I got with Sorscha herself was that she is a great caster, but should not be brought to bear as a direct weapon. Against Legion she danced on the outskirts of the battle, buffing and directing the ‘jacks, and that’s definitely where she appeared to be best. Not until the end did I risk charging her into combat, and I don’t think I would ever consider putting her 1 on 1 against another caster with no support.

The Juggernaut performed wonderfully, earning back its point cost and then some in the course of a single great round, and even though I got careless with him in the second game, he is definitely here to stay in my army list. Loading it with 3 focus and giving up spells is definitely a possibility I will have to consider often.

The Destroyer gets a lot of praise, but he felt a little bit middle of the road for me. With the low RAT I needed to get lucky on the scatters, even thought I boosted the attack roll almost every time. His melee skill is definitely strong, but was weak this game due to my poor choices, and my opponent’s excellent ones (See above: Shredders). I think I can get better at using this guy over a few more games.

The Manhunter turned out to be kind of a scarecrow this game. Not to say that he isn’t powerful in close combat, but his greatest asset was threatening the enemy with his skills rather than using them. I look forward to him taking a few more swings at stuff in future games – I was careful to avoid combat until he reached Lylyth, but next time I’ll take the chance to prey on something earlier.

The Mortar Team is sharing the MVP on my team with the Juggernaut. To be specific, I never actually directly hit anything with the mortar. Nor did I do more than a couple points of damage. But the fact is that a 25 point unit caused an 80 point warbeast to go hunt it down for at least 3 rounds is nothing to sneeze at. At 20” and 16 POW, that is a long range, intensely annoying nuisance to deal with. I expect that when facing units of warriors, the mortar will really shine.

Well, hope you’ve enjoyed the battle report and the unit by unit breakdown.

Next game I am looking forward to field a unit of Greylord Ternion in place of the Mortar and Manhunter to see how I feel about them. I was tempted to pick up the Butcher today for some Warcaster variety, but I still feel like I could learn more about Sorscha, and I have enough models to paint for now.

Oh, and right before my games, for the price of $4.84, I picked up a pack of 25 hard plastic card covers (With a red trim for Khador no less! My opponent got white for his Legion as well.) and a fine tipped dry-erase marker. Surprisingly this made my gaming experience a lot more enjoyable.

~Max