Warmachine Journeyman league - week 3

Yesterday was week 3 of the Journeyman League at the Cranfield Conquerors club (temporarily residing in Milton Keynes). For this week we were allowed 25 points but still must include the starter box for your faction. My faction for the campaign is Cryx, so I've got the Deneghra set.

My list for the night:

Deneghra
Slayer
2x Deathrippers
Defiler
Stalker
Skarlock Thrall
6x Banethralls

Game 1

The aim of the game this week is still just kill your opponents caster. The League is meant for new players so it makes sense to keep it simple.

My first game of the night was against Ian Wardle and his Trollbloods.

There was some nice scenery on this board for me to hide things behind and the ghost walk through.

Both our forces moved together and ended up in combat, as is inevitable in this game. I thought he had me on the ropes at the beginning after he killed one of my deathrippers and nearly killed my slayer before I'd managed to do anything to him. But then the rest of my force moved in, my high Def on my bonejacks and stealth on Deneghra and the Banethralls proved to be a problem for Ian and his unlucky rolling was failing to do much damage to me. My units started chomping their way through his trolls without taking much damage. Eventually staring defeat in the face, Ian conceded. While he was greatly outnumbered at the end, I wasn't in a particularly effective position to finish him of quickly. It would have been a protracted exercise with his forces performing a fighting retreat hoping for an opening but with Deneghra having stealth he couldn't shoot me, so it did make some sense as we still had to fight another game that night.

My nearly dead slayer just wouldn't die and just kept punching his big scary beasty in the face, eventually it died.

The Stalkers incredibly high Def of 16 saved it quite a few times, I like this jack.

Game 2

An almost mirror match against Carl Sharman's Cryx. Carl is an experienced player and I'd heard that he had changed his list for fighting against me. The only difference between our lists was that I had the stalker and Skarlock Thrall, he had a Helldiver and a squad of mechanithralls.

Carl has a nicely painted Cryx army, no journeyman points for him for painting models then lol.

After his deployment I used the denied flank tactic that I've practiced well in 40k, his Banethralls with their slow movement then took a while to catch up with events.

It didn't take too long to see that his strategy, or at least part of it, was to sneak in the Helldiver and try to pump out a ton of damage on my caster. The Helldiver is a particularly nasty bit of kit, it burrows underground and can't be hit until it has popped out and starts doing damage. Well it popped out next to my Denegra and promptly failed to kill her, my slayer turned around and gave it what for. 

I forgot that once his chicken hit any further his would be automatic thus negating the high Def of my stalker. He popped his feat, lowered my Def, boosted the first his and then had 2 more automatic hits to finish me off.

Near the beginning of the game we both cast crippling grasp on each other's slayer jacks, lowering most of their stats by 2. This nerfed both our big hitters so we ended up using our bonejacks to do all of the work. Somewhere in the middle of the game we both cast our feats, negating both our force's stats and leading to straight rolls for some things, as he had -2 arm from my feat but I had -2 strength so they both cancelled out. 

Towards the end of the game my Deneghra had fought off a couple of assaults on her successfully and we had both lost a great deal of troops. I made a BIG mistake, I reminded Carl of the killbox as he was measuring his move for his Deneghra, EPIC FAIL! He was just about to move into it! I managed to manoeuvre my Defiler into position to belch forth toxic goo on his Denegra, it did a ton of damage but failed to kill kill her and she shook off the corrosion immediately. He had already sprayed my Deneghra with his Venom spell and I died to corrosion damage after he was running away fast. 

This was an incredibly close game at the end with some real nail biting moments but in the end Carl won. I'm quite glad with my performance though as I'd really thwarted his plans and managed to pull off a nice combo at the end with ghost walk on the Defiler that nearly killed him.

I really need to paint some models now to claim some journeyman points in the league, I've got so much to paint and so little time :|