That. Was. Awesome.

So, it happened.

I finally got in my first game with a full painted Menoth Army.  Not only that, but I got to experience a really interesting scenario. 

I came into my LGS to try for a pickup game tonight and found out that they were wrapping up an escalation league.  There were perhaps 12-15 Warmahordes players present.  So, I watched for a bit until the store owner noticed I was there.  I do a lot of commission work for him and he knew I wanted to get in a game tonight, so he asked a player if he could spare some time.  We were about to start a game when I was instead invited to be a part of a special scenario game meant to cap off the league and man was it a scenario.

The league organizer developed a scenario where a giant monolith dominated the center of the board.  It was on a very large base, perhaps a an inch of radius or so bigger than a battle engine base.  It had quote a few super nasty stats include 120 damage boxes. Three players deployed in corners of the table and had the task of destroying the monolith and acted as friendly faction models for the task.  The monolith had some punishing special attacks that used energy, not focus or fury, so it couldn't be stopped in any way.  The only issue is that it didn't have enough energy to do enough damage to all of the forces arrayed against it and it's seemingly large quantity of damage boxes went pretty quickly when a fully charged Mulg got swinging on it.  The other interesting aspect of the game revolved around the list.  Each player had two warcasters or warlocks and they shared a 15 point list + their jack/warbeast points. 

I took: pSeverius and pKreoss with the Avatar, a Crusader, a Revenger, a min Choir, and 3 Wracks. 

So, the three allied players, a Trollbloods player, a Skorne player, and my Menoth managed to easily take down the monolith in two turns.  However, the twist came when the league organizer revealed that once the monolith was destroyed, the three allies cut all ties and sought to destroy each other's casters with only one army left standing.

This is when the series of events swung severely into my favor. 

1) The monolith had a power where if it made its attack rolls, it could take over the movement and action of the model hit in its next activation, even if destroyed.  It managed to take over both a bronzeback and Molik Karn from the Skorne player.  In his second turn, the Skorne player suicided his Naaresh and then his other caster, both out of spite and to prevent the monolith player from using his own warbeasts on him.  This effectively took him out of the game immediately. 

2) We took turns in a clockwise fashion and the monolith was destroyed on the Skorne player's turn, which meant that he eliminated that threat and himself right before handing the game over to me. 

3) The Trollblood player moved forward aggressively to help with the monolith exposing his two warcasters to my army.

4) My army was delayed due to an attack from the monolith that created impassable terrain features.  This caused me to have a fairly good line of sight and distance to the Trollblood player's army.

So, in my turn, I had a full army, unmolested, ready to beat face.  The Avatar and Crusader both had defender's ward up, one from Kreoss and one from Severius.  I also had Eye of Menoth up on my battlegroup. 

My first move included bestowing hymn of battle on my battlegroup and the Avatar.  Then, Kreoss moved forward and feated, knocking down everything in the Trollblood army, but his warlocks.  His army included: eDoomy and Borka, Mulg, a Mauler, and an Impaler.  Kreoss' feat knocked down the keg bearer, Mulg, the Mauler, and the Impaler.

I was then able to charge the impaler with the Avatar, knocking off quite a few boxes and using his reach to smack Borka pretty hard.  I then moved my Revenger in to poke at Borka and after passing a tough roll, ended him.  I then arc noded off the Revenger to do some damage to eDoomy and set him fire.  The Crusader then charged in to Impaler and wiped him out. 

In his turn, my opponent had some hard decisions.  First, the fire on eDoomy went out, much to my Chagrin.  Both Mulg and the Mauler were knocked down.  They both had also maxed out on fury to help destroy the monolith.  Due to this and because eDoomy was camping fury, they both had to take frenzy checks.  Mulg passed, but the Mauler didn't which ultimately meant he could get up from being knocked down.  Mulg then got up and moved to get into range for primal shock against my warcasters.  He took a free strike from the avatar and was knocked down to three boxes. It was then that my opponent remembered that Severius can't be affected by spells.  He instead went after Kreoss and killed him with some impressive rolling and two primal shocks.  With that done, my opponent had to hand it back to me. 

This was it.  I had both the Avatar and the Revenger in range to smack eDoomy while the Crusader could handle Mulg for his last three boxes and the Mauler was still knocked down.  I walked the Avatar forward and took a mighty swing with his sword and boxed him.  He was unable to make his tough roll and I walked away victorious. 

Wow!  What a fun game.  Not to mention, I got to play against some really cool guys with amazingly painted armies.  Events transpired perfectly for me to win this game.  Had the Skorne player not lost control of his two warbeasts, things would have been different.  The Trollblood player would have been easily crushed from both sides and then I would have had an uphill climb against a very canny opponent in the Skorne player who would be relatively unscathed as well.  Luckily though, that didn't happen.  Likewise, the turn sequence and positioning of armies allowed me to be in position to feat with Kreoss and cut out his warcasters with ease.

I definitely learned a thing or two from the players and found that I had a fairly decent handle on things despite being relatively new to the gaming system.  Having wargaming experience really helped me out here.  I was glad for that. 

Warmahordes is fast and brutal and loads of fun.  I can't wait to add a few more units to my army and get into some more battles!

If you are an experienced Warmahorde-er, leave a comment a share your first experience with the game.  I would love to hear how things have gone to others. 






Here are some other Warmachine articles:
Warmachine the Way I See It: Warcaster Study, pKreoss
The Harbinger of Menoth: Model Review
How Important is the Front Arc, Really?
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