Post by Turtleboy(AWOL) on Aug 18, 2007 5:30:49 GMT -5
wow was it a fight!
so I'm playing mercenaries, who aren't even their own faction - just a hodgepodge of different stuff - the thing is, if you take a mercenary warcaster, then you can't take anything from any of the actual factions! it's the hard road to take, but I love the feel of a mercenary army - soldiers for hire, relying on high pay to cover 'jack repairs and hiring new soldiers to replace the fallen troops - soldiers for hire, profiteers of the warzone, survivors! I love the feel of not having the support of limitless repair and supply trains and the gritty 'we manage to hang on, and if that means we salvage the arm of an enemy jack and weld it onto our warjack that lost its arm we do it!' feel (and my conversions represent this too! I've got two different mule heavy warjacks that look totally different from eachother but you can tell they're the same 'jack.
anyhow, game started (vs. menoth) with us facing off with a bit of forest directly infront of my right flank and a big hill out in midfield. that's all the terrain that matters since I didn't know what to expect (first time playing vs. menoth) so went defensive and let him come to me.
he opened up by running this paladin guy forward at a sprint and he had a special power that made him immune to any attacks except my warcasters spells (!!!) he was quick and powerful and hit really hard so I gauged his rate of advance and figured if I sat tight, he'd be mine for the killing. meanwhile out in midfield, one of my solos, Gorman Di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist sat in wait, blanketed in his invisibility ability - the enemy began to approach in an effort to take the hill, which they did. I was watching with Gorman to see how my enemy worked, and I was glad I did, because i noticed that this pack of tightly formed troops behind his 2 advancing heavy warjacks who were cresting the hill was projecting one of a few different abilities that were REALLY powerful onto his warjack formations! deciding not to bushwhack one of the heavy 'jacks and try for a penetrating move to get into his backfield and make him split off one of his heavy jacks to chase down my alchemist as he tried to position to kill his choir (the dudes projecting the powerful warjack buffs) - Gorman shimmered into view and sprinted into my opponents backfield. now, gorman has stealth (which means any attacks from further than 5" from him automatically miss) so I purposfully DIDN'T tell my opponent this (hey if he doesn't ask what my achilles heel is I ain't advertising it!!! - cheesy yes, but hey, that's warmachine!).
sure enough, my opponent broke off the heavy jack on the flank gorman had slipped past and moved to take him out. he just cringed and said 'oh man!!!' when I informed him that gorman had stealth when he went to crush him with some shooting from the heavy jack heh heh.
the super paladin of invincibility predictably charged forward and got nice and close to my lines - I responded by jumping my warcaster, Ashlynn D'Elyse forward and summoned my biggest baddest direct damage spell she knows and, boosting the attack roll to be sure to hit, completely sacked out on my roll and the spell fizzled...oh sh*t!! now my warcaster is sitting out and completely vulnerable to his paladin!
luckily for me, he'd gotten his paladin into the trees by like 1/4" so he couldn't charge Ashlynn (OMG WHEW!) which was his downfall - while I botched the kill spell once, it wouldn't happen again and my opponent knew he'd botched his shot with the paladin of dOoM!1!
meanwhile gorman with a mighty sacrificial warcry ran forward, grabbed an acid bomb and said his hail mary as he hurled it to the limits of his range, the bomb smashing into side of the head of one of the choir members and exploding with a BOOM that exploded acid death, leaving 4 sizzling spitting goo-ified corpses when the cloud cleared! gorman knew he was dead and so he was, it was the last act for him, but he took down the head of the choir in his attack and neutralized the threat - it was huge! no more super buffs for the menoth warjacks! (these buffs were like 'you can't shoot at any of my jacks PERIOD (but they could shoot at me!)' - VERY powerful.
Ashlynn growled and dug deep and slaughtered the paladin in one mighty spell. the menoth warjacks fortified their position on the hill and gathered their coordination for the oncoming assault - they'd have 2 heavy jacks and 2 light jacks in the battle.
taking them by suprise, ashlynn ran forward and popped her feat, roulette, which basically is chedder on a stick and gives me a massive advantage in landing my attack rolls, almost guaranteeing every attack to hit and making alot of my enemies attacks miss when they normally wouldn't! I followed this up by a combined assault that slagged one of his light 'jacks and saw my devil dogs (anti warjack infantry) buffed for extra movement by ashlynn and inspired by rupert carvolo, piper of ord, their musician (his song giving them all an extra attack - hell yeah!) charge way further than they should have been able to and up a small cliff which took my opponent completely by suprise (as normally you can't charge up hills that impair movement) - he was like 'oh sh*t!' as I dashed all my devil dogs across a suprisingly large gap between our forces. the devil dogs got busy and threw entangling chains all over the heavy jack they assaulted, drug it down to the ground, knocking it over and proceeded to tear it apart with their picks, immobilizing it and tearing off an arm in the process!
the menoth heavy jack that had fallen back to try and deal with gorman who had assasinated his choir unfortunately returned and lobbed a fireball into the melee that had my devil dogs merrily hacking at a helpless heavy menoth warjack and all but 2 of them went up in the blaze (4 died, including samantha machorne, their captain! noooo!). luckily the devil dogs stuck in the fight due to ashlynns encouraging words though.
things were beginning to get dire - I spotted an arc node on one of the menoth light warjacks (which allows his warcaster to cast spells thru it - an AWESOME assasination device! just get the light jack thru my lines and bam kill spells directly into my warcaster from his warcaster on the other side of the battle lines! - scary.). I tried and failed to neutralize it as I had a shot to put it to his warcaster - I banged him up good, but couldn't finish the job and his warcaster lived - I had to retreat with ashlynn to make the arc node warjack that was now actively hunting ash really work at it, which left me too far away to put focus into my warjack that was trying to kill his warcaster - argh!
his light jack with the arcnode tried to sweep around behind ashlynn and I had to drive her right at the battle, but it was a similar situation with my warjack harrassing his warcaster from behind him too so our warcasters were both being pushed towards the main fight!
he got a bead on ashlynn unfortunately, but lucky for me (ashlynn is so nimble) she was able to dive out of the way as the first kill spell sizzled by her. she wasn't as lucky with the second one and screamed as it crackled nasty death energy around her!
pissed and hurting really badly, she looked up to see him emerge from the melee at midfield and stride up to her with his spear - stabbing at her she tumbled out of the way, seeing one of his heavy warjacks falling in behind him in it's advance to come kill the nimble mercenary warcaster, ashlynn took the initiative and dodged inside the menoth 'casters reach, pressed her hand cannon to his forehead and splattered his brains all over the menoth warjack right behind him. a lopsided grin made its way thru the pain wracking her features as he hit the ground with a crumpled thud and his warjacks went inert with the death of their caster.
A WIN FOR THE MERCENARIES!!!!!!!!
so I'm playing mercenaries, who aren't even their own faction - just a hodgepodge of different stuff - the thing is, if you take a mercenary warcaster, then you can't take anything from any of the actual factions! it's the hard road to take, but I love the feel of a mercenary army - soldiers for hire, relying on high pay to cover 'jack repairs and hiring new soldiers to replace the fallen troops - soldiers for hire, profiteers of the warzone, survivors! I love the feel of not having the support of limitless repair and supply trains and the gritty 'we manage to hang on, and if that means we salvage the arm of an enemy jack and weld it onto our warjack that lost its arm we do it!' feel (and my conversions represent this too! I've got two different mule heavy warjacks that look totally different from eachother but you can tell they're the same 'jack.
anyhow, game started (vs. menoth) with us facing off with a bit of forest directly infront of my right flank and a big hill out in midfield. that's all the terrain that matters since I didn't know what to expect (first time playing vs. menoth) so went defensive and let him come to me.
he opened up by running this paladin guy forward at a sprint and he had a special power that made him immune to any attacks except my warcasters spells (!!!) he was quick and powerful and hit really hard so I gauged his rate of advance and figured if I sat tight, he'd be mine for the killing. meanwhile out in midfield, one of my solos, Gorman Di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist sat in wait, blanketed in his invisibility ability - the enemy began to approach in an effort to take the hill, which they did. I was watching with Gorman to see how my enemy worked, and I was glad I did, because i noticed that this pack of tightly formed troops behind his 2 advancing heavy warjacks who were cresting the hill was projecting one of a few different abilities that were REALLY powerful onto his warjack formations! deciding not to bushwhack one of the heavy 'jacks and try for a penetrating move to get into his backfield and make him split off one of his heavy jacks to chase down my alchemist as he tried to position to kill his choir (the dudes projecting the powerful warjack buffs) - Gorman shimmered into view and sprinted into my opponents backfield. now, gorman has stealth (which means any attacks from further than 5" from him automatically miss) so I purposfully DIDN'T tell my opponent this (hey if he doesn't ask what my achilles heel is I ain't advertising it!!! - cheesy yes, but hey, that's warmachine!).
sure enough, my opponent broke off the heavy jack on the flank gorman had slipped past and moved to take him out. he just cringed and said 'oh man!!!' when I informed him that gorman had stealth when he went to crush him with some shooting from the heavy jack heh heh.
the super paladin of invincibility predictably charged forward and got nice and close to my lines - I responded by jumping my warcaster, Ashlynn D'Elyse forward and summoned my biggest baddest direct damage spell she knows and, boosting the attack roll to be sure to hit, completely sacked out on my roll and the spell fizzled...oh sh*t!! now my warcaster is sitting out and completely vulnerable to his paladin!
luckily for me, he'd gotten his paladin into the trees by like 1/4" so he couldn't charge Ashlynn (OMG WHEW!) which was his downfall - while I botched the kill spell once, it wouldn't happen again and my opponent knew he'd botched his shot with the paladin of dOoM!1!
meanwhile gorman with a mighty sacrificial warcry ran forward, grabbed an acid bomb and said his hail mary as he hurled it to the limits of his range, the bomb smashing into side of the head of one of the choir members and exploding with a BOOM that exploded acid death, leaving 4 sizzling spitting goo-ified corpses when the cloud cleared! gorman knew he was dead and so he was, it was the last act for him, but he took down the head of the choir in his attack and neutralized the threat - it was huge! no more super buffs for the menoth warjacks! (these buffs were like 'you can't shoot at any of my jacks PERIOD (but they could shoot at me!)' - VERY powerful.
Ashlynn growled and dug deep and slaughtered the paladin in one mighty spell. the menoth warjacks fortified their position on the hill and gathered their coordination for the oncoming assault - they'd have 2 heavy jacks and 2 light jacks in the battle.
taking them by suprise, ashlynn ran forward and popped her feat, roulette, which basically is chedder on a stick and gives me a massive advantage in landing my attack rolls, almost guaranteeing every attack to hit and making alot of my enemies attacks miss when they normally wouldn't! I followed this up by a combined assault that slagged one of his light 'jacks and saw my devil dogs (anti warjack infantry) buffed for extra movement by ashlynn and inspired by rupert carvolo, piper of ord, their musician (his song giving them all an extra attack - hell yeah!) charge way further than they should have been able to and up a small cliff which took my opponent completely by suprise (as normally you can't charge up hills that impair movement) - he was like 'oh sh*t!' as I dashed all my devil dogs across a suprisingly large gap between our forces. the devil dogs got busy and threw entangling chains all over the heavy jack they assaulted, drug it down to the ground, knocking it over and proceeded to tear it apart with their picks, immobilizing it and tearing off an arm in the process!
the menoth heavy jack that had fallen back to try and deal with gorman who had assasinated his choir unfortunately returned and lobbed a fireball into the melee that had my devil dogs merrily hacking at a helpless heavy menoth warjack and all but 2 of them went up in the blaze (4 died, including samantha machorne, their captain! noooo!). luckily the devil dogs stuck in the fight due to ashlynns encouraging words though.
things were beginning to get dire - I spotted an arc node on one of the menoth light warjacks (which allows his warcaster to cast spells thru it - an AWESOME assasination device! just get the light jack thru my lines and bam kill spells directly into my warcaster from his warcaster on the other side of the battle lines! - scary.). I tried and failed to neutralize it as I had a shot to put it to his warcaster - I banged him up good, but couldn't finish the job and his warcaster lived - I had to retreat with ashlynn to make the arc node warjack that was now actively hunting ash really work at it, which left me too far away to put focus into my warjack that was trying to kill his warcaster - argh!
his light jack with the arcnode tried to sweep around behind ashlynn and I had to drive her right at the battle, but it was a similar situation with my warjack harrassing his warcaster from behind him too so our warcasters were both being pushed towards the main fight!
he got a bead on ashlynn unfortunately, but lucky for me (ashlynn is so nimble) she was able to dive out of the way as the first kill spell sizzled by her. she wasn't as lucky with the second one and screamed as it crackled nasty death energy around her!
pissed and hurting really badly, she looked up to see him emerge from the melee at midfield and stride up to her with his spear - stabbing at her she tumbled out of the way, seeing one of his heavy warjacks falling in behind him in it's advance to come kill the nimble mercenary warcaster, ashlynn took the initiative and dodged inside the menoth 'casters reach, pressed her hand cannon to his forehead and splattered his brains all over the menoth warjack right behind him. a lopsided grin made its way thru the pain wracking her features as he hit the ground with a crumpled thud and his warjacks went inert with the death of their caster.
A WIN FOR THE MERCENARIES!!!!!!!!