This week, I got to play against Tim again in a Khador vs Circle battle. While we only managed to get in one game, the evolution of the game surprised me. I’ll be honest, I nearly surrendered just before everything clicked into place…
Khador vs Circle, round two (25 points)
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I decided that this time, with the higher point game, I would try to use some infantry. This lead to me picking my infantry first, and picking my warjacks afterward – I’m not sure I particularly liked the results, but, of course, I do like the Juggernaut/Kodiak pairing most of the time. I picked the Man-O-War for their ability to screen for the Butcher, and because I wanted to try out the Shocktroopers screening for the Bombardiers.
The game started much like other games – me running on the first turn to get into position. I managed to luck out though, because Yuri, with advanced deployment, was able to get a little closer to my opponent’s deployment area earlier. By turn two, he was Threshing away at a pureblood warpwolf and a shifting stone while keeping one foot in the nearby forest. This was an early victory for me – I managed to take out one of the shifting stones, taking away their warp power (at least that won’t happen again). The rest of my army moved up to the middle of the table and dug in around our centerpiece – a big tree obstruction.
Meanwhile, he started doing what Circle is good at – hit and run. Using the double-handed throw of both the Feral Warpwolf and the Pureblood Warpwolf (once he distangled from Yuri with Ghostly), he managed to throw the Kodiak around a bit, catching an off-guard Bombardier, but doing no appreciable damage to either. After each attack, he was able to pull back his warbeasts with Spirit Door, and, by keeping their fury up, he was able to do this for two warbeasts for the next few turns. Yuri was really the only thing I had that was fast enough to keep up the assault, so he did, finally taking out the last of the stones while the Juggernaut took out the exposed Pureblood and the Kodiak took out the War Wolf on my (possibly premature) feat turn. Shortly thereafter, Yuri fell to the Stalker – my first casualty, but I still felt sure I was losing.
The next hour or so was spent chasing him (slowly) into the corner. Slowly. In this time, his hit-and-run tactics had destroyed both my warjacks and I thought he was going to slip my grasp. I very nearly surrendered, but decided to give it one more turn… …My shocktroopers were in charge range of his Feral Warpwolf. They charged in, with their reach, they were able to take a few chunks out of the Warpwolf – damaging a couple of aspects (which he would regenerate, but at least I had done some damage). The Bombardiers came in next, but managed to miss everything they shot at – bummer! The one plus side, was that I had managed to seal off that escape route, pushing him back into the corner (though he took out all my shocktroopers and two of the Bombardiers along the way).
In his retreat, however, he left both his Warpwolves in the Butcher’s threat range. So… …The Butcher charged – he wasn’t going to use that focus on any warjacks anyway. The Butcher managed to take out both warbeasts on that charge with one focus to spare. It was now Kaya’s turn, having reeved all the fury from her Warpwolves as they died. When she managed to critical and knock down the Butcher with her first shot, I was pretty worried, but her damage potential wasn’t up to the task. With nothing left but the Butcher and a single Man-O-War Bombardier (which missed), Kaya went squish. Victory!
This was a very tough game for me – I was at such a tactical disadvantage with his ability to maneuver out of my threat range every turn, but still able to do reasonable amounts of damage, especially with the Warpwolf Stalker. Each turn, I was faced with the choice of: (a) run, and push him a little further back, or (b) walk, and maybe get some attack of opportunity off. In the end, I did a bit of both – I rotated among my units with the home of getting a ranged attack off every-other round with the Bombardiers (which only sometimes happened).
Updating my previous score, I am 2 wins/3 losses at -20 points.