Battle Report: First Outing With Gators

I know I'm late to the trend here, but I wanted to share a high level report on my first outing with my Gators. I actually cheated a little bit on my rule of playing with finished models by playing Calaban and the Wrastler before I had finished the basing. However, it was due to the opportunity to squeeze in a couple games with my buddies. For both games I played Calaban, Bull Snapper, Wrastler, and Gatorman Posse(5). Here's the rapid fire summary:

Game 1 (loss): eMorghoul, Marketh, Titan Sentry, Archidon, 4 Paingivers. I was clearly fumbling with my brand new unplayed gators, and Mike was a really good sport about it. He delivered a pretty crushing blow early on against my posse, and then managed to leave eMorghoul (with his feat popped) parked right next to Calaban (who was blinded). I survived the assassination run, cause, like, gators are awesome. However as awesome as they are, my newbieness was too powerful and I failed to work out any option to take out eMorghoul. In the post-game analysis, Mike helped me figure out that using the Wrastler to do a 2H throw of something into eMorghoul and then Calaban could have probably greased him. Even then though, it would have required some luck. It was a huge learning experience and a very well played game by Mike.

Game 2 (win): eHexeris, Rhinodon, Arcuarii (6), Hakaar. Another highly amusing game with great learning. The posse turned out to be a really good match-up for the Arcuarii, particularly with Occultation on them. This game became a careful piece-trading match, with me on the winning side. The real kicker though was when eHex made an assassination run on Calaban, but just couldn't quite pull it off. Of special note here, when eHex went to do his assassination run, Lance declared he was going to get to Calaban by charging the Bull Snapper and using his Beat Back ability. I was then (prematurely) cheering when he blicked my Bull Snapper in a single charge hit, thus making me think Calaban was safe because he needed 2 beat backs to get to Calaban. Unfortunately, he was able to step sideways over to the Wrastler and use that to get the extra beat back moves to get to Calaban. And that was all she wrote.

Takeaways:

• I love playing Gators so far. Totally different than Legion. They don't feel too underpowered, just lacking very many options.
• I really need to get more than 1 game of Hordes in per 3 months. My in-game skills have atrophied pretty badly.
• I'm even more energized to paint gators than before!
• If there's a gargantuan gator, I will definitely get it. Maybe even 2 of them if the sculpt is good. You hear that PP?!?!?!?!