Amon vs Doomshaper

Ok, before I say anything else about this battle, this was hands down one of the most fun games of Warmachine I've played. It was the weekly Wednesday game against Zugbart, but for some reason this game was just outrageously fun. Hats off to Zugbart for going to the mat to pull out the victory on this one. The game ran about 3 hours and probably 10 rounds, so there's no play-by-play description this week. First, the lists:

Me: Amon, Devout, Revenger, Castigator, Chior(6), Vilmon, 2 Paladins, Seneschal, Gorman
Zugbart: Doomshaper, Mauler, Blitzer, Axer, Impaler, Fell Caller, Krielstones(4)

Now the highlights:

• The Impaler made an impressive showing against the Castigator, charging in and ripping off one arm of the Castigator. Unfortunately for the Impaler, the Castigator recieved 3 focus from Amon the next turn and delivered a brutal beatdown from the one remaining fist.
• The Seneschal managed to return back from the dead briefly after a Paladin got snacked on by the Mauler, only to be gunned down by the Blitzer right after that.
• A lone chior boy got did 4 damage to the Blitzer on an amazing free strike roll. For all of you at home counting, I rolled 5-5-6 on the free strike damage roll, doing 22 damage to the Blizter. Not enough to do anything major, but still an impressive showing.
• Vilmon and a Paladin very nearly put down a Mauler in a single round, but in an unfortunate twist, they were short by 1 damage from killing the Mauler. That very Mauler ended up surviving till nearly the very end of the battle.
• Amon and Doomshaper traded spell blasting at each other troops. Amon's Sand Blast spell was very effective at delivering slams to key things, especially when cast through the Revenger's arcnode. Doomshaper's Accursed spell again frustrated my jacks.
• Rock walls are awesome. Especially when Amon stands behind one. It makes him pretty much impossible to hit.
• Doomshaper's feat was crazy outrageous. He scored 14 damage on 5d3 against Amon when Amon spent 5 focus to finally dust off the Mauler. That's 1 short of max.

Game End: The end came when Doomshaper managed to hit Amon with Accursed and scored the exact 3 points needed to kill him, AND Amon failed his tough roll. Doh! If he'd survived the tough roll, I honestly have no idea how the rest of the battle would have played out. At that point it was Amon, a movement-disabled Devout, and 2 chiorboys (no leader) vs Doomshaper, the Fell Caller, and the Blitzer.

MVP: Amon was an outstanding performer in this one. Through careful use of his Meditative Stance he was able to lay out alot of damage with the Sand Blast spell.

Learned Lessons:

• Vilmon is outrageous. Being able to sacrifice either movement or action to become immune to everything except spells and feats has a sneaky use for the patient player. Spend one round running into melee range (sacrificing action to be immune), and then the following round sacrifice movement and get to take attacks. He and a pair of Paladins are also a pretty secure lockdown of a control point.
• The Steamroller 3 missions are pretty unbalanced against non-infantry based lists. We rolled to play a 2 control point mission (I forget the name of the mission) and basically since I won the first turn, I could have easily won the mission by the second round without a single attack being exchanged.
• 5 Focus casters are not terrible, but they do require alot more precision than an 8 Focus caster. Wrack usage is also made much more challenging with such a limited range.
• The game reinforced that what I love about WM is the small squad feel of the game. Battles where armies have 50+ models feels like playing warhammer 40k all over again, and seriously, they just take so much longer to play.

All around, this was a fabulously entertaining game!