Battle Report #72: Maddox vs Harkevich

Practice game with lots of Khadoran proxies. I was very interested to see if Maddox has game into Harkevich. Harkevich is possibly the strongest jack caster in Khador now and I expect to see him all the time. Ordinarily I would drop Haley2 into him, but that is also a pretty tough matchup!

Major Beth Maddox (75 points)

Objective: Bunker
Theme; Storm Division

Major Beth Maddox (Maddox1)
* Squire
* Ironclad
* Stormclad
Journeyman Warcaster
* Firefly
Major Katherine Laddermore
Savio Montero Acosta
Stormblade Captain
5+5 Storm Lances
6 Stormblades
* Stormblade Infantry Officer & Standard

Kommander Harkevich, The Iron Wolf (75 points)

Kommander Harkevich, The Iron Wolf
* 2x Juggernaut
* 3x Kodiak
* 2x Marauder
Kovnik Jozef Grigorovich
10 Winter Guard Infantry
* 3x Winter Guard Rocketeer
* Winter Guard Officer & Standard

Deployment 

I win the roll, and spread out, hoping to envelop Harkevich' forces.His brick goes into the middle, and the infantry are deployed to threathen my zone on the right.

Turn 1

I run up. Assail on the Stormclad, Arcane Shield on the right side Lances that will meet the Winter Guard, Dauntless Resolve on the Stormblades.

He shoots a few Storm Blades.

Turn 2

I spread out to try to envelop him.

Kodiaks and smoke walls go up in the center. Unfortunately three of my Lances get blown up by Winter Guard. Those Rocketeers are brutal! Harvevich decides to not feat defensively.

Turn 3

I have some lines of vision around the clouds so I decide to go for it and see what I can make happen. The resulting attack is brutal, with the Stormclad trampling into the clouds, Firefly charging, Stormblades charging, Stormlances charging. Two Kodiaks and one Marauder dies. The left Juggernaut loses high axe, which is good news, Juggers are so sad without their axes.

Stormblades get Iron Zeal. The ironclad goes into position to kill whatever kills the Stormclad.

We discussed this for a while and we think that with better positioning he could have denied some of my attacks.

I score my zone.

1-0

Harkevich feats, and proceeds to kill some Stormblades and dismount Laddermore.

Turn 4

Around here we have timed out, but for practice games we don't really care about the clock.

It's hard to deal with his ARM 23 jacks, but the Stormblades start clearing out his infantry now.

In retrospect I should probably tried to have taken his objective, and put pressure on scoring on the left flank.

2-0

My Stormclad gets killed.

Turn 5

Again I clear the zone. A juggernaut goes down but I am running out of models here.

3-0

A Marauder gets into the zone to contest.

Turn 6

I start hitting the Marauder, but it lives.

It fails to take out Maddox, though!

Turn 7

Maddox murders the Marauder. Just one Juggernaut left! She is camping just 1 Focus, but the Juggernaut has lost its arms.

Neither the crippled Juggernaut nor Harkevich are able to seal the deal! Maddox lives, with 3 boxes left!

Turn 8

Yes, TURN EIGHT!

Laddermore cuts down Harkevich!

Cygnar wins by assassination!

Post Mortem

Nico was going crazy waiting for us to get done with this game. This is quite possibly the longest Warmachine game I have played since Mk2, it went on for more than three hours. :D

We had a great time, and in the end it was all down to the dice. We discussed the matchup later, and we think Harkevich is probably up here, It's tricky to get the smoke wall right, but if he can deny me a good initiation with my feat, then I will probably have a hard time taking out enough armor. Holding the feat when he did was possible a bit greedy!

After waiting forever, Nico is ready to shoot me (with gunbunnies).