Battle Report #87: Maddox vs Gunnbjorn

Once again, up early on Sunday morning for some WARMACHINE. For the first game, I am facing Mats playing Gunnbjorn. I have faced him once with Caine2 before, which was terrible. Maddox is not as reliant on shooting.

Major Beth Maddox (75 points)

I have just glued Brickhouse together, so I decided to give him a spin. I also replaced the Ironclad with a Hammersmith. And Arlan with 2 Storm Gunners. It's try out new models day!

Objective: Bunker

Theme Force: Storm Divison

Major Beth Maddox (Maddox1)
* Squire
* Brickhouse
* Hammersmith
Journeyman Warcaster
* Firefly
Major Katherine Laddermore
Stormblade Captain
2x5 Storm Lances
6 Stormblades
* Stormblade Infantry Officer & Standard
* 2x Storm Gunner

Captain Gunnbjorn (75 points)

Mats is channeling his inner whelp

One real danger with facing this list is just dying to random sprays and shots. POW 16 sprays are lethal, and Gunnbjorn has some solid threat ranges.

Objective: Fuel Cache

Theme Force: The Power of Dhunia

Captain Gunnbjorn (Gunnbjorn1)
* Dire Troll Bomber
* Dozer & Smigg
* Earthborn Dire Troll
* Mountain King
Janissa Stonetide
2x Northkin Shaman
4 Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes
* Stone Scribe Elder
Dhunian Knot

Deployment

I win the roll and decide to go first. We deploy, and then I got a frantic call from my wife telling me she had left the coffee machine on.

One hour later, the game continues.

Round 1

I start largely outside his threat ranges. Stormblades minifeat, but that was probably a turn too early. I should have waited till next turn.

A Storm Lance was too close to the Bomber and dies. A Stormblade is sprayed away. Gunnbjorn feats.

Round 2

I jam in a couple of Lances to try to delay him a bit. Maddox toes into the zone and camps a lot.

Mountain King Kill Shots Maddox for 8 damage. Dhunian Knot is so good in this list. Rerolling poor damage rolls at will makes this so much more dangerous!

Gunnbjorn fails to contest, which makes me pretty happy. If I can just keep that Mountain King out of my zone, and not die, I am pretty sure to win by scenario.

1-0

Round 3

I feat and both my heavies go into the Mountain King, who dies. Some charging Stormblades finish off Dozer. I charge one Storm Lance into each heavy to try to stop them for getting into zones.

2-0

Gunnbjorn with Puppet Master manages to hit Maddox with a shot, but no crit. I am down to 5 boxes. A whelp runs in to contest the right zone.

Round 4

I kill the Bomber and clear the zone. Brickhouse moves into my zone to remove the Earthborn next turn if he runs in to contest.

3-0

One last ditch attempt from Gunnbjorn to kill me. Maddox is slammed out of the zone, but lives at 2 boxes.

Gunnbjorn cannot prevent me from killing the objective and capping my zone next turn, so we call it a game.

5-0

Cygnar wins by scenario!

Post Mortem

One thing I definitely should have played differently would have been to cast Dauntless Resolve or Arcane Shield over on Maddox. I was already doing great on attrition, so why risk dying to a lucky spike?

I felt I played this one correctly. It's much easier for me to contest and clear zones, and since the Mountain King has no threat extenders and I can one round it, my heavies can just keep him out of my zone.

Brickhouse was actually pretty good here. Carapace helped a lot against this ranged heavy army.

A challenge for this Gunnbjorn list might be the low volume of attacks. One spray, two Bomber bombs, a Bombard shot and Bazooka are 5 really hard hitting shots, but I have so many solid models it's hard to remove enough.

I like that Gunnbjorn list, and the feat is crazy good against most other Cygnar lists. It definitely felt bad to spend two turns just getting shot at in the beginning, before I could start getting work done. Now I know how all of you non-Cygnar players feel!