WTC 2024 Round 3 vs Italy

Dusk Army

Hellyth, Scyir of Nightfall

SPELL - Abyssal Gate

SPELL - Backlash

10 Specter

5 Krueger, Wrath of Blighterghast

4 Mage Hunter Commander 1

4 Mage Hunter Commander 2

3 Mage Hunter Sniper Team

4 Vaelyss, The Hand of Mourning

9 Dreadguard Archers 1

9 Dreadguard Archers 2

12 Dreadguard Cavalry 1

12 Dreadguard Cavalry 2

7 Mage Hunter Rangers 1

7 Mage Hunter Rangers 2

6 Soulless Guardians 1

6 Soulless Guardians 2

Blessing of the Gods

Careful Reconnaissance

1 Duck and Cover!

Power Swell

1 Sentry Duty

Game Summary

Third game I played the captain of Italian team The Italian Job.

There is not much to report here - I made a rookie mistake and placed Caine next to the pig, and got shot at by Krueger and then blasted to death by Archers in round 2.

My opponent was a super nice guy, shame the game was so short!

I forgot to take photos, too!

WTC 2024 Round 2 vs USA Irving

Cygnar Storm Legion Army

Major Anson Wolfe

SPELL - Arcane Shield

SPELL - Chain Lightning

7 Courser 1

1 HEAD - Shield Guard

4 RIGHT ARM - Heavy Stormthrower

2 LEFT ARM - Voltaic Punching Spike

7 Courser 2

1 HEAD - Shield Guard

4 RIGHT ARM - Heavy Stormthrower

2 LEFT ARM - Voltaic Punching Spike

13 Stryker 1

1 HEAD - Relentless Charge

8 RIGHT ARM - Electro Bombard

4 LEFT ARM - Power Fist

14 Stryker 2

1 HEAD - Relentless Charge

6 RIGHT ARM - Voltaic Halberd

7 LEFT ARM - Heavy Mag-Bolter

3 Legionnaire Officer 1

3 Legionnaire Officer 2

4 Storm Vanes 1

4 Storm Vanes 2

6 Stormblade Legionnaires

2 Legionnaire Standard Bearer 1

7 Stormguard Legionnaires 1

7 Stormguard Legionnaires 2

8 Stormthrower Legionnaires 1

2 Legionnaire Standard Bearer 2

8 Stormthrower Legionnaires 2

2 Legionnaire Standard Bearer 3

Blessing of the Gods

Careful Reconnaissance

High Alert

Hit & Run

2 Spotters

Summary

We draw USA Irving in the second round, and the top table, we will be streamed 😅 feeling the pressure now!

https://www.youtube.com/live/araWYvjhVPk?si=84COkNVAjHfOnfLB

For this game I would prefer Khymaera, Dusk or Cygnar Storm Legion. I get Steve playing Storm Legion.

Unfortunately, I did now know a recent ruling about how the Caine and Wolfe feats interact. I thought Wolfe would get one shot after my feat, but it is one shot for each model killed. So after sending in the Rangers and setting up the feat turn I had to not feat, and teleport back behind a forest, for my caster to survive. I was considering conceding at this point, but decided to fight on. Caine has a mad assasination, so it's never over until the dice are down. After basically wasting a whole turn on nothing I had lost a lot of time and tempo.

I murdered most of his infantry the next turn with Caine, but was lose on clock and scenario.

I tried a last ditch messy assassination with very little time left, and clocked out.

My bad for not knowing this ruling, but there really must be a place to easily find all rulings in this game. Why Warmachine never had a proper FAQ is beyond me. Hopefully Steamforged will fix this in the future, they did do a very good job with the Guild Ball FAQ.

Steve was super nice and it was a good game, and we swapped shirts the next day. I think the matchup is playable for me, but my opponent was clearly more experienced and just played better overall, so most likely I would have lost anyway.

Afterwards I heard that my girlfriend and her family had watched my ass get thouroughly kicked on stream. They even kinda understood what was going on, due to the extremely professional streaming setup where they could hear our discussions as we played. Kudos to the streamers, please come back and do this again next year!

WTC 2024 Round 1 vs Finland

Khymaera Army

Kyrrax, the Unrelenting Night

10 Vipex

1 HEAD - Asp

3 TAIL - Hunter's Mark

6 ARMS - Cleavers

19 Wyvern 1

19 Wyvern 2

4 Bellighul, Master of Pain

6 Ryvyn, The Onyx Rampant

11 Incarnate Knights 1

11 Incarnate Knights 2

7 Talon Lashers 1

7 Talon Lashers 2

5 Wyrmspine Shadowmancers

Blessing of the Gods

Hit & Run

Power Swell

Put the Fires Out

1 Savagery

Game Summary

We meet Finnish Team Iki-Turso in the first round.

I prefer Caine into Dusk or Khymaera. Lucant and Khador are hard to shoot away, even for Kraye. Cygnar wants Caine into Sparkhammer and Kraye into Calder, so a bit of list Chicken there.

I end up being paired into Khymaera lead by Kyrrax with double Wyvern, which I am happy with. Poor Endre got thrown under the bus against Lucant, but the rest of the matchups are good.

I went 2nd due to shorter payload distance. It was a very tight game, we both played careful and few models died. 

I delivered the payload, and my opponent could not contest and score enough next round, so I won 10-7 on scenario.

My opponent got a bit screwed on scenario by not noticing a Ranger behind a building, that could run to contest. I love the 2.5D terrain, but it's easy to forget that buildings can obscure the line of sight for players as well as for models! It really was not my intention to hide anything, but I felt a bit bad about this afterwards.

Hugin went 4-1, very happy with the start!

Now it's the painting competition, and lunch!

Cygnar First Army snowflake spotted at WTC 2024

I am on my way to Düsseldorf to play for the second time in the Warmachine World Team Championship! I am a snowflake with Cygnar First Army this year, as the only player out of 160, with Caine and Kraye as my leaders. Win or lose, this is going to be fun! Looking forward to roll dice, meet old friends, and German beer and food 😊

The hosts of the Euromachine podcast thought my armies were awesome, so download episode 10 if you want to hear about them, as well as my teammate Amund's dorfs, discussion around the 26 minute mark.

WTC 2024 Kraye - Cygnar - First Army

Captain Jeremiah Kraye

+ Centurion

+ 4x Cyclone

2x Patrol Dog

Squire

Trench Buster 

Trencher Master Gunner

Trencher Sniper

Trencher Cannon Crew

+ Captain Karli

2x Trencher Combat Engineers

2x Trencher Express Team

Arcane Forces

Blessing of the Gods

Defenses

Duck and Cover!

Hit & Run

WTC 2024 Caine - Cygnar - First Army

Lieutenant Allister Caine

+ Ace

Captain Jonas Murdoch

Carver Ultimus

+ War Boar MMD47

2x Patrol Dog

Squire

Trench Buster 

Trencher Master Gunner

Trencher Warcaster Lieutenant

+ Hurricane

2x Rangers

Trencher Cannon Crew

+ Captain Karli

2x Trencher Express Team

Blessing of the Gods

Duck and Cover!

Hit & Run

Power Swell

Sentry Duty

Standings on Longshanks

Going first advantage of 57%: The math

The results from WTC show that the first player has a 57% chance to win the game. On average any player will win the game 50% of the time, since ties are close to impossible. If it's possible to get a tie, I am ignoring it for this calculation.

The math

The chance that this result happened by chance can be computed using the Binominal Test - you can try it here for yourself: Easy Binomial Test Calculator (socscistatistics.com)

There were 292 games played (n), 166 (or 167) games were won by the first player (K), and the chance of winning a game (p) is 0.5. Inserting the numbers show that the chance of the first player getting at least this many wins by chance is .011, or 1.1%. So we can conclude that it is almost certain that the first player win rate is due to going first being better, and not due to random chance.

I am not a professional statistician, but this seems rather straight forward - feel free to inform me if the calculation is wrong.

Went second against Lucant, pushed off scenario

Discussion

Every single player I have talked to during the WTC agrees that going first is a huge advantage. One just said "don't even look at the table or matchup, always go first". The problem is as follows:

Most armies can run units (almost) to the middle of the table turn 1, leaving the opponent the choice of not grabbing much - if any - table space, or getting alphaed top of 2. Both are bad. 

Many armies can run, then defensive / control feat plus run, scoring zones on their side while leaving the second player scrambling to not lose on points top of 3.

I had several matches at the WTC where I knew that if I won the die roll I had good chances, and if I lost I was already in trouble. And that was exactly what happened, if I went first I had a fairly good time (even if I lost - I am not all that good), but going second was brutally hard.

Going first against Borka

I even had one game where I had to move AD units backwards bottom of 1 to not get charged. It’s ridiculous, Steamroller has to be fixed for Mk4. Mk4 is otherwise amazing though, best edition ever, miniatures are awesome, keep it coming.

Just fix Steamroller, please!

 

Kraye, Pincushion, and Trencher Express Teams: The math

I did a little math to see whether Pincushion helps to land Express Team critical knockdowns. I was expecting it to be slightly better, but was a bit surprised to see how much better!

AnyDice code below. It will check if the 3 highest dice hit the target number, and then whether any of these 3 dice show the same face.

function: crit ROLL:s drop lowest at least TARGET:n {

  result: {1,2,3}@ROLL >= TARGET &

          (1@ROLL = 2@ROLL | 1@ROLL = 3@ROLL | 2@ROLL = 3@ROLL)

}

output [crit 4d6 drop lowest at least 12]

This gives the following chances of hitting the KD on boosted shots using Pincushion (4D6-DL-C), and without Pincushion (3D6-C):

Target  4D6-DL-C  3D6

 4      53.63%    43.98%

 5      53.32%    42.59%

 6      52.55%    39.81%

 7      51.85%    37.96%

 8      49.85%    33.80%

 9      46.91%    29.63%

10      44.52%    26.39%

11      39.74%    22.22%

12      34.80%    18.06%

13      30.25%    14.81%

14      24.38%    10.65%

15      16.67%     6.48%

16      13.04%     4.63%

17       5.79%     1.85%

18       1.62%     0.46%

Kraye vs Irusk - 50pts

Lightning Shroud is back after a very long covid + divorce + moving + changing jobs + new gf + lots more break!

I started playing a bit of Mk3 Brawlmachine, and now Warmachine Mk4, after Guild Ball was unceremoniously killed off by Steamforged.

Cygnar - First Army - Kraye - 50pts

Captain Jeremiah Kraye

* Cyclone

* 2x Defender

Best Boy

2x Trencher Sniper

Trencher Combat Engineers

Rangers

Arcane Forces, Blessing of the Gods, Infiltration, Old Faithful, Power Swell 

I always loved playing Kraye, and in Mk4 he is better than ever! Today I took him into a wall of Man-o-Wars.

Khador - Armored Korps - Irusk - 50pts

Kommandant Irusk

 * Devastator

Man-O-War Kovnik

Battle Mechanics

Man-O-War Bombardiers

Man-O-War Demolitions Korps

Man-O-War Shocktroopers

Inflitration, Old Faithful, Power Swell + ???

Khador wins the roll off and elects to go first. I take the side with the big house in the center, thinking I can use it to use it to outmaneuver the hulking wall of flesh.

Deployment

Khador puts all the boys in the middle. I fan out a little, planning to flank to the left or right depending on what happens.

Deployment. It sure does not look even :D

Round 1

Irusk hands out Iron Flesh to the front line Shocktroopers and runs up the middle.

Kraye plays Arcane Forces and tags the Shocktroppers with Pincushion. He then casts Admonition on himself. Kraye, one Defender, and a Sniper kill one Shocktrooper and deal 7 damage to the next one, but the last Sniper is half an inch too far away to finish it off.

Cygnar, Round 1 complete

Round 2

Battle Mechanics fully repair the hurt Shocktrooper. Melee MOWs run up. Bombardiers shoot my Cyclone and kill the Best Boy, who I should not have left near a jack. Irusk feats, camps 5, and repos into the central trench.

I think a little about whether I can just shoot Irusk to death, but probably not - I need a 13 to land Pincushion, and even then it seems dicey.

So, it's feat and yoyo time. Jacks take turns killing all the Shocktroopers and one Bombardier, then nimbly step away again, mostly out of melee threat ranges. One sniper picks out a Man-O-War that happened to tough. Most of the tough rolls fail, poor Irusk.

Rangers plus one Sniper kill all the battle mechanics. God, they are so maneuverable now. I score the right zone with a Defender. Attrition is looking very good, game should be mine unless I screw up (spoiler alert).

Cygnar, Round 2 complete

Round 3 

Irusk shoots two Rangers and the Kovnik kills the last one. The two remaining Bombardiers charge damage the Defender in the right zone. My sniper in the zone is splatted by the Devastator.

I activate my Jacks and kill off every last Man-O-War grunt except one Demo Korps. Unfortunately I leave the Defender in charge range of Irusk, and the Cyclone in charge range of the Kovnik - which I totally did not have to do. Points are now 2-2.

Not much left - but I had repoed forwards too aggressively...

Round 4

Irusk gives himself Battle Lust, does a hail mary charge, and finishes off the Defender, and then gives gimself Iron Flesh and camps 1. The Kovnik and Devastator destroy my Cyclone. Oh noes! My misplay leaves me down on attrition, I think assassination is the only option.

Irusk charges the Defender

The Man-O-War has only 1 box left and gets sniped, freeing up the last Defender. Engineers fill him up with full focus. Kraye charges Irusk and leaves him on a few boxes, the Defender then smashes Irusk's head in. Victory to the boys in purple!

Death of a Kommandant

Wrap Up

I think I played this OK until the misplacements in Round 3. Clearly I cannot win a straight up fist fight, so hit and run and win attrition while trying to not lose on scenario seemed solid. 

Rangers were better than excepted. Reposition on units is sick, and allows them to Mark Target without immediately losing the whole unit.

Snipers were MVP, killing off so many 1-point MOWs.

The list is really fun to play, and extremely maneuverable. 4 dice drop lowest kills Man-O-Wars, getting Pincushion really helps Kraye into high armor lists.