Hordes - I'm back at it

After a good chunk of time in which I didn’t play (and thus didn’t paint) due to time and financial constraints, I’ve restructured my personal calendar to afford additional time at home during the week AND took advantage of a brief but no less pleasant small pile of available personal cash to make some acquisitions and to re-connect with the local 2 or 3 dudes who actually play semi-regularly.

As such, I’ve added to the Orboros pile:

1 base unit of Tharn Ravagers (4), plus the Shaman UA
1 Druid Overseer to hang with my Druids of Orboros
Daliah/Skarath
1 base unit of Blood Trackers plus a PIP of extras for a total of 8 of the beauties
1 Gorax

Last night was the 3rd game I’ve played since I’ve been back, at the rate of about 1 game/week. Given the difficulties I’ve had with Kaya I’ve been running Krueger (non-epic) to try out more beat-stick modes of play with a little less subtlety (which seems to be Kaya’s method). My characterization may be wrong there but between tendrils, wind storm, and a woldwarden there’s a lot more straight up beat down, at least to my perception, than there is with Kaya - particularly when it comes to infantry, something I never did get much confidence at annihilating.

So to wit, last night’s bout with destiny was:

Krueger
Gorax
Warpwolf
Woldwarden
Woldwyrd
Blackclad Wayfarer
Druids of Orboros + UA
Gudrun (on loan)
Sentry Stone
Swamp Gobbers
Tharn Ravagers (4) + UA
Totem Hunter

The opponent ran a Epic Stryker Cygnar army. I forget all the details, but he had a unit of melee fearless sword dudes, two different units of ranged things (one of which was a ranger of some type, iirc), 2 chain gun weapon crews, one big fat warjack, the centurion perhaps, a lancer, and some goblin fellas who can repair jacks, . . the solo that throws grenades at stuff, another small jack, another solo, and . . I think one other thing. I suppose I should start documenting my opponents better. I found the iBodger app for my iPod which makes it a breeze to track armies.

In any event Gudrun rolled like crap but still managed to take out a solo and choke up his ranged infantry long enough to get my druids and warden into position for a little fun with the Devouring. Between that and Krueger’s feat I mopped up the infantry and the two weapon crews fairly easily. Totem Hunter single handedly (in two turns, of course), took out the entire 6 model unit of fearless sword dudes - fortunately, TH got 3 attacks on both his turns, and my opponent rolled poorly enough to miss me on his two chances.

On the left side of the board the ravagers + blackclad + lightning tendrils had some fun with the lancer. Took longer than it should have but I killed it, even with it surrounded by little healer manz. Blackclad’s storm beacon gave me a nice long distance charge - between that and the tendrils a 15“ threat range plus +2 on the attack made me realize this is a damned useful unit ‘o’ dudes. Not QUITE as awesome as the gatormen (I tried those last time, jeesh, I need a set of those), but still pretty handy.

However, by this time it was starting to get late and I started screwing up. Key features of my eventual defeat was that no, the warpwolf doesn’t have pathfinder and no, don’t put Primal on something if you aren’t certain there will be enemies around for it to be useful against. I killed my own woldwarden, and that’s never fun. Finally I wasn’t careful enough with Krueger and left him in range of Stryker’s absurd threat range who promptly wandered over and killed him. The store was closing in 7 minutes, the game had gone on for almost 4 hours, I think I can be forgiven for a little sloppy placement with so little time left to play and so much fatigue hitting my eyes.

I take nothing but positives from this match up however. My opponent indicated that my tactics were generally sound, and this was one of those games where I felt like a) I had plans and could execute them and b) I was actually capable of removing some of the enemy models off the board.

The sentry stone continues to impress the shit out of me for its point cost. I want to field 2 of these soon (altho, to be reasonable, one has felt like enough in a 750 pt game).

And Gudrun may be my next high priority acquisition.