Tournament report

I didn't take pictures, as my army was assembled the night before.. I figured looking at a bunch of unpainted metal stuff wouldn't be too exciting.

Rather than give a turn by turn report, I'll just give a summary of what happened.

My lists:
Ravyn
Discordia
Max MHSF+UA
x2 Stormfall units
Lady A and holt
Epic Eiyress
x2 Assassins

This was intended to be my "main" list. I looked for quick potential assassinations, or would grind down serious threats with mass stormfalls and Lady A's buff.

Second list:
Adeptis Rahn
Discordia
Chimera
Max Sentinels+UA
x2 Battlemage units
x2 Assassins

This was for anytime I faced a gunline or a stealthed warlock/warcaster. The army is mostly immune to blast damage, or gets bonus def/arm against shooting. It can also play tricksy with the usual Rahn sillyness.

GAME ONE:
My opponent was using:
Strakhov
Kodiak
Destroyer
x2 Manhunters
Yuri the axe
Drakkun with dismount
Fenris
P Eiyress
Great bears

Going over his list in ibodger, it would appear he was over by 1 point. I think he probably paid for drakkun without dismount but forgot. Not a huge deal. Scenario was 3 objectives across the middle of the board, and 1 dissappears.

He takes first turn and moves up. Sending his manhunters and kodiak through the woods in front of me. Fenris down my right flank, Drakkun down my left. Greatbears, destroyer and Eiyress up the middle.

I do snipe/feat/go trying for a quick kill on strakhov with my mage hunters. I take him down to 2 life. Stormfalls kill fenris and most of the great bears. MHA's dismount the drakkun but eventually die to his dismounted self

He wipes my MHSF over the next two turns with manhunters and the kodiak, in return I kill them all with discordia/ravyn. Eventually I get line of sight to strakhov with stormfalls and finish him.

I think the big mistake he made was waiting too long to put stealth on strakhov.

Win by assassination.

GAME TWO:
My opponent had E. Lillyth and Abby. Knowing that if I take ravyn, lillyth screws me. While if he takes abby, itll give rahn some problems but ravyn will wreck her.. We both play it safe, I pick rahn and he picks lillyth

His list:
E. Lilly
Ravagore
Angelius
Seraph
Striders+UA
Deathstalker
Forsaken

Scenario is killbox. He wins the roll off and elects to go first. He moves up a little with his army, mostly hugging the line of the killbox looking to shoot me and make me come to him. I mostly run everything on turn one to a house blocking some line of sight. Discordia shields the sentinels, and I send the mages around my left flank, the chimera around my right. He does some light shooting at the chimera with his striders, but does minimal damage, the seraph kills a few battle mages but otherwise is second turn isn't too scary for me. One big mistake he made is killing 1 sentinel for the next two turns, triggering vengence in pretty much the best way possible. Turn two I kill angelius by arcing telekenesis and charging with sentinels. I trade an assassin for his deathstalker. Polarity shield on the sentinels prevent his beats from doing much to the sentinels, lining me up to finish the game the following turn. Next turn he feats and takes some pot shots at discordia hoping to get lucky and get rahn too, most of his shooting misses or does very little damage. I vengence into his forsaken killing it, as well as lillyth killing her.

Victory by assassination

GAME THREE:
I cant remember Noheas list exactly
Terminus
Nightmare
Withershadow
Max McThralls with 1 brute
Siren
Necrotech
Soul hunters
The dragoon guy
Madelyn Corbeau

I took ravyn, and was exhausted by this point. In hindsight I probably should have taken Rahn, just to keep moving/slamming terminus around. I was thinking the burst damage ravyn provides could chew through the screen of mcthralls opening up terminus, but I wasn't able to kill him. He chewed through my army pretty quickly after that.
He executed my army perfectly, his did exactly what it was supposed to do and I mainly just fumbled around trying to get in what licks I could.

Loss, by assassination.

Things I learned:
- Ravyn with a max MHSF scares people. Even if you don't intend to use it, they will pick their list based on seeing that combination (unless they have a stealthed caster).
- Rahn as always is a total bastard. I used to run his tiered army. But breaking tiers to include sentinels and MHA's really ramped up his killing power
- Next time I play terminus I need to be much less aggressive and either try to wait out his feat turn, or find a way of isolating him from his army.
- Ret has a bit of difficulty playing to scenarios. I'm finding my best bet is usually just trying to deny points, not score them while still looking for assassination vectors.
- I held lady A and holt back too much in both games, for a 4 point investment I need to be casting her debuff from turn 2 onwards. When I did use it, it was a huge difference in damage. When I didn't, they were being wasted.

All in all I'm pleased with my performance. I guess if I won my third game, I would have had a chance at second or third depending on a fourth game. If I lost, then the standings were clear and there wouldn't be a fourth game.

Big ol' order

So I sold my old Retribution army several  months ago, bounced around in several factions.. Then came to appreciate what the Ret had to offer after messing around with others.

I had a huge troll army that I sold recently.. While I really enjoyed the models and painting the trolls, they just weren't my style. I kept finding in tournaments I'd say to myself "Man if I had a mage hunter unit here..." or "What I'd give for Rahn and friends right now".

The choice was obvious. I needed to go back to the faction that drew me back into Warmachine in the first place. It doesn't hurt that there are almost no Ret players locally. What few people do have the faction, its a second or third army. So it would be nice to be a "wild card" in tournaments.

I've sold the trolls, ordered a ton of elves. Some would say I shouldn't have sold them in the first place, and I'm not normally so wishy washy, but it did help me appreciate the faction quite a bit more than I did originally.

Planned lists for upcoming 35pt tournament:

Rahn +6
Chimera 6
Phoenix 10
Max Sentinels with UA 11
Battle mages 5
Battle mages 5
Assassin 2
Assassin 2

I could swap the phoenix for discordia for the obvious synergy with the sentinels. I do like combustion quite a bit, and have 2 arc nodes with Rahn makes it almost too easy to have at least one of them where you want it. I reckon with all the knockdown available the assassins become a very real threat rather than just a percieved one. I found before my assassins didn't do a whole lot other than scare the crap out of people, the goal now is to jam them down somethings throat. Sentinels are nice with Rahn thanks to polarity shield, its pretty hard to not get the first charge with them. While I enjoy the halberdiers as well, I could never decide if I liked polarity shield or set defense better. When I would cast polarity shield, people would often just walk into combat which would then make set defense pretty much useless. The battle mages are an obvious pick, the reason for their inclusion shouldn't require much explanation.

Second list:
Ravyn +6
Manticore 8
Full MHSF with ua 10
Full MHSF with ua 10
Stormfall archers 5
Stormfall archers 5
Epic Eiryess 3

The idea here is the quick and easy caster kill if they aren't stealthed or high armor. The stormfall barrage will keep light troops or heavy jacks/beasts honest while the MHSF try to move in for the tried and true snipe+feat. Eiryess is there because why not? Another option would be to drop Eiryess for a arcanist and upgrade the manticore to discordia. At that point I think the list would give stealth heavy armies a good scare. I'm not usually very aggressive with Ravyn unless I have to be.. So ideally, the infantry will do the work and she will just shift snipe around and feat. If she has to get stuck in, I have a feeling the MHSF and stormfall barrage failed me.

Advance Deployment

So I have a general hobby blog, but it is mostly 40k related.. I figured I would start a new one following my efforts in Warmachine mkII. This blod will follow painting, the odd battle report and thoughts on my lists as I fumble around in the dark of mkII and figure out just what the hell I'm doing

I played the previous edition with a large Khador army but lost interest due to a lack of local community and events to attend.. But it seems to have picked up in the last 2 years. So with the release of the new edition and due to painting a few Warmachine commissions for a friend, my interest was sparked again.

I have picked up quite a bit of the Retribution. I now own at least 1 of every unit with the exception of Destors of course. I have managed to paint up about 50 points worth of stuff so far (I will post that later).

I get in about 3 to 5 games a week, and get completely pasted for the most part.. But at least I learn quickly and don't fall for the same trick twice ;)