July has been an exciting time at Drawbridge games in Castle Shannon for our privateer press players. With the release of Mark III we were really excited to try out the new rules and perhaps start new factions. We’ve had a pretty consistent core group of players and we were all looking forward to starting a new league and getting some new models painted up.
Since we were starting a new Journeyman and most of our core players weren’t planning on playing Cygnar I went ahead and pre-ordered the new box set as well as the models for what I would need to get to a 75 point list. I was very excited to get my trencher army put together with my ending warcaster being Caine2.
Fate decided I would be taking a different path unfortunately. Upon receiving my new battleboxes on the 30th I was dismayed to find my Cygnar box had a mis-pack and Maddox arrived with two sword pieces and no torso. The other hitch was that the trencher box and UA I had ordered were no shows due to lack of stock. As that unit was a good chunk of my list, it seemed a faction swap was in order.
With the battlebox tournament the next day, I broke into my Cryx box and quickly assembled Agathia and the reaper and managed to get Aggy painted up for the next day. The event went very well with a good sized turnout. We had a good number of new players show up and I managed to get four games in. I won the first three and managed to barely lose the final championship round to Paul’s Khador. With the game on the line, Paul rolled a six and his warcaster survived to the next turn with Aggy camping zero focus. Weapon master combined with a full focus load out soon left Aggy dead and my assured victory lost to the winds of fate. Though I lost my final game I had a great deal of fun and ended the day 3-1. I walked away with a silver trophy and a smile on my face. Fun was had and that is the most important thing.
The next week saw the start of our new Journeyman league. A good number of us were excited for more games and I ended up grabbing games with Andrew and Andy on Wednesday. You can check Andrew’s coverage over at his blog www.chalkboardwar.com for week 1.
We first played a journeyman game, followed by a rulebook scenario game. I very quickly learned to fear the fire of the new Menoth warcaster and the amount of fire sprays igniting my forces made me cringe. Andy also is playing Menoth for the league and my first impression of the Menoth box is that it’s very strong at this level. With the limited amount of models and continuous fire, the damage mounts quickly.
Though I lost two journeyman games, I felt I had some solid lessons learned with Agathia. Agathia so far has proved herself to be more of a jack of all trades caster with a forgiving spell list. The most important lesson learned is that she’s a mediocre melee assassin. The temptation to put her into melee with high value targets to make use of dark shroud has proved to be a generally poor decision. With MAT 7 and POW 12 she doesn’t quite have the oomf to get the job done on high defense and high ARM targets. I have found myself expending all her focus leaving her in an extremely vulnerable state since I can no longer cancel out follow up damage from my opponent.
Zero camp has left me losing the game more often than naught, especially against the more experienced players. So I endeavored to play her farther back and let her jacks do more of the work. Putting this into practice the next day at the primary Thursday meet up went well.
We had an amazing turn out for the first week of journeyman. We had fifteen players in total show up for games and we were having to split even the 4x4 tables into 2x4 sections to keep everyone playing. Even then we had people waiting for games.
I played two of our new players and a final game against Brandon who has been around the group but has limited play time and experience. First I played Roger’s Circle, a new player whose name I missed who played Cygnar and the Brandon’s Circle.
The first game went very well for me by turn two due to Roger’s lack of experience. He was unaware that his Warlock could dump fury during its activation which left excess fury on his warbeasts on his turn at the top of round two. He rolled a ten with one fury on his pureblood warpwolf on his frenzy test causing it to advance and attack his nearby argus taking a good chunk out of it. With his only heavy beast out of the picture he backed his force up into cover.
With the Pureblood stuck out in the open, my reaper quickly reeled it in and with assistance from my slayer quickly destroyed it. With his main warbeast destroyed, Roger had to change to assassination tactics. Unfortunately Agathia was camping too much focus so she barely took a scratch. The rest of the game was fairly academic with the reaper and slayer pair taking down the remaining warbeasts in succession with Aggy hiding in the background. Though Roger lost, hopefully he managed to pick up a few tricks and he definitely learned more about fury management which will serve him well in the long run.
The second game was against a new player whose name I didn’t catch in the mayhem of that first day. He was playing Cygnar and was coming off a loss so he seemed a little crestfallen. We quickly set up with him going first and setting up on the side to my right. Leery of his firefly’s ranged attacks, I set up behind a tree template. The battle was engaged the second turn when his firefly charged my reaper in the forest. The reaper took minimal damage and the firefly was now in a decently exposed position.
Using Aggy’s feat, I repositioned the reaper deep into my own line and reeled the firefly into my back field. The reaper/slayer bash brother pair quickly destroyed it leaving my opponent with an ironclad and a lancer. It took another three turns due to mismanaged charge lanes on my part to destroy the two other jacks. I lost the boneripper and reaper before ending the match by destroying the ironclad with my slayer. The game was closer than it should have been after destroying the firefly on turn two. On turn three I had a positioning problem with the slayer which prolonged the game by another turn.
My final game of the evening was against Brandon’s Circle. Due to space constraints we were playing on one of the 2x4 spaces. I again won the roll of and decided to go second. We deployed and moved into the first turn. I’m not sure of his reasoning but Brandon used an ability on his argus which would cause it to frenzy on the second turn. Having left my boneripper in its line of sight it charged towards it ahead of the rest of his battlegroup. The reaper/slayer bash brother team so had it reeled in and destroyed.With turn three upon him, Brandon was really struggling with how to deal with my reaper. He eventually positioned his gorax to attack on turn four and the pureblood and his warlock peppered my heavy jacks from range. His pureblood was soon reeled in but its high defense combined with poor dice left it still standing and capable of being healed enough to cause some damage.
My reaper was destroyed in exchange for his warpwolf. The game ended with a battle between his gorax severely damaging my slayer with it being destroyed in turn by Aggy with a full focus load.
The journeyman league has so far been excitingly successful and I look forward to it as the weeks progress. I’ve learned a number of tactical lessons with to work with my heavy jacks in a faction that previously shunned them. I am currently convinced that having less that two heavies would be a serious drawback to any cryx list. One drawback is that I believe I’m being lulled into overconfidence by playing all of these newer players. Many of them do not have the experience to deal with some of the nastier gimmicks my battlegroup can pull off while the more experienced players are aware of the dangers and avoid those pitfalls.
We’re moving into an extended week two with a full steam event on Saturday where I will be fielding Lich Lord Terminus for the first time. The model was a gift from Andrew and I feel it would be a disservice not to get him finished for the event and to use him at the caster swap on week four of the journeyman league.
As always, Enjoy Your Games!
MKIII Records: 6/3 Cryx
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