Warzone Resurrection - A Battle Report

My first full game of Mutant Chronicles was less than successful due to a combination of a somewhat unfocused list (I wanted to use a bit of everything), poor rules knowledge and the fact that apparently my dice hate me...

...this time would be different...I hoped...

The Immortal                 Vs.                    Golgotha

My opponent was one of the managers at my FLGS Titan Games and he used the same faction as had successfully kicked the crap out of me with last game (Cybertronic) though had decided to give a more elite sort of list a go and had also included a unit of three Scorpions which worried me a bit...anything that awesome looking was bound to kick ass...

I, on the other hand decided to choose something more horde like as discussed in this blog post here. My final list decision was this...and also involves my first mistake...

Dark Legion
Golgotha   (175)
Undead Legionnaires x12 (120), Necromutant Squad Commander (+20), HMG x4 (+32)   (172)
Undead Legionnaires x12 (120), Necromutant Squad Commander (+20), HMG x4 (+32)   (172)
Undead Legionnaires x11 (110), Necromutant Squad Commander (+20), HMG x4 (+32)   (162)
Undead Legionnaires x11 (110), Necromutant Squad Commander (+20), HMG x4 (+32)   (162)
Razides x3   (225)
Praetorian Behemoth (320)

Total   (1388)

Mistake No.1 - Apparently I can't add up worth a damn...On the bright side it means that next time I can take two units of two Razides rather than one unit of three, max out the last two Undead Legionnaire Squads and give Golgotha a 15 point Dark Symmetry Psychic Power which will bring the list to 1498.

I had to do a bit of proxying in order to get four units of Legionnaires for testing which is why one unit looks suspiciously like the one from Titan Games cabinet and another bears a startling resemblance to the female zombies from my 'Asylum' themed Nicodem Malifaux Crew. Any Legionnaire with a red token next to him (or her) is armed with a Valcheck HMG just so my opponent had a clear idea of where they were...

Talking of my opponent...he used the following...

Cybertronic
The Immortal   (285)
Everassur (180)
Dr Diana Clone (110)
5 Armoured Chasseurs (125), 1 Rapid Blaster (+20)   (145)
5 Armoured Chasseurs (125), 2 Rapid Blaster (+40)   (165)
6 Mirrormen   (132)
3 Enhanced Machinators (150), HMG (+25)   (175)
3 Scorpions   (285)

Total   (1477)

With our forces decided we figured we best move onto the bit where we try to brutally murder each other...

We selected the 'Standard' Offensive Organisation Chart (OOC) and as we are both still learning the game we just rolled a priority mission and didn't worry about a secondary one or any corporate agendas. I deployed first and went first using the 'Battleline' deployment type. Due to the size of the table one of us had to deploy a bit further forward...just in case you thought I was cheating.

Deployment.
Having learned from my deployment mistake in my previous game I made sure that none of my units got in each others way, that Golgotha was in range of the units I needed to move quickly for the +1 Movement Value Modifier and that the Praetorian Behemoth had a clear path towards the enemy...

The aforementioned enemy...Cybertronic. The Scorpions were kept off the table in order to be deployed via the 'Rapid Deployment' rules and everything else was deployed to give it the best fire lanes possible towards my poor innocent Dark Legion...

Turn 1
We shuffled towards each other a bit and there was some minor exchange of fire resulting in some thinning out of the units that were foolish enough to stick there heads out first...

With my arch nemeses the 'Mirrormen' advancing behind cover with pretty much every 'you can't hit me power' at their disposal up and running...which is why they're currently depressingly at full strength...

Turn 2
I decide to commit the Praetorian Behemoth early as given the quantity and quality of Cybertronics fire-power I expected him to take a lot of weapons fire early on...especially after last weeks 'throw a building at the Mirrormen' incident...and it would be a shame for 320 points of my army to die without doing something...

Interlude 1 - Basics of Shooting
In Warzone, ranged attacks utilise the RS stat. Pre-measuring is fine in this system so you'll first check the range to the target. Then you select your weapon (some models have more than one option) and then you roll a D20 with which you need to roll equal to or below your RS value. Things such as cover, various special abilities, taking an aim action, etc. can modify this value up or down. A roll of a 1 is always successful (as well as preventing your target from using the 'Heal' ability) and a roll of 20 is always a failure (and also ends your models activation). Once you've hit your target it then gets to make an armour save (this is the 'A' value on your list of stats) and this value is reduced by one for each point of Strength that the weapon has over ten or conversely is increased by one for each point under ten. Some particularly tough or heavily armed units have a 2nd value in brackets which is the minimum value that their armour can be reduced to. This is roughly equivalent to an invulnerable save in 40K for those of you who are familiar with that system.

If your lucky enough to have a weapon with Str 18, 19, or 20 it will do Critical Force/Critical Damage which causes 2. 3 or 4 points of Wound or Structure Damage as appropriate. This will also stack with and Critical Force/Critical damage that the weapon may have 'built-in'.

Lets get on with some of that then...

After killing a couple of models with his Decimator Handcannon a unit of Armoured Chasseurs decides to counter the threat and hit him with everything they have. When the dust clears he has a single wound left...

I then move my own unit up in order to try to torrent the Chasseurs out of existence...

Which they promptly do...much to mine and the Behemoths relief...unfortunately the one thing Cybertronic isn't short of is long range fire-power...The mighty behemoth then suffers the ignominy of being finished off by a tiny little dart from the Dr Diana Clone, lol.

A unit of Undead Legionnaires then kills a Mirrorman...this makes me far happier than the death of a single model really should do.....

There then follows a significant amount of tit for tat shooting which by virtue of throwing as many bullets as possible at the enemy goes in my favour.

The dead piles have big X's over them...just ignore those bits of the table...

By the end of turn two our respective dead piles look like this...

Though I'm a bit irritated by the death of the Praetorian Behemoth, I can't really complain about how everything is currently going. However I'd forgotten about a certain unit of Cybertronic Scorpions that had been waiting for the perfect moment to strike...

Turn 3
Did some-one mention Scorpions?

Interlude 2 - Rapid Deployment.
Any squad with the 'Rapid Deployment' Special Skill does not need to be deployed as normal. During the course of any game turn you can choose to activate the squad. An unoccupied point in open terrain is selected (though Cybertronics Scorpions can actually appear right on top of a unit if they wish but this isn't the norm). Then roll a D20 using the squad leaders leadership halved and if the roll is successful then the unit commander is placed on the nominated point and any other squad members are deployed within 3". An unmodified 20 on this roll means something goes terribly, terribly wrong and the unit is removed as a casualty but conversely a roll of a 1 means the unit doesn't use up an action point to arrive. If the test is failed then the unit scatters the same way as an explosion would. Should this scatter send the unit into impassable terrain, off the board or onto another model then there's a scary mishap table to roll on...

The Scorpions arrive and I foolishly say in a derisive tone "How much damage are they going to do..." I then find out that by the simple method of utilising two Resource Cards then get an ability called 'Avalanche' which allows them to use both their ranged weapons in a single activation. Also unlike with 'Deep Striking' in 40K a unit arriving by 'Rapid Deployment' can assault in the turn it arrives if it has the actions available...

The dead pile has a big X over it...just ignore that bit of the table...

A ridiculous amount of attacks later and Golgotha is down to a single wound and there are several noticeable holes in my wall of Undead and I lose my entire unit of Razides. In a single turn the Scorpions kill more than there own points value in Dark Legion and then some...

Let's make sure they don't do that again...

Due to the 'Brainless' rule, Undead Legionnaires can only take 'Basic' actions and aren't allowed to use any Special Squad Actions. Fortunately as long as they have a Necromutant Squad Commander they do gain access to a single Special Action called Swarm...

I could probably have just killed the Scorpion by sheer weight of attacks (the process for close combat is pretty damn close to the process for shooting and is dead simple) but I wanted to give Special Squad Actions a go....

Interlude 3 - Swarm
For 'Swarm' to work I need to have at least three models engaged with the target. I then get a single attack with the CC (Close Combat) value of a participating member of the squad (the highest one) with a bonus of +6. All the RoA's (Rates of Attack) of the models involved are added to the lowest Strength (St) value and the attack now defaults to the type 'Piercing'. As an additional bonus, for every three models participating in the 'swarm' I get Critical Force +1 and AVV +1 (bonus's to number of wounds caused or to vehicle armour respectively).

In the above situation my attack would be at a CC of 19 (The Necromutants CC of 13 (being the highest) plus a bonus of 6) and be at a strength 17 (The lowest strength and weapon strength being the Undead Legionnaires 10 plus an additional 7 for the Necromutants RoA of 2 added to 5 lots of Legionnaires RoA's of 5) and at Critical Force +2 and AVV +2 due to the six members involved.

CC 19, St 17 with Critical Force 2 is pretty good for a bunch of zombies...

Through a combination of torrents of fire and 'Swarm' attacks I kill the Scorpions with just one attack to spare...

...and the dead piles are beginning to look similar in size...

...of course my dead pile is mainly full of expendable cannon fodder...though those Razides and the Behemoth are notable exceptions...

Turn 4
The Immortal finds himself a nice vantage point in some cover and sees what he can do to turn the tide of battle...

It doesn't go particularly well...apparently 'The Immortal' is just a figure of speech...

One of Dr Diana's clones goes to see what's keeping the boss...it doesn't end particularly well either...but it's not like Cybertronic is particularly short of Dr Diana's either...

After failing to make a single Heal roll up to this point I get three all at the same time...

At this point with only two Mirromen left to face four squads of Undead Legionnaires with the majority of their Special Weapons still in play the Cybertronic Corporation decided to surrender...

Not much in the way of toys for Golgotha to play with but she'll just have to make do I suppose...

Well I think that'll do for the first full Battle Report. More reports and some more intro articles to follow as well as some in depth articles on particular units.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Mutant Chronicles - Warzone Resurrection - That Tricky First Game...

So after experiencing a couple of demo games (and watching a few more) the manager of my FLGS asked if I wanted to give my Dark Legion a proper test run at 1500 points and as a game with some-one who'd actually read the rules more than once seemed like a good idea I accepted. I'll be doing 'proper' intro articles and battle reports later on but I'm currently in that wonderful 'excited about everything' phase of exploring a new system and so there will undoubtedly be several more half-arsed articles with me rambling excitedly about every tiny thing I bloody do...I apologise in advance for those...

He used the Cybertronic force he'd tried for his initial games as he had a fair idea of how it all worked and I basically took one of anything Dark Legion that I had because...I wanted to...

A really, really brief introduction to Mutant Chronicles...

Loyalty to country has been replaced by loyalty to corporations and these massive organisations alternate between making deals with each other, cooperating with one another and betraying each other depending on which of these things makes them the most profit or expands their power in comparison to the others though it was rare for outright conflict to occur. Unfortunately for humanity while expanding throughout the solar system and poking it's noses into places that should really have been left alone the human race inadvertently broke a seal keeping the forces of the Dark Symmetry from the universe. This power has the ability to affect artificial intelligences, raise the dead and generally ticks all the 'these are the bad guys' boxes and subtly at first began to turn the corporations against one another until outright violence occurred that the dark forces were only to willing to exploit...

When things were looking their worst a man of vision appeared with the power to wield the forces of light against those of the darkness and he united the people behind him and having little choice the corporations followed suit lending all their resources to the battle against the Dark Symmetry. Victory was achieved at the cost of their leaders life and an era of (relative) peace and prosperity resulted, rules were introduced in order to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again...

...unfortunately humanity has a short memory and has begun again to make the mistakes of old paving the way for evils return...

Each force has it's own individual flavour based in many cases around a certain archetype of a country though others are somewhat more esoteric in nature.

An even briefer introduction to game-play...

It uses D20's, low rolls are better than high ones as you have a target number to roll under (except when seeing who goes first) and each model has the expected stats relating to it's abilities in the appropriate areas (Close Combat, Ranged Skill, Strength, etc.). Each army also has a number of resource cards that it can 'burn' to gain benefits each turn which range from the fairly mundane (gain an extra shot) to more interesting unit specific ones (throw building at nearby unit...). Unit activation is done alternately (you activate a unit, your opponent activates one, etc) and each model in a unit activates individually though they need to stay within a certain distance of the unit leader (Leadership divided by two, rounding up in inches). Once the unit is activated each model decides what it wishes to do and is free to shoot at different targets from one another and can even shoot something with one guy (or girl) and charge something with another if they are able.

A slightly longer report than the game-play introduction but far to vague to be called a battle report...
The first turn was the usual moving towards each other and was characterised mainly by me deploying my units terribly so I got in my own way, realising that Undead Legionnaires take a while to get where you want them and deciding I need another three Razides....

If you listen carefully you can here the Behemoth saying "who the hell came up with this battle-plan?"

I thought I was doing well at this point as my dead pile was significantly smaller than Martins...

...but I rapidly realised that this game is wonderfully brutal once you get stuck in and I was about to get my arse kicked...which I promptly did...

As we got further into the game I began to lose critical elements of my army far faster than I was putting a dent in my opponents though with the exception of the last two* turns this was due to mistakes I made in a number of important areas. As I mentioned previously, my deployment was terrible. I failed to take into account that the Legionnaires 'Brainless' rule means that they can only take basic actions and their inability to run made getting them out of my Behemoth's way a more complicated exercise than I would have liked and also cost me a round of shooting from them which would have been useful.

*Two turns without Martin failing an armour save or missing a shot was a bit frustrating but I'd lost at that point regardless of dice and the fact that I didn't pass a single heal test was just amusing by this point, lol.

The mechanic for deep-striking (referred to as 'Rapid Deployment') is much rarer in Mutant Chronicles than 40K but is significantly more powerful due to the ability to act freely after arriving.

A moment ago there was an enemy squad here but a combination of flamer templates and charging Praetorian Stalkers made them go away...

The Behemoth wins the 'man of the match' award as he neatly bypassed the Cybertronics Mirrormen's penalties to ranged attacks against them by the wonderfully inventive method of throwing a building at them. This cost me a Resource Card to accomplish but was well worth it.

There was a building at the bottom of this picture...and a lot more Mirrormen in the middle of it...

I learnt a few important things during this game but I invariably learned them about ten minutes after they would have been useful. Firstly I learnt that it's important to remember what passive effects your models generate as Golgotha gives me a bonus of +1 to models within 12"'s movement (which I remembered when it didn't matter but not when it would have been useful) and a +1 bonus to armour within the same range (which I noticed when I only had about three models left...). I also forgot that everything Dark Legion gets Heal (2) which might have saved my Behemoth and that would have been a game-changer.

All in all it was an enjoyable game which I can only foresee becoming more enjoyable as I remember to use the rules I have and actually select units that compliment one another.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

1st Game of 6th.

So I had my first game of 6th Edition last week as the start of my project for which the outline can be found here.

I played against Mike Leach who is an experienced tournament player and is (according to Rankings HQ at least, lol) one of the top Space Marine players in the UK. He bought a Grey Knights list he'd been working on modelled as Custodes which suited the purposes of the test as it had some annoying flying things in it for me to attempt to kill.

I'll do this as a brief battle report with any relevant 6th Ed. observations inserted as appropriate.

My Army was some of my 'Night Reapers' 2nd Company counting as Blood Angels...
1x Librarian c/w Combi-meltagun and Shield of Sanguinius and The Sanguine powers,
2x Tactical Squads c/w Plasma Cannon, Meltagun and Combi-Melta in Assault Cannon Razorback,
3x Assault Squads c/w Meltagun, Infernus Pistol and Meltabombs in Assault Cannon Razorback,
1x Baal Predator with Heavy Bolter Sponsons,
1x Predator with Heavy Bolter Sponsons,
2 x Predator with Lascannon Sponsons.

Mike's army was...
1x Grandmaster c/w Psycannon and Halberd,
1x Vindicare Assassin,
2x10 man Strike Squads c/w 2x Psycannons, 7x halberd, 1x Master Crafted Daemonhammer and Psybolt ammo,
1x 5 man Terminator Squad c/w Psycannon, Master Crafted Daemonhammer and Psybolt ammo
2x Flying Bastards* c/w Personal Bastard Teleporters

*They were Dreadknights with some upgrade which meant they could fly and which also apparently made them invulnerable to all forms of weapon fire**
** I'm not bitter about that at all by the way...well not much anyway...

We rolled some daft mission whereby Heavy Support were scoring but also Kill Points (or whatever they call them now) and we had four objectives. Mike won the roll off to go first and promptly made me swap table sides as the one side had easier initial access to two of the four objectives and was closer to a third...

Off we go then...

Gmorts Deployment Picture 1

My Intention was to shoot the crap out of the unit on objective 1 but not bother to attempt to claim it (unless I cleared it early enough to drive one of the scoring tanks onto it) and also to torrent to death anything that might be wondering onto objectives 3 and 4 before rolling some Transports onto it/them.

Gmorts Deployment Picture 2

As I was going to use my Librarian to get me a 5+ Cover save I saw no need in creating too much of a 'parking lot' as it's entirely possible for a front rank of wrecks to get in the way of the rest of my units and due to 6th Edition Cover Save changes I wasn't going to be able to get a 4+ save anyway.

Mike's Deployment

Mike Deployed on one objective and in walking distance of a 2nd. His Terminators appeared to be planning on walking onto the objective marked as 4 on the first picture while his Flying Dreadknights occupied my army. A pesky Assassin was perched in a building ready to take pot shots at whatever he damn well pleased. Mike was going first and I failed to seize the initiative.

He then remembered that we had to roll for night fight which we did. As it turned out night fell...which probably helped me more than Mike as it happened.

Some of his units moved forward and the Dreadknights decided to fly straight towards my fire support and I promptly fired everything in my army at them...

Here they come...

Bastard...

I slightly damaged one of them...

6th Edition - Note 1
Things that fly are annoying as hell. I was hitting on 6's and against the pitiful few hits I actually got I was wounding on 4's (Assault Cannons) against which he was getting a 2+ save on all but the rends. I'll work out the maths later (another article in the making, perhaps?) but I can't see me doing much better against 'Flying Circuses' either. The solution is either more shots, something that can deal with Flyers without having to hit on 6's or perhaps some higher strength shots to make wounding more likely once I actually hit...

Mikes other shooting made a bit of a mess of one of my transports and to be fair a statistical improbable amount of saves made courtesy of the Librarians 'Shield' power is all that stopped this from being a crippling of my army.

The turret mount indicates where the vehicle was as I had no craters available.

6th Edition - Note 2
Vehicles are much more delicate than in 5th. Glancing hits that would normally have been shrugged off managed to gradually chip away at my vehicles Hull Points. I have a few options for dealing with this.

1) More vehicles
2) Better protection for vehicles
3) Some thing of a higher (or more immediate) target priority to draw shots.

I'm as yet unsure of which solution I'll go with...

At this point Mike has two objectives to my one and has got the point for 'First Blood' so is safely in the lead at this point.

Mike's shooting and punching then maims my fire support and further chips away at my vehicles. The ability to pre-measure helps Mike to put his units in perfect range to kill what he wishes to kill and the fact that a I forgot that the closest model is removed first costs me a few models I'd rather not have lost. The only bright side is that I could now shoot at the Dreadknights without needing 6's to hit...unfortunately it took all my armies remaining shooting to do so and thus I was unable to do much to inconvenience the objective holding units.

At this point Mike has three objectives to my one and has the additional 'First Blood' point. It is at this point that Mike reminds me that Heavy Support choices are Kill Points as well as Scoring but these losses are evened out by my killing of his Dreadknights.

Some clever use of measuring and some strategic 'Look out sir' rolls mean that I only manage to kill three Terminators.

6th Edition - Note 3
The 'look out sir' rule combined with the 'closest model removed' rule is going to be seriously open to abuse especially when combined with the ability to pre-measure. I can see some people falling out over this one...

Just the boss left...

Where the hell are you going...

After some exchange of fire between the two of us I reduce this unit to the Grandmaster who promptly withdraws to a more strategic location. In true Night Reapers fashion I shoot him in the back while he's running away ;-)

MINE!!!!

Things begin to look a bit more hopeful at this point as I have managed to get rid of the Terminators threatening the middle two objectives and I have torrented one of the Strike Squads off an objective. It's too late for me to get an objective holding unit to it but fortunately it's too late for Mike to get one to it either. My point for killing his HQ evens out the one he got for scoring first blood, we're equal on Heavy support kills and I now have two objectives to his one. Unfortunately I'm running low on troops and the one objective that will probably decide the game is being defended by a squad of one and a combat squad with an attached Librarian and I'm less than confident about their ability to hold off the nine remaining members of the Strike Squad especially with the assassin in support.

Mike's Assassin is apparently highly trained in the destruction of vehicles but is a bit shaky when it comes to killing people and manages to roll a one followed by a one and therefore kills no-one this turn. Then as occasionally happens in a game with dice even a terrible roll can sometimes benefit you. In this case Mike's above average shooting combined with my below average saves results in my entire unit dying from shooting giving Mike's unit nothing to charge...this leaves one guy holding the objective and giving me a narrow and quite probably completely undeserved victory...

So what have I learnt?
Vehicles die more easily, things that can fly are a pain in the fucking arse and now that you can pre-measure I should really remember to do so.....I also made a few silly mistakes (as did Mike I think) because we were unsure of some rules and spent more time checking the rules than planning our next move. A re-match is probably in order ;-)

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.