Legions of the Dragonfather

I’ve moved to Abingdon, in Oxfordshire in the UK to begin work as a scientist. The town has a GREAT wargaming club (all sorts of games not jut GW/PP ones!) And so last night I played a game of warmachine.

No photographs as I didn’t bring out my camera but I took notes. I was using My Deneghra 500pt list (Deneghra, Nightmare, Cankerworm, Deathripper, 6 Bile thralls, Withershadow, Gorman, Skarlock, Pistol Wraith) He had 2 large trolls – stone and mauler I think, a pyre troll and slag troll, an axer and his leader who had the focus/fury feedback type of feat.

It went down like this..

We all moved up, I was cautious with death tracker on the nightmare so as not to get in charge range of the stone troll. He also moved up.

I charged in the cankerworm to his slag troll and the nightmare to the axer (to get away from the stone troll) I murdered the Axer! Cankerworm with some focus put a hole in the slag troll with help from the skarlock debuffing it. I kept deneghra back and took pot shots with the pistol wraith and the withershadow (who essentailly have the same stats) He charged my nihtmare in the back and totaled it. His slag troll hit the cankerworm but I was lucky to have a box left in each system… CLOSE!

He was getting quite close. A little closer than you want a horde of regenrating frenzied trolls to be. So I oiled the pyre troll to blind it, Denegra used scourge to knock down the mauler and the pistrol wraith got lucky and chilled the stone troll!! Then my bile thralls decided to martyr themselves for the Dragonfather. I did a point of damage to the stone troll, corroding it and the pyre thrall, I did a couple of points and also damaged my own cankerworm corroding it – this knocked out the cortex which meant no focus – was I toast next turn? Then he popped his feat whcih meant anything that got focus got zapped. OWCH.

I survived with most things intact although corrosion burned out my cankerworms cortex – not a big worry as the feat meant that if he had focus then he’d fry and with 2 boxes left he’d be Toast. The skarlock parasited the stone troll who got zapped twice with dark fire and admonia debuffed him by just being there and looking cool. Puppet master on cankerworm from Tremulus made up for lack of focus. I hit with the cankerworm and due to the fleshgrinder, ablation and parasite the stone troll was worm food! Go cankerworm! However now wanting to preseve my beloved beastie I scuttered him behind some trees.

After that it was mostly over. I’d lost my Nightmare and suicided my thralls, my cankerworm was weakened but more or less fully functional and short of the mauler trying to throw the deathripper at deneghra (he missed – phew!) the game was mine. A good game with many hair rasising moments! My opponent did fluff a few rolls but on my second last turn I missed both of Denegrhas spells by 1 which let his mauler get closer than I’d hoped!

I must add that not having much experience of hordes this game was fun. My opponent wasn’t afraid to let his beasts go frenzied and actualy wanted it to happen. He was quite true to the fluff of his army and we played for fun. I enjoyed the game immensely.

Not playing against ‘hordemachine’ or against a casterkill type army allowed us to really have fun rather than work it out ‘chess style’ about how to cheese-ball kill each others HQ which to me seems boring! While I was cautious at the beginning (maybe not in character) I opened up and had to take chances. I would have liked Deneghra to have killed stuff in melee but despite her Uber big spear she’s not a fighter!