Round 5 - vs Brian Cortese (Minions)
Scenario: Outlast
Leading up to this game, I was excited that I was going against another Hordes faction and could have a chance to run Venethrax again. However, as I examined his lists, I realized he would likely be playing Maelok with the Sacral Vault and Venethrax would have real issues with that. As a result, I dropped Skarre for the fourth time in this scrum. If I had been told going into the scrum that I would play a Hordes opponent every round, but only play Venethrax once I would have been greatly surprised. I am not certain if this speaks to the power of the Skarre Dark Host list, or if it means Venethrax doesn’t quite have the plays I am looking for in Black Industries. Here are the lists:
Pirate Queen Skarre - WJ: +28
- Skarlock Thrall - PC: 0
- Kraken - PC: 36 (Battlegroup Points Used: 28)
Wraith Engine - PC: 15
Bane Lord Tartarus - PC: 0
Soul Trapper - PC: 1
Bane Knights - Leader & 9 Grunts: 15
Bane Riders - Leader & 4 Grunts: 20
Bane Warriors - Leader & 9 Grunts: 16
- Bane Warrior Officer & Standard - Officer & Standard: 0
Maelok the Dreadbound - WB: +28
- Blackhide Wrastler - PC: 16 (Battlegroup Points Used: 16)
- Blind Walker - PC: 10 (Battlegroup Points Used: 10)
Sacral Vault - PC: 17
Kwaak Slickspine & Gub, Croak Sorcerers - PC: 0
Totem Hunter - PC: 0
Bog Trog Mist Speaker - PC: 0
Feralgeist - PC: 2
Gatorman Witch Doctor - PC: 4
Gatorman Witch Doctor - PC: 4
Gatorman Posse (Blindwater) - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16
Gatorman Posse (Blindwater) - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16
Gatorman Posse (Blindwater) - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16
I really need to get better at actually taking pictures of my games (though that might be difficult in a tournament type setting). Due to this, I don’t recall much of the terrain. There was a forest placed a little to the right of the center of the table. The left zone had a house on the left side, so a sliver of the back of the zone was available to my opponent with the obstruction in the way. There was an acid pool overlapping the near edge of the left zone. A 4" cloud overlapped the near edge of the right zone. Aside from these things, I do not recall terrain being much of a factor in this game. This is a common theme for me when playing Dark Host, as nothing in that list outside of Skarre cares much about terrain. My opponent won the die roll and opted to go first.
He deployed one unit of posse with a witch doctor and the feralgeist to the left with Maelok and both beasts in the center. To the right he placed two units of posse with a witch doctor. The other assorted solos were centrally deployed. I deployed my wraith engine to the left of center with Skarre sitting just to its right. The kraken was to the right of skarre, close to the center of the board, but just to the right. Bane riders went out to the left of the wraith engine. Bane knights were to the right of the kraken and the bane warriors went to the right of the bane knights. Tartarus was behind the small based banes and the skarlok was behind the kraken with the soul trapper.
Brian declared the bane warriors to be the totem hunter’s prey and began his first turn. The totem hunter ran up to stand behind the center forest, but far enough to the right to have line of sight for next turn. The two beasts also stood behind the forest. The sacral vault ran forward. All the posse ran forward into the zones that were in front of them, while praying for concealment. Maelok cast death pact and moved forward a bit with his other two solos.
My turn one, the kraken ran forward, wraith engine ran forward, but stayed 9.5” away from the wrastler. Bane riders ran forward, bane knights ran forward and grouped into bunches of 3 or 4, bane warriors ran to be a second wave behind the knights, with Tartarus behind them. Skarre moved up a little and the skarlok cast Ritual Sacrifice on the soul trapper, rolling a 3.
His turn two, Maelok popped feat and cast death pact again. There was another spell he cast, but I cannot recall right now. Both beasts continued to hang out behind the forest. Totem hunter charged the center group of bane knights and killed one. One group of posse on the right ran forward, with one running to be base to base with the kraken. The rest positioned in front of the bane knights with the second unit positioning at the back of the zone. The posse on the left also ran in. One of the posse ended base to base with the wraith engine and two others were forward to try and gum up the bane riders. The sacral vault moved forward slightly and took a couple shots at the bane riders. One rider died.
I knew this turn I would feat and my primary goal was to kill the sacral vault. There was a large open space in front of it where the wraith engine could land. My turn two started with an ineffective vengeance (need to remember to vengeance move back so I can charge in again). Skarre activated and picked up the 3 extra focus from ritual sacrifice, cast dark guidance and feated. She targetted the kraken, wraith engine, two bane riders (the others were outside her control), Tartarus, a bane warrior and a pair of bane knights. She moved to be sitting in a trench behind the cloud wall provided by the dark host theme. The kraken activated and killed the posse that was engaging it, as well as the totem hunter which gave it two corpses. I triggered kill shot and took a shot at the sacral vault, doing 6 damage. The bane riders charged and did little real damage. The wraith engine charged the sacral vault and destroyed it. My banes on the right charged and killed a posse or two, but did much less than expected considering some of them had Skarre’s feat applied. I left one posse for Tartarus to kill so I could create replace the bane knight that died. The skarlok sacrificed a bane and rolled 5. While there was still a good amount of posse left on the board, I had accomplished my main goal for the turn and felt like I was in a good place.
Brian’s turn three featured the left gators taking some swings at the bane riders. I think they did a couple points of damage and that’s it. The gators on the right killed all but one bane knight and started working on the warriors. The meat of his turn was Maelok casting death pact and putting rage on the wrastler. The wrastler came in and did exactly enough to kill the wraith engine. The blind walker moved up into the forest and the left side witch doctor positioned itself in front of Maelok who had moved to be by the wraith engine when it died. He placed himself about .5” outside the kraken’s threat range. Kwakk & Gub moved to the flag and cast enliven on both heavies. Brian scored, putting him up 1-0.
My turn three had a clear goal. I needed to kill both of his heavies. I started by allocating two focus to the kraken, putting it on a full three for the turn. Skarre activated first, collected her 5 additional focus and cast dark guidance. I felt she was safe behind the cloud, so I also spent a bunch of focus to heal her up from her feat. I believe she was left with 2 damage at this point. The bane riders continued to be ineffective in removing the gators from the left zone. The bane warriors got the press forward order. One ran to the wrastler so it would suffer the ARM penalty from dark shroud. Four more charge the blind walker. The rest charged the remaining posse on the right. The blind walker died, as did a few of the posse. Tartarus charged in and killed another posse and the lone remaining bane knight charged and killed the gatorman witch doctor in the right zone. The kraken did not have line of sight to the wrastler, so it charged the witch doctor on the left. The witch doctor died which gave the kraken its third corpse and also brought it in melee range of the wrastler. The kraken made its second initial attack against the wrastler and hit for solid damage. Brian decided to trigger enliven. The free strikes from the kraken and bane warrior finished the wrastler off. The skarlok ran to my flag and his flag was contested. I scored, putting the score at 1-1.
On turn four, Maelok cast death pact, revived a gator in base to base with the kraken and moved away from the kraken’s threat range. The left posse continued their slow war against the bane riders, but did not kill any. His posse moved up and killed a couple more banes. On this turn, he remembered to move the feralgeist up and it sat in the left zone behind the building. He also moved Kwakk & Gub off the flag and another solo over and killed the bane warrior that was contesting it. I scored on my flag and he scored on his, keeping the score tied at 2-2.
At this point, my summary is going to speed up and contain less detail, as some things happened that weren’t very relevant. The bane riders killed the posse in the left zone, but were unable to score due to the feralgeist. The kraken killed the two posse that were in base to base with it and used killshot to kill the solo that was scoring on Brian’s flag. Banes on the right killed more posse. I scored my flag, going up 3-2.
Brian moved Kwaak & Gub into position and used two sprays to kill most of the remaining bane warriors. Maelok killed Tartarus. The posse on the right killed all the remaining banes except the standard bearer, who was outside the zone. I scored my flag and he scored the zone. I was up 4-3.
The kraken moved over to contest the right zone and killed a couple of the posse that remained over there. Killshot killed Kwaak & Gub. The bane riders ran into position to charge Maelok the following turn. I scored my flag, going up 5-3.
The last gator ran to stand in front of the cloud that the standard bearer was behind. Maelok charged the kraken. He cast his spray targetting the kraken, which also caught and killed the skarlok. He cast a second spray on his last posse and caught the standard bearer who died. No scoring, I remained up 5-3.
Skarre put the kraken to full focus, moved over to the flag and cast dark guidance. The kraken killed the last posse and then killed Maelok. Skarre scored the flag, putting the final score at 6-3 with a caster kill.
I felt pretty good about how this game went. I managed to initiate the piece trade in such a way that when I committed the kraken, nothing else could deal with it. The one mistake I made was that the bane riders should have been using their vengeance movement to back up and get another charge in. Without their brutal charge bonus, they could not really crack the armor of the gators with unyielding and death pact. I was told by an outside observer that once the wraith engine took out the sacral vault, the game was effectively over. I am not a good enough player to see that many turns ahead, but that was the chain that began the piece trade I needed.
Next time I will post up some thoughts about the Scrum and the lists I played. Thanks for reading!
Scenario: Outlast
Leading up to this game, I was excited that I was going against another Hordes faction and could have a chance to run Venethrax again. However, as I examined his lists, I realized he would likely be playing Maelok with the Sacral Vault and Venethrax would have real issues with that. As a result, I dropped Skarre for the fourth time in this scrum. If I had been told going into the scrum that I would play a Hordes opponent every round, but only play Venethrax once I would have been greatly surprised. I am not certain if this speaks to the power of the Skarre Dark Host list, or if it means Venethrax doesn’t quite have the plays I am looking for in Black Industries. Here are the lists:
Pirate Queen Skarre - WJ: +28
- Skarlock Thrall - PC: 0
- Kraken - PC: 36 (Battlegroup Points Used: 28)
Wraith Engine - PC: 15
Bane Lord Tartarus - PC: 0
Soul Trapper - PC: 1
Bane Knights - Leader & 9 Grunts: 15
Bane Riders - Leader & 4 Grunts: 20
Bane Warriors - Leader & 9 Grunts: 16
- Bane Warrior Officer & Standard - Officer & Standard: 0
Maelok the Dreadbound - WB: +28
- Blackhide Wrastler - PC: 16 (Battlegroup Points Used: 16)
- Blind Walker - PC: 10 (Battlegroup Points Used: 10)
Sacral Vault - PC: 17
Kwaak Slickspine & Gub, Croak Sorcerers - PC: 0
Totem Hunter - PC: 0
Bog Trog Mist Speaker - PC: 0
Feralgeist - PC: 2
Gatorman Witch Doctor - PC: 4
Gatorman Witch Doctor - PC: 4
Gatorman Posse (Blindwater) - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16
Gatorman Posse (Blindwater) - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16
Gatorman Posse (Blindwater) - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16
I really need to get better at actually taking pictures of my games (though that might be difficult in a tournament type setting). Due to this, I don’t recall much of the terrain. There was a forest placed a little to the right of the center of the table. The left zone had a house on the left side, so a sliver of the back of the zone was available to my opponent with the obstruction in the way. There was an acid pool overlapping the near edge of the left zone. A 4" cloud overlapped the near edge of the right zone. Aside from these things, I do not recall terrain being much of a factor in this game. This is a common theme for me when playing Dark Host, as nothing in that list outside of Skarre cares much about terrain. My opponent won the die roll and opted to go first.
He deployed one unit of posse with a witch doctor and the feralgeist to the left with Maelok and both beasts in the center. To the right he placed two units of posse with a witch doctor. The other assorted solos were centrally deployed. I deployed my wraith engine to the left of center with Skarre sitting just to its right. The kraken was to the right of skarre, close to the center of the board, but just to the right. Bane riders went out to the left of the wraith engine. Bane knights were to the right of the kraken and the bane warriors went to the right of the bane knights. Tartarus was behind the small based banes and the skarlok was behind the kraken with the soul trapper.
Brian declared the bane warriors to be the totem hunter’s prey and began his first turn. The totem hunter ran up to stand behind the center forest, but far enough to the right to have line of sight for next turn. The two beasts also stood behind the forest. The sacral vault ran forward. All the posse ran forward into the zones that were in front of them, while praying for concealment. Maelok cast death pact and moved forward a bit with his other two solos.
My turn one, the kraken ran forward, wraith engine ran forward, but stayed 9.5” away from the wrastler. Bane riders ran forward, bane knights ran forward and grouped into bunches of 3 or 4, bane warriors ran to be a second wave behind the knights, with Tartarus behind them. Skarre moved up a little and the skarlok cast Ritual Sacrifice on the soul trapper, rolling a 3.
His turn two, Maelok popped feat and cast death pact again. There was another spell he cast, but I cannot recall right now. Both beasts continued to hang out behind the forest. Totem hunter charged the center group of bane knights and killed one. One group of posse on the right ran forward, with one running to be base to base with the kraken. The rest positioned in front of the bane knights with the second unit positioning at the back of the zone. The posse on the left also ran in. One of the posse ended base to base with the wraith engine and two others were forward to try and gum up the bane riders. The sacral vault moved forward slightly and took a couple shots at the bane riders. One rider died.
I knew this turn I would feat and my primary goal was to kill the sacral vault. There was a large open space in front of it where the wraith engine could land. My turn two started with an ineffective vengeance (need to remember to vengeance move back so I can charge in again). Skarre activated and picked up the 3 extra focus from ritual sacrifice, cast dark guidance and feated. She targetted the kraken, wraith engine, two bane riders (the others were outside her control), Tartarus, a bane warrior and a pair of bane knights. She moved to be sitting in a trench behind the cloud wall provided by the dark host theme. The kraken activated and killed the posse that was engaging it, as well as the totem hunter which gave it two corpses. I triggered kill shot and took a shot at the sacral vault, doing 6 damage. The bane riders charged and did little real damage. The wraith engine charged the sacral vault and destroyed it. My banes on the right charged and killed a posse or two, but did much less than expected considering some of them had Skarre’s feat applied. I left one posse for Tartarus to kill so I could create replace the bane knight that died. The skarlok sacrificed a bane and rolled 5. While there was still a good amount of posse left on the board, I had accomplished my main goal for the turn and felt like I was in a good place.
Brian’s turn three featured the left gators taking some swings at the bane riders. I think they did a couple points of damage and that’s it. The gators on the right killed all but one bane knight and started working on the warriors. The meat of his turn was Maelok casting death pact and putting rage on the wrastler. The wrastler came in and did exactly enough to kill the wraith engine. The blind walker moved up into the forest and the left side witch doctor positioned itself in front of Maelok who had moved to be by the wraith engine when it died. He placed himself about .5” outside the kraken’s threat range. Kwakk & Gub moved to the flag and cast enliven on both heavies. Brian scored, putting him up 1-0.
My turn three had a clear goal. I needed to kill both of his heavies. I started by allocating two focus to the kraken, putting it on a full three for the turn. Skarre activated first, collected her 5 additional focus and cast dark guidance. I felt she was safe behind the cloud, so I also spent a bunch of focus to heal her up from her feat. I believe she was left with 2 damage at this point. The bane riders continued to be ineffective in removing the gators from the left zone. The bane warriors got the press forward order. One ran to the wrastler so it would suffer the ARM penalty from dark shroud. Four more charge the blind walker. The rest charged the remaining posse on the right. The blind walker died, as did a few of the posse. Tartarus charged in and killed another posse and the lone remaining bane knight charged and killed the gatorman witch doctor in the right zone. The kraken did not have line of sight to the wrastler, so it charged the witch doctor on the left. The witch doctor died which gave the kraken its third corpse and also brought it in melee range of the wrastler. The kraken made its second initial attack against the wrastler and hit for solid damage. Brian decided to trigger enliven. The free strikes from the kraken and bane warrior finished the wrastler off. The skarlok ran to my flag and his flag was contested. I scored, putting the score at 1-1.
On turn four, Maelok cast death pact, revived a gator in base to base with the kraken and moved away from the kraken’s threat range. The left posse continued their slow war against the bane riders, but did not kill any. His posse moved up and killed a couple more banes. On this turn, he remembered to move the feralgeist up and it sat in the left zone behind the building. He also moved Kwakk & Gub off the flag and another solo over and killed the bane warrior that was contesting it. I scored on my flag and he scored on his, keeping the score tied at 2-2.
At this point, my summary is going to speed up and contain less detail, as some things happened that weren’t very relevant. The bane riders killed the posse in the left zone, but were unable to score due to the feralgeist. The kraken killed the two posse that were in base to base with it and used killshot to kill the solo that was scoring on Brian’s flag. Banes on the right killed more posse. I scored my flag, going up 3-2.
Brian moved Kwaak & Gub into position and used two sprays to kill most of the remaining bane warriors. Maelok killed Tartarus. The posse on the right killed all the remaining banes except the standard bearer, who was outside the zone. I scored my flag and he scored the zone. I was up 4-3.
The kraken moved over to contest the right zone and killed a couple of the posse that remained over there. Killshot killed Kwaak & Gub. The bane riders ran into position to charge Maelok the following turn. I scored my flag, going up 5-3.
The last gator ran to stand in front of the cloud that the standard bearer was behind. Maelok charged the kraken. He cast his spray targetting the kraken, which also caught and killed the skarlok. He cast a second spray on his last posse and caught the standard bearer who died. No scoring, I remained up 5-3.
Skarre put the kraken to full focus, moved over to the flag and cast dark guidance. The kraken killed the last posse and then killed Maelok. Skarre scored the flag, putting the final score at 6-3 with a caster kill.
I felt pretty good about how this game went. I managed to initiate the piece trade in such a way that when I committed the kraken, nothing else could deal with it. The one mistake I made was that the bane riders should have been using their vengeance movement to back up and get another charge in. Without their brutal charge bonus, they could not really crack the armor of the gators with unyielding and death pact. I was told by an outside observer that once the wraith engine took out the sacral vault, the game was effectively over. I am not a good enough player to see that many turns ahead, but that was the chain that began the piece trade I needed.
Next time I will post up some thoughts about the Scrum and the lists I played. Thanks for reading!
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