Mitsuharu on Bat Reps - Learning Legion Thagrosh, Prophet of Everblight vs Vladimir Tzepesci, the Dark Champion

Hey guys welcome to my latest bat rep, and my first with Legion! Finally! This is likely the most I have looked forward to a game in a long time and I was pretty psyched to get models on the table. I was using my pThagrosh practice list that I wrote about in my last CitTM article:

Thagrosh, Prophet of Everblight +5

-Succubus -2

-Ravagore - 10

-Angelius -9

-Scythean -9

-Seraph -8

Nyss Shepherd -1

Nyss Shepherd -1

Forsaken -2

Deathstalker -2

Deathstalker -2

Max Legionnaires -6

Spawning Vessel -3

Objective - Fuel Cashe

I managed to get a game with Mike, who usually plays Trolls but was trying out Khador for the first time. His list consisted of eVlad with a wardog, a Destroyer, Juggernaught and Drago as well as the Great Bears, a unit of Widowmakers, a max unit of winter guard with UA and three rocketeers and Kovnik Joe, two Mortars and a Manhunter. Nick found us a scenario using http://www.rollforscenario.com/ and we got Fire Support. We rolled for first turn and I got a 6, giving me the first turn. 

I deployed with my battlegroup to the right of centre with my Legionaires and Spawning Vessel to the left. Mike set up with his battlegroup in the centre and his Winterguard package to my left. I then popped my Deathstalkers on either flank while his Manhunter and Widowmakers went on his flanks. 

On my first turn I had the Legionaires charge up the board, with three of them killing their brothers to fill up the pot, who then popped out a shredder. The battlegroup then ran up, with the Seraph using Slipstream to shift Thagrosh up slightly. The Deathstalkers advanced up the flanks and Thagrosh moved up, putting out tenacities on all of the battlegroup except the Angelius, casting Fog of War and giving Draconic Strength to the Scythean. 

On Mike's turn he ran up most of his army, the Widowmakers nestled up behind a wall, but were out of range to do any damage. The Manhunter ran into the forest for protection. The Mortar on my right flank advanced up to take a shot at the Legionaires, but it was half an inch short and deviated back, missing everything. The battlegroup ran up and the Winterguard used Bob and Weave and advanced. 

On my turn I had the Legionaires run up towards the Widowmakers followed up by the Spawning Vessel. The seraph used its animus and then moved across the Ravagore around the Obstacle, pushing the Ravagore two inches closer to the Widowmakers. The Seraph then took a Strafe into the Manhunter, killing him but nothing was in range for the second shot from the strafe. The Ravagore, now a bit closer, sacrificed movement to aim a boosted shot into the Widowmakers, killing three of them. The Angelius moved up to the edge of the forest, but was just short on its gun to hit the Destroyer, annoyingly. The Deathstalkers continued to move up the flanks. Thagrosh started his work as the tenacity fairy and started putting out the animus onto most of the battlegroup including himself. 

Mike had been hoping that his Widowmakers and Manhunters would have gotten more work done before dying and so moved the remaining Widowmaker back towards the Mortar and out of the way of the winter guard. The winter guard then moved up and used sprays from the UA to kill a handful of the Legionaries. The Juggernaught and Drago ran up towards my lines while the Destroyer took a shot at the Scythean, sticking a bit of damage on it. Vlad advanced up, out of kill box, hiding between the Great Bears. The mortar on my left took a shot at the Legionaires, but missed, scattering back to kill one of the pot, which was full of dead Legionaires at this point, and hit the Ravagore but failed to damage. 

I started my turn by reaving in all of my fury and taking my Vengence move to reposition the Legionaires to get them better charge lanes on the Winter Guard. The Seraph took a strafe shot on the Juggernaught, only rolling two this turn again, chipping the paintwork but doing minimal damage. The Ravagore then moved up and took a shot at a bundle of Winter Guard, catching a clump of them with the AOE. Only one failed their tough check, though, however the animus set the survivors on fire. The remaining Legionaires charged the closest winter guard and remaining Widowmakers, missing all but one attack thanks to poor dice rolls. The Pot then spawned a Stinger who moved up and sprayed but completely failed to kill anyone. The far right Deathstalker continued its extreme flank, killing the Mortar on that side. The Ravagore and Seraph were running hot and so the Shepherds took the fury off them. The Scythean then charged Drago, moving to also get the Juggernaught in melee. He then proceeded to hit Drago twice, triggering the Chain Attack, getting a hit on both the Juggernaught and Drago. When the smoke cleared and he was out of fury Drago was left with only a couple of boxes. Not wanting to fall shy on the piece exchange I flew the Angelius in to finish it off with an armour pierce charge, then the foresaken came up to take its fury off, giving her two. Thagrosh continued to dole out Tenacity to everyone and camp on a healthy stack of transfers. 

On Mike's turn he continued to whittle down my forces. The Winter Guard on fire all died as it didn't go out. Joe started by moving up and shooting at one of the Legionaires. Since the Legionaire was engaged he missed and ended up shooting one of his own Winter Guard in the back, but they passed their tough roll. The Winter Guard then took some shots and sprays into the Legionaries and the Stinger, killing two of the troops but missing the lesser with all of the shots. The Destroyer charged the Angelius but had trouble hitting its high DEF and only got one solid hit, which did a moderate amount of damage. Vlad then went and feated, affecting himself, the wardog and the Great Bears before running out of the way of the nearby beasts. The bears then activated and charged the Scythean, killing it with ease. 

On my turn I had the Ravagore move across the board and take an optimistic animus and shot at Vlad, but this missed despite the boost thanks to the feat bonus, deviating forwards to utterly miss everything, leaving a scather behind the caster. The Angelius took a double boosted Armour pierce hit on the Destroyer, doing a high amount of damage, but was then unable to damage it much more afterwards. The Foresaken also charged the Destroyer, but only managed a few points of damage to the high ARM Jack. The Seraph continued to plink shots into the Juggernaught, rolling a full 4 shots, boosting damage on all of them, but only doing a middling amount of damage to it. The Pot then produced a second Stinger, who joined the first in spraying over the Winter Guard, killing the UA and two of the Guardsmen between them. The Legionaires' Vengence and charges killed another couple of Guard, but Joe passed his tough to survive another turn. The Deathstalker on my left flank took out the other mortar, and the other one did a few points of damage to the objective. Thagrosh then moved up to the objective to get a line on the friendly flag to dominate next turn and then feated (not shown in the below pic) to put the Scythean back in play in front of him. 

Unfortunately at this point Mike had to call the game as he needed to leave to get home. This was a shame as I'd been enjoying the game and had wanted to play it out, but since we were new to our factions the game had taken a bit longer in the tank than usual and so it had gotten quite late. We discussed the game while packing up and Mike felt that I had a significant upper hand in attrition that he wouldn't be able to come back from, especially with me in position to dominate my own flag next turn. You can never rule out a Hail Mary assassination run with Vlad though!  

I thoroughly enjoyed playing Legion. I was slightly worried going into it that I'd be disappointed with them after building them up in my head so much. I really think that their play style is much better suited to my preferred approach and they're a much better fit for me. 

In terms of the game, retroactively I probably should have moved Thagrosh across into a position to dominate a turn earlier to allow me to start scoring sooner. I also probably shouldn't have taken the shot on eVlad in my final turn and continued to wear down the Winter Guard. Mike's remaining two Jacks were beat up enough to not pose too much of a threat to my beasts but I'd have enjoyed seeing where he went from there. I feel like I got to explore all of the models I had in the list pretty well. The Spawning Vessel is an awesome psychological tool since it really takes the sting out of your guys being butchered if you get to benefit from it later! 

This game has only whetted my appetite to play more Legion and I'm excited to get them back on the board! 

Hope you've all enjoyed my first foray into Everblight because there's plenty more to come!

As always check out the Facebook page and like for regular post updates, photos and more at www.facebook.com/Mitsuharuonminis 

-M

Cogs in the TheoryMachine

Hi all, and welcome back to the latest installation of Cogs in the TheoryMachine! Following the Valentines Massacre results from a week ago, I decided I needed to get more practice with some of the more traditionally tournament viable casters for the faction. I'm pretty ok with my eFeora play, and I got a decent run through with both pSeverius and pKreoss when I started playing Menoth. The caster I really wanted to get to grips with, though, was Harbinger.

I don't think that there would be any argument that she's one of the best casters in Menoth, and probably the game as a whole. Having said that she can be tricky to play, and I have very limited experience playing with her. In fact if you skim back through the archives I took her to a Tournament at the Outpost last year with a single practice game and got fairly consistently schooled using her against more experienced oppenents. To overcome this I've decided that now is the time to get a handle on her starting by playing her for the next few weeks until I feel confident enough with her. 

The list

The Harbinger of Menoth +5

-Heirophant -2

-Reckoner -8

-Devout -5

Minimum Choir -2

Wracks -1

Vassal of Menoth -2

Maximum Exemplar Errants with UA -10

Exemplar Errant Seneschal -2

Rhupert Carvolo -2

Covenant of Menoth -2

Minimum Holy Zealots with UA -6

Maximum Exemplar Bastions -8

Dartan Vilmon -3

Paladin of the Order of the Wall -2

Objective: Fuel Cache

The idea with this list is all control and denial. The Errant package (Max Errants with UA, Seneschal, Rhupert and Covenant) is designed to be a massive pain for my opponent to get rid of while also dishing out a reasonable amount of damage to clear zones etc. with Hunter Quick Work shots from charging weaponmasters. The Zealots are also in the list for zone control, jamming and obviously super-fun bomb throwing japes. The Bastions form a second wave to counter attack whatever's left from the rest of the grind in the list, adding in a hard to shift force that can polish off any troublemakers. The Devout is in the list to offer squishy Harbinger some protection from ranged, while the Reckoner is there to handle any heavy ARM that comes up. The support package is the deluxe edition with choir, wracks, vassal and a Heirophant. Then finally Dartan and his little brother are in the list to offer an immovable object to sit on flags and in zones and simply not die. Add in all of Harbingers cool native abilities (Awe for the pseudo DEF buff, FOCUS 10 for... being awesome, and obviously martyrdom) and the list becomes hard to kill and pretty heavy hitting on the retaliation. 

Test Game 

Ok. Full disclosure: I did actually already use this list and I was going to write it up as a bat rep... but the game went long and the store was literally closing around us at the time, so it didn't end properly and I didn't feel like it reflected how the game was going. I played against a Legion list that included pThagrosh with a Carnivean, Angelius and Scythean, along with a max unit of Legionnaires, a max Spawning vessel, the Black Frost Shard, a Foresaken, a shepherd and a Throne. We played Two Fronts from the 2015 Steamroller. 

My list out attritioned throughout the game, wiping out swathes of Legion models, including killing all the heavies (and one twice). The Reckoner in particular was very effective, using Enliven and Assault to dodge charges from a heavy and then one round it in the next turn. The Errants did a great job of making a nuisance of themselves while also whittling down the Legionaries. I wiped out the majority of the force and survived a couple of long shot assassination attempts along the way. By the last real turn his force was a Harrier with one box, a shredder, the Throne, Thagrosh, a mostly dead Carnivean and the Blackfrost Shard, while I had only lost about half the Errants along with all the Zealots, and only had a single model (the Harrier) stopping me from controlling the opposing zone.

I was in a commanding position and could easily have gotten Harby to a safe position from which I could continue to attrition and ultimately win on scenario, which is what I would have done normally, but as the store was closing and we had to get finished, I instead went for the cool option of charging the Throne with Harbinger to remove the last big threat. I used a boosted Cataclysm and a couple of melee attacks to hurt it and then poured damage onto it, and the Reckoner killed the Carnivean. The Throne was left on 1 box when I was done, and so I allowed him to take his turn, and he managed to kill Harbinger using every model he had left on the table to pull it off. It's a shame that we didn't have more time to be able to play the game out properly as I feel if I played it safe I was in a strong position to win the game within a couple more turns. More importantly I felt that this game gave me a good chance to play around with her abilities and use them effectively in a real game. 

I'm really looking forward to having a another practice with her to hone my experience a little further. I'll be sure to tell you all about it as it happens!

Stay tuned for more, and don't forget to like Mitsuharu on Minis on Facebook for more updates!

-M