Friday Rucht Hour: Warmachine Tournament at My House

Well, the other night we had an unprecedented event. Warmachine has caught so much fire up here that we had six people over for Warmachine, meaning we were able to host three one-on-one matches. Three matches, lined up on a big table, all going at once - it was like we were at a tournament.

Lined up on the table were the following match-ups:

• Circle of Orboros vs. Cryx
• Khahor vs. Mercenaries
• Trollbloods vs. Skorne

Bout One!

As you can see, factions were evenly distributed across the Warmachine / Hordes lines. Over on the far side of the table, Trollbloods and Skorne battled in a zone occupation scenario. Trollbloods won the day, on a hail mary attack. A giant troll warbeast broke from the lines, weathered free strikes and squashed the opposing Warlock. That said, I'm going to give Doug the moral victory for being new to minis and wargaming...but having paint on all of his minis. Not only that - turns out he's a pretty good painter. He cites his inspiration for his purple and grey color scheme as coming from Skeletor. Check out the royal purple Skorne!

Victory: Trollbloods (Moral Victory: Skorne)

Bout Two!

Next up was Khador vs. Mercenaries. In this match up, the goal was protect your side's objective while trying to destroy your opponent's objective. Casey was playing Vlad, one of the toughest Warcasters in the game. He cannily picked out which high-damage models he had to worry about in Nick's Mercenary army and then picked them off, one by one. What remained couldn't penetrate Vlad's incredible armor. In the end, Nick's warcaster was killed by Casey's in a deadly brawl. 

Victory: Khador

Bout Three! 

Finally, it was Cryx vs. the Circle. Undead abominations vs. the protectors of nature. Well, it wouldn't go so well for the tree huggers. We played on some lovely village terrain constructed from train mats, Dwarven Forge dungeon tiles, Halloween miniature dressing and paper buildings. Everything started so peacefully....

Then, the melee began. This game had no zones to occupy or objectives to attack. It was just straight up kill or be killed. The large terrain feature divided up the battle into two fronts. On my right, the battle waged back and forth between two infantry units with lots of shenanigans to keep bringing soldiers back on the field. 

Over on my left, might forces clashed and remained in a slugfest for almost two whole turns. I could not penetrate the high defense of the Circle's forces, while they could not penetrate my armor. In the end, it was attrition. I killed off the infantry on the right had side of the field. This precipitated the opposing Warlock to send her personal guard out finish off my zombie forces allowing my Warcaster - Terminus - to fly over the memorial in the center of town and engage her one on one. If you know Warmachine, you would think that it would have been a done deal, but no - Terminus barely killed her. In the end it came down to a single die-roll and I happened to make it. Long discussion came afterwards about what would have happened had I not made that die-roll. Isn't that always the way?

Victory: Cryx

Spent most of the game fighting around this corner...