Domination Release Event - Battle Reports

This weekend I went down to San Antonio with a few other austinites for a Domination release event. Actually ended up being a lot of people from austin, but I did get to play some new opponents as well. it was an interesting tournament, using one scenario all day and cramming in as many rounds as possible during the day. you got points for playing, more points for winning, with bonus points for playing against new factions and players. and then there was a whole list of other bonuses you could get once per tournament. so in the end winning the games wasn't worth a whole lot compared to all the other points you could get, which made things interesting (in a good way).

I'm reconstructing my rounds from memory, some bits might be missing. Warning, this is going to be a rather large post, so if you're not really interested in a bunch of random battle reports, you might want to just skip over this one. I enjoy writing reports, though, as it helps me process my games and think about what went well and what I need work on.

Round 1

the first round was played against a trollbloods player from San Antonio. one of the bonuses for the day was playing a game with an army consisting entirely of a single battlegroup, so we both agreed to get this one out of the way to start with.

I had:
pMorghoul
-Bronzeback
-Gladiator
-Canonneer
-Savage
-Brute
-Shaman

He had:
Calandra
-bomber
-Mauler
-Pyre Troll
-Axer
-Impaler
-winter Troll

the scenario (which was sued all day) involved getting beasts or a caster across the middle line through a choke point and surviving for a turn, and doing it twice. there were also a bunch of large based boulders you could throw around.

He won the roll and went first, moving everything up, and putting up some upkeeps. most of his stuff went up the middle, with the winter troll out front a little bit. the pyre troll went wide left, hiding behind the large rock wall that formed the choke point. My turn was about as eventful, everything ran forward, admonition went on the bronzeback. maltreatment dinged the canonneer for 2 points, used that fury and one more to heal it back. (6 beasts running meant I needed one more fury, but had no spells to do anything more interesting with)

on his turn stuff moved up again, but most stuff was out of range to do much. bomber got far strike and lobbed some shots at my gladiator, one of them deviated and the other did a chunk of damage but didn't cripple anything. the frost troll tried to spray something but rolled too low to do much and didn't get any crit freezes. on my turn 2, most things ran forward a bit. the Savage ran all the way past the rock wall into melee with the pyre troll, after riling. just trying to force a frenzy on him next turn, and he was in the scoring zone now. canonner and shaman both shot the winter troll, almost killing him. gladiator slammed a rock into the mauler, everything else moved up. morghoul spent his fury healing some beasts and poking the canonneer in the back a few times to clear some extra fury points. I then feated, which would make it very hard to take down the two cyclopses that were in the scoring zone.

his turn was a little slow due to the feat. calandra put up starcrossed (i think she had done that the last turn, too, but I was still able to do damage to the winter troll) and moved up a little bit. the mauler got up and threw the rock back at the gladiator (he was just out of my miniature control range), knocking me down and doing some decent damage. the other trolls didn't do much, 2 of his lights ran across the middle to try for points. the pyre troll did nothing at all to the savage that was tying him up. his turn ended and I got my first control point. on my turn, the savage frenzied and took out over half of the pyre troll's hitpoints with a really high damage roll. the shaman and canoneer walked over the middle line and killed the winter troll and a chunk of the axer that was trying to score. the bronzeback finished him off and used beatback to stay on the far half of the table. the gladiator took out the mind and spirit of the mauler, and morghoul walked over nearby and hit the mauler with his offensive spell (I actually used torment?! wow!), keeping it from healing next turn.

I had all 6 beasts across the mid-line of the table, and would win the game at the end of his turn. so he had to try for an assassination run on morghoul. I was dumb, and forgot to put safeguard on morghoul during my turn. so I was actually in some danger since calandra has a knockdown spell. any skorne player knows, if morghoul falls on his butt he will die. Calandra moved up to shoot at him, but was luckily in range of a counter charge from the bronzeback. he hit her and knocked off about 10 damage. but more importantly was in melee with her. she had to spend fury to use befuddle on the bronzeback to move him away again, and then tried a boosted knockdown shot. even with a reroll she missed his def 17. he tried a few shots, but without morghoul being knocked down it hardly mattered. won the round with scenario points.

Ended up scoring a ton of points this round. got the full 4 points for winning a game against a new opponent, 2 points for only using a battlegroup, a point for fully painted, a point for first scenario win, a point for having no enemies on my side of the table, and a point for having no friendly models on my side of the table. game 1 and I already had more than half of the single-use bonus points.

Round 2

played against a Skorne player from San Antonio. I had already picked out my next caster before seeing what he was playing (I needed to try to play 5 different casters for some bonus points) and I picked pHexeris. he plunked down his list and had... pHexeris. that was goign to be interesting

my list:
Hexeris
-Bronzeback
-Brute
-Gladiator
-Marketh

Soulward
max paingivers
max swordsmen + UA
void spirit

his list:
Hexeris
-Bronzeback
-gladiator
-canoneer
-Marketh

2X soulward
max Karax

slightly different lists, but still played very similar. I took first turn and moved up the field in a pretty standard turn 1. vampire went up, death march on swordsmen, soul slave on the bronzeback. his turn 1, stuff moved up (karax ran instead of shield-walling and spread out a bit with all three extoller solos behind them). karax got death march, gladiator got soul slave. canoneer took a long shot, clipped 2 of my swordsmen with a perfect deviation and killed both. Hexeris shot an obliteration, which also deviated towards me, killing another 2 swordsmen.

On my turn 2, swordsmen moved up from vengeance. and for some reason I decided now would be a fun time to feat. I moved hexeris up, feated and then quickly realized I should have moved my bronzeback up first so I could actually use my spells. instead hexeris ended up putting some random animi up and dropped some fury. oops. swordsmen got a charge off on the karax, and the front 4 were all in range of the feat. swordsmen used their mini feat and easily killed the front 4, plus another one in the second rank from a sidestep. 3 more died from feat attacks, leaving just 2 of them. he only got 4 souls out of the deal because of the feat removing some of them from play. my gladiator slammed a rock into his gladiator, knocking it down.

on his turn, the karax made their vengeance moves, killing a swordsman. the bronzeback trample through a swordsman in his way and killed the officer. his gladiator returned the favor and knocked mine down. one of his soulwards gave magical weapons to his canonneer who wiped out my void spirit. Marketh used soul fir on a swordsman, leaving me with only 1 or 2 of them left. Hexeris shot some spells, but didn't do a whole lot. My gladiator was still over the line and scored point 1.

On my turn 3,  I went to move as much stuff as possible into his zone and try for another scenario win. my last remaining swordsman killed a karax with vengeance, and then took down a soulward with his activation. not bad for the last survivor. the gladiator was able to move into good position to kill off his gladiator and almost kill the canoneer with some hot rolling. paingivers got the brute and bronzeback riled up. the soulward took a shot at the bronzeback, boosting to make sure I hit. and rolled triple 1s. oh well, I still have a bronzeback in range. I get the free charge, I have P+S 19 and a butt-load of attacks needing 5s to hit. I miss my second attack, losing out on the free chain attack headbutt. I miss on 3 more of my bought attacks. in the end the bronzeback was still there. darn. my brute charges his canonneer and finishes it off.

on his turn 3, he needs to try for the caster kill or I win on scenario. his bronzeback rolls much better than mine and kills my bronzeback, making it look easy even without paingiver support. hexeris moves up into melee with my hexeris (I really should have played further back...) and starts wailing on me. he spent his initial attack on one of my beasts to beat back in range of my hexeris. so he had 7 attacks, needing 8 to hit and dice - 2 on damage. I had 2 fury left. he hit with 6 attacks in a row, but rolled poorly for damage. I had used both transfers, and was down to 4 boxes. he had one attack left. and finally missed an attack roll. I squeeked by with a win. moral of the story: why the hell was Hexeris so far forward? he has a 14 inch control range and an arch node beast. lesson learned.

Round 3.

Decided to squeeze one mroe round in before lunch. played against an Austin player with Thornfall. it was pMakeda's turn to play:
Makeda
-Brute
-Gladiator
-Molik Karn
Orin Midwinter
Soulward
Void spirit
min paingivers
max swordsmen + UA

he had
Sturm and Drang
- 2X war hogs
- Gun Boar
- Targ

bone grinders
brigands
slaughterhousers

he had first turn, and ran everything up. he had a wall of brigands first, slaughterhousers bunched up on the left, and his beasts behind. finally he had his caster and caster support group in the rear. the brigands went Tough, and were almost to the middle line after running their full distance forward. he was going to try to jam the middle with tough little piggies and play the attrition game. Makeda likes the attrition game. my stuff ran forward. the void spirit went wide for a flank charge next turn. Molik walked 11" forward and got ready. orin midwinter took a shot at some pigs, but didn't get past tough. the swordsmen ran 12" and got ready to die. Makeda feated and the soulward got to a good collection spot.

Turn 2, his brigands charged forward, killing a fiar number of swordsmen. I think he got them down to 3 models. the slaughterhousers set up for a counter punch next turn. the gun boar took some shots but didn't do anything, the war hogs stood behind their little pigs and waited. Sturm and Drang stayed well out of the fight. of course on my turn 2, all those dead swordsmen came right back. makeda put up carnage and sat back to watch the fireworks. the swordsmen plowed through every last brigand and several side-stepped up to harass the gun boar. Molik Karn walked up and totalled a war hog, but it took all 5 of his fury to do it, meaning no fate walker. The void spirit charged the slaughterhousers, but failed to kill one because of tough, so no ash explosion. the gladiator threw a boulder on top of the slaughterhousers, hitting 3 of them. they all toughed it out.

On turn 3, he was low on infantry and had Molik Karn in scoring position to deal with. the slaughterhousers stood up and killed a few swordsmen. they tried to kill the void spirit, but the two that tried couldn't hit his def 14 and got pushed back from poltergeist. his remaining war hog wasn't in position to charge Molik, so he got himself in a better spot and put the bone grinders between the war hog and caster and Molik. he then used TK to push molik out of the control zone and turn him around to prevent a charge next turn. the gun boar killed a swordsman.

on my turn, the swordsmen finished off the gun boar and half the slaughterhousers. Molik ended up with one extra Fury on him, and frenzied (even with a threshold of 10) leaving him facing the wrong way with a war hog nearby. the soulward tried a shot at the hog, but didn't do much. the void spirit charged and did some decent damage but nothing major. the gladiator ran across the middle of the table.

on turn 4, the war hog charged Molik. he took a free strike from the void spirit who took out his mind aspect. without it, he was unable to take out Molik, even with the extra attack from targ. the slaughterhousers went after the gladiator, but he was unhurt so they didn't get their finisher bonus. I got a control point for the gladiator. at this point the game was almost over, as he was down to one injured hog and his caster/support models. I tried for an assassination for the extra bonus point, but didn't have anything in range. he had no way of killing my gladiator, so he just ended hi turn and we went for lunch. I got one bonus point for playing 3 casters.

Round 4

round 4 was against a fairly new Legion player who was borrowing a friend's eLylyth list. I picked Naaresh for this one, as a counter to all that shooting:
Naaresh
-bronzeback
-gladiator
-rhinodon
-brute
min swordsmen + UA
max paingivers
agonizer

he had
eLylyth
-ravagore
-2X bolt throwers
Anyssa
raptors
Deathstalker
(might have had some more, I don't remember)

This was a very quick round, so I don't remember all the details. I made him take turn 1, and most of his stuff was out of range and just moved up. ravagore shot his fire ball, but didn't kill anything. my stuff ran forward and the swordsmen were just able to engage one raptor and the deathstalker with a run. swordsmen got iron flesh, rushed a bunch of beasts and everything went forward as quick as possible.

his turn 2 he focused too much on iron fleshed swordsmen and didn't do much. he did shoot my gladiator twice with bolt throwers, pushing him back and knocking him down. he killed half the swordsmen, but din't do anything too bad. lylyth got way too close for some reason. Naaresh feated, gave rush to the bronzeback and rhinodon. the swordsmen got out of the way, losing a few to free strikes. the bronzeback threw a rock 8" and hit lylyth with a boosted hit roll, knocking her down. Rhinodon was in charge + reach range. game over. I got a bonus point for the assassination and for playing a domination 'lock

Round 5

This round was against a legion player from austin, and probably my most common opponent. he was playing a tier 4 absolonia list to get the bonus point for hitting tier 4 (one of the only bonuses I didn't hit). He had:
Absolonia
-Ravagore
-Angelius
-scythian
-shredder
-Raek
-2X stinger
2X forsaken

I used my last remaining list, eMakeda (it's actually the same list as pMakeda, but with her epic form. they play pretty similar lists most of the time anyways)
eMakeda
-Brute
-Gladiator
-Molik Karn
Orin Midwinter
Soulward
Void spirit
min paingivers
max swordsmen + UA

he had the first turn and moved everything up, putting forced evolution on the angel, playing god on the raek, and carnivore on the scythean. I moved everything up in my turn as well, and didn't have any upkeeps to play so everything just sat tight.

on his second turn, the scythean charged the swordsmen, killing 2 of them (he didn't get his thresher chain attack off, but still ate 2 of the 3 he charged). the angel hid behind some rocks just to the right of the scythean, and the ravagore shot at Makeda. the brute took the hit, and a little bit of damage. the gladiator, brute and Makeda were all on fire. one of his forsaken filled up on fury, and the little beasts got into better positions. he dropped a blight field around his scythean, trying to keep it safe from my beasts.

my turn 2 was feat turn, but ended up being one of the worst feat turns I've ever had with eMakeda. swordsmen moved up with vengeance, and did 2 damage to the scythean. then they got the charge order, doing a bit of damage to the scythean and side-stepping out of the way. two of the swordsmen got a long charge on the back forsaken, but were out of the feat radius and couldn't hit the def14. one more swordsman ran to engage absolonia 'cause he had nothing better to do. void spirit charged the angel, which was a bad plan on my part. angel with forced evolution and tenacity is Def 17, and even with the feat boosting it, the spirit didn't hit. the soulward did a little bit of damage to the ravagore, but not much. I had a good chance to do some damage to his beasts at this point, but whiffed it up. the gladiator had a great slam path to the scythean that would have knocked it out of the blight field which would have probably meant a dead scythean. that would have freed up room for Molik to walk around the boulder and blight field to try to put some damage on the angelius. scythean is only def 11, I need a 5 with a free boost to slam him. I roll a 4 on three dice. now the gladiator can't buy any more attacks on the scythean, and Molik is bottled in. Molik walks up, trying to stand just outside the blight field to hit the scythean. it's close, we end up dicing for it to see if molik is in range. turns out he's in the blight field. he takes his two swings at the scythean, almost killing it.

Turn 3. not that it matters that the scythean is almost dead. abby heals it up with her feat, along with the damage done to the ravagore. the void spirit dies to a shredder, the angel moves up to hit molik, and does a huge amount of damage with armor piercing. he gets bad rolls with the rest of his attacks, however and doesn't kill Molik or the gladiator. a stinger charges my brute, doing some decent damage and holding him there. the ravagore lights more stuff on fire. the forsaken I couldn't kill wipes out the swordsmen nearby and the one on abby. the angel had scored last turn, so now he was in good position to win on scenario this turn. blight field goes down in the same spot, covering the gladiator and Molik.

my turn 3. unfortunately, because I thought molik would be out of the blight field, after he was done I had 0 fury on the table. so I cut for 6 and looked to the assassination attempt. Makeda buffed herself up and destroyed the stinger in one hit, and put up road to war. Gladiator walked around the schythean, still in melee but out of the blight field. rush went on molik, and I hit the scythean with a 2 handed throw, tossing him right into abby. I missed the hit roll, but it only scattered an inch and knocked her down. I shot her with the soulward and orin, but didn't do enough damage. I messed up and blocked the way for my brute to get there, so I had to try with Molik. road to war plus rush gave him a 10" walking range, putting him just inside reach range of Abby. had a bit of a discussion on whether he could be in reach range due to where she ended up after the throw. based on where the models were, though, the reach template barely touched her base. if it hadn't quite gotten there, all I would have had to do was use a Push power attack on the knocked down scythean to get into range, using 4 more fury for auto-hitting weapon master attacks. only took 2 attacks to kill her, and that was that. got another bonus point for playing 5 casters.

round 6.

we still had a little bit of time left before they were going to stop the rounds, so I decided to squeeze one more round in. the only faction I hadn't played yet was circle, so I went for that last extra point for playing a new faction. ended up playing against my wife's circle army. I used the Naaresh list above.
she had:
eKrueger
-Warden
-Wyrd
-Stalker
druids
min bloodtrackers
lord of the feast

I had the first turn. moved up as normal, iron flesh on the swordsmen, extra fury on the agonizer. she moved her stuff up a little bit slower, using a bunch of druid shooting and telekenisis from Krueger and the warden to push all of the big boulders into a line in the middle of the field, giving me more to work my way around.

turn 2 I dropped iron flesh and charged a couple of bloodtrackers with my swordsmen, running the rest to engage stuff around the boulders in my way. I think I killed one of the trackers. my bronzeback on the left side tried slamming a boulder at some bloodtrackers that were a little further up than the rest. it stopped less than an inch in front of them. my gladiator decided to try is luck, getting +2" on slam rolls. his boulder also stopped an inch or less shy of several trackers. he also rushed my rhinodon to let him give it one more try. he didn't have a good slam vector, and I decided a throw would go further anyways with a guaranteed 5". I walked up and tried to toss the rock. the rules state that a rock counts as Str 8 for throws. I rolled snake eyes on my strength check and she beat it with a 5. oh well. the paingivers moved up and whipped naaresh for some extra armor, and then he feated. should have feated before trying to toss a boulder I guess, but oh well. at the end of the turn, the rhinodon was across the middle, and the two titans were close but not fully across.

on her second turn, she feated. the feat pushed both titans out of the middle, and almost got the rhinodon out. Krueger then used TK to move my bronzeback a bit and turn him around, moved a boulder out of the way of the warden, and scooted the warden up. at this, I cringed a bit. I showed her how to use this trick right before we came down for the tournament. the warden walked up to the bronzeback and got him in a weapon lock, keeping him from turning around and attacking, even if he were to break the lock. the warden wasn't across the mid line, but he was close. her bloodtrackers made short work of my swordsmen. even with iron flesh on, prey took them all out (with a little help from druids). the stalker ran all the way onto my side of the field, way out of range of most of my (now slow) army.

on my turn, I did what I could but it wasn't much. the brtue tried to hurt the stalker a little but failed to do any real damage. the gladiator put rush on the rhinodon, who got into thresher range of several trackers, taking them all out with boosted attacks. the bronzeback broke the lock, but it didn't help much. Naaresh put iron flesh on himself. at the end of the turn she got her first control point for the stalker.

her turn 3, she decided to try for an assassination for some reason. even with iron flesh on, Naaresh got shot up byt he wyrd, which gets an additional die against anythign with an upkeep spell on it. Krueger then shot a few lightning bolts, hitting with one and getting sustained attack with a second shot. Naaresh was down to 4 boxes, but not quite dead. She made 2 mistakes here. she should have just run away with Krueger and won on scenario. I couldn't have caught her if she just backed up 4 or 5 inches. second, she forgot to put the bronzeback into another weapon lock.

on my turn 3, I still didn't have anything that was in range of taking care of the stalker. the stalker had taken out 2 aspects off the brute last turn with some amazing damage rolls, so it wasn't able to finish the beast off. nothing else was really in range to help down there. so I had to go for the assassination. gladiator was able to slam a boulder over krueger, knocking him down. Naaresh moved up and hit him multiple times, but with only 4 boxes left wasn't able to get the paingivers to buff him up. pow 10s just weren't doing the job. the bronzeback then walked around the warden, barely in melee range and put up beatback. he hit the warden with his tusks, pushing him out of melee range. he then used both fists and his chain attack to move a boulder that was between him and krueger, tossing it aside. beat back got him in range and he finished krueger off with a swing from his giant fist.

I really should have lost this game. if Naaresh had lost only a few more hitpoints, if she had just had krueger walk away, or if the warden had done a second headlock, she would have won on scenario.

they tallied up the scores and we cleaned everything up. I ended up taking best overall and got the domination coin, along with the Skoren faction coin. Chris, the legion player from round 5 got the legion coin, and Quin, the Thornfall player from round 3 got the minion coin and the best painted battlegroup. Cody (another Austin player) took the circle coin. Very good showing from all of the Austin players.

Sorry for the really long post. I didn't want to break it up into 6 different posts in a day or two. if you read this far, thaks for reading! also, dont' forget to vote in the "Who Would Win" contest!