Mammoth batreps, Part 2 - Rasheth

The Mammoth battle reports continue. this week I got one more game in with the Mammoth, this time using something completely different. Continuing working through every Skorne caster, the second to appear alphabetically is Dominar Rasheth. Not only would this game be my first time ever using the obese dominar, but I decided it was a perfect time to try out the new theme force presented in the latest No Quarter. This week I would be pitting my Mammoth proxy against the Mountain King, led by eDoomshaper.

My List (Rasheth T4)

Rasheth
* Mammoth
* Raider
* Krea

Animantarax
Agonizer
Tyrant Rhadeim
Max swordsmen
venator catapult crew
paingivers

Tier benefits:
1 point discount on huge bases
advance move on catapult
3 rage tokens on animantarax
2 dice for starting game roll, take highest

And my opponent's list:

eDoomshaper
* Mountain King
* Earthborn
* Pyre Troll
* Winter Troll

kriel warriors
* UA
* 1 caber tosser
krielstone bearer
* Elder
Swamp Gobbers
More Whelps


At first glance, the Rasheth list looks really odd. after playing it.... it's still odd. It's kind of a cute list, but it's not really all that strong IMO. it's one of the more limiting theme forces I've seen. not only does it force the use of a battle engine, but the models you're allowed to take are extremely limited. at least it allows paingivers.

Just because I was proxying the Mammoth, and of course the fact that there was actually a fully painted animantarax on the table, a lot of people ended up watching parts of this game. pretty much all of them gave me a puzzled look when they saw what all was in my list. All of them except for the guy I borrowed Rasheth from, who spent most of the night trying to convince me to pick up Rasheth.

Anyways, on to the battle report. we were playing Outflank from SR 2013. the terrain was fairly spread out. each quadrant of the board had one decent chunk of terrain. starting clockwise from my right we had a shallow pond, a forest  a hill, and an obstruction. in the center of the board was a fairly long linear obstacle. using the tier benefit of signs and portents for my starting roll I won the roll and chose to go first.

Predeployment was a large chunk of the setup. I put the animantarax in front of the left zone, the mammoth in front of the right zone, and she put her mountain king dead center. from my left, my deployment was the skorne-a-pult, the animantarax, the raider, the paingivers (behind everything), rasheth, the agonizer, the krea, the mammoth and rhadeim. the swordsmen fanned out in front of everything, weighted towards the mammoth's side.

She deployed the kriel warriors and swamp gobbers to my right, followed by the stone, then the mountain king with doomshaper behind him. the two light trolls tucked in behind and to my left of the MK, with the earthborn set up across from the animantarax. the whelps were deployed, with another pile off the table for the Mountain King to shed.

Turn 1

Skorne did what we always do on turn 1. everything ran. between advance move and a run, the catapult toed the left zone. the swordsmen ran up to screen, everything else tucked in behind them. Rhadeim ran to the center to threaten more than just the kriel warriors  Rasheth waddled up and put carnivore on the swordsmen and dumped 5 to the agonizer.

the trolls ran up in response. the gobbers put a cloud in front of most of the kriel warriors  the stone got a full load and put up the armor aura. the winter troll put its animus on the mountain king to prevent me from just running to engage with a few swordsmen.

Turn 2

the catapult and animantarax tried their best, but failed to hit anything on the left flank. the animantarax at least toed the left zone. the swordsmen tried to get in the way, spreading out all over the right zone. a few hung back, one got far enough to engage a single kriel warrior. the krea and mammoth both got snipe from Rasheth, who then blew up the standard bearer to drop a breath of corruption at the gobbers. it of course missed, but the scatter was perfect and killed both. the mammoth took 2 shots at kriel warriors, killing 2 with boosted blast damage, then put up counterblast. rhadeim got between the MK and Mammoth. the Krea moved up and shot the mountain king, paralyzing him. the agonizer and paingivers ran.

the trolls got to work on my screen. the kriel warriors charged my swordsmen, killing the three that they could reach. the mountaing king couldn't really get anywhere without running or charging and with a linear obstacle nearby. he ended up killing one swordsman I think. the pyre troll got into the left zone to contest, with the EBDT behind him. doomshaper did a few primal shocks, killing more swordsmen. I was down to 4 at this point, but they passed their command check. the aura went back up, and the winter troll put his animus back on the mountain king.

Turn 3

I was going to see how much damage I could do this turn. the left zone was going to stay contested this turn, since nothing had range to the pyre troll. the right zone had 7 kriel warriors in it, but I thought I had a chance of taking that, barring lots of tough rolls. I wanted to do it without the mammoth getting too close to the mountain king. without rush, there was no way I was getting to him this turn, but doomshaper could possibly get the MK to the Mammoth.

I started the turn with Rasheth. he moved up as far as I was willing to go and feated. then he put Blood Mark on the mountain king, blowing up one of my remaining swordsmen. I think I camped 2. the swordsmen went and rolled well (with help from the feat of course), killing 5 kriel warriors between the three of them. the raider moved up to block in the Mountain King a bit and shot one of the last 2 kriel warriors in the zone (the standard bearer). he passed his tough roll and didn't even fall down. Rhadeim charged the last 2 warriors, hitting both with impact attacks. the banner toughed again, but the grunt died. Rhadeim's charge attack hit but again, the banner was tough (and the last remaining model int he right zone)!

On the other side, the agonizer got right up to the wall and reduced beasts' strength by another 2 (on top of my feat). the krea shot the mountain king again and put up her animus, protecting herself and the agonizer. the animantarax charged the mountain king (I think my opponent forgot about battle engines having native pathfinder to get over the wall. or just wasn't worried about taking a charge from the game's worst battle engine). with the rage tokens, the feat and blood mark, the animantarax actually hit pretty hard. the charge attack with the tail was at dice+2 and did about 13 damage. the spears got some points in, then I rolled the gun, getting all 4 shots! with the MK down to def 7, all four hit. when it was all over, the Mountain king was down to 8 or 9 boxes! the catapult helped clean up, killing 3 of the spawned whelps. the mammoth activated last, and hit a stone scribe with a boosted cannon shot, catching that pesky banner bearer. boosted blast damage broke armor, and the banner finally went down. the Mammoth put up counterblast again.

the trolls had a few big problems this turn. they needed to contest the zone, and the mammoth was getting really close but was protected by several models in the way. the mountain king wasn't in any condition to help much, with no running or charging and being tied down by the animantarax. First, she tried to get rid of the battle engine. the EBDT charged in, but with the feat and the agonizer was hitting a bit softer than normal. the dice weren't any help, and after all his attacks, the earthborn had left 10 boxes on the animantarax. the pyre troll also tried, but didn't do much. the mountain king didn't have much choice and had to finish the job. He ate 5 whelps, healing back 11, then killed the animantarax using his kill shot catching the agonizer, krea and rasheth. he only hit rasheth, and didn't want to boost damage because it would just get transferred back to the MK with blood mark.

the last 2 or 3 remaining kriel warriors ran to get in the way of the mammoth as much as possible, and the winter troll charged Rhadeim, almost knocking him off the cat, but not quite.

Turn 4

the first thing I needed to do this turn was get rid of the three kriel warriors in my way to get to the Mountain King. my paingivers went first, enraging the Mammoth and clearing some fury from the krea (I had forced too much last turn). the last paingiver in the unit hit and killed one kriel warrior. the krea shot at the EBDT but missed. Rhadeim used leap to get away from the winter troll and into melee with the remaining warriors. he killed one and knocked the other down. my last 2 swordsmen finished the last kriel warrior off. Unfortunately, the paingiver that killed a troll was in the way of the Mammoth now. Luckily, Rasheth has a way of dealing with such issues. He launched a breath of corruption out of the paingiver towards Doomshaper, just barely missing with the scatter. with the paingiver out of the way, the Mammoth charged and killed the Mountain king, then put up counterblast.

And here is where I made an almost-game-losing mistake. she had forced her beasts a ton during her last turn, and all of them had max Fury. I decided to get cute with the agonizer and try out the -2 threshold cry that I've never used before. Pro tip: don't do that. There is no reason why you should ever not do -2 damage rolls for beasts.

On the troll's turn 4, the EBDT got its fury removed, the winter troll passed his check and the pyre troll frenzied, doing a whopping 1 point of damage to the EBDT. the remaining 3 krielstone bearers and UA moved up, spending their last fury to pop the aura and add stone's strength for +1 Str. Doomshaper moved up behind them and feated, then put flaming fists on the EBDT. the Earthborn charged across the center of the table to the Mammoth. with flaming fists, stone's strength, and no agonizer debuff, he was swinging at P+S 19. good thing the Mammoth doesn't have high POW weapons. her dice were almost exactly average, and the dire troll took the Mammoth down to 6 boxes. the winter trol tried to help, but had no fury to boost with. still, he got another 2 damage in. Lesson learned. if the agonizer had been doing his job, I would have taken 16 less damage over those 8 attacks, leaving the Mammoth with an impressive 20 boxes remaining. instead I almost lost my only heavy hitter in the list.

Turn 5

Luckily I managed to just survive, and it was time for cleanup. the paingivers enraged the Mammoth. Rasheth shot a breath of curruption out of one of the paingivers into the clump of krielstone bearers that were trying to screen Doomshaper. the cloud killed one, toughed one, and put damage on doomshaper, which he transferred with his last fury. rasheth then put carnivore on the mammoth and healed it for 2. the raider and swordsmen managed to kill the last of the kriel stone, dropping the aura. the mammoth started swinging, killing both trolls after buying 2 or 3 attacks. carnivore meant that doomshaper didn't get any fury back. the krea shot doomshaper and managed to hit, dropping him to def 7. Rhadeim charged doomshaper and got him down to 6 boxes. the catapult decided to be heroic and hit doomshaper in melee (base def 7 + 4 for melee + 2 for the cloud effect, managed to roll the 10 to hit). the shot did enough to disable Doomshaper, but he made his tough roll.

Doomshaper healed 1 at the beginning of the turn, but without any fury from beasts and no health left to cut from, my opponent resigned.

the victor. can't even get out of his chair...

Afterthoughts

This was a really fun game. we both had slightly odd lists with limited heavy hitting power. half of the game was the Mammoth and Mountain King dancing around each other, knowing that the first to charge would probably kill the other. The mvp for this game has to be the Krea, proving she's worth taking even if she's not there solely to protect the Mammoth from ranged attacks. 2 turns of no charging for the MK were brutal, then dropping doomshapers def in the last turn. on that last turn I could have bulldozed the two beasts and just shot a def 7 doomshaper with 3 cannon shots, but the idea of using carnivore to kill and remove 2 beasts in one turn was too tempting.

biggest lesson learned was definitely to not do anything dumb with the agonizer. he has one job, to protect his gigantic brother. as soon as he stopped doing that I almost lost the game. I had nothing left that could threaten a fully healthy EBDT at that point.

the new theme force is interesting, but still not good. the catapult is a bit redundant with a Mammoth in the list, you don't get any melee outside of the mammoth, and you have to bring the animantarax. granted, this is the first game I've ever won with that thing on the table, but it's still not good, even with the -4 armor swing and the free rage tokens. a gladiator would have been way better for 8 points, and probably would have finished off the MK instead of just ticking it off.

turtle turtle

Thoughts on the Mammoth

first of all, it's not as sturdy as you want to think it is when you have a huge model. arm 20 is nice, but not enough to put it at risk. it almost died to one EBDT. on the offensive side, he's everything you ever wanted in a skorne beast. everything around him just dies. it's incredible. that's 2 games now where he just waltzed into a zone and killed everything in it. a bronzeback kills any model it touches, a mammoth kills everything in a 9" radius. his initials can take down a heavy, then he has 5 fury to buy attacks or drop his animus.

Speaking of his animus, I need to remember it more. I had it up every turn, but didn't have any good opportunities until the last turn. when the EBDT charged, I totally forgot to hit it. granted, it wouldn't have done much (we rolled it out after I remembered, but didn't apply the damage). the EBDT under the krielstone aura and next to a wall isn't going to be hurt by one pow 19. other models, though...

I did get to shoot a bit in this game, though I still haven't used that to full effect. trolls don't care much about blast damage, so I was having to take one or two boosted damage shots to clear models. even that was effective. I can't wait to try his guns against lighter infantry. hopefully next time I'll have a chance to do more shooting. next up in the order is eHexeris, which should have a lot of fun with black spot nonsense. stay tuned, more reports coming out in the next few weeks!