Full Circle - Episode 16

Video Broadcast all about Circle Orboros for the Privateer Press game Warmachine & Hordes.  This week I talk about Megalith, Feral Warpwolf and Druids of Orboros!

Baldur2 vs Thyra

Finally getting some more 50 point games in, and that's been great.  I brought my fairly typical Baldur1 theme force build

Baldur the Stonecleaver
- Megalith
- Wold Guardian
- Woldwarden
Shifting Stones
- Stone Keeper
Shifting Stones
Druids of Orboros
- Druids of Orboros Overseer
Druid Stoneward & Woldstalkers
Druid Stoneward & Woldstalkers
Blackclad Wayfarer
Sentry Stone & Mannikins

Here's the list that I think he brought

Thyra, Flame of Sorrow
- Revenger
- Crusader
Avatar of Menoth
Choir of Menoth (min)
Daughters of the Flame
Daughters of the Flame
Exemplar Errants (max)
- Exemplar Errants Officer and Standard
Wracks
Vassal Mechanik
Covenant of Menoth
Knight Exemplar Errant Seneschal
Saxon Orrik
Nicia, Tear of Vengeance

We rolled up a scenario, got Overrun again.  Big  control area in the middle of the table, virtually no chance that Baldur can lose that on scenario so that's good.  I won the roll, elected to go first.  I again forgot to take some pictures so sadly that'll be of no help.  The table was set up in basically a symmetrical setup, my right flank had a hill near me, and a trench near my opponent.  My left flank had a decent sized forest near me, and a medium-long wall on about a 45º near him.

Deployment

This gets a little ridiculous with Baldur1.  I deployed Baldur in the middle of the table, the Blackclad was deployed next to him, and to either side, not quite off to the flank, I deployed the Woldstalkers.  That's it for this list, the rest of it has advanced deployment.

He didn't do anything unexpected as deployment.  Daughters on either side, support pieces in the middle around Thyra.  Warjacks basically in the middle too.  Errants have AD, as do the Wracks.

I deploy the Druids in the middle of the table.  Megalith directly behind them, the Guardian to the left of them and the Warden to the right.  Sentry Stone up field about 20" since they can do that.  After his advance deploy I do an advance move with my woldstalkers basically straight ahead.

He put his Errants behind the wall that was near him more or less.  He put the Wracks in a massive triangle with one behind him and one on each side.

Round 1

Everything moves up more or less.  Druids drop clouds, counter magic and elemental immunity.  One Mannikin drops a forest for funzies.  Another Mannikin sprays over a wall at an Errant that is next to the wrack, I think it might have hit but dealt no damage.  My opponent said that the Wracks are missed with ranged attacks if they have a focus on them, but I did a little research out of curiosity here and discovered its only if they're DIRECTLY targeted, so that's a good bit of information for the future.  Baldur casts Solid Ground, puts a forest where he wants to go, and one underneath of him.  Teleports up.

He decided that he needed to do some harassment of my stuff, so he runs one of the units of Daughters B2B with my Druids, Warden, and some mannikins.  Errants move up, do some shooting at my woldstalkers and mannikins, kill a few.  Thyra puts Occultation on them, moves up towards the wall.  'Jacks move forward, so does the Seneschal and I think the Choir sings no spells and the book says no knockdown I believe.  Nicia runs towards the hill on my side.

Round 2

The druids do their best to try and take out the Daughters, they manage to kill a couple.  My Warden goes ahead and tramples over 3 of them, boosting to hit on them ... but I managed to roll a 6 on 3 dice with one of them.  My wold stalkers shoot into the errants, kill a couple.  The black clad and 2 shrimp try to kill the seneschal, and manage to put 4 damage on him.  Megalith can't move far, neither can the Guardian.  Stone Skin goes on the Warden.  Try to take some shots at Nicia, and some other stuff, doesn't do much. Baldur feats giving cover and rough terrain w/out pathfinder for enemies

Without much space to move, he advances only a little.  Errants do some more shooting.  Daughters try to put some damage out there.  Most of his stuff, caster included, gets near the wall.  Nicia kills a few things.  He moves up the arcnode to try to target one of my guys, but forgets about the Druids having counter magic up.  Think I had 4 druids left, maybe 5, dunno.

Round 3

I try first to do a little bit of shooting, that takes out a little here and there.  Daughters get dealt with by the Druids after Megalith puts his animus down.  Woldwarden charges the arcnode, puts up Stone Skin, and then I roll a 4 on 3 dice when I needed a 6 was all.  I hit with the 2nd attack, puts a decent amount of damage on him and then he's bumped out of melee which I hadn't expected.  Baldur drops some forests.  Druids have counter magic up.  Woldshrimp try to do some damage to Nicia with no luck.  Stone Skin cycles to the Woldguardian, who I teleport up into base with some of the errants, kill them and sit there to be a pain in the ass.

On his turn he throws a lot of stuff at the Woldguardian, leaving it at 1 health after a lot of stuff hit it and it had some good rolls.  Avatar took out the Warden without too much difficulty.  Thyra moved away from the wall to do a couple things.  Nicia killed some more stuff.  The other unit of daughters got back in my face to be a pain in the ass.

Round 4

I was looking at this like I might be able to just surprise kill his caster because of where he put her.  Additionally, my girlfriend notified me that she was quite hungry and I should speed things up, so seemed like it was worth it.  I gave the Druids a charge order, mostly so that I could run the Druid Overseer up so that Megalith would be in his command area for Beast Master.  Megalith was inside one triangle of shifting stones and the other triangle was far closer.  The first triangle teleported him into the other triangle so that only about a sliver of Megalith's base is inside the 2nd triangle.   The second triangle then moved Megalith a little over 9" which put him in base with Thyra.  Forced for his animus to get her defense down to 15.  Boosts to hit, which he does, giving her another -3 DEF to make her DEF 12 and putting 11 damage on her.  Makes another attack, hits, deals enough damage and that's it.

Analysis

Double teleporting a heavy remains to be such an AMAZING thing to do.  I don't frequently make it to round 4 with 2 full units of shifting stones, and its pretty easy to see why.  I'm glad that I've made myself play more with the double units of shifting stones, because it has definitely helped improve my play with them.  I also think that I need to learn to space out my Druids a bit more, they're CMD 9 with the Overseer, that should help.

Baldur1 vs Morvahna

That's right kids, we decided to throw down with some hot Circle vs Circle action.  I've been playing Morvahna a lot, but I didn't really think I was excited by the prospect of a mirror match so I decided Baldur1 would be my guy.  This was a 35 point shindig, and I went ahead with the tier 4 theme force for my list:

Baldur1
- Megalith
- Wold Guardian
- Wold Guardian

Druid Stoneward & Woldstalkers
Druid Stoneward & Woldstalkers
Shifting Stones
Sentry Stone & Mannikins

He, as mentioned, was playing a Morvahna list, I'm pretty sure this was what he had:

Morvahna
- Ghetorix
- Argus
- Gorax

Tharn Bloodtrackers (max)
- Nuala the Huntress
Warpborn Skinwalkers (max)
Shifting Stones
- Stone Keeper
Gallows Grove

Contrary to my mental decision to only play scenarios, we did not do that.  Also, contrary to my mental decision to take pictures while playing ... I didn't do that either.  Win some, lose some.  We did the old fashioned "roll for terrain".  I think he won the roll, passed and didn't put anything on the table, so I went ahead and dropped 2 forests more or less on each flank in the middle-ish.

As a side note, I think that as I want to get a bit better at playing that I dislike this method of putting out terrain.  I do try to not be a dick when putting out terrain, but I'm playing Circle, so it gets kind of easy to put out terrain that will definitely grant me an advantage.  I'm not going to get this if I show up at a tournament so I don't know that I like it here.  No big deal, just something I've seen.


Deployment:
Anyway, I won the game die roll, so I opted to go first.  The 2 Wold Guardians got AD from the theme for the theme force benefit.  So I deployed everything how you'd expect.  Baldur and Megalith in the middle, the units of shrimp on each flank.  He deployed his stuff more or less in the middle.  For AD I deployed my stuff basically in the middle.  He deployed the Bloodtrackers on my left flank and the shifting stones right-ish.  My Woldstalkers advance move basically straight ahead.  He chose the Sentry Stone & Mannikins

Round 1:
Not much exciting from me here.  Everything moved ahead.  Only thing of note that I did was one of my Mannikins was able to get within spray range of his Gallows Grove.  Boosted the damage, anddddd I rolled 1 1 2, awful.  Baldur puts up Solid Ground, we've got Stone Skin on one of the Wold Guardians, and here we go.

On his turn, most of the stuff moves up.  He tries to rock hammer something with the Stone Keeper, this doesn't work at all.  His Bloodtrackers kill off all the mannikins and some of the wold stalkers on that side, but leave the Sentry Stone.  Everything else moves up and Morvahna puts Restoration on the Skinwalkers and Regrowth on the Bloodtrackers.

Round 2:
Now things get interesting.  Shifting Stones send the Stone Skin'd Guardian after his shifting stone and a skinwalker, those die.  Baldur feats.  The shrimp shoot another Skinwalker, and some fail to do much against the bloodtrackers.  Megalith and the other Guardian stay home in the shifting stones.

He goes, tries to do the most he can with the bloodtrackers.  They kill all but the Stoneward and the Sentry Stone is still there.  One Skinwalker tries to kill a Shifting Stone and fails, 2 others charge the Guardian and do some damage, but all the aspects are up.  Morvahna kind of runs away.  Ghetorix moves up and I don't think he does much might have killed a wold shrimp.  He tries to Primal up the Gorax and charge the Guardian but ends up short.

Round 3:
Well, this is interesting.  My Guardian with Stone Skin on it goes up and kills another Skinwalker and Gorax.  I did some mis-positioning here, but basically Megalith moved so that his animus would hit Ghetorix, Wold Guardian #2 is teleported into base with Ghetorix, gets Stone Skin, and proceeds to kill the shit out of him.  Baldur moves, kills a Tracker, puts up a forest to stand in and casts Flesh of Clay, and the Sentry Stone moves to block

So, the mistake here is that I probably should have cycled Stone Skin to Baldur, or left him with the transfers.  I had forgetten about Argus, who advanced, and hits Baldur with his Paralyze, and since its a spray it ignored cover.  Needed a 4, he got it, Baldur's DEF against shooting is now 9.  Morvahna had to move into a forest to do this though, so he's got to kill Baldur or that's the game.  Bloodtrackers move into range, and get their throws off.  I don't remember how many it was, but he still had like 6 dice.  Game Over.

Analysis:
I think Baldur is definitely a good matchup against Morvahna, and probably much of Circle.  I continue to like the 50 point list where I can bring the extra support and decide between the Warden or the Druids.  The ARM 20 Guardians are a bitch for Circle to do a whole lot about with most lists, Megalith is of course amazing, and we rely heavily on having Pathfinder to help us get there.  I need to get a little quicker playing him, and I need to get my turn one a little more down if I'm not playing the Warden in the list (I'm too used to going Solid Ground. Rapid Growth. Undegrowth. Forestwalk. Go.)  Also, transfers are good things, I should keep some around.