The Terminus Challenge: pSeverius

So I faced pSeverius tonight, with my revised Terminus list. The scenario was a flank scenario called "bunkers", that totally messed up my deployment (thats something I need to look into) and the reinforcements complication was in play.

Menoth, Round 2

It was a serious cluster**** up the middle, and when my reinforcements arrived I knew I'd made the wrong choice there. As you can see on the picture, the entire twenty strong mob is stuck behind a forest and an obstruction (the wall just above the right zone), and they never did much except die horribly. The first round was running, and nothing interesting happened.

Round 2

The Errants gave me some headaches in the middle, since my Ravager doesn't work when they sacrifice themselves, but I decided that complete chaos was probably to my advantage, and jammed everything up in front, and then I forgot that he had reinforcements as well, and he scored a point in his second turn with the invulnerable Zealots of doom (killing a Machine Wraith and a WSC member in the process). He also popped his feat, so I wouldn't get to play with Focus in my second round, but I had a plan (a devious plan!).

Round 3

He didn't do much damage to me, so my two surviving Machine Wraiths grabbed a Redeemer/Reckoner, and then I unleashed the Apocalypse Purge Plan (should have done that in reverse, but it didn't matter). Four Purges later the middle was a sizzling pool of melted goo, with several Bane Thralls missing in action, Darragh Wrathes horse dead, the Reaper without his Harpoon, but most of the Errants were gone as well, and quite a lot of his invulnerable Zealots were marked with corrosion. I got Eiryss out of the way, and when his army was done melting I had Terminus on twelve souls, which meant invulnerability.

I had jammed things up quite well, and he couldn't assign Focus to his main beatstick (due to the Machine Wraith), so his round was spent trying to clear up my middle, with pillows tied to his fists. Sure I lost a lot of models, but nothing important, and when my turn came up I had 18 Focus.

Round 4

Severius had fled, so I decided to spend my Focus on his army instead. Terminus pulped both his Redeemers and a couple of random infantry, while the Reapers (both of them were very banged up, but operational) failed miserably (due to being ½ an inch out of range with both of them), but my remaining army took down the Reckoner, and left my opponent with almost nothing to work with.

My surviving Machine Wraith ran to engage Severius, which was bloody stupid and almost cost me the game: There you go Lamoron, bring models to make sure you don't lose on scenario, and then run them away from the zone. Severius had to dare a free strike from a Reaper to clear out the zone, and was left with a single box, but he made it down there, and everything he had left tried for the Reaper I parked there: they failed.

My opponent conceded at that point, since Severius was standing next to an eight Focus Terminus with a grudge, and it was getting late anyway. I did learn a lot of things from my game, and I'm really pleased with how the list runs.

What did I learn?

The Reapers did exactly what I wanted them to, though to be fair they could probably have done more if I had been on the spot with the distances. The eleven inch threat allows them to engage on my terms, and on a good feat turn I can easily load them both with full Focus, while still taking names with Terminus.

The Machine Wraiths were fantastic, and I'm definitively keeping them in for now. I really need to remember that not all linear obstacles are cover, because I lost one to stupidity, when an Errant shot him with a good aim, and I had put him behind concealment instead of cover. They did exactly what I hoped they would, and got in the way, disrupted his Focus allocation, and one even killed an Errant in melee.

The Mechanithralls as reinforcements were horrible, and I'll need something entirely different next time. I'm thinking Satyxis Raiders, but there has to be other great choices. I also learned that Saxon Orrik is to be protected at all costs, since the Bane Thralls just won't work without him if even one piece of terrain is placed where it inconveniences me. I also learned that putting the Withershadow Combine on offense works well, against everyone but Menoth, and that Rhoven is a bastard (R.I.P Tartarus).