Terminus Vs. Durgen Madhammer

I had my game against Durgen Madhammer, and it was bad. It was a Radial scenario (Diversion), and he chose to go first. I knew he had to, but with the SR 2012 rules it allowed me to pick the sides, which gave me an edge with the terrain.

Get in the pile, NOW!

He split his forces around the tower, with the Nyss Hunters on the left (my left), and the Gun Mages on the right. Behind the tower his main force was setting up camp, ready to engage at whichever flank I moved towards.

Move up the pile!

With no better idea presenting itself, I ran up everything, making sure that he would have to split his fire, and cowar... I mean brilliantly, ran the Bane Thralls away from the Gun Mages and towards the Nyss Hunters. I bunched up behind the linear obstacle, to prevent the Nyss Hunters from charging, since they can't swing across it without reach.

You there, on the horse, go get shot!

As you can see, I moved up Darragh Wrathe, and popped Beyond Death, hoping to lessen the impact of his turn by making him use his single target firepower on taking down Darragh, since even boosted blast damage suffers from -2 to their damage rolls. I used the Machine Wraith to block charges from the Nyss Hunters, and the Stalker hiding in the woods on the right is a proxy Machine Wraith, since my third one hasn't shown up yet.

I moved up Madelyn as well, hoping I could drain some more shots, and maybe even survive. The Gun Mages are limited to 10" range if they need critical brutal shot, which they do to harm Darragh, so I thought she might even survive, since the Gun Mages couldn't shoot her without getting in Beyond Death range: bad idea.

Durgen Madhammer: King of rolling just a little low

Madelyn was directly below Darragh, but The Ragman strolled around the tower, and shook her bones around a bit. The dancing undead hooker caused a few laughs, and then Darragh was gunned down with extreme prejudice. I mean everything shot him, and with Kiss from A&H he succumbed to the hail of bullets.

My plan did work though, and even with Durgens feat up my casualties were extremely limited. I had some really close calls, when blasts scattered on top of important models, but they often survived with a box left, or managed their Tough checks (at one point I was making more than half my Tough checks). It was really impressive to see my opponent consistently rolling one less than needed, and it pretty much cost him the game.

Admonia was close to dying, and that would have spelled disaster, but she survived with one box left. If I hadn't forced him to spend his single target shooting on Darragh, he would have finished of my wounded models with the Gun Mages and Snipe, so that turned out to be a valid tactic. Madelyn should never have been up there with him, but I'll know that next time.

Now I've written about the Gorman di Wulfe slingshot before, but that didn't mean I saw it coming. I had built my Terminus castle, when Gorman came at me from 14" away with boosted attack rolls from Durgens feat, which meant that my entire castle ground to a halt, when both Reapers and Terminus got themselves oiled (BUM JOCKEY!)

Time to fight back!

I remembered something I wrote a while back, and decided to use Terminus to debuff the Nyss that had come forward to nuke my Bile Thralls, when he locked down my army with Gorman. They were defense 16 with Rhupert, and I would be swinging with MAT 6 Bane Thralls (not to mention that they would explode upon death), which would never work. I would have loved to get Terminus and the Berserk Reapers in there, but Black Oil = no fun.

I'll hold them, now hit the bastards!

You see that line between the armies? That's what happens when Admonia removes their Primed upkeep (allowing Terminus to suck their souls when they go), Tartarus charges and kills The Ragman but curses the Nyss when he arrives, and Terminus plants his Malediction aura smack in the middle of them. Suddenly the Bane Thralls were rolling 6+ to hit instead of 10+, and while I only managed four souls it would have to do (especially since one soul was Gorman).

I ran every available model I had in, to lock down his ranged units, and at that point my camera ran out of juice, since someone had forgotten the charger at work. Machine Wraiths engaged the Nyss Hunters and Gun Mages, the Warwitch Siren engaged the Gun Mages, the Reapers relocated with their base move to block him from circling around the tower, and it was time to hunker down and endure...

Another round of shelling!

The short version is, that he shot me up some more, but since I had engaged his Nyss and Gun Mages with Machine Wraiths and the Warwitch Siren, he had to jump through a lot of hoops to do it, and the trend of rolling just a little to low kept holding him back. He had several times where he could have turned the game around with just an eight or more, but rolled seven a handful of times instead.

Some inconsequential things died, my Reapers were banged up a bit, Tartarus was left with one box, the Machine Wraiths died (except the one that had taken up residence in a gun bunny) after killing a model each on the free strikes (The Nyss Hunter even gave Terminus another soul), but he was in bad shape.

The grand finale!

The game had gone for a while, and I had to get home, so I probably wouldn't have done this in a tournament game, but I thought a finish would be more fun. My last remaining Bile Thrall blows up half my remaining army to clear out Eyriss (no Focus draining free strikes please), and Terminus flies in for a ranged kill.

Durgen had placed himself out of charge range, but Terminus has ranged options that reach a bit farther. Terminus touches down behind his lines, after ignoring the free strikes with his armor 29, and since Durgen ran himself dry on Focus he goes down to a boosted breath and a couple of fully boosted Hellfires (the three damage from Admonias Unbinding really helped).

A matter of dice!

Though I'm please I pulled it off, I know it could have gone the other way several times during the game. The game was basically decided by one roll, when a blast drifted on top of Admonia. If he had rolled one more on his damage roll, I would have been unable to remove the Primed buff from the Nyss Hunters, which would mean no souls, and losing a significant part of my list trying to kill a couple of Nyss Hunters before they took down Terminus the following round.

It was an interesting game, and the list is a horrible match-up for me, but luckily I don't think I'll be seeing something like it at a timed tournament, because it takes forever to resolve those blasts. I learned a few things, and I really enjoyed my Machine Wraiths, so it was an evening well spent.