First game of Warmachine: Protectorate of Menoth vs Cryx

The escalation league kicked off and my first 15 point game was against a Cryx army, simple mission, just kill the warcaster. Now this isn’t a battle report, just what I came away from the game with. While I have never played a proper game of warmachine before I have read over the rule and I thought I knew what I was doing, I was wrong. 

I took the following list:

Feora, protector of the flame

Vanquisher heavy warjack

Repenter light warjack

5 Exemplar cinerators

And the Cryx player brought (I think)

Witch Coven of Garlghast & the Egrogore

Seether

Nightwretch

Nightwretch

Mechanithralls

The game kicked off with cryx going first and moving forwards and I responded in kind. To stop the Seether getting a favourable charge, I sacrificed a single cinerator to act as a speed bump against the Seether. The seethe murdered the lone exemplar but he was then out in the open and the rest of the examplars charged in and destroyed the seether in a single round of combat. That was surprising and helped a lot.

The Mechnithralls charged into the repenter and crippeled both of its arms. The Vanquisher charged in to help the repenter but I changed my mind next turn and it walked out of combat but only took 3 damage from the free stike. The vanquisher destroyed a Nightwretch in combat in a single turn with a very lucky boosted roll.

I got a little over confident after the examplars set 2 of the mechanithralls on fire, I used Feoras feat and set 2 witched on fire. I then used fire step and moved in a rather stupid manor so the witches where no longer in her command range. So one of the witches fires went out and the other took a fire damage.

Eventually I managed to kill everything bar a nightwretch and the witches but I lost the game as the wretch killed my warcaster in a daring last ditch attempt.

So my first game was a loss, but he only had 2 models left and I had both the warjacks, and a single examplar.

Learning from loss

I found my first game really great, it was very close and if I hadn’t made a few little mistakes I recon I might have won. I am very slow at playing and I missed a few little rules which my opponent was gracious enough to help me with.

As I have only ever played warhammer its hard not to compare the games, e.g. the spray template is somewhat similar to the flame template of 40k but the two act very differently. I just assumed that spray attacks automatically hit, which of course they don’t in warmachine. I need to be able to separate the two games from each other, which will come in time, but right now I might get a little confused.  

Keeping the warcaster alive! I need to make sure my warcaster if safe at all times, with some sort of body guard or hidden out of sight. If I was able to hide her a little better I might have lasted one more turn and killed off the witches.

Also I learnt some cryx related things, next time I play against Cryx I need to take out the Arc nodes as quickly as possible. It was because of those I lost this game. The little buggers are hard to hit but go down easily. The mechanithralls fold like paper so they weren’t to much to worry about.

Anyway I really enjoyed the game and I can’t wait to play the next game in the league. I will be facing Circle of Orboros. Going in blind, that’s how I'm playing it.