Learning to play Hordes: Part 3 (Battle Report)

Last night the talking stopped and the fighting started. There is no better way to learn a game, faction or new warlock than to dive straight in and get some games in. Anthony brought his 35pt Cryx force up to the house. This was my chance to try out the list and tactics I posted yesterday.

Anthony’s army list looked like this –

• Warwitch Deneghra
• Deathripper
• Deathripper
• Nightmare
• Bile Thralls (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Mechanithralls (Leader and 9 Grunts)
• Necrosurgeon & 3 Stitch Thralls
• Soulhunters (Leader and 2 Grunts)
• Darragh Wrathe

Anthony won the dice roll, but let me deploy first. I decided to pretty much deploy as planned with Saeryn surrounded by her beasts with the Feralgeist, Swamp Gobbers and Shepherd in close proximity. The Legionnaires would hold the left flank and the Striders would harass the enemy on the right.

Anthony went for a tighter deployment with the Mechanithralls and Deathrippers leading the way. Without access to arc nodes Hordes struggles on ranged magic attacks, so I’d have to close the gap quickly and try to take out the Deathrippers at the earliest opportunity. The Necrosurgeon was going to keep close to the Mechanithralls, so I’d have to find a way to do away with her before I started to turn them into corpse tokens. Darragh Wrathe and the Soulhunters can move ridiculously fast. I had no obvious counter for these guys, but I had to hope that aggressive play would force Anthony to keep them in a defensive mode. All of these threats to worry about and I haven’t even mentioned Nightmare! Anyway, here’s Anthony’s deployment –

The early part of the game was about positioning. I moved everything up pretty fast. I cast Respawn on the Carnivean and Banishing Ward on Saeryn herself. She was kept in a concealing cloud from the Gobbers and usually had Tenacity cast on her too. Anthony’s army came straight forward and the Soulhunters galloped up my left flank. He was pretty aggressive with the positioning of the Deathrippers, so I took the opportunity on my next turn to charge them with the Nephilim and Carnivean. Two wrecked Deathrippers. The Striders shot a couple of Stitch Thralls and Mechanithralls that were too far to yield corpse tokens. Seeing the Soulhunters’ speed I moved the Angelius onto my left and moved the Legionnaires into the centre to offer some resistance against the horde of Mechanithralls. I should have cast Breath Stealer on them. This would have prevented their charge!

The Mechanithralls caused a bit of damage on their charge, damaging the Nephilim, taking out two Striders and a Legionnaire, but it was the Bile Thralls that did the real damage, killing another four Legionnaires, with the final one succumbing to corrosion at the start of my turn. Thankfully the purging Bile Thrall took out two of his own. Anthony knew this would happen, but he needed to position them to leave a charge lane to the Carnivean open for Nightmare. Nightmare lived up to his name and lead to the Carnivean respawning safely out of reach. Anthony pulled his Soulhunters back to block charges to Deneghra.

Now there was an opportunity. Saeryn moved up and feated, granting her beasts immunity to melee attacks for a round. She threw her Deathspur at a Soulhunter who blocked a charge lane to Deneghra, but missed despite boosting! She then attempted to cast Breath Stealer on Deneghra and again missed despite boosting. The Nephilim Soldier charged over the Mechanithralls engaging him to attack the same Soulhunter. Guess what, despite a boosted attack he missed too! Four of the Striders CRAed against the same bloody Soulhunter and, you guessed it, missed again! I should have shot at it before the Nephilim engaged it, but I originally had other plans for them. The turn was falling apart. To salvage something the Angelius charged Nightmare and did a shocking amount of damage. The Carnivean, who was originally going to charge Deneghra had the Soulhunter done the right thing and died(!) charged in and finished Nightmare. At least my beasts (and Saeryn) would be immune to a melee retaliation.

Anthony debuffed the Angelius as much as he could with Deneghra, including popping her feat. He then used the remaining Bile Thralls to massively damage it. Darragh Wrath charged in and finished it (with his magical attacks). He surrounded Saeryn with the Mechnithralls and moved up the Necrosurgeon behind them. The Soulhunters fell back to protect Deneghra.

The Striders took out the Necrosurgeon and remaining Stitch Thrall and Saeryn used Blight Bringer on herself to kill off most of the Mechanithralls. The Nephilim Soldier and Shredder killed off the other two. Things went downhill from here, though. The Soulhunters and Darragh Wrath finished off the Carnivean, Nephilim and the remaining Striders for the cost of two Soulhunters and Darragh’s mount.

This left Saeryn low on Fury, but there was little she could do. The last remaining Soulhunter, who was loaded up on Soul tokens, charged in and missed with both of his melee weapons, but struck with the mount. Saeryn was down to six damage points. She took it out, but in the meantime Deneghra skulked closer and came in for the kill. It took a lot of boosting to finally land a blow, but when she did it was game over. Saeryn was dropped by the Warwitch. Game over.

That was a great game and I think I played pretty well. Deneghra could have been in real trouble had my dice not abandoned me on my feat turn. It was a game of high attrition, but once my beasts were gone I was in real trouble. In retrospect the Carnivean could have finished Nightmare by itself and I could have kept the Angelius back. That and better use of Breath Stealer could have improved things. That said it was still a close game and I’m happy with my progress so far. I might change the list a little for next time. A Harrier would be useful for its animus and I think Warmongers would be more useful than the Legionnaires. At least it’s not back to the drawing board, more subtle tweaks than a complete redraft.

Owen