Post mortem, round 3

Wrapping this up with the third, and final, loss of the day.

Round 3

Opponent: Aaron, playing Khador

Army: 2Vlad
Behemoth
Juggernaut
Spriggan
Doom Reavers
Kovnik Joe
max unit of Winterguard Infantry
5 Man O'War Shocktroopers

Reinforcements: Don't know, as they were not placed on the table.

My army: Blindwater

Bloody Barnabas
x2 Blackhide Wrastler
Bull Snapper
Swamp Horror
x3 max Gatormen Posse

Reinforcements: Wrong-Eye and Snapjaw

(Technically, I was a point down, as I was for my Thornfall.  I could have put in my Swamp Gobbers -  just didn't think of it at the time.)

Scenario: A flag too far

Yeah, we were going to kill each other on this one too.  Melee-centric armies, meeting toward the center?  This would be bloody.  I won the roll, and had him deploy first.  He set his up pretty close to the center, as did I.  First turn, he advanced, with the Doom Reavers running forward, and the Behemoth taking some ranging shots, which did nothing.

Bloody Barnabas Swamp Pits 3 times, then charges forward.  I run gators up, chanting for the +1 Def and Terror.  Wrastlers run up, Snapper runs up along the flank, and the swamp horror runs up as well.  The end of my first turn looks like this:

Anyone see the mistake here?  I sure didn't.  Not at the time. 

On Aaron's turn, the Behemoth advances, takes a couple pot shots, doing next to nothing.  Spriggan moves up, winterguard move up.  2Vlad moves up a bit, feats.  Doom Reavers charge, including Barnabas, who is caught with no fury on him for transfers.  Doh!  (Cue Mr. Rogers voice: "Can you say, 'That was dumb', boys and girls?  Sure, I knew you could.")

Doom Reavers tear huge gaping holes in my front line.  Barnabas survives, but with only 4 health remaining.  Several doom reavers fall to other doom reavers - occupational hazard, and a small price to pay for the number of gators that they killed.

It comes to my turn.  Board position is terrible.  I go ahead and place Wrong-Eye and Snapjaw, and activate them first.  That way, I got to use them.  Wrong-Eye advances, takes over a couple of winterguard, manages to kill one of them that way.  Snapjaw charges up, and eats a couple of the troopers.  No big deal, really.  Bull snapper charges over and eats one of the doom reavers, then goes torpid. One unit of gatormen activates, tries to eliminate the rest of the doom reavers, and does so.

It's time to go big, or go home.  Yep - gator tossing is where it is at.  Wrastler grabs the other, in an effort to 2-handed throw it toward 2Vlad.  I can still pull this off, but now I pretty much have to do an assassination.  I hit.  I fail the throw.  Yep, I can roll lower on 2d6 than 1d6 when I need to.  (Looking back, I may have tied.  If so, I could have thrown - the target need to beat the roll, not tie it.  More on that below!)  At any rate, a failed gator toss is not good.

I look for a few minutes.  I have more than 35 minutes on the clock still, and really, if I can't pull off the assassination, it's doubtful that I will be able to win.  The armor on the Khador jacks is too high for my poor pillow-fisted gators.

Ah-ha!  I see a possibility.  One of my gators is in the way, so I activate another posse, and charge it, killing it.  Huzzah?  The second wrastler activates, moves up, and throws Barnabas at 2Vlad, then casts Rise on Barnabas.  Risky, since Barnabas could have been hurt by the throw.  Fortunately, he isn't.

Barnabas feats, knocking 2Vlad down.  I charge in, and start doing some damage.  The bonus to Def from Might of Kings doesn't matter.  Unfortunately, I fail to kill 2Vlad, leaving him with 3 boxes.  He stands up, and kills Bloody Barnabas.

(Several models are out of place, because we had started to pick up before I took this pic.)

Lessons learned: Know the throwing rules better.  Really. 

Lesson #2 - Don't leave Barnabas exposed like that.  Losing some gators hurt, but having Barnabas take a hit like that was risky, since he could have been killed outright, and it also put me in a really tight spot. 

Great game, again, and a lot of fun.  Aaron really wanted to see me pull off the flying gator trick, and I wanted to see him assassinate Barnabas, since I left him wide open.  I think with a little more careful placement of his Doom Reavers, he could have managed it, too.