Hey folks, here’s the follow-up to Mugu’s post on Monday.  Remember as you read this, it was written almost a week ago.

Welcome Back to the Madness!

In my last post (in addition to lots of demotivational posters) I told you how  tressed out I was about the upcoming TempleCon and what I thought I needed to get done prior to that date.  Well, since writing my first post over a week ago, I was able to take stock of what minis I needed to get painted as well as two army lists that I wanted to use at TempleCon.

First the easy and good news – I played the Deneghra1 (Tier 3 – Witching Hour) list and won.  My opponent, Ron, was kind enough to take pictures and wrote a small battle report on his blog, here.

For those who look at the pictures, I forgot to bring my other Brute Thrall and my Scavenger, which were represented by the Ogrun Bokur and armless Helldiver respectively.

What I learned:

The game went better than anticipated as I was really wary of not having any heavy warjacks in my army at all.  I also did not have anything that I felt could shield Deneghra if Ron’s warjacks got too close.

As Ron points out in his blog (in the comments section) my army is vulnerable to Area  Of Effect (AOE) weapons and I knew going into the game that it would also be vulnernable to shooty armies as well.

What I can do about those weaknesses:

My standard approach to AOEs is positioning. I to try to spread my army out as much as possible to try to minimize the damage to any single unit/warjack.  This also has the added bonus of causing some folks to panic when they see the wave approaching.

As for shielding Deneghra, I’m still trying to figure that one out.  During my game with Ron, I kept her as far back and away as possible, but still within support and control area range.  It just happened to also work out during that game that I kept the Savenger and Necrotech between her and the opposing warjacks.

Army Selection:

The army performed well overall despite my abysmal dice rolling.  I may still replace the Scavenger with a bonejack with an arc node, just to have something a bit more untilitarian. Though the Scavenger’s 7 MAT and other abilities make it worth the points, seeing as its my first time using it, I wasn’t impressed (but that’s through my own fault).

I’m on the fence about the Ripjaw.  It performed well enough, but after missing with my initial charge attack by rolling double ones (I should know by now to always boost the roll to hit when I really need it ::sigh::). I couldn’t use the armor piercing attack, but if I had a Deathripper, it wouldn’t have mattered for my second (purchased) attack.

The Mechanithralls and attached Brute Thralls worked better than I could have hoped for – killing the Great Bears of Gallowswood and all but one of the Iron Fang Pikemen! They were the MVP’s of my army.

The Defiler and Warwitch Siren spray attacks were really handy and the Defilers’s arc nodes were really useful for arcing spells into Ron’s models as soon as they were within range.

The Pistol Wraith distracted Ron more than doing anything else, as Ron didn’t have any models other than Vlad with magic weapons that could attack it.  It didn’t really damage many (any?) of his models, but it definitely distracted him.  The Scrap Thrall spent the entire game running around warjacks and trying to make a beeline to Vlad.  The Stalker got too close to Vlad, who was happy to carve it into little pieces.  The Skarlok slung Crippling Grasp around mostly and managed not to get killed.

Painting the Models

After checking my models the other night, it turns out I *only* need to paint the Scavenger and Brute Thrall for the Deneghra list and six Soulhunters & Darragh Wrathe . And only a week to paint it all in. [At the time of writing the article – P]  ::sigh::  Possible, but not likely, especially since the Brute Thrall and Darragh Wrathe need some conversion work.

Speaking of Darragh Wrathe, I have a really nice undead mount from another company that I want to use in a conversion to mount him on, but its going to take too long to finish and so I’m going to mount him on Epic Alexia’s horse with Darragh’s deathpony’s head and tail.  It’s the easiest and quickest conversion I can do and still maybe get him assembled and painted by TempleCon.  I’d just use his old horse, but I chopped him up into many pieces.

 So here’s my plan:

1.  Finish painting the Scavenger.

2.  Assemble and prime the Brute Thrall (who’s getting the IK Bridge Troll’s head).

3.  Reassemble the arms and legs that have come off of my Soulhunters.  (Re)Prime as necessary.

4.  Assemble Darragh Wrathe and horse.  Even if I don’t manage to get him painted in time for TempleCon, I want him to be assembled to use.

Final Thoughts:

I’m still a bit stressed, but the win helped boost my confidence in the Deneghra list. The relatively small amount of models that actually need to be painted doesn’t leave me feeling too overwhelmed, either.

However, since last Thursday was my last chance to get a game in, I’ll be heading into the crucible at TempleCon to see if I can master these two lists.