Battle Report: Goreshade I v. General Ossrum

I managed to get a game in against a friend of mine, he had picked up his dwarves again and I was playing my stupid Goreshade list. I can’t seem to get any good matchups.

I don’t have any pictures, so I’ll make it short and sweet and then get on to talking about the really cool part: The 2015 beta portion.

He was playing an extremely ranged heavy game, with Ossrum, Dougal, Earthbreaker, Hernne and Jonne, and a unit of Highshields.

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I brought along my crazy list for playing against hordes with Goreshade I.

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Now, its a bad matchup, in the terms that there are two abilities I can use that are specifically against living models, but overall, its just not that bad. I’ve yet to really feel that I’ve been on the back foot because I have my ‘Jacks, even though in the Sorscha game I had two of them removed almost trivially. That, however, is how Sorscha does warjacks. I have stealth to counteract Earthbreaker, to a point, and I have Dark Shroud in order to counteract his stupidly high armor.

He wins the rolloff, and decided to go first.Letting Cryx get a foothold against his slow, ponderous dwarf army just isn’t going to make for a fun day for him.

We are playing the new 2015 beta for steamroller, which have you bring along your very own objective for each list. I picked up one that reduces spell cost and has a damaging retaliation against melee attacks, and he picked one that makes units fearless and grants cover. The Scenario, too, was a new one. It had a zone centered short-side along  the center-line, with friendly objectives on your side of the table. It also had two flags on the centerline as well, a bit away from the center zone.

He deployed Earthbreaker on my left, highshields on the right, center filled with solos and battlegroup. I knew I had to counter-deploy or get blown off the board, so I put the Riders across from the guns and the Knights across from the Earthbreaker. The guns on that colossal can reach out, but if I can get him to trigger vengeance, I’ve got a cursed threat range of 15″, which is far enough. Its definitely not going to out-threat a sniped Earthbreaker, but it gives it only a single turn of shooting before I get there, if I position well enough. I preyed the Driller, hoping to either keep it out of the game or use it to get a good position on Earthbreaker.

Our first turns are unimpressive as we vie for position on the board, and I move up to take advantage of the objective. I had this dream of casting Mage Blight and Shadowmancer every turn, but after he popped his feat on turn 2, there was never really a reason to. His feat, snipe, and Dougal’s minifeat light me up, blowing out 3 of my Knights and two of my Riders. I had high hopes for my retaliation, but nothing materialized, as my Bane Riders crashed ineffectively into his ARM 21 Highshields and my Bane Knights barely nick up the Earthbreaker. It didn’t help matters that two turns later I remembered my weaponmaster die, but I did so little damage that even 3 additional damage over the 5 models would just have been a tickle.

His turn managed to take down one of my Bane Riders and blow out of the field all my Knights with a single sweep of the Earthbreakers claws. I was loosing models to swiftly, and I just couldn’t keep up. His Driller, thankfully, managed to beat the hell out of a Slayer, but left him with only movement busted in the end. My turn was the back breaker, as I popped my feat, created a unit of 6 Thralls, and charged the Earthbreaker. I was able to put three on Nightmare and two on another Slayer and still cast Shadowmancer thanks to the objective, and I think it enabled me to win the game. That second focus I was able to give to the slayer enabled me to sink enough damage into the driller to kill it, forcing Prey over to Earthbreaker, who I killed with only a single focus to spare on Nightmare. He used that attack to take out the objective, which allowed me to dominate the zone for two points. He then committed to kill Nightmare with Ossrum, knowing it was all over but for the dice, and succeeded in his task, leaving my small, frail army with only one task: Kill Ossrum. This task ended up being nearly to difficult for my poor undead, but in the end, Ossrum was put into the dirt.

I really enjoyed this game, and I really enjoyed the concept of “BYOO” in the steamroller context. I think it will generate a slew of new lists that are designed to take advantage of a number of the objectives powers, including the boosted damage to light artillery one. I’m really excited to try out the new Incursion, as well, as that seems to be getting a lot of buzz. The completely new scenario, which we tried out, was pretty good, though it seemed that the flags on the sides were to far out of the way to be worth going for, when you can just score the center.

I enjoy the iterations of steamroller every year, because it seems that they are trying to both shake up the basic stagnation a game will always have, and that they are trying to constantly create a set of scenarios that are a ton of fun, balanced and are both simple enough to understand and complex enough to create player interaction. The public test period of 2015 is extremely short, so if you have the chance, go to a tournament this weekend and try it out!