How to lose at Warmachine - Being troll food

So, in my second game of Warmachine (not im not counting the few i played years ago and the two mangled metal warjack only games I played) I came up against Sean and his Trolls.

Now, I'll talk about Sean a bit. Hes a top guy, every week he sets up multiple games tables with scenery in his garage and lets a dozen or so beardy gamers in to play. He's doing a lot to support the game in our community and for that he has my respect. Hes also a nice guy which helps.

One thing he doesn't do is let the noobie win.

He was very helpful and explained what all his dudes did, and gave me a good post game debrief and some ideas on what I could do next time. It was a solid learning experience, but still one where I got thumped.

Army list

So, I took Siege again Not the easiest caster to use and I still need to get the hang of his tricks.But he was the only caster I owned so, yep, not many options.

Sean also len't me some models so I could experiment with some guys before making a purchase, which was handy.

Madrak - The troll caster

• Siege
• Centurion/Lancer
• 6 Trenchers with officer and Grenadier
• Journeyman with Defender
• 6 Sword Knights
• 10 Long gunners with officer

The game
It was a mission with three objectives in the middle of the table, with one becoming a non objective after the 1st turn. This required the splitting of forces to cover all three objectives.

I parked my long gunners and Defender in the middle of the table. Sent the Centurion up the middle, the trenchers to the left, and the sword knights and lancer to the right. 

Dire Trolls are well scary

The middle objective turned out to be the fake, which left my centurion with a long way to go to get engaged in combat. Needless to say he did sod all.

The game looked close for a while. My trenchers and grenadier held the left flank and had overpowered Seans guys on that side of the table.

That being said I had given the Defender to my Journey man caster who was murdered by a 13" charge.... didn't see that coming. Important feature of the battle that one. 

But the main battle was on the right flank. Madrak, his Dire Troll and a group of very tough trolls were claiming that objective and I moved to counter.

I used sieges once per game feat, which halves my opponents armour the next time they get hit. The lancer and Sword Knights did a good job of carving up Sean's super tough trolls and the long gunners did some heavy damage to the Dire troll.

Things were looking pretty well balanced until Madrak decided to get his hands dirty.... and by hands dirty I mean bury them into the entrails of my Warcaster.

First, Sean used a telekinesis style push power to line my guys up in a nice row.  He then used Madraks feat which allows him to attack and then move on if he kills something.... yep ... he turned into the tasmanian devil and bounded down my line of sword knights hacking them into bloody giblets until he got in contact with my caster. Who he then hit a few times.

My caster was still alive, but, as Sean had mentioned earlier his feat works for any dudes in his control area. So the dire troll turns into a tasmanian devil as well, hacks down the last defenders near Siege and then proceeds to eat him..... the game ended with the dire troll lazily chewing on sieges face and then using his rocket launcher as a tooth pick.

Lessons learned

• Know your dudes. A couple of times I forgot to use special abilities that could have been handy
• Threat ranges. Some opponents have amazing threat ranges. I couldn't believe how far those troll guys could charge with their mini feat.
• A defender is too important a warjack to give Jnr. Also, jnr is very fragile
• The centurion is very slow, decide where it needs to be early on. 
• Madrak is the tazzy devil, don't get close unless you can killshot
• Foxhole isn't just for defensive purposes.