America Hill, the Final Solution

America Hill, the Final Solution
Wednesday, January 24, 2007

This week we decided to try another tweak to the America Hill rules. We discovered that the hills we had been fighting over were really the wrong hill. Luckily we finally found the right one this week.

To help encourage people to take the hill, we added Woldwompers. Woldwompers were independent models that could be activated by various warcasters or warlocks if they were in control of the hill. Woldwompers had the same stat line as a Woldwarden but with -1 SPD and -1 ARM. They also had a fury of two and could be forced by any controlling warcaster/warlock, and the fury would dissipate at the end of each player’s turn. Woldwompers had no animus, no chain attack, but maintained All Terrain, Elemental Construct, and Spell Strike.

• At the end if each turn, the player with the most models on the hill gained 1 VP. This is turn, not round – we went this way to place more value on the hill.
• At the end of a turn, if a player had their warcaster/warlock on the hill, they could activate one of the three Woldwompers immediately.
• At the end of a turn, if a player had their wracaster/warlock on the hill and had or tied for the most models on the hill (units counted as 1 model), they could activate two of the three Woldwompers immediately.

Despite the steps we played the hill as “smooth” so it could be climbed freely. We didn’t want to overemphasize the steps too much.

After rolling to determine order, we arranged ourselves around the table as follows:

Khador (Mark)

• Butcher
• Kovnik
• Kodiak (on Kovnik)
• Kodiak (on Kovnik)

Mark brought a Butcher list with a couple Kodiaks and a Kovnik. Although all slow-moving models they all sported high ARM values and would prove difficult to remove from the hill if he could get them there.

Protectorate (Myself)

• Kreoss
• Crusader
• Devout
• Devout (Proxied Revenger)
• Seneschal
• Choir (x5)

I like me some Kreoss – he’s just so all-around useful. I decided to pair him up with a couple Devout escorts and a Crusader to provide some punch. The Seneschal would hopefully provide more slamming capabilities and the Choir is because… well… I play Menoth.

Cygnar (Patman)

• Darius
• Centurion
• Ironclad
• Junior
• Reinholdt

Darius. Ug. I hate having to try to kill a Centurion twice. The big man moved slow himself but his crane added speed and Maneuverability that those Cygnaran jacks just didn’t need.

Cryx (James aka Pinky aka Yogurt)

• Deneghra
• Slayer
• Deathripper
• Deathripper
• Deathripper
• Skarlock
• Pistol Wraith

James brought a pretty basic Deneghra assassin army. Lots of ways to provide the killing blow, along with the two-handed throwing capability of the Slayer to help clear the hill. It looked like James may have the hardest time holding the hill but if he can eliminate the competition that wouldn’t be an issue.

Turn 1

Khador
Mark began his slow advance towards the hill in the first turn. The Jacks walk and vent steam for protection and everyone else moves forward.

Protectorate
I started out giving the Devout a couple focus, giving one to the Crusader, and leaving the rest on Kreoss. The Devout slammed the nearest Woldwomper to move it back away from my lines and discourage people from using it on me early. Then the Crusader ran up and took the hill. The Second Devout edged up on the left flank. Kreoss put Protection of Menoth on himself and charged something out of reach for movement. The Seneschal came up along side him and the Choir brought up the rear chanting Ward. I got a VP for taking the hill.

Cygnar
Junior puts Arcane Shield on Darius and heads out behind the woods. Two halfjacks run towards the Protectorate line to force them to divert resources to deal with them or serve as Meltdown bombs. Darius puts Jackhammer on the Centurion, which then charges the nearest Woldwomper, but misses the first attack and doesn’t do any damage. The Ironclad heads up in front of Darius to provide some screening.

Protectorate gets a VP for keeping the hill.

Cryx
James sends his Pistol Wraith out where it Death Chills the nearest Kodiak. One Deathripper runs up on to the hill, and Deneghra keeps the rest of her focus and runs onto the hill herself to tie the Protectorate for most models and activate two Woldwompers. The rest of her jacks rush towards the hill.

James activates the Woldwomper next to Deneghra first and has it walk up to the top of the hill and try to toss Parasite on Kreoss but misses. He then activates the one near Cygnar that the Centurion charged. It stepped around a bit and two-handed-threw the Centurion at Darius, knocking them both down but not doing any significant damage.

No Hill VPs

Score

• Khador: 0
• Protectorate: 2 (+2 Hill)
• Cygnar: 0
• Cryx: 0

Turn 2

Khador
The Kovnik steps up and kills the Pistol Wraith with its Axe Cannon. The rest of the jacks and the Butcher head to the hill as quickly as possible.

Protectorate
The Devouts and the Crusader set up a defensive perimeter as Kreoss got on the hill, casting Anti-Magic Pulse (to get rid of Darius’ Arcane Shield) and camping on his focus with PoM to keep himself safe. The choir gets the run order and heads towards the halfjacks, engaging them and angling themselves to limit the halfjacks’ mobility. The Seneschal head out to the right flank to prep for following rounds.

The first Woldwomper Kreoss activates is the one Deneghra used to throw Parasite at him. He sends it back at the Warwitch, but even with boosted attack rolls it only gets one hit and with Deneghra on her focus she doesn’t take much damage. The second Woldwomper headed for Darius, hitting him a couple of times but only doing a handful of points through his focus-boosted armor.

Protectorate gets a VP for the hill.

Cygnar
With Darius and the Centurion knocked down, the Ironclad walks up and Tremors, knocking the Woldwomper down. Darius stands up sacrificing his action and moves around the Centurion, throwing up Full Throttle and putting Jackhammer on the Centurion. Then he cranes the Centurion over in front of himself, where he sends it charging off after Deneghra.

Sometimes the dice really don’t want you to succeed, sometimes they do. Even with boosting up to four dice, Patman rolled a 10 instead of the 11 he needed to skewer Deneghra. James had caught a break.

Finally Cygnar digs its halfjacks near the Protectorate in as mines to serve as a barrier.

Protectorate gets a VP for keeping the hill.

Cryx
Deneghra decided not to let anyone get the jump on her again and started by Feating, then tossing Parasite onto the Centurion. She then shifted around a bit and sent a fully focused Slayer at the Centurion. The Combo Strike ripped of the jack’s shield and with a few extra attacks it was able to total the Centurion, buying a bit of a breather. She then moved a couple Deathrippers to tie the Protectorate for most models, giving her two Woldwomper activations.

The first activation was the Woldwomper that was next to Deneghra, which he walked away from her as far as its feat-reduced movement would allow. Then he activated the one near the Protectorate lines and after taking a Defensive Strike did some damage to the Devouts arms but left them intact.

No Hill VPs

Score

• Khador: 1 (+1 Pistol Wraith)
• Protectorate: 4 (+2 Hill)
• Cygnar: 0
• Cryx: 3 (+3 Centurion)

Turn 3

Khador
Khador is slow to begin with. Khador under Deneghra’s feat almost moves backwards. The Khador and his Kodiacks ran toward the hill, only one actually making it up. The Butcher ran forward, but still couldn’t make the hill.

No hill VPs

Protectorate
With Deneghra’s feat up there wasn’t much going on for the Protectorate. The jacks maintained their defensive perimeter as Kreoss puts Retribution on the right Devout and camps on PoM and focus again. The Seneschal steps up on the hill to lay claim to most models and the Choir – the only models unaffected by Deneghra’s feat – run away from Cygnar’s mines.

Kreoss activates the Woldwomper near the Cygnar lines and has it get up and walk in front of the Ironclad to prevent it from charging my lines then activate the one nearest him and walks it up to engage the Kodiak to get in Khador’s way.

Protectorate gets a VP for the hill.

Cygnar
Darius’ newly created Halfjack head up and System locks the Slayer’s Movement, dropping its Defense. Darius (with a little help from Rineholdt) then takes two shots at the Slayer, taking out its movement and one arm. Then Junior takes a boosted shot at the Skarlock (he was out Deneghra’s feat) and kills it.

Protectorate gets a VP for keeping the hill.

Cryx
At this point Deneghra wants nothing to do with Cygnar, so shifts her attention over to the other blue warjacks. She shifts away from the Centurion and puts a Deathripper in front of her to block the Crusader from charging her, putting Parasite on the nearest Kodiak. The second one walks up further on the hill and the third (fully loaded with focus) goes to town on the Kodiak, ripping both its arms off in an orgy of destruction typically unseen from Deathrippers.

With only four models in the hill, Cryx can’t keep the Protectorate from scoring again and only activates one Woldwomper, selecting the closest one and using it to pound on the injured Kodiak some more.

Protectorate gets a VP for keeping the hill.

Score

• Khador: 1
• Protectorate: 7 (+3 Hill)
• Cygnar: 1 (+1 Skarlock)
• Cryx: 3

Turn 4

Khador
The Butcher and his crew finally reach the hill, and there’s much chaos. The armless Kodiak vents steam, priming the nearby arcnode and Woldwomper with a little damage. Then with just a couple focus the Khadoran caster quickly totals two Cryxian arc nodes and makes his presence known. The Kovnik follows up with a Slam on the damaged Woldwomper, knocking it away from the Kodiak. The unhurt Kodiak then goes to down on the nearby Woldwomper that I had moved to engage it, killing the Womper and scoring three VPs.

With the Butcher on the table, he wanted to try to get the Woldwomper near the Cygnar lines over to mine, but the Ironclad killed in with a free strike, earning Patman a few VPs as well.

Protectorate gets a VP for keeping the hill

Protectorate
Finally, a chance to pop Kreoss’ feat and do some damage. I’m not a fan of the Pop-and-Drop – it’s not the Protectorate’s strength. I prefer the Pop-and-Pound, which uses the feat to prevent free strikes (from the knocked down models) and auto-hit in melee. First things first – giving out all Kreoss’ focus to his jacks. Before Kreoss feated, the Seneschal walked up to the nearby Kodiak, chain attack slamming it over the Butcher to knock him down. Then Kreoss stepped up and feated. The right Devout charged across the newly opened charge lane at Deneghra, killing the warwitch in one swing. Then the Crusader charged the Butcher. At this point I realized that I forgot to have the Choir Infuse my jacks, so after three swings at the Butcher who had camped on 4 focus, I only had him down to 2 life left. Had Infuse been up, the Khadoran would have been dead. So I had to charge my other Devout across the hill to engage the Butcher with reach, but couldn’t roll well enough to get through his armor with two attacks.

The Choir got the run Order and blocked the Ironclad’s charge lane at Kreoss.

Protectorate gets a VP for keeping the hill

Cygnar
Darius’ crane foiled my plans. The mechanik was able to stand up, move around the Ironclad, and then crane it up and around my Choir so that it could get a charge lane on Kreoss under Full Throttle and Jack Hammer. Then he feated and used a newly created Halfjack to bring the Centurion back up to full health. The Ironclad then charged Kreoss, and while the Choir took a couple of valiant free strikes and actually did a couple points to the warjack the critical on the first attack against Kreoss sealed his fate. Smashy smashy.

With the Protectorate mostly Inert, Khador gains a VP for owning the hill.

Score

• Khador: 7 (+2 deathripper x2, +3 Woldwomper, +1 Hill)
• Protectorate: 18 (+2 Hill, +5 Deneghra, +3 Slayer, +1 Deathripper)
• Cygnar: 16 (+5 Kreoss, +3 Crusader, +4 Devout x2, +3 Woldwomper)
• Cryx: 3

We had to pack up at this point, but we did a hasty round as we packed up but nothing really happened. The Butcher feated and tore apart the Centurion and the Seneschal slammed another jack over the Butcher to try to kill him (a Kodiak that had moved to keep him from getting to the Butcher himself), and Darius and Jr lobbed shots at the knocked down Butcher but couldn’t get through his armor and we called the game.

Score
Khador: 10 (+3 Centurion)
Protectorate: 18
Cygnar: 17 (+1 Hill)
Cryx: 3

My Thoughts

Khador
Slow to the party but they brought the pain. If Mark had run them first couple turns, we would have been hard pressed to dislodge them from the hill. But with the Woldwompers we could activate to throw things, the rest of us seemed to teamup to slow him down.

Protectorate
I shot myself in the foot when I forgot to Infuse that last round. Had I done so the Butcher would have been killed by the Crusader and the left Devout could have gotten in on the Ironclad, engaging it and doing some damage and probably keeping it from charging Kreoss next turn. Spreading the Choir out more would also have helped screen better, but things just didn’t work out for me in the end.

Cygnar
Darius is a bad man. He’s almost as slow as Khador, but his Jacks can make up for it. If it wasn’t for a statistical fluke Deneghra would have been killed early and Cygnar would have been a much bigger thread. As it was between Kreoss and Deneghra’s feats and Woldwomper throws, he was held up most of the game. I think if he had gotten Fortify up each round and left the Ironclad in base-to-base with Darius he would have moved a little faster, but that’s hindsight for you.

Edit: I realized later we typically forget about Rineholdt’s Coward ability. Darius was engaged a few times and I think got away from Rineholdt at one point and the Gobber probably would have fled the table giving everyone else 1 VP. We’ll have to remember him next time.

Cryx
James made good use of Parasite this game, but his tactic of constantly matching me for models on the hill just for the Woldwomper activations instead of taking the hill for VPs caused him to fall behind. He was really gutsy with Deneghra forward from the beginning and caught a lucky break but once she was knocked down it was game over.