We all appreciate Jukey’s reports and so I thought we’d try to start sharing ours. We’re a newer group of veteran games, so some of our choices may seem sub-optimal- feel free to share your thoughts...

Now, onto the report...

Forces:

Daqan (me): Golemstar

• Baron Zacareth
  • Fortuna’s Dice
  • Greyhaven Runelore
• Rune Golem 2x2
  • Wind Rune
  • Terrifying Herald
• Rune Golem 1x1
• Spearmen 2x2
  • Dispatch Runner
• Spearmen 2x2
  • Dispatch Runner

Waiqar (Scott): Big Blocks

• Reanimates 3x2
  • Fallen Hero
  • Raven-Standard Bearer
  • Aggressive Drummer
  • Moment of Inspiration
  • Fortuna’s Dice
• Reanimates 3x2
  • Necromancer
  • Raven-Standard Bearer
  • Aggressive Drummer
  • Lingering Dead
• Carrion Lancers 1x1
  • Moment of Inspiration
• Carrion Lancers 1x1
  • Moment of Inspiration
• Carrion Lancers 1x1
  • Moment of Inspiration

Missions/Terrain: (see photo)

Waiqar was first player and chose Confluence of Magic to give him some Rune manipulation (which Waiqar don’t have) and to deny me the other choices which he felt would put him at a disadvantage

I chose Careful Approach so I could place terrain in between the two and force him to split his force (or create maneuvering challenges).

I placed Stone Terrace in the middle, he placed Temple Ruins off to his left and I placed the Spikes in between the two, effectively forcing him to one side of the board. As you will see, this paid huge dividends later. Waiqar is in the lower left of the photo. Objectives (for Confluence) are placed as shown

Turn 1: Everyone advances to claim objectives and position for the engagement while collecting Inspiration tokens

Waiqar chose to have one of it’s big blocks (with the Fallen Hero) track down the objective token on the left as it would have a Skill action open to use it. This did take it out of combat and prevented him from presenting a unifed front when we engaged on Turn 3. My plan was to engage with my two main units (the Golemstar and Baron Z) supported by the Spearmen with Dispatch Runner on their flanks.

Turn 2:

Waiqar secures all 3 of its objective tokens. I secure two as the third was far to the right out of the picture and would have taken my units out of the game to recover it. I’m in the center of the board with the Golemstar able to threaten a variety of positions upon exiting. Baron Z and his Spearmen are threatening the Carrion Lancer at the bottom.

Turn 3:

Waiqar positions himself cautiously to avoid contact and/or giving out Blight with the Worms. Note the Reanimate block on the right contacts the terrain on its move and this means it can’t hit the Baron on Turn 4. Spearmen use the Confluence action to flip the Runes and get then to two Blue, 1 Green and a Blank which the Reanimates promptly flip back to 1 Blue and 2 Green.

Turn 4:

This is where it gets real and demonstrates why I love this game. The Rune Golems don’t want to let the Carrion Lancer in the middle escape so they Wind Rune on I3 into contact with it. My Spearmen then use Reform/Skill to Dispatch Runner on I4. Allowing the Golemstar to swing. They roll lucky, get 3 Hits with Threat 3 killing the Lancer- splat!

His Lancer charges my Spearmen and rolls poorly. With no rerolls, he gets 1 Hit.

Baron Z charges the Lancer at the bottom and scores 2 Wounds. The Stun Dummy and Spearmen reform to face the Reanimates that have now reformed off of the Terrace. The Lancer swings at Baron Z but fails to score a wound (he spent his Blight token to keep the Baron from killing his unit).

The Reanimates on the left are joining the action but are going to have a problem avoiding the terrain and other units.

Turn 5:

Baron Z finishes off the Lancer while the Spearmen miss an I4 charge by a fraction of an inch. The Reanimates hit hard taking 3 trays. The Stun Dummy inches forward while the other Reanimate tray runs into the other one preventing it from turning the face the Golemstar at the top. The Spearmen swing on I3 and get two wounds. If they had waited to I7, they would have gotten the extra hit but I wanted to get the swing in while I had the full re-roll. The Lancer finishes off a tray of Spearmen at the top.

Turn 6:

Baron Z can’t turn and charge so he has to Shoot and Reform. The Spearmen at the bottom swing on I3 and flip one of the runes to blue (not shown) while the Stun Dummy charges forward on I8. The Reanimates eliminate the Spearmen (not shown in the picture). Interestingly enough, the Stun Dummy collides with the terrain stopping him short of the Reanimates, but because they are in contact with the terrain it gets to complete the charge hitting them in the flank (casualties shown minus Regeneration).

The Reanimates at the top have to Reform and Defend while the Golemstar charges into them on I8. It rolls like a champ again- 3 hits. 12 damage removes the back rank of Reanimates (leaving nothing to regenerate).

We call it at this point as Turn 7, the Reanimates are going to get hit in the flank by Baron Z with the Rune Golems on the opposite side (yuck). The Golemstar is untouched with 2 Vitality tokens and the Spearmen at the top are reloading Dispatch Runner.

We didn’t calculate scores as it was running late but we figure it’s a 9-2 or 8-3.

Last Thoughts:

This is a case where the Setup and initial decisions regarding unit placement and movement set the tone for later in the game. One of the Reanimate blocks never swung at anything the entire game as it went to grab the objective token. Also, trying to coordinate the movement of two big units through all of that terrain is a big challenge. As we discussed, he may have been better served to choose the deployment card and suffer through an unfavorable mission. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20... 😎

Also, Wind Rune is great and even better on Rune Golems. They can effectively move on I3 and then attack with a supporting Dispatch Runner. Very cool timing.

Thanks for reading.

In turn 6, when the stun dummy collides with the terrain and enters it, its activation should have ended immediately, no swinging.

Really nice terrain and report. Good to see everything painted up.

51 minutes ago, Darth Matthew said:

In turn 6, when the stun dummy collides with the terrain and enters it, its activation should have ended immediately, no swinging.

So, this is very confusing within the rulebook as 81.2 says that “After the unit resolves all of effects of entering the terrain, its activatino immediately ends. If it had a bonus action or other game effects to perform, these are cancelled.” That seems pretty clear to me, but...

81.8 says, “When a unit collides with a piece of terrain that an enemy is touching, those units resole any effects of that collision as if the unit had collided with the enemy.”

and 16.3 says, “If an unit resolving a charge collides with an enemy unit, the charging unit performs a melee attack action targeting that enemy unit after the move is complete.”

It seems that these rules set up an infinite causality loop 😎 , so I looked through the forum as I figured that this question had been asked and answered in the past 2 years. Here’s what I found:

Is there a FAQ or other ruling on this? How was this handled at Worlds or what is the accepted convention within the community?

Thanks, Cliff

Nice to see more batreps! Really like the top-down view you used.

Cool to see the dual Reanistars, those are tough to use in tandem with eachother.

I like the idea of using wind rune to get more maneuverable golems while still slinging damage via dispatch runners.

Looks like waiqar could have benefited from a deathcaller, would have let them sit back and force the daqan units in closer. With 3 Lancers, getting the blight down would have made it work. Just food for thought.

11 hours ago, Jukey said:

Nice to see more batreps! Really like the top-down view you used.

Cool to see the dual Reanistars, those are tough to use in tandem with eachother.

I like the idea of using wind rune to get more maneuverable golems while still slinging damage via dispatch runners.

Looks like waiqar could have benefited from a deathcaller, would have let them sit back and force the daqan units in closer. With 3 Lancers, getting the blight down would have made it work. Just food for thought.

I absolutely agree. Two blocks and vorunthul or worms. Like this, they do not care whether they can get there.

Also, great to read sbd new. I kind of like Daqan army, was thinking about even bigger star (3*2), but this implementation looks more efficient.

I found this to be the most efficient formation without concentrating too much firepower in one unit making it susceptible to Banes. Also, due to Brutal, the damage doesn’t scale linearly as with other units, so a 2x2 seems to be the optimal configuration for me. It’s amazing how much better Golems are with Baron Z, so starting with him and 2 Spearmen with Dispatch, I was left with this configuration. It’s too bad they can’t get some better upgrades at the 3x2- it could be a real incentive to use that unit size.

The Waiqar army was interesting and reminds me of the twin ISD fleet in Armada. It’s a lot of firepower in theory, but it’s hard to get it all pointed at one thing at the same time. I guess that’s a potential benefit to narrow formations with Column Tactics.

21 hours ago, Darth Matthew said:

In turn 6, when the stun dummy collides with the terrain and enters it, its activation should have ended immediately, no swinging.

Also confirmed via the FAQ (pg. 10) that you can get attack after entering terrain on a charge. Glad that we didn’t play it wrong as it definitely affected the outcome...