• pVlad
• Doom Reavers 6 will do, 12 might even go better
• Other small based killers, like Great Bears
• Assassins , to run interference

Quite simply form a wall of Doom Reavers in front and around Vlad, Put Vlad in the middle, put the other small base killers around Vlad.  Cast wind wall. You now have a nice wall of models around you that can not be targeted by spells or ranged attacks and the opponent has no line of sight to stuff behind that could be targeted by spells. Don’t stick a medium or large base model in this as it kinda ruins the effect. Throw in the Assassins or man hunters to slow down cavalry that Cygnar might throw at you. Yuri can be very effective at taking out the Cavalry leader to stop Assault orders.

At 1000 Points you can get more adventurous using pVlad and pZerkova to make any unit you like spell proof and then bullet proof with Wind Wall. Medium based multi wound models are the best as they’ll ignore all but the very worst accidental hit.

My last battle enabled me to actually get my core army into combat and slice up Cygnar with great joy although my first 3 turns were not very thrilling and the rest of my army took the wrath of the Black 13th anc Co until I got into melee.  Oh throw in a Mortar to keep the B13 on their toes.

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Turn 3 kicked off and Khador went into full “clear the pit” mode, and this time Khador killed stuff! Some Trolls they killed 2 or 3 times before they went down. The last Troll in the Mosh Pit managed to survive all the normal attacks and three more attacks from Feeling some Hate.. Turn 3 Trolls, an attempt to clean up Khador left the Doom Reavers mauled but alive, the Uhlans very mauled and Beast 09 a smoking wreck, on top of that Butcher took a few hits too. And that was with Madraks nasty feat kicking in too. Luckily the Singing Cow was too far back to do much and moved up and didn’t howl and screach…thankfully

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Turn 4 The Ice Queen turned on the ice maker and froze everything in the Mosh Pit and a fair number of models beyond too. The Doom Reavers mashed a unit of Champions bar one, which was awfully good fun. Drago then proceeded to hack to tiny pieces the Slag Troll, and The Butcher himself charged in to finish off the Last Kriel stone warrior…and blocked the charge lane of the last Uhlan who was needed to take out the last Troll in the Pit. Butcher cast a desperate spell, missed and it was left to the Behometh to nail the last Blue skin. Moves, fires, hits… the Troll toughs it, second shot, no repeat of limbs reattaching and it’s victory Khador!.

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Granted winning always makes a difference, but the Mosh Pit scenario is a blast. We played 12 minute turns with a 1000 point army, no time for over thinking. Trolls suffered from lack of time to move all the models, while the more compact Khador army generally managed to activate in full (plus had 100 points of Kossites off the board that never got used). Mosh Pit brings out the best in War Machine, full on heavy metal blood bath!

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The game was 750, 8 minute turns. Victory on VPs for holding the stone circle.

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Right from the start it was obvious that it was going to be hard to stop Kris from dominating the game as his pirates deployed forward and charged into the circle on turn one while Khador was bogged down in rough Terrain and the Trolls engaged Skorne. By turn 3 the Pirat Skorne alliance were already far far ahead on VPs for holding the circle, when by a stroke of good fortune (for Skorne) Epic Madrak was found exposed, Harpooned and then beaten to death, removing the Troll warbeasts from the battle.

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However even with their chief gone the Trolls continued to give Skorne a headache, though the tide gradually turned as the Champions and fell callers fell leaving the Trolls with just a Kriel warriors.

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Meanwhile Khador finally had arrived at the circle and engaged the Pirates in a bloody mop up operation that left the ground strewn with corpses especially when the Beast pulled  off our gaming groups first ever really successful Trample manouver leaving squashed pirates all over the place. However even with the Pirates and Trolls dying in droves, it was all too late and they won by a massive VP margin from occupying the circle early and in numbers.

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Victory to Pirates and Trolls, though Skorne and Khador took grim delight in the fact that the enemy was horribly mauled and gasping their last breaths when the game ended.

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Cygnar won the toss and opted to deploy and move first, as soon as Cygnar started casting multi shot, fast move horror spells I got a sinking feeling in my gut and sure enough the trenchers lined up to take… hmmm 20 odd shots into the Khadorian deployment zone… as luck would have it I’d deploted deep. The only models in range were the Kayazy’s (well in range but not in range), the widowmakers and the Shocktrooper. The Cygnar sneak attack collapsed with only 2 widowmakers and stray Greylord and Holt (killed by an errant grenade) . With the trenchers under the effect of temporal accel, they were done for two turns, the Assassins rushed forward and made a right mess of the counter attack, doing little damage. Meanwhile Fenris lopped off Maxwel’s head and booted it back where it came from.

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Turn 2 Cygnar advanced, did little damage other than blowing Fenris into the air with a Mule hit, sadly for the lancer he lander right next door and it had already activated.  The main Cygnar army moved up, considered popping feats and opted not to. Khador continued the Trencher mop up, the Witch charged into combat killing three trenchers and getting some nice soul food.  Gorman popped some smoke and the widowmakers made rather hard work of not doing much damage to the cygnar cavalry under Arcane shield. Fenris stood up and made very short work of the Lancer.

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Turn 3 Cygnar didn’t really lead to much, with the trencher sneak attack failed they were lacking in a back up plan and the Cavalry was bogged down in rough terrain facing the Behmoth widowmakers and Aiyana. The mules fired, missed and did little damage, more consideration to feats, decided against and then all hell broke loose.. The last trenchers died.  Sorcha moved up and it was a whole world of icey pain, catching both casters, both Mules, Laddermore and the Piper. This was followed by a tempest and it was time to clean up . Gorman popped smoke, scrappy slipped through the secret paths and sprang on Haley, Frozen she was easy meat and swiftly pinned and reduced to a few hitpoints, Fenris cleaved off the arm of one of the Mules and the Shocktroopers blew the cannon arm of the other one.

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Turns 4 to the end saw the Cygnar army in pannic as they failed to kill scrappy, Haley, and her support group were polised off and suddenly there was just bart, three StormLances and the fake Aiyana & Master Holt left. The Old Witch popped her feat to ensure no Cygnar stragglers got over excited. Bart held out, but was frozen every turn and while his Armour kept him alive, it was only until Eyriss arrived to stop that and the the Demo boys moved in splattered him all over the floor.

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All in all a massacre, Khador casualties amounted to a few scratches here and there and one unit of Greylords. Cygnar were left realing from the loss and review the trencher sneak attack as a viable attack option. For Khador it was stunning success, the synergy between Sorcha and the Old Witch was devestating. Scrappy once again did an awesome job but the hero of the day was Gorman who set up the cloud that enable Scrappy to jump into the frozen heart of cygnar and take out Haley.

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First up was a 750 Rage, Rivets and Solos with Kromac and the Circle taking on a confident Dominic Darius. Darius had witness last weeks royal massacre of the ciricle by Khador and felt the battle was going to be a mere formality of handing him a medal and getting his butt kissed by a hairy wolf… not quite the way it turned out. Luck desered Darius from the get go as his forces missed everything. Given a blunderbuss and a barn door, his forces would have missed, that was how badly it was going. Even his half jacks couldn’t repair his Jack’s fast enough and the forces of Kromac ripped a trail of cogs and screws right up to Darius and then ripped his head off and played footy with it, until that was, one of the Warp Wolves got hungry and ate it. All said and done, not a day to remember for the blue boys.

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Next up Dark hearted Fiona took on Vlad in a 500. Fiona fielding a couple of Jack’s, a full unit of Croe’s bad boys and some other assorted riff raff. Against an interesting combination of Khador cavalry and Yuri and his Manhunter gang…plus the obligatory fire and hope Mortar.  Well as it was for the Blue’s so it was for Croe and the barn door. Miss after miss and then the cavalry and the single Kodiak Jack stormed in. Blood everywhere and while a counter attack from Fiona did finish off the 3 Khador Cavalry she was left horribly exposed and with Yuri’s gang coming at her fast. Even her feat failed to stop the reds from cutting down her forces. A last throw of the dice she moved up to get range for an attack on Vlad…and forgot about the Man-o-War Drakhun counter charge.  That left her with 3 wounds left and no line of site to Vlad. Next turn just to add to the general all round horror, she got boiled alive the next turn by the Kodiak Vent attack… nasty!

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So the reds were feeling confident. And faced Madrak in a 500, Scorcha in for the reds.  The terrain was awful. It was a double champions brick and the reds really became very tentative early on, unable to find a way through the brick, even with the Kazyak Assassins and underboss they dithered around and waited for the Trolls to attack, which they did and then it was all down hill from there. Madrak maintained Sure Foot whch mean Scorcha couldn’t get penetration on the Brick and the Iron Fang Pike men couldn’t knock anyone over.  Greylords were burnt alive by the Pyre Troll, and the only good news was when Hawk managed to take out the fell caller, though with sure foot running he was never going to be needed. In the end Scorcha was left almost alone and made one last effort to get to Madrak, it failed and she died under the stomping champion boots.

• Mercs challenged Trolls at 750 and Lost
• Khador challenged Cryx at 350 and won
• Everblight challenged Skorne at 500 and won

The friendly match saw Cyrx and Everblight fight out a 350 featured 10 Shredders and a Harrier. In which a rules error and Wuffy forgetting his feat effects helped Everblightto victory.

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FIona’s spells proved to be marginal in the battle other than her pow 12 strike that should have won the game when Vlad was left exposed but crappy dice saved Khador.  Vlad on the other hand used his Wind spells and Impalor to great effect, shutting down the Mule until it was engaged and using his wicked frost spell to cause the Behemoth’s armour piercing attacks to do horrific damage.

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Once the mercs were enagged the battle was never really going to go the mercs way, though after the Beserket killed the Mule and then Blew up, there was a moment when it looked like they had a chance, then the Behemoth killed another Jack to put the melee battle beyond dispute.

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At that moment though Vlad was left exposed with no focus left and no BoK running, hit twice by Fiona’s pow 12 spell, once with a boosted damage, he was very lucky to be still standing. Turn 5 Khador he returned the favour to Fiona, charing up and impaling her with his first attack.

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Another battle that I could have lost,  bad roll on Fiona’s attack saved my over confident arse from being defeated.  350 battles are really becoming very fast, I remember reading the rules when we first got them and thinking “15 Minutes!! are they insane!” . Now if only I can beat those bloody trolls at 350… then I will be happy!

Kris did an excellent job of shuttigng down the Khador Jacks, they spent most of the game on the floot, system locked, netted or generally out of the game and the Devestator ended the game with no damage and no kills either. Butcher spent most of the match disrupted and his only contribution being to kill Eyriss on turn 5 after she had driven him even more insane through four turns of disruption. Many attempts to kill Eyriss failed until the Butcher had her kiss Lola.

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However this left Vlad free to give Khador “S&P” love on a constant basis and that really made the difference. The Battle was very even, and though the mercs locked down a good half of the Khador army with a combo Magnus / Bart feat , by turn 5 both armies were still pretty much intact with only the odd solo and unit on each side destroyed. However Kahdor turn 5 saw the Rocketeers move up and nail Magnus. Two hits and he was dead. 2 Jacks shut down and suddely Bart was alone.  His Jacks got nailed the same turn, two loosing their guns and he got hit by the Khador Eyriss meaning he was disrupted with no focus for his last turn, not an ideal situation.

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Turn 6 the mercs advanced and though they killed a couple of winterguard they did nothing more than clear the charge lane for the Man-o-War Drakhun to charge Bart. Three flying steel attacks were called for and it took just two to cut down Bart and bring victory to Khador. Neither Khador caster seeing much action and Vlad only attacking in the last turn to take out the Mule. The Mule it must be said, once again prooved to be a beast!

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Then things went wrong, rather than killing my beast, the behemoth picked it up and threw it at my other beast…missed… deviated one inch…hit. Both beasts on the floor they then suffered ranged attacks galore and died together. Leaving me light on beasts. However the Harriers were doing okay and we’d killed everything on the right execpt for Yuri and he was in a bad way.

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Turn 4 for me I poped my feat and moved my caster, yes really I did,  battle three I forgot again.  Rhyas swept through the Khador forces, killing all but the last Widowmaker and all the Greylords and ending the turn invisible, Def 20 in the middle of what was left of the Kador army (not much at all) . Harriers advanced but didn’t manage to kill Yuri, it was looking good!

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Then Yuri moved (ran) , avoided two free strikes and ended next to the Behometh, and here a slight rules error from both of us (mixing up stealth and invisibility for ranged attacks) meant the Behometh then picked up Yuri threw him at Rhyas, missed and deviated on to her. (Rules error being that she can’t be targeted and therefore the Behometh has to throw at half strength distance). Anyway she was hit, knocked down and then Vlad stepped over and finished her off.

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So close, and yet so far!