Lately I have been noticing several little trick moves that I thought were rather excellent, even though most of them spelled my demise. I wanted to start a series of posts when I note a few of these, just to share them with you and perhaps start some discussions. Here we go with round 1:
- (this one is perhaps my favorite ever). I played against a 35 pt Aurora list at Lock and Load; I was running the Harbinger with several jacks. As I handed the turn to my opponent with all of his heavy jacks destroyed, I thought I was sitting pretty. He was out of charge range, and only the Blessing of Vengeance was really in Aurora’s sights. I never saw it coming. He activated a unit of Clockwork Angels and ran them into melee with the Harbinger, and next activated Aurora. She feated, and then charged the Blessing of Vengeance. After pegging him for a little bit of damage, he declared that Aurora had finished her combat action, and then proceded to move into melee with the Harbinger. I never realized that ‘refuge’ triggered at the end of combat action; I always assumed it was at the end of activation. After all, most of the time the two events are simultaneous. He then proceeded to cast ‘Flashing Blade’ a few times, and destroyed me with the flank bonus. I had been beaten, but I was giddy to see this awesome trick in action!
- Recently I was playing against a local Retribution player. He had a unit of Sentinels with the soulless weapon attachment. No biggie; I was playing Constance Blaize and didn’t intend to cast any spells at the sentinels. However, my savvy opponent ran that soulless right into the faces of my Precursor Knights. At first, I thought this was a ill-conceived attempt to tie them up. That was, until I realized what killing the soulless actually meant. Since he was a part of the unit, killing him would trigger ‘Vengeance’ (which would have been very bad, given the situation). Even though soulless cannot receive unit abilities (other than advance deployment) – this use of Vengeance was a really sweet little trick.
- Enjoy Durgen Madhammer but wish you had one more focus to put to use each turn? The solution is simple, trigger his ‘Blast Armor’ yourself to get that extra focus. All it takes is a Basher, which you should have in a Madhammer list, sitting nearby. Have the Basher use its ‘Flak Field’ ability, and the ensuing blast damage will give Durgen an extra focus. No muss, no fuss!
These kind of neat tricks and strategies are just one of the many things I love about Warmachine. Got any examples of your own? Feel free to throw them in the comments and let me know about them.
Sustained Attack 