Ogrun Assault Corps

I bought the OAC (Ogrun Assault Corps) a long, long time ago. And I haven't really played with them in any list so far. I've never had a reason to include them, since there's always something "better" to add in Cygnars huge list of mercenaries. But I stumbled upon a thread were they where discussed as a solid choice against Legion, a faction I've always had trouble with.
But what do they really offer that, say, Boomhowlers doesn't? They have 1 less SPD and ARM, the 1 extra point of STR doesn't really matter since both units are P+S 12 in melee. They have more wounds, but lack super-tough. Well, I guess the only thing that they add are a powerful Battlecannon with 12" range, POW 12 and a 3" AoE. Combine that with Jonas Murdoch to give the unit Assault and a Warcaster with Snipe and we got something going.

Another thing to add is the "new" ruling about ranking officers, which means if you include Murdoch they can get the benefit of being trenchers for the purpose of Maxwell Finns Desperate Pace. Now we suddenly have a unit that have a 26" threat range (5 spd, +2 desperate pace, +3 charge, 12" range on battlecannons, +4" Snipe). My guess is most players won't see that coming. They still need to hit with stuff with their cannons, but that's why we play Cygnar. Rangers and Deadeye for the win.

Now, you still want them to survive in case they overextend. Arcane Shield will put them at ARM 18, and with pStrykers feat we're looking at Ogruns with impressive ARM 23 and 8 boxes a piece. That should hopefully protect your second wave of Stormknights to enter the fray unharmed. Well, that's the theory at least. I still haven't given them a try yet, but I will.

The list I'm gonna start with is of course pStryker since he has quite a few tools to help OAC with.

50/50
Commander Coleman Stryker (*6pts)
* Lancer (6pts)
* Ol' Rowdy (9pts)
* Sylys Wyshnalyrr, the Seeker (2pts)
Ogrun Assault Corps (Leader and 4 Grunts) (9pts)
* Captain Jonas Murdoch (2pts)
Rangers (5pts)
Stormblade Infantry (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
* Stormblade Infantry Officer & Standard (3pts)
* * Stormclad (10pts)
* 3 Stormblade Infantry Storm Gunner (3pts)
Professor Victor Pendrake (2pts)

Against Legion this should be a solid list. The plan is quite simple. Start off with casting Snipe on the OAC and give the Lancer a focus to run. Pendrake uses Beast Lore on the OAC. OAC uses assault on a suitable target (if there is one). The rest of the army follow up behind the Ogruns. Second turn you give Arcane Shield to the OAC and assault a second time. The Lancer might have found a target to Earthquake or you simply use Beast Lore again. Pop the feat with Stryker and hopefully you opponent now has to deal with 5 models with ARM 23 and 8 boxes each before the rest of your army is in melee. Sounds easy enough.

I might want to skip the Rangers and add the Black 13th to remove some support units. Perhaps I could even drop a Storm Gunner and get another solo in the list, like Gorman, Lanyssa or Rhupert for pathfinder if I find it necessary.

Two battle reports from "NorrCup"

Trolls, trolls everywhere

So I recently played 2 of the 3 games in the league "NorrCup". My first opponent was a Trollkin player and the second one was against Menoth. I couldn't take that many pictures since we were using my cell phone as a chess clock. So this will just be a short recap of what I remember.

In the game against Trolls I played my Siege list, he played a eMadrak list that looked like this:

Madrak Ironhide, World Ender (*5pts)
* Slag Troll (6pts)
* Storm Troll (5pts)
* Troll Impaler (5pts)
* Trollkin Runebearer (2pts)
Krielstone Bearer and 5 Stone Scribes (4pts)
* Krielstone Stone Scribe Elder (1pts)
Pyg Burrowers (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
Trollkin Fennblades (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
* Trollkin Fennblade Officer & Drummer (2pts)
Trollkin Warders (Leader and 4 Grunts) (8pts)
Fell Caller Hero (3pts)
Janissa Stonetide (3pts)
Stone Scribe Chronicler (2pts)

We rolled for a random Steamroller 2014 scenario and got "Incursion". My opponent won the roll and wanted to go second and get a chance to choose table edge instead. I guess he didn't want a forest and a building blocking his huge force from advancing. The game was however very one sided.

We both pretty much ran everything the first turn. The second turn his Burrowers came up and with the help of Madraks feat they did some good damage to the Stormwall and locked him in combat. On my following turn I tried my best to kill as many Trolls as possible, but he made well over 60% of his tough rolls, which prevented me from moving forward with pretty much everything. The following turns he just wrecked my entire army. I failed with every tough roll on the Boomhowlers, and he wrecked my Stormwall with some insanely high dice rolls.

There wasn't much I could do after that. I tried to see if I could perhaps find a slim chance to assassinate Madrak since Siege was unharmed and unengaged, but with only two shots and Madrak sitting on 2 transfers I just conceded after thinking about it for at least 15 minutes.

My second game was against Menoth and this list with eFeora.

Feora, Protector of the Flame  (*6pts)
*Redeemer (6pts)
*Reckoner (8pts)
*Reckoner (8pts)
*Vanquisher (8pts)
*Hierophant (2pts)
Choir of Menoth (Leader and 3 Grunts) (2pts)
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt (4pts)
Temple Flameguard (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
*Temple Flameguard Officer & Standard (2pts)
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution (3pts)
Madelyn Corbeau, Ordic Courtesan (2pts)
The Wrack (3 wracks) (1pts)
Vassal of Menoth (2pts)
Vassal of Menoth (2pts)

This time I went for my eHaley list since I knew my opponent have had a hard time playing against her. The scenario this time was "Process of Elimination". Once again I lost the staring roll and my opponent choose to go first which in turn gave me the table edge with a hill to hide on.

First turn started with things running forward. Stormwall did however get within range of a Reckoner and did some good damage to it. During the second turn things started to catch fire and both Blazers and Black 13th lost a few members, but nothing critical. On my second turn a used my feat with Haley and prevented him from getting any charges done. Haley dominated the Vanquisher and blocked a Reckoner from doing much that turn. Stormwall tried to get some damage on Feora but only managed to cause 2 boxes of damage. Third turn Menoth couldn't do much, but he destroyed one of the objectives to score a point.

On my third turn Storwall charged two of his jacks but some poor dice rolls left the Vanquisher standing. Tempest Blazers tried to move down the left flank and put some pressure on his army but I forgot to contest the zone. So instead I had to place my Stormstrider in the zone in a perfect charge lane for his remaining Reckoner. I did however score 2 points since I dominated to right zone with Haley this turn.

Fourth turn came and with the left zone hardly contested he went for some "free" control points. Reckoner charged the Stormstrider, but he forgot about the knock back and left the Stormstrider standing. Redeemer got Haley on fire and he moved as many models as he could into the right zone to contest for points. With the Stormstrider still standing he charged with Feora and killed it to remove my last model from that zone and to score 2 more points.

I saw to possible scenarios. Either I could kill Feora with the Stormwall or I could try and dominate the right zone and destroy the objective. Killing Feora seemed to be the safe bet, so I went for that play. With 4 focus and Temporal Acceleration it was only with the last attack that I did the necessary damage to win the game.

One loss and one win. My remaining opponent is playing Cryx with eLich and eDenny. Since only two players will continue to the playoff I really must win that game.