first fight: Conquest

This are some notes from my first battle (not recounting specific turn for turn moves as this is from memory) with my new retribution army pitted me against a simple 25 point Khador list consisting of:

• Harkevich
• Black Ivan 
• Conquest

  I took the following for my first fight:

• Ossyan
• Hypnos
• Manticore 
• Arcanist
• Dawngaurd Sentinels (6)
• Mage Hunter Assassin
• Eiryss

With this being the first time fighting a Colossal I was surprised at first at how many hit points they have, but then not so bothered to learn the Khador version has a very low defense value, even for Khador, so hitting it was going to be easy, staying in the fight however is not.

With the armies deployed, left to right I had Hypnos(with Arcanist behind), Ossyan and Manticore forming a V in the deployment zone, Eiryss and Mage Hunter Assassin advanced deployed six inches in front of Hypnos, and to the right of the jack formation were the Sentinels. My opening plan was to rush the jacks and sentinels up the board while the two solos sweep around the right side to isolate and assassinate Harkevich.

My opponent's turn one had him charging with Ivan which was opposite my Hypnos placement, and moving and firing with Conquest into my sentinels taking two of them right off the bat. My next turn I advanced with the entire force sticking with the original plan and sending Eiryss and Mage Hunter running in Harkevich's direction. Here my opponent suggested that I could probably do some serious damage to Ivan with the Mage Hunter Assassin, which at the time I thought I could do for sure but he was baiting me away from Harkevich. Eager to try my new Assassin, I decided to charge Ivan with it on the following turn. Doing 14 damage with weapon master and a charge I thought that was spectacular, but took me away from the main objective.

Ivan had charged Hypnos on a previous turn prior to the Mage Hunter's charge, Hypnos added boosted damage to the already cortex crippled Ivan, while Manticore moved up opposite the Conquest with the Sentinels following the same path advancing towards conquest.

On the Conquest's next move he charged the Manticore and boxed it in one turn with rebought melee attacks. I was completely shocked at how quickly and easily it wrecked my Jack, with my Jack having not done a single thing the entire game except move.

The following turn I charged with my remaining four sentinels targeting the Conquest. With all four charges hitting, weapon master and reach, I was able to do 25ish points of damage to the Conquest, almost completely crippling its left side. I then charged out of Melee with Hypnos towards Conquest, taking a free strike from Ivan and getting away with only 5 damage, I was hoping on boosted damage rolls to severely damage Conquest. I followed suit after wards with Eiryss bolt picking the row to deal three damage to taking out it's super structure. Ivan finished off Mage Hunter, Harkevich took out Eiryss, and Conquest boxed Hypnos, after first sweep attacking and killing all of my Sentinels.

This left me with severely damaged Ivan, Conquest and Harkevich bearing down on Ossyan and my Arcanist. On my last move before conceeding, I popped Ossyan's feat, moved up and fired at Harkevich, nearly killing him in one shot missing only by 2 hit points.

Over all I was pleased with the way my units played, I had bought them after weeks of research and thinking about possible scenarios. I got Sentinels for the sole purpose of charging, and they proved to be valuable here. Ossyan's Chronophage cannon paired with Hypnos and void lock had helped out quite a bit mid game, while Mage Hunter Assassin excelled at delivering damage, even if diverted away from it's original target.