eStryker vs pButcher

By the power of Castle Greyskull! That's the image that keeps popping in my head whenever I think of eStryker and his overload ability. Except unlike the power of Castle Greyskull, overload can be deadly. To its user. 

Cygnar
eStryker
-Hunter
-Squire

Arcane Tempest Gun Mages with UA
Stormblades with UA and 2 Gunners
Boomhowlers with Jonas Murdoch
Journeyman Warcaster

Khador
pButcher
-Spriggan
-Sylyss

Aiyana and Holt
Saxxon Orik
Kayazy Assassins with UA
Winterguard with UA and rocketeers
Kovnik Joe

I'm testing out eStryker today, mostly because I'm fascinated by overload. He wins deployment and makes me go first. 

Turn 1
-I run my boomhowlers up the front to contest the zone later on. The addition of Jonas Murdoch means I can leave Boomhowler far behind and most units will still be in formation, which means they can still benefit from 4+ tough. Including Murdoch since he has tough. Stormblades run up the left to provide support to the boomhowlers. Arcane shield goes onto the ATGM because I'm worried about random AOE splatters from the Spriggan and the ATGM runs up the left to flank my own objective. The journeyman moves up. Stryker casts deflection and moves up. My hunter runs up the left flank and camps near the enemy objective.
+The winterguard run up the right side, so they don't have bob and weave. Joe gives them fearless and tough and runs up as well. Kayazy run up the center and pButcher gives them IF. Everything else runs up. 

Turn 2
-My opponent made a mistake not IFing the WG instead of the Kayazy. My boomhowlers assault the WG. I won't be able to reach them but I can still shoot them thanks to the assault rules. Surprisingly, I don't miss a single shot and quite a few WG go down this turn. I do forget to use Jonas Murdoch's mini-feat though, which would have given them def 16 against shooting. My stormblades assault as well, though I run one up into position so I can charge it with my Journeyman warcaster later. I charge my Journeyman into it later on so I can get the extra distance needed to cast arcane shield on Boomhowlers. This makes them armor 19, armor 21 later with deflection. I move eStryker up and cast deflection of course. And I try to electrical storm his Kayazy with some lucky deviation but it fails. Hunter shoots the Spriggan and deals some damage with a boosted damage roll.
+3 focus given to Spriggan. pButcher casts IF on himself and feats. He really really wants to kill the boomhowlers. Winterguard shoot the boomhowlers with several CRAs and also kill the objective on the right.. Joe gives them fearless and tough again. Kayazy mini-feat and then charge the boomhowlers; the hunter as well as some stormblades. Spriggan moves up and shoots Jonas Murdoch. This was when mini-feating the turn before would have been really useful. I would have been def 19 in forest with cover. I make a bigger mistake when I forget to roll tough for him, due to not realising he had tough. Due to the huge cluster of my boomhowlers and stormblades in the zone, he doesn't get to score it this turn. But he does get 2 points for killing the central objective and the right objective. 

Turn 3
-I've lost Jonas Murdoch, which means a lot of my spells don't matter anymore for the boomhowlers due to it being FF only. My feat doesn't matter as well for them. My boomhowlers charge the WG where applicable. I want to be able to keep them from shooting my stormblades. I manage to kill some of them and then Boomhowler sings the fell call that gives -2 to attack rolls for warjacks and causes people within his CMD to take a command test. The kayazy pass but Aiyana and Holt fail. Yay. Stormblades assault. Thanks to the UAs special ability, direct hits generate a 3" electric AOE. I chose to run a few stormblades into the Kayazy and then assault them with unit members that are too far to reach but close enough to shoot. I hit my own guys in the back and suddenly, a few more Kayazy are dead thanks to the AOEs. ATGM move up and shoot Kayazy and kill the underboss. Hunter shoots at the Spriggan again. Stryker moves up and I make a mistake here by forgetting to shoot the Spriggan and disrupting it. I just forgot the gun has disruption as well. But I do cast deflection. 
+He gives 3 focus to Spriggan. His remaining Kayazy clear out the stormblades and trolls blocking Spriggans way and the Spriggan charges across the board to try and assassinate Stryker. He rolls an 8 on his attack roll, which would normally be enough to hit since he gets +2 to charge attack rolls, but he also gets -2 because of Boomhowlers fell call. Which means...he misses. He tries to hit again but fails and settles for killing Boomhowler out of spite.Winterguard get +3 strength from Joe and charge the boomhowlers, CMAing whenever possible to take them out. He runs Sylyss into the zone to contest it. End of turn, he's still stuck at 2 scenario points. 

Turn 4
-2 focus goes onto the Hunter. The journeyman casts arcane shield on the stormblades and moves back. My stormblades charge the Spriggan and nearly scrap it. Stryker moves up and finishes the job and I feat and cast deflection as well just in case. The hunter kills off Kovnik with a boosted attack and damage roll.The ATGM clear the remaining stragglers out of the zone. Now I just need to get rid of Sylyss and 1 Kayazy. During my feat activations, I manage to kill them and score 2 pionts for dominating the zone. 

-He upkeeps IF on the Butcher. Aiyana moves up and curses the stormblades and then Holt kills two of them. Butcher moves up and shoots one of the stormblades. One by one, they die to shooting from the remaining WG as well as Saxxon Orrik. This allows him to dominate the zone since I have no other units except the warcaster in the zone, leaving him at 4 points but also leaving him dangerously close to me.

Turn 4
-I keep all my focus on me and get Squire to give me his last focus point. The ATGM try and critical thunderbolt the Butcher so he gets knocked down but I don't manage to. So in the end, it's all up to Stryker who has 7 focus. I cast velocity one time, so that I have enough distance to move past most of the wreck of the Spriggan and then I charge pButcher. I end movement within reach of him and then I overload myself. It's at this point the people watching start chanting "3D6! 3D6!" along the veins of "one of us! one of us!". I roll 3D6 and I get 5,5,6, leaving me at power 31 vs an armor 22 butcher. I'm definitely killing him I think. Then I roll for damage and it comes to...6,6,5. Nope, I'm dead. From my own overload.

Thoughts on game

Well, my opponent and I rolled anyway to see if I would have killed the Butcher. I would have but that was the risk I took when I chose to overload. Although this is like the 2nd time this has happened within a month in the club when someone's played eStryker for the first time. 

Although I really didn't need to try for assassination. I could have killed the remaining units in the zone, gotten the ATGM to kill the objective along with the hunter and then I would have dominated for 2 points and scored 1 point for the objective as well, leaving me at 5 points in total. Which is what I needed to win. But there was too tempting a morsel within my face and the khadoran in me told me to go for it. 

Overall a fun game and I managed to learn a lot of things while playing it, which means it was a really good game.