And so it begins..

Well, played my first two official Warmachine games against a good friend of mine. Things did not go well. Lost both games. I learned a lot though and that's the important thing.

We kept it simple since both of us were just learning the game. Very little terrain, straight forward deployment zones and simple kill the caster missions. The lists were

Me: Convergence of Cyriss
Forgemaster Syntherion
Cypher
Monitor
Diffusor
Algorithmic Dispersion Optifex

May not be the most synergistic list, but hey, I'm figuring this stuff out. 

My Opponent: Khador
Kommander Sorscha
Juggernaut
Destroyer
5 Winter guard Infantry and Leader

Game one

Ok, I know Khador is tough so my idea was to get to Sorscha as quick as possible.
First turn for him, threw a focus on the two jacks and ran them and cast fog of war to give concealment.
My first turn, I put a focus on the cypher and the monitor (didn't really need to do that) and cast hot shot on the monitor and reconstruct on the cypher. My plan at this point was to use the monitors range and "true sight" ability to snipe his caster.

Turn 2: He again moves up and not much else happens.
My turn 2: Upkeep my two spells for free (thanks Resourceful) and place a focus on all three jacks. I move the monitor over and try to take a shot at his squad. Out of range. Damn. 13 inches is shorter than I expected. I moved the diffusor over and shot at the destroyer. Hit. That gave me an extra 2" of charge range, awesome. I then moved my ADO to get him in position to cast Magnetic hold through. Synth's activation, I move up and try to cast Magnetic hold through the ADO, out of range. Fail. Cyphers activation, I attempt to charge the Destroyer anyway. I get to charge for free thanks to the diffusor's hit. Still end up a hair short. I really needed Magnetic hold to go off.

Turn 3: Another move up from him, luckilly he doesn't really have a charge lane yet. The juggernaut moves up to position for next turn, the squad moves up and takes aim at the Monitor and put decent damage on it. The destroyer moves over to hit the cypher and hit him he does. Those things really hurt.
My turn 3: Upkeep hotshot and reconstruct. Put two focus on the monitor and two on the cypher. Roll a d3 for auto-repair, 1. Well, that's not gonna be useful. By this time Sorscha is in range so I take my shot. Monitor moves up and boosts to hit, Hit with a critical. Sweet, now I get an additional d6. Boost damage, so no I'm rolling 4d6 plus my POW 13. I leave her with 6 health. Well, that ain't gonna do it. Cyper activates and does like two damage to the destroyer. ADO and the diffusor are pretty much worthless at this point.

Turn 4: The beginning of the end. Juggernaut and destroyer get focus. Sorscha casts boundless charge on the Juggernaut and comes crashing into the Monitor. That thing really hits like a Mack truck. A couple of boosted attacks later and my Monitor is all but totally crippled. Cypher is punched into oblivion, but reconstruct gives him new life (kinda). Infantry moves around and blasts the ADO off the table.
My turn 4: Last chance to make something happen. Syntherion repairs the monitor for 1 point again, cause I can't roll for shit. The cypher gets a repair of 1 as well. They both get 3 focus cause at this point there's no use camping any. Syntherion pops his feat giving everyone weapon platform, then I made a huge mistake, I forgot to fire his weapon. He has a decent range, decent POW gun and I didn't shoot her with it. Major fail on my part. He has no more focus so his activation ended. Go time. Monitor activates and takes a shot at Sorscha, boost to hit, miss! Well, that sucked. Cypher charged into the Destroyer and didn't really damage him much (not nearly as much as two POW 18 spikes should do)

Turn 5. Sorscha pops her feat and that was that. Everything I have is frozen in place. He finishes off my two heavies, blasts the diffusor off the table. Synth is all thats left verses his entire army and I concede.

A quick reset to our respective deployment zones and we begin game 2. I went first in this one. I'll summarize this one since it went almost like the first. Applied some of the lessons from the first game and made some adjustments. Got my ADO in better positions this time, got the charge off with the cypher (what a difference that makes), made better use of the focus induction trick the Convergence can do. End result was still the same however with me losing in the end. This time at least I did wreck his destroyer and engaged Sorscha in melee and should have killed her but again, rolled like shit.

So. What did I learn? A few things actually
1. This ain't 40k
2. This ain't 40k
3. Ranges are almost laughably short compared to what I'm use to.
4. Activation order is everything. Activate the wrong thing at the wrong time and you just screwed your battle plan.
5. I have to get A LOT better at estimating ranges.
6. Charges are awesome, except when they fail.

So, there it is. Two games down, many more to go. It's gonna be a huge learning curve, but I'm actually excited about playing games again.