MK III is GO!

Well, MK III is upon us. The rules are now available for free. You can pick up either the Prime or Primal versions of the rules, though each contains the other. I played my first game under the new edition last night and to be honest it doesn't feel that much different. If you're curious as to the main changes then I'll point you here as a user on the privateer press forums has done a great job of summing that up. As for the game, here's what I took:

Ragnar Skysplitter
Runebearer
Dire Troll Mauler
Earthborn Dire Troll
Troll Axer

Fennblades w/officer and drummer
Fennblade kithkar

Krielstone bearer and stone scribes
Stone scribe Elder

My opponent was

Kaelyssa
Manticore
Hydra

Dawnguard Scyir
Manticore

Mage Hunter Assassain

Arcanist Mechanik x3

Dawnguard Sentinels w/ officer and standard

My opponent won the roll off and took first turn.

Top of 1.
Not a lot of action, as per the usual. Seems not even a new edition can change that. He hands out focus to the Hydra from the mechaniks in addition to it's free power up points. And everything else ran to get into position.

Bottom of 1
Ragnar dumps all his fury into the stone, the Fennblade mass runs up and to the right of the table near the flag. The earthborn runs (14" thanks to his abilities) and sits there, the mauler runs up with a pathfinder assist from the axer, axer moves up, runebearer runs, and finally the KSB uses their protective aura and runs. Lot's of positioning going on here.

Top of 2
Again, not much. The Hydra moves up and takes a shot at the EBDT and softens him up just a bit, the manticores advance and use covering fire to make life difficult for my fennblades to move (POW 12 vs ARM 16 is not good) The sentinels advance and get into position for next turn and Kaelyssa feats to keep me from charging and gives her forces stealth.

Bottom of 2 EBDT runs again, trying to get to his flag and hopefully score a point. Mauler hangs back a little since I don't want to lose him this early and it sadly was going to be my Earthborn or my mauler that left the table. Fenns advance in the only direction they could, and surround the flag. However, they're now kinda trapped from the covering fire and the building to their right. Runebearer moves up and casts Earths Sanctuary on the Fenns, making them dug in and giving them cover. The KSB advances again and uses their aura, the elder hands out stone strength. Ragnar goes, tops off the KSB and feats. This is where I made a pretty big mistake, I should have cast pulverizer now instead of waiting till the next turn. Axer advances and bides his time till the next round.

Top of 3
He moved the dawnguard up and surrounded my EBDT and took him out. Both Manticores laid down covering fire and trapped my Fenns in the corner yet again.

Bottom of 3
Ok. Getting a little desperate to get some action in this game. KSB activates first, protective aura and stone strength. Next, Ragnar activates and does two rages on the axer and mauler and puts the rest on the stone to top it off. Axer charges into the grouped up Dawnguard and uses Thresher. POW 18 hits all around and most of the dawn guard are dead. Then they run away!! Except no, no they didn't since there are no more command checks. Runebearer activates and uses his spell slave ability to cast shockwave at one of the manticores, knocking him down and giving the Mauler a nice juicy 'jack to kill. One little problem with that, when I pre-measured, I added in his melee range twice, so since I was going to be an inch short, I charged the remaining Dawnguard instead and took all but one of them out. Then, since I had a 'jack laying on the ground I decided to go ahead and charge my Fenns through the covering fire. Bad idea. I ended up having to make 8 tough rolls and I failed 7. Not much left to do but pass the turn.

Top of 4
Again, not much moving from him. He knew I didn't have enough to out last him, so he held back and just took shots at me. His Hydra landed a good hit against Ragnar and took 9 health off him. The last two Dawnguard and the Scyir moved over to engage the mauler and failed. They did no damage to him at all. More covering fire from the manticores, since that's been effective all damn game thanks to my mispositioning them. Magehunter assassian moves over and takes a swing at Ragnar and misses.

Bottom of 4
Ragnar casts shockwave and knocks the Mage hunter down, then charges him to finish him off. Mauler rages and finishes off the Dawnguard and the Scyir while using beatback from Pulverizer to get closer to the flag, he ended up just a hair away from touching it. This had the bonus effect of causing one of the Manticores to go inert since it's 'jack marshall had been killed. Fenns stayed put, and the runebearer shockwaved the hydra this time. Still no scenario points scored on either side.

Top of 5
Seeing that the end is near, my opponent makes an assassination run on Ragnar. Between Kaelyssa's shots, the Manticores shots, and my opponents dice betraying him, Ragnar was left on one health and Kaelyssa was in a terrible position.

Bottom of 5
Not much to do now. Ragnar moves over and Shockwaves Kaelyssa and knocks her to the ground. Mauler walks over and takes his swings at dice +2, 3 hits later and she's dead. Trollblood win!

So, what did we learn from this? Well, MKIII isn't nearly the doom and gloom the internet made it out to be (I knew that already). The point values have made it a little bit smaller of a game if you can believe that. 50 point games are small. Both my opponent and I couldn't believe how few models were in our armies. The Earthborn has the potential to be a speed demon. His +2 speed from being near rough terrain, combined with the +2 from the Axer makes him SPD 9 and running 18. The combination between Ragnar and the Runebearer gives you two 4" POW 14 AOE's that have knock down. Throw those out there before charging the Fennblades in with cleave and you have a whole lot of dead models. It's going to be interesting to see what lists come out of this.