Butcher1 v Cryx (Pirate Queen Skarre) - 23 points

Pirate Queen Skarre
Reaper
Satyxis Blood Witches (10)
Satyxis Blood Hag
Satyxis Raiders (10)
Satyxis Raider Sea Witch
Satyxis Raider Captain
Necrosurgeon & Stitch Thralls

Butcher
War Dog
Spriggan
Iron Fang Kovnik
Iron Fang Pikeman (6), Officer and standard
Kayazy Assassins (6), Underboss
Manhunter

Why 23 points? I have no good answer for that.

I lost the dice roll (again), so went second. More Proxies here - Banes (I think) filling in for Blood Witches. I threw this list together without a lot of thought. Min units were already feeling like a bad idea.

At this point I'd learned something. These guys are fast. I was a little stunned at how quickly they'd closed in. This was the top of 1. Ouch.

I wasn't sure what to do in response, so I shuffled forward. I'd noticed a couple of things on cards that were scaring me. The Raider's main weapons negate shield wall (ouch), and the Witches have a mini-feat where they go incorporeal for 1 round - and Butcher has my only magic weapon (ouch). My basic idea at this point (with no scenario in play) was to try to ride out the alpha strike and incorporeal turn, then hit back with the Kayazy and Butch.

In they came. Butcher was nicely hidden behind the wall against non-reach models. Hits started coming in, picking things off slowly, but nothing too dramatic. I was just trying to remain patient and not panic.

So this is annoying - things got interesting. So interesting, in fact, that I obviously forgot to keep taking photos. He eventually burned down the Spriggan and started to cut through the Pikemen. I walked the Manhunter around the outside to try to draw some attention away from the main melee. This worked far better than I could have hoped. He charged out to the flank with the Reaper, but missed the charge by millimetres.  I felt like this gave me a chance, feated, and charged butcher into the Reaper (and a couple of witches who'd moved in to clean up the Manhunter. Butcher charging on feat turn hits really, really hard, and that was the end of Reaper. Still under feat, I charged the Kayazy through with their mini-feat, but they did much less damage than I'd hoped. I was severely outnumbered...but I had Butcher.

He ground down most of my army...but I had Butcher.

Butcher now had Iron Flesh and a bunch of camped focus. I moved him up with a plan to end it casting Obliteration, but on measuring control, realised I was probably a couple of mm out of range. So I sat.

At that time Skarre tried a hail-Mary charge at a Def 17, Armor 26 Butcher. It didn't work out for Skarre.

A win! 

This was another weird game. I'd honestly thought that at low points, we'd burn through the game quickly, but that wasn't the case. I think I'd have been in trouble if we'd been running a scenario. Seeing all of those models getting across the table so quickly was quite a sight. Really, I'm leaning pretty heavily on Butcher - I need to get the most out of his support.