Menoth vs. Circle or Finding New Ways To Lose

I had another small game of Warmachine on Friday night against James.  James has lots of new Warmachine minis I'm sure he'd like to try out, but the rest of my Menoth force in the mail, so we had to make do with another small game.

I had expect James to bring his Khador, but he surprised me with some Circle of Orboros models.  I had only played against a Hordes faction once before and that had ended poorly for me.  But I was curious to see what the Circle had to offer.

James had two giant stone constructs that seemed pretty tough with lots of buffs to make them tougher and they could be healed.  So I decided that the best bet was to go for an assassination of his caster (or whatever Hordes calls them).  I managed to bring my Repenter within range of his caster and squirted some fire at him as he peeked out from behind his stone man.  I did a respectable amount of damage and was feeling pretty good about things, as he was now on fire as well.  That is when I got the nasty surprise that his caster could transfer his damage to the stone dude.  Let me tell you that sucked.  Now I was left in the position of having to destroy his constructs in order to have a chance at hurting him.  This seems a little weird to me, as it means there is only one way to play this game (when not using a scenario).

How did that happen?

The next turn his caster took some more fire damage and passed it on to his large stone friend. As an aside, setting things on fire is fun.  I had set caster up behind my other light jack and had given him Defender's Ward.  I was also threatening James' closest construct on the flank with my heavy.  I hoped he would go after the more immediate threat.  However, I got another lesson, when he slammed my light jack, thereby knocking it and my caster down.  Annoying, but not fatal, until his other construct was able to make a charge to my caster by a fraction of an inch and pulverize him in one smash.

I'm finding Warmachine has a very steep learning curve and  I will admit, I have not spent too much time reading the rule book.  I find that I only start looking to defend against some things once they have been done to you.  Now I know to watch for (and use) slam to get things out of the way and/or knock down things that are hiding.  I also know to make sure that charge lanes are blocked or that I'm out of range in case my guy falls down on his ass.

I only got to roll dice twice that game, but it was definitely an education.