Help round out my 35pt pDenny list (Objective: Kill eSevy)

[CTFlyer11]

Hello forum,

My friend convinced me to start playing warmachine about 4 months ago as a shorter version of the D&D campaigns we used to run before I got married and before my son was born. Warmachine has filled the void for rpg/strategy tabletop gaming, and I'm totally hooked! My only problem is my friend has 40+ games under his belt (plus a few tournaments), and a much better feel for the game than I do at present time. This has lead to me losing roughly 9 in 10 games against him so far... He also says that it didn't help for me to choose the faction with the steepest learning curve, but I always gravitate toward undead anything; so there wasn't much choice in the matter.

My only victory occurred when he made the critical mistake of leaving a charge lane open to his caster, and I had a plethora of dead bane knights for an eGaspy feat turn. Otherwise I have been dead in the water, my army mostly obliterated by turn 3 or 4. I'm quite positive that my losing has as much to do with my inexperience, as it does with his skill level, and I could use all the help I can get here. I've been working very diligently to build an army which can counter a lot of the nasty things he has done to me in the past, but I need some help rounding out the list.

Without further ado I present his favorite list to play @ 35pt.

eSevy (*6)
Repenter (4)
Revenger (6)
Vanquisher (8)
Choir 6 (3)
Exemplar Bastions 3 (5)
Temple Flameguard Leader +5 (4)
Flameguard UA 2 (2)
Gorman (2)
Covenant of Menoth (2)
The Wrack 3 (1)
Vassal of Menoth x2 (4)

Our games usually revolve around him rolling deviation blasts on my banes, arc-noding admonisher to chew up what's left, flamethrower to any infantry left after the previous two, shield walling 3 pairs of flameguard w/ holy ward and mini-feat to block charge lanes and protect his caster, vassals allowing jacks ancillary attacks, book denying my spells w/o arc nodes/skarlock, choir preventing either magic or shooting on the jacks. Oh yeah, and bastion weapon master/damage spreading to kill even the flaming cinders that remain... Sometimes he will take a min-unit of choir, scratch gorman, and take a max unit of bastions... He calls that taking it "easy" on me... I hadn't even mentioned eSevey's feat which burns d3+3 of my undead for pow12, and the need to pass fire rolls at every maintenance phase...

So I've been thinking that a debuff caster w/ a mix of infantry and range may give me a better chance at killing him, since he cannot stop both spells and shooting during the same turn.

I'm sure this is enough text to stop many readers from getting to this point (sorry for that), now I present the beginnings of my "friend-killer" list.

pDenny (*5)
Deathripper/nightwretch x2 (8)
Skarlock (2)
Satyxis Raiders 10 (8)
Sea witch (2)
Raider Captain (2)
WSC (5)
Gorman (2)
Warwitch siren (2)

I'm at 26 points so far, and I have a few thoughts/questions about my list so here we go.
1) Is the skarlock necessary with pDenny and two arc nodes?
2) Satyxis raiders + UA are immune to that nasty aoe blast damage he always forces my banes to endure. Plus they're cheap, super fast, and ignore shield wall bonuses w/ chain attack
3) WSC is practically necessary for me to remove/prevent fear of god, and the always nice free upkeep and puppet master.
4) He always takes gorman and uses black oil to essentially remove one of my jacks from play, so I though I would return the favor.
5) Is one warwitch siren enough? Should I bring 2?
6) Most importantly how do I spend my remaining 9 points?
-A focus efficient heavy like seether?
-A focus hungry heavy like reaper plus another warwitch or Leviathan for feat turn destruction?
-Infantry heavy with another unit such as min bane knights plus BLT?
-Or think outside the box and bring min Nyss + MacNaile and shoot him dead where he stands?

I shy away from taking Malice, or really favoring reaper against him, since he protects his jacks very well, and can prevent me shooting them at will. I always thought WSC + Malice or Reaper would really give me an advantage, but it has failed miserably against him.

All suggestions are welcome, and no models or alternative casters are off limits here, I'll go to any length to kill my buddy .

[Gamingdevil]

1) Is the skarlock necessary with pDenny and two arc nodes?
2) Satyxis raiders + UA are immune to that nasty aoe blast damage he always forces my banes to endure. Plus they're cheap, super fast, and ignore shield wall bonuses w/ chain attack
3) WSC is practically necessary for me to remove/prevent fear of god, and the always nice free upkeep and puppet master.
4) He always takes gorman and uses black oil to essentially remove one of my jacks from play, so I though I would return the favor.
5) Is one warwitch siren enough? Should I bring 2?
6) Most importantly how do I spend my remaining 9 points?
-A focus efficient heavy like seether?
-A focus hungry heavy like reaper plus another warwitch or Leviathan for feat turn destruction?
-Infantry heavy with another unit such as min bane knights plus BLT?
-Or think outside the box and bring min Nyss + MacNaile and shoot him dead where he stands?

1) Yes, if you have units that don't have Pathfinder/Ghostly. it will mostly be serving as a Ghost Walk dispenser as casting offensive spells will likely get him killed, not to mention they will miss 50% of the time.
2) True, they're a solid unit.
3) WSC is always solid.
4) Gorman is possibly the best 2-point solo in the game.
5) It's enough if all you're doing is run 2 nodes, generally only one of them will need a focus on any given turn.
6) Nyss hunters are very good with pDenny since her standard assassination plan is generally feat+scourge+parasite=pew pew. They work better as a max unit because of CRA though, also, they're overcosted at min and slightly undercosted as max, so you get the better deal by taking max. They have Pathfinder so you could leave Dougal and the Skarlock to bump them up to max, though you might miss Dougal.
The other option could be Wrongeye & Snapjaw. They're quite powerful, can be immune to shooting and most importantly, don't take focus from your caster. They'll also give your Skarlock something to do, since they don't have Pathfinder.

[Lamoron]

Consider Wrong Eye & Snapjaw as well.