Sorry for the delay posting last Wednesday's game folks; I got a combination of busy and distracted. I made the mistake of starting to play Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, and... Well, it was a mistake. A tasty, fun mistake.
So, one of my worries with my Calanda list was getting shot up on the way in; I was worried Cygnar in particular could put in enough damage to remove Gators or Boomhowlers while avoiding Star Crossed. I didn't actually get to test that theory this week!
My opponent, a local Cygnar player named Joe, decided to try out a Darius tier list and see how it would work. For my part, I wanted to try out a variation on my Calandra list, subbing in a Bomber, Impaler, and Slag for Mulg, Pyre, and the Runeshapers; I feel that Calandra can support the list fairly well through fury soaking with Soothing Song and Star Crossed. Scenario was fire support. My list:
Calandra Truthsayer
Runebearer
Bomber
Impaler
Slag Troll
Max Gator Posse
Max Nyss Hunters
Max Boomhowlers
Bone Grinders
Swamp Gobbers
Feralgeist
Joe's list, as close as I can manage:
Darius Wrecking Crew Tier 2:
Darius
Centurion
Minuteman
Journeyman Warcaster
2x Sword Knight Units with UA
**Both units marshalling 2 Hunters each
I ended up going first. I had a rock in front of me that blocked LOS (not linear obstacle, the bigger size), a house off to my right, and a linear obstacle to my left that had little impact. Joe had a forest in the middle of the board, but fairly clear access to either side.
I sent my Nyss down one flank, Calandra + Battlegroup + Protection down the center, and my Gators + Boomhowlers (Boomies in front) on the left. Calandra put up Bullet Dodger and Star Crossed, camping on three. I made an early mistake with her, in that I did not put up the Gobber cloud to put her into concealment, and I charged her up the middle not behind the rock, so I did not have cover or LOS. My early worry was the Hunters shooting up my Gatorman posse, so I tried to screen them behind Boomies, and I wanted to get Calandra up the board aggressively to abuse Star Crossed, which may not have been a mistake, but I went about it poorly.
Joe responded by Prontoing all 4 Hunters forward and running the Knights up behind them. The Minuteman got 3, moved, jumped, and shot two Boomhowlers, both failing tough checks (they never passed a single one all game). Then the pain started, with the Hunters beginning to shoot up Calandra bottom of 1. Because of Pronto, they were able to aim, needing only 7's to hit and boosting to hit to get around Star Crossed. At this point I started swearing, because there was a reasonable chance that I would half-kill most of my beasts with transfers. Both damage rolls on Calandra spiked at dice -1, producing more swearing, before the third boosted failed to hit due to Star Crossed, and she took her Evasive move behind cover; the final shot went into the Bomber, plugging more damage into him. Darius and the Centurion both just ran through the forest (Pathfinder from the Tier bonus).
Calandra cut for two, I sighed from relief that I hadn't quite gotten Calandra killed bottom of 1, and I decided to start the slaughter. Calandra went first, popped feat, befuddled a Hunter to send its ass to me and move forward, and the beatings commenced. I took down 3 of the 4 Hunters plus a Minuteman, along with a few Sword Knights from Boomy shots. The Bomber claimed one Hunter, the Slag claimed another, four Nyss 2-man's at Dice - 3 claimed the third, and Boomies + Gators took down the Minuteman. I felt a lot safer at this point, getting Calandra behind smoke to deny LOS, and sat back to see the return.
At this point the game will get a little hazy, because it bogged down - Joe engaged the Sword Knights into the Nyss on the right, the Sword Knights into the Boomies and Gators on the left, and we bogged down a couple of turns. He got the Centurion in the mix, but Befuddle and some spiked dice left him nearly dead - had I not forgotten to put more effort into killing Junior, I would have killed him, but Darius's feat put him fully operational again. We bounced attacks around in the Nyss and Sword Knights, but as the clock was winding down, I realized that I didn't really need to spike any more damage into him, blew up the objective with the Bomber, and put the Feralgeist onto his flag to go to 2 CPs. He had little way to retaliate and conceded.
My alternate Calandra battlegroup worked extremely well - I was very happy with its performance, as the ranged attacks that it can put out really take advantage of her feat while remaining at a distance, and really help aid the slog that she creates with Star Crossed. All the pieces pretty much worked nicely with each other; my major mistakes came in the form of bad first turn issues that I learned quickly from.
My next post will be giddiness about new Troll news (and won't really be a post as much as me just being happy), but I'm going to post some theory about a new Calandra list modification soon; hopefully by tomorrow. It may not be practical, but it'll be cramming as much denial into one list as possible and giggling manically.
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