Another battle report for your enjoyment!
I played against a local Mercs player, who was running a Damiano list, with me choosing to run a variation on my pGrissel list that I had run recently. For his list:
Damiano
Rocinante
Max Steelhead Halbs
Max Steelhead Cav
Max Croe's Cutthroats
2x units of Kayazy Eliminators
Stannis Brocker
Gudrun
Alexia2
Rhupert Carvolo
And I think that was it; it was a list I hadn't seen before, so I was a little wary going in of what it could do. I'd played against Damiano lists, but this one threw me for a small loop in figuring out what it could do.
My list was:
pGrissel
Pyre Troll
Storm Troll
Full Warrior package
min Champs + Skaldi
Max Long Riders
Horthol
min Stone + UA
Chronicler
Saxon
Trollkin Sorcerer (on the Riders)
I'd usually been running Warders in place of Skaldi + Champs and a Bouncer instead of the Storm Troll, but I changed it back; I think I'll probably be undoing those changes, because I've really liked the way the previous list played. Scenario was (I think) Rally Point - it has two offset circular zones, the one on my left being a friendly zone to dominate for 1, control for 1 or dominate for 2 on the other zone, and two objectives somewhat central.
I went first, with my Warriors front and center spread across the front, champs on the left, Horthol on the right, and the Long Riders in the second line behind the Warriors, and the rest of the package central behind Grissel.
He put the Halbs across from the champs mostly (fairly central though), all his cav off to the right, one unit of Eliminators to either flank, Rocinante with the Halbs, and Croe's in front of the Halbs.
I advanced - way too cautiously - up the board, being wary of Croes, and tried to keep most of my guys out of shot ranged. I accidentally boxed in my Long Riders, so I wasn't getting good threat vectors with them, dropped 5 into the Kriel Stone, and moved up. Hoof It went on the Champs and they booked it a little farther forward with the Stone hitting them still. He mostly advanced on his turn, although the Croe's plinked a Champ slightly, and got into good position for zone threatening. His cav were right at the edge of his friendly zone, in good position to threaten anywhere.
My mistakes on my first turn in being WAY too cautious came back to bite me on this turn. My Warriors were way out of position to be threatening anything because of his advance, and I couldn't keep him blocked out of the zone, so I was in a really awkward board position. Additionally, I left one of my Long Riders directly behind an objective and the others were blocked by terrain, so they would be unable to contribute offensively for the turn. I managed to get a few Croe's down with the Champs + a Grissel Rift cast, but he toughed (Rhupert) and they couldn't be knocked down (Surefoot on Gudrun with good placement) so I only got 3 or 4. I feated essentially defensively with Grissel, trying to recover some board position and minimize the next turn damage, and left her on 2 Fury. I got most of my guys under the feat, and all of his units except one set of eliminators, preventing charges. I advanced my Kriels up to just jam up the works, moved the Long Riders into some threatening positions, and prayed for good luck.
He decided, with pGriss on 2 Fury, to try for an assassination, putting 2 on Rocinante and putting Deadeye on the Croe's and the Steelhead Cav. With other attacks, he cleared out a few Warriors (I made no tough checks on the Kriels until the very last guy... Yay Tough.), clearing out way more of my screen than I was hoping to still have. Either 5 or 6 Croe's got shots on Grissel, as well as 2 Steelheads with the +2/+2 ranged buff from Damiano, and Brocker. He forgot the feat shut down Alexia, but she was out of position too. After all was said, Grissel had 4 life and 1 Fury remaining, and he left me a ton of good angles with my Riders and the remaining Kriels.
To speed this along... Next turn I removed all but one of his cav models with Warriors and my Long Riders, with 2 of my Long Riders getting into Rocinante - one of which got Defensive Striked into a tough check, which he passed, but between 2 long riders put a grand total of 2 damage into Rocinante. That sucked. I got a few Halbs, and the Croe's were entirely removed from the board, thankfully. I got some board position back, and Grissel ran scared, healed herself a little, but got to a safe spot.
On his next turn he cleared all but the Piper and Flag from the Kriels (passed Command check), all but 2 Riders dead, with one out of formation, and other scattered damage, with his feat supporting. My next turn, I was beginning to threaten his zone, with horthol removing Stannis, all the Halbs getting removed and Rocinante getting totally reamed by the Champions (3 hits to kill him. Hot dice anyone?), and Grissel dominating friendly for one. He couldn't kill Horthol, tried to keep fighting up but couldn't prevent contesting, so I got another one, cleared all but Kell Bailoch and Damiano my next turn (Forgot Kell, sorry!), ran Grissel to the other side to dominate for 2, and he failed to kill. Alexia had a last ditch assassination on Grissel, but needed 7 to hit and 9 to kill and pulled an 8 on the damage.
I played flat out badly in this game, but his failed assassination run (on a bit of a long shot) really let me back into the game, and I made the most of it, getting back up in attrition and pulling it through. MVP of the game may actually have been the Krielstone - the ARM buff kept more guys alive when they were reduced to 1 HP than I care to remember. The Long Riders and Champs were close, though - they each did their jobs very effectively, once I finally got them in position.
I'm probably going to write a post about my errors with pGrissel, and what I'm finding hard about playing that list - it's a little bit of a self-serving idea because I keep making the same positioning mistakes, and I need to think more about it. Cheers!
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