Battle Report 4-12, Atomic Empire Tourney Game 1, Trolls vs. Legion

Quick note: Sadly, despite this being a potential 3 game tourney, I had to bail after Game 2, so I left an unresolved game with Andy with us both at 2-0.  We had 6 people attend, with 2 Legion, 2 Trollbloods, 1 Khador, and 1 Circle.
 
Scenario: Close Quarters

My List:
pGrissel
Storm Troll
Pyre Troll
Impaler
Max Long Riders
- Sorcerer Adjunct
Horthol
Max Warders
Min Champs + Skaldi
- Sorcerer Adjunct
min Krielstone + UA
Swamp Gobbers

Opponents List:
Vayl, Consul of Everblight
* Angelius
* Angelius
* Ravagore
Blighted Ogrun Warspears (Leader and 4 Grunts)
* Warspear Chieftan
Blighted Ogrun Warspears (Leader and 4 Grunts)
* Warspear Chieftan
Spawning Vessel (Leader and 5 Grunts)
Blighted Nyss Shepherd
Strider Deathstalker
Strider Deathstalker

I lost the roll for choice of first/second, and my opponent elected to go first.  Terrain was forest on opposite corners of the board (my close right, his close right), random walls that had little/no effect, and that was about it I believe.  Fairly sparse for the game.

I'm a little hazy on his deployment, but I know there was a unit of Spears threatening on my flag, a unit fairly central, I believe both Angelii were near his flag with the pot, and the Ravagore on the right side.  Approximately.  Both Deathstalkers were threatening my flag.

I put my Long Riders mostly on the right, one or two in the back-central region, Grissel central right to attempt to dominate my friendly flag (similar to my last game), with the Warders left and the Champs on the center.  Beasts and support were fairly central, as I recall.  I decided to attempt an early game plan similar to that of a few days ago; attempt to dominate my flag and keep my points rolling in while using the Warders and Champs to contest his flag and jam up.  It wasn't as successful as the day before, due to different lists and a few mistakes on my part, but still had moderate success.  After I deployed, the unit of Spears across from the Long Rider Preyed them, while the other unit preyed the Champs.

He simply ran up, mostly straight forward, with Angellii threatening central/center left from my position, Ravagore central right, and the War Spears threatening middle and right.  The Deathstalkers ran up, one moving way up the board into my side, the other moving about halfway up, right side.

I moved up a little cautiously - I gave him 1-2 Long Rider targets that were OK, but I tried to limit how much I gave him.  The Warders went full bore and ended up getting Hoof It from Grissel, advancing relatively aggressively, although still remaining far enough away to not eat too much damage; I learned from the other day to be a little more cautious.  Champions went up, but I held them a bit in reserve to protect them from the Warspears.

Top of 2, the Warspears assaulted/ran on each side.  One of the Warders got damage plinked in, and one Long Rider died that I moved a hair too far forward and a Spear had him, along with some random Assault shots from other Spears.  One Angel finished off a Warder, but I actually came out mostly intact; I was fairly content.  At the end of this turn, the Ravagore had Admonition, one Angel had Refuge, and he had fairly solid threats across the board.  Oh, and a Deathstalker knocked out a Sorcerer (failed Tough check) but failed to hit a Gobber in the cloud near Grissel (needed 11, rolled 10, yeesh!).

I decided it was time for the pain train, and lit the world up with Grissel's beautiful chorus of songs.  The Pyre Troll, Impaler, and Storm Trolls all got random shots into the Warspears, resulting in 2-3 dead Warspears, as well as a dead Deathstalker.  After Warder and Long Rider charges, I left him sitting on 1 Chieftain in one group, a Chieftain and Grunt in the other, as well as a single deathstalker, with no Champion hitting required.  I repositioned to jam up the works hard with the Warders - pretty much sacrificing them for the next turn, because I was fairly sure it would take most of what he had to jam them - Champs went central, and the Long Riders stayed on the right.  One Rider repositioned to tie up the Deathstalker, along with the Impaler.

However, I made one HUGE error on this turn; instead of charging the Long Rider into one of the Warspears, I decided to impact attack with Flaming Fists (taking impact to pow 16 on a Spear missing 4 already), since I needed 7 on 3 dice to hit... And failed to hit.  Had I charged that guy, also, I would have needed 5 on two dice to hit a charge, then 5 on two dice for a Feat attack, at PS 16 and 14 for the two attacks.  That would have let me dominate now, getting my scenario game going 2 turns earlier; instead, I lost the opportunity and ran out of attacks to finish the Warspear.  Additionally, I made a smaller error in that I played too cautiously with the Champions, and they weren't in as good retaliatory position as I wanted next turn.

Next turn, he cleared the Warders with Angels, dismounted Horthol (I placed him about 11 inches away from an Angel; bad positioning on my part, but he did take a Skaldi Bonehammer counter charge which blew out Spirit on a Refuged Angel), killed a Champ, lost a Deathstalker to free strikes, and shot with the Ravagore but didn't accomplish much due to No Continuous Effects aura and the dice kinda crapping out.  I believe Admonition stayed on the Ravagore if I remember correctly...  Not 100% sure.

I was a bit counter-jammed, now, in my ability to get repositioning, but did my best, and freed up a few Champs to kill a Stinger with Skaldi (he'd spawned one by this point from the Pot),  and cleared the War Spears, to get some better repositioning.  Horthol crapped out on me for once :(  and missed needing 6 to hit on an Angel to put more damage at D-3.  I forgot to use Grissel's fell call, stupidly, but got her in dominating position to go up 1-0 on scenario.  The forgotten Fell Call was huge, actually, in that it cost me Skaldi and good Champion position with Hoof It.

My opponent took this opportunity to wreck Horthol and refuge away (he was way outta the Stone's aura), then brought in a Ravagore to finish off a Long Rider near my point and contest.  Skaldi got a random counter charge that didn't really matter, and was eaten by an Angel - I thought he would be anyway, because he was out of position, but oh well.  He did some work for me, putting 11 on an Angel and killing a Stinger.  Good boy.  He ran the Shepherd in between my Impaler and his Ravagore, trying to minimize the number of beasts I could get on the Ravagore, as the Pyre and Impaler were in position to attempt to kill the Ravagore.  A Stinger was spawned again and did some work in the middle, but Vayl couldn't quite dominate her side to take advantage of my position, so I remained up 1-0.

With the Shepherd in the way I was in a very awkward position, trying to figure out how to unjam myself.  I was struggling to figure it out until I realized the Storm Troll's Lightning Generator might be just what I needed.  I moved him into position, boosted to hit, and got 2 jumps (to the Shepherd and my Impaler), boosted slight damage into the Rava, and killed the Impaler.  The Impaler was given Flaming Fists by Grissel, the Stone popped for +1 STR, and I walked around and started beating on him at dice -2.  I left him at about 1/3 boxes or so, and the Pyre managed to finish him on the last attack.(retrospectively, I should have probably tried to get Calamity on the Ravagore, as that would have been better than Flaming Fists on one beast, but hindsight's 20/20).    The Angel's had come up to threaten the center, and had been attacked by the Krielstone members and champs, but I failed to kill the badly wounded Angel (bad decision making with the Champs combined with failing to hit needing 7's on all the Champion attacks.  Ouch.)

On his next turn, he moved Vayl into position to dominate, cleared the area around the objective, removed both remaining Champs (and one remaining Long Rider, I believe), and started threatening Grissel, leaving me in a pretty tough spot, having to clear 2 Angels, a Stinger, and still contest.

My next turn, I ran a Sorcerer around to contest, along with random Krielstone members getting in with the Vessel members, and was about to start pounding the Angel when dice down was called, giving me a 2-1 scenario win in a very tough match.

I made some key mistakes that really left me a bit further behind than I should have been, including not focusing more attention on a nearly-dead Angel, but I luckily got away with my mistakes and made it out of a very tough round with the victory.  The early CP's managed to win the day for me!

Battle Report 3-19, Trolls vs Legion of Everblight

I'm still putting my thoughts together for my Calandra post; here's a battle report in the meantime!

So on Wednesday, I brought along a huge base, wanting to try a little bit of early play with the Mountain King.  He's on my painting table, so I just brought the base to proxy for the time being; he'll be along in a bit.

I decided to try a Runes of War variant, rather than my traditional pDoomy list, to run the King.  I ran:

Doomshaper, Shaman of the Gnarls (+7)
Mulg
Earthborn
Mountain King
max Krielstone + UA
Janissa
2 units of Runeshapers

This may honestly be the lowest model count army I've ever run; it felt incredibly weird to me.  I'm used to running much higher model counts than what I ran in that, but I need to break out of habits anyway!

I played Andy, who ran a pThagrosh tier variant.  I honestly can't replicate the list, except I know it has 3 Spawning Vessels, 4 Beast Mistresses, a Carnivean and Scythean, and more lessers than I've ever seen on a board.  It looked like a unit of lessers coming across the board at me, of all types.

Andy had been running this list lately, and I was curious to see how just simply skewing my armor upwards would run on it.  I felt like the Carni and Scythean were the only real dangers to the King, so if I could keep plodding through, I could make it.

The board featured 4 giant pieces of terrain - a huge hill, huge house, huge linear obstacle, and giant trench.  I seriously have no better word than "huge" for any of them; the linear obstacle was the smallest, and it was a hooked wall that had about 8-10" of length, maybe more.  That piece was my downfall.  The scenario was Incursion (3 flags), and Andy elected to go first.

I predeployed centrally with the MK, and he put down his few models not AD in the center.  I put Mulg to the left of the King (near a hill), Earthborn to the right (to abuse a wall), and Runeshapers to either side.  My hope was to threaten either side with a heavy and let the King run the center; my deployment really hurt me later on.  Andy put his 4 various Lesser battlegroups spread evenly across the board for AD, and off we went.

Andy mostly just sent beasts screaming across the board; he knew I had a limited model count, so my number of attacks was fairly low, and he just went with the intent of jamming me up.  The lessers all hid around the various walls that were available and ate up a lot of space around me, making it very difficult for me to get to the objectives.

I kept the MK central, sprayed down a random Stinger that he ran forward with Fortune on the King, and ran Mulg and the Earthborn to try to keep a beast in either flag direction.  However, I realized increasingly that the giant wall was hampering me from actually moving the King anywhere, and he might be jammed in a small area for most of the game.


Anyway, Andy came in, took out 4 of 6 Runeshapers, and plinked damage into the Earthborn, continuing his jam.  The wrong flag for me had gone away, and the King was now thoroughly stuck; I realized quickly that I might lose simply from lack of mobility.  Andy had put a solo on the outer flag, so he would get 1 if I couldn't contest, but the only piece that could get near enough to contest was my Earthborn, which was a guaranteed death for him based on Andy's positioning.  I decided to give up the point and just hope that I could get over on my turn (when Andy would be at 3 CP's) and do my best.  Spoilers: it didn't work.

Andy just simply continued jamming, held me off with Lessers, and I couldn't get my beasts out to contest.  Mulg was hampered by the wall and couldn't come over to support, the MK never had anywhere near the necessary room to try and contest, so I simply ran out of options.  Andy killed off the Earthborn after a bit of hardship, but it was too little too late; I did not have enough tools, and he won 5-0 on CPs.

Despite the low volume of attacks, I think the core concept is essentially fine; the MK, Mulg, and Earthborn are all hardy and can take a beating.  I need to be careful of getting Bronzebacked, but this list isn't entirely intended to face a Skorne list or something similar; I would rather put it down against armies in a central scenario that I don't believe can crack armor and wear them down.

That said, my deployment killed me.  I put the King behind the wall in such a position that he could never move out - he killed 10-15 points of lessers across the game from attacks and killshots, but never really had a major effect on the game from where he was located.  Had I deployed him on a flank, maybe the wrong flag would have gone away, but I think he could have maneuvered and been able to make his way around, albeit slowly.  So, I learned a good bit about what to look out for, and I learned how much a large piece of terrain would affect my board positioning with the King.  Until you actually run one, it's really hard to realize how much space that huge base needs to occupy, and how inflexible that requirement really is.

Battle Report, 3-5-14

For my regular Wednesday gaming at Game Theory, I played against Andy, one of our local Legion of Everblight players.  He was wanting to test a new list, trying out the new pThagrosh tier list (New Blood from No Quarter 50), and I'm continuing my testing of my Hunters Grim list, trying to decide if I like its current incarnation, or if I have any improvements I would like to test.

Andy's list, as best as I can reassemble it:

Thagrosh, Prophet of Everblight (*5pts)
* Carnivean (11pts)
* Scythean (9pts)
Spawning Vessel (Leader and 5 Grunts) (3pts)
Spawning Vessel (Leader and 5 Grunts) (3pts)
Spawning Vessel (Leader and 3 Grunts) (2pts)
Beast Mistress (3pts)
* Harrier (2pts)
* Shredder (2pts)
* Stinger (2pts)
Beast Mistress (3pts)
* Harrier (2pts)
* Shredder (2pts)
* Stinger (2pts)
Beast Mistress (3pts)
* Harrier (2pts)
* Shredder (2pts)
* Stinger (2pts)

My Hunter's Grim list remains the same as previous efforts; I may change some pieces, but I want to playtest it thoroughly in a variety of games before I draw any conclusions.

Hunters Grim (*4pts)
* Troll Axer (6pts)
* Troll Axer (6pts)
* Dire Troll Mauler (9pts)
* Trollkin Runebearer (2pts)
Pyg Burrowers (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
Pyg Bushwackers (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew (Leader and 1 Grunt) (1pts)
Trollkin Fennblades (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
* Trollkin Fennblade Officer & Drummer (2pts)
Fell Caller Hero (3pts)
Fennblade Kithkar (2pts)
Professor Victor Pendrake (2pts)
Stone Scribe Chronicler (2pts)

 Unfortunately, I'm writing this battle report a week after the fact, rather than the fairly immediate writing I would like to do, so the details are fuzzy; this may be more of a summary than a true report.  Scenario was Supply and Demand; the objectives had no real effect on the game except getting in my way!

Early highlights: I went first, running up the board and advancing an Axer too far up the board, trying to be aggressive to bring him into the game early.  The Dygmies went under, otherwise I kept a fairly central presence with a wide spread.

Andy moved up a Vessel, brought out a Stinger onto a Beast Mistress, and landed a pair of Stingers onto my Axer, leaving me an Axer short as of the bottom of round 1, a beast that would have been extremely useful across the rest of the game.

The Dygmies came up and with help blew up all three Spawning Vessels, which I had decided I needed to remove from the board to minimize his recursion throughout the game, and landed damage on the Scythean despite Spiny Growth, and I did some other tertiary damage.  I did not move Grim far enough to land a Mortality, or I would have nigh-crippled the Scythean.  I placed other random damage, and boxed some lessers in.  Additionally, I didn't spread the Fennblades enough and left some of them in bad positions.

Andy retaliated, removing most of my Dygmies and Fennblades, and we banged out several turns of attrition.  I removed the Scythean from the board but it came back from the feat, and Andy was able to put scenario pressure with a domination and objective destruction.  On my last turn, I forgot to move the Mauler into the zone as I should have, preventing me from contesting with it, and letting Andy clear a single Fennblade to win the game.

I learned a few key lessons from this game, though; one is the brutal attrition of pThagrosh.  Andy hasn't played him very regularly, so I simply was not aware of how nasty he can be.  I learned a lesson from this game, and I have a better awareness now of what he brings to the table, as well as how hard it can be to remove him and his beasts.

Additionally, I need to bring more aggressive pressure with my beasts, particularly my Mauler and Axers, and be careful not to lose an Axer stupidly.  There was no gain from my early Axer loss, and my Mauler was so far back as to be out of the game for the majority.  Instead, I can use my Mauler's Rage animus and Grim to hand out Rage to key Fennblades for charges, bringing them to PS 15, or PS 17 effective with Mortality, which can do a lot of the needed damage while keeping my key pieces safe.

I also thing going for the pots may not have been the correct decision.  Removing Andy's recursion was helpful, but I think that trying to force an early feat by removing a heavy from the board may have been better.  If I can land a Mortality, the Dygmies guns are at dice - 4 effectively on a Spiny Growth'd beast, meaning the unit can potentially remove a heavy.  That may be a more effective goal, as the trade of Thags feat for Dygmies is a fairly good one.  If I can clear charge lanes for the Fennblades with my Dygmy placement, I bring additional pressure.

Andy played a very good game and taught me a couple of key lessons; I think the list is running nearly how I would like for it to, but I need to practice it more and figure out the wrinkles.