Battle Report, Trolls vs Mercs, 4-26-14

My List:

Grissel Bloodsong, Fell Caller
Storm Troll
Pyre Troll
Troll Impaler
min Champs + Skaldi
min Champs
max Warders
min Stone + UA
2x Champ Hero
Fennblade Kithkar
S.S. Chronicler
2x Sorcerer
Swamp Gobbers

Opponent:

Damiano
Rocinante
Nomad
max Boomies
Gun Mages + UA
TAC
Rorsh & Brine
Alexia2
Ogrun Bokur
Rockbottom
(maybe something else?  Don't have a way to calculate points right now)

Scenario:
Fire Support

Terrain:
Rock walls on my near left and on the far right, close to the destroyable objectives.   Forest central-left on my side, largish obstacle near my opponents flag, hill on his side.  Maybe something else I'm forgetting.

This battle was a giant slugfest, so I may be off or hazy on some details; I'll try to get the points that had the biggest effects.  I won the roll and went first.  Sorcerer's on the 2x Champs, Warders central, one champ unit and hero on the side of my objective and flag, the one with Skaldi on the other side.  Grissel central, stone central, Kithkar to the right side, Pyre to the left, Storm to the right, impaler central.

He put the Boomhowlers mostly central, Gun Mages to my right, Alexia and other solos central to central right with Damiano.  Both jacks were pretty much central, Rorsh and brine off to the left flank.  All solo's were AD because Highborn.

I just rolled fast up the field.  Warders ran, got Hoof It, went further.  Champs ran up on each side, Grissel put 5 in the Stone, Stone popped for No Continous, and all that jazz.

His turn, he rolled forward, Rocinante rolled fire and blasted a Warder off the table - he was actually sad, he wanted Alexia to get a soul early.  I knew that I'd lose a chunk of health on the warder, thought he'd still be up!  But at least Righteous Vengeance was triggered.  Boomies 4+ Tough, spread out to eat up room, Warpath and Death March out (DM on Boomies).

I normally like a turn 2 feat, but it wasn't happening here.  So, instead, jam.  Hoof It went on Warders, I deviated a Pyre shot into 2 of them and lit em up.  Warders ran up to jam the area and occupy space.  Stone got maxed out (9" aura), while I went for broke with the Kithkar.  I put Lightning Fists on him and charged into the Gun Mages, but failed to hit either shot needing 8's.  If I got lucky and hit 1, 2 dead mages; if I got really lucky and hit 2, then 4 dead Gun Mages.  It was a risk I was willing to take.

His turn, he sent Brine into the objective on my side and put it down.  Damiano feated, the Boomies came in and slapped around Warders, but ARM 21's quite a lot (after the first damage taken).  I think he took out another Warder this turn, maybe 2 - I think one though.  Kithkar got beat to hell and didn't Tough, but most importantly, the Gun Mages thunderbolted the Storm Troll, knocked him down...  And out of control.  Fuck.  Skaldi got beat the hell down by Thralls after a Thunderbolt crit, when I placed him on the wrong side of the Champs formation - my bad.  That was about it.

My Storm Troll didn't frenzy, but couldn't be forced to stand, so that sucked.  I was going to use his shot to try and bounce around the Gun Mages, too, since taking 2-3 of them out is a big step up for me to take out his board manipulation.  So he just had to walk up to get back in range and hope it'd be enough.

It was a good feat turn now, as everything was in range of good charge targets, so I opened fire with all cylinders.  Grissel aiming knocked down a Boomie, who she then Calamatied (I really wanted to make sure I cleared their feat armor - 19 is annoying, and relies on Weaponmaster rolls.  Average breaks, but still...)  I threw down a lot of attacks that took out Big Pig, Boomhowler, a few Boomies, and plinked some damage elsewhere, but wasn't nearly as effective as I'd like.  The army rearrangement was very nice, however, and kept the warders jammed up.  I made a couple of bad decisions, though, including choosing poor charge targets - I should have cleared the objective on his side, while I had a fantastic lane at it.

On his turn, he cleared all but 1 or 2 Warders, knocked down all my Champs on the right side (where Skaldi was) and failed to bump the Storm Troll out of contesting (I think that was this turn).  Brine came up and parked on my flag, and he rotated the Nomad around to the left side.

I finished off the Boomhowlers pretty much this turn, but the problem I ended up having was missing Brine on 1/3 champ attacks and getting him only Tough, not dead, so I failed to get CPs that would have been a huge help.  Also, I made a bad charge decision and got a Champ toughed on a free strike, while the other champ crapped his pants on dice and only plinked damage into a nomad.

I think this turn is when he started controlling for CPs again; he got the Storm Troll back out, cleared the Warders, cleared my Champs, and started the CP train.  Nomad cleared a Champ or two, and he killed a Sorcerer and damaged another Champ.

I killed Brine, started the domination train, contested the other side, and did some more damage in other places - nothing important.  From there, we traded a few pieces, but I deathclocked out - I could maybe have won through scenario with a little luck, but I never had time to try and get there.

Biggest mistake: I should have played harder for scenario.  I could have taken out his objective early, which would have set me up to dominate twice on the left flag and win, but I didn't.  No matter what, I would've only been able to hit 4 CPs, not enough to win.  I didn't play badly, just a few mistakes that were enough to hold me out.  He played a very good game and deserved the win!

Battle Report, Trolls vs Mercs 4-2-2014

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!

Battle Report, 3-7-14

I got some extra time off work this week, and went down to Liam's place with Keith and Will for a little bit of extra table time.  I learn some of the best information about my lists from gaming at Liam's, and I've probably made more progress as a player from that than any other time.

Liam wanted to test out Magnus the Warlord's Bad Seeds tier from No Quarter 36, figuring out if he wants that as one of his competitive lists going forward.  His list (as always, as best as I can figure it out) was:

Magnus the Warlord (*6pts)
* Renegade (6pts)
* Renegade (6pts)
* Mangler (8pts)
* Mule (8pts)
Rangers (5pts)
Sword Knights (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
Trencher Infantry (Leader and 5 Grunts) (6pts)
* 2 Trencher Infantry Grenadier (2pts)
* Trencher Infantry Officer & Sniper (3pts)
Kell Bailoch (0pts)
Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor (2pts)
Saxon Orrik (2pts)
Trencher Master Gunner (2pts)

The Trencher infantry may be a hair off; something doesn't seem quite right, but I'm not sure I have the points precisely right.  I ran my Hunters Grim list again, in my continuing effort to try this as an all-comers list.  It has been described in my previous posts, so I'll save space on listing it.

Similar to my game with Andy, the scenario was Supply and Demand.  I took my normal deployment of central Fennblades and Burrowers, Axer on either flank, Bushwhackers to a flank, and everything else fairly central with the Fenns.

Liam's jacks went central, Kell off to my right flank, the Rangers ended up on my left flank, Saxon and the Sword Knights ambushed, and the Trenchers went mostly central too.

We each had some careful advancing up the board, wary of being shot up too early.  Liam knocked off a couple of Bushwhackers early with Rangers, and the Trenchers advanced carefully into the zone with Dig In.  My Dygmies emerged and shot up a Mule and Renegade, taking out of much of the Mule and a chunk of the Renegade; again, I forgot to move Grim up far enough to lay out a Turn 2 Mortality.  This recurring mistake may have cost me destroying the Mule, unfortunately.  I sent some Fennblades in to do supporting damage, but didn't cause any major casualties for Liam.

Most of my Dygmies got killed off and more than half my Fenns on the next turn, as Liam took advantage of his heavy combined arms approach to reduce my numbers.  He plugged the objective with a couple of Renegade shots to remove it, and placed scattered damage around, as well as getting Ambushing Sword Knights onto my Axer.

I was able over the next couple of turns to remove most of his jacks and to whittle his numbers down, but it had come at too high a cost; I was running out of pieces.  His Trenchers were still on the board, and I simply couldn't do anything about it.  The game ended officially when I clocked; I was slow on my early turns, and couldn't make up for it later, and he won 1-0 on scenario/clock.

Again, as with the game with Andy, the details are a little hazy, and I'm working on trying to be a little smoother on my reporting, so I'm glossing over details.  My unhappiest mistake was a repeat of a previous one; I feel like I need to be more aware of getting Grim up the board for Mortality.  I could consider the Bone Grinders, but I would actually like to build in more combat pieces currently, and those are decidedly support.

Additionally, I think I focused too much on his jacks, and not enough on infantry removal.  I feel like I should have put more emphasis on removing some of his infantry, which chewed chunks through my Dygmies and Fenns.  If I could have reduced his volume of attacks, I might have gotten better clogging on the board, although I'm not 100% sure.  That's simply theorycraft.

Also, I let 8 points of Sword Knights + Saxon tie up 2-3 Fennblades, a Stone Scribe Chronicler, Fell Caller, Axer, and (somewhat) Bushwhackers.  Liam got the better trade in this situation, preventing me from bringing more to bear on the center of the board.  I may wish to keep the Axers a little more central to threaten into the center of the board; one Axer was a consistent threat on one side of the board all game, but the other Axer bogged down clearing Sword Knights, which was an unfavorable exchange I think over the game.