50pts Testament of (Menoth) vs. eDoomy (Trollbloods). Mt. King, come forth!

After my eCaine game, I took on the same Menoth player I played last time. I brought me eDoomy list, because A) I really wanted to field the Mt. King and B) It's a model count of 13. He had the Testament of Menoth, who basically looks like a converted and zealous Bane. I haven't played against the Testament before (I don't think), so this was a new deal for me. On the plus side, the list was really similar to the Reznik1 list I beat with eMadrak, so I knew most of what the units would do, I simply didn't know what the Testament changed about it.

So, our lists:

eDoomy
*Mt. King
*Earthborn
*Mulg
Janissa
KSB min
Sons of Bragg
Whelps

I've never played the eDoomy brick before, but my goal is to find something that works with the Mt. King. The list consistently takes the 3 beasts up to arm 21-23 with the KSB aura and Earthborn animus, has a pretty serious threat range, and is pretty difficult to tear apart. As a Cygnar player... Well, as a Cygnar player, I'd drop eCaine and Taryn and shoot eDoomy to pieces on turn 2. So there is that. Without that though, I'd be pretty concerned.

Testament of Menoth
*Reckoner
Errants (Red)
Errants (White)
Errants (Black)
Choir
Vassal
Paladin
Paladin
Dartan
Vessel of Judgement
Choir Mechanics
Daughters of the Flame, or something like that.

We rolled off, I won, elected to go first, and he chose a side. I deployed my thirteen models with the big stuff in front, little stuff (Medium bases, heh) in the back.

His Errants spread out, with the Vessel to my left, and daughters way to the left. I don't have a picture of deployment, or even my first turn, so you'll have to imagine all of the running that happened, otay?

Mt. King ran up, Mulg ran, Earthborn put is animus down on Mulg, eDoomy put it on the King, Refuge on the Earthborn, and Wild Aggression on the king also. The rest went to the stone. Everything else ran, and the Bragg's did a 4+ tough and hid behind the king.

Menoth all ran as well. Ashen Veil landed on the foremost unit of Errants, and Hallowed Avenger went to the Reckoner, which is a neat trick. He keeps his jack far enough back that he'll never reach, but the jack has Assault, so as long as he gets 3'', he gets a shot off. The cav went left some more for a wide flanking action.



So there's actually a scenario in play, and I actually want to try winning on scenario. I kind of have a list that does it very well, that's able to just tank damage and dish it back out, but I don't really want to give him a leg up on the competition by leaving the zone uncontested. In the end, I decide it's feat turn.

Doomshaper upkeeps Refuge and WA. The Earthborn moves up and animuses Mulg. Doomshaper moves up, feats, gets the Earthborn Animus onto Mt. King, reloads the stone, and hangs out. Mulg charges in, smacks a daughter that got too close, goads back to the other, kills her too, and goads closer to Doomy.

The King charges. I'm hoping I can kill a decent amount, but they're spread out pretty well, so there's only maybe three Errants in melee range. Happily, the King has Killshot, and I tell you what, a RNG10 POW16 spray is a thing of beauty. He pulverizes the first Errant, and happily sprays the paladins all lined up for him. Unfortunatly, I miss Dartan, and another Paladin, but manage to kill one, an errant, and something else. Choir or something. I buy a few more attacks to smack what's left of the Errants in melee, and hang out. The Reckoner takes one of those chances to charge/assault, but has blocked himself in enough that he doesn't get the 3''.

The ksb shuffles up to catch both the King and the brick in aura, putting the King at a healthy ARM23, and the sons of Bragg hang out in the brick.



Now we've forced an issue. My opponent pretty much has to kill the Mt. King this turn. I've forced him down his throat, and he's got to kill it, all the way, because the King's going to drop enough whelps to heal back, and, once he's killed everything in melee with a sweep, he's going to snack and heal back to nearly full health. He has one chance to kill this guy, so he gets after it.

I think I'm ok though. The positioning I've got means he can really only get so many Errants into melee with me, and the first unit that gets into melee with me is going to spawn whelps that I can use to block chargelanes.

The testament drops Hallowed Avenger, teleports with a soul he gained (Something he does), feats, giving his entire army except the Daughters (out of control) incorporeal.

Great.

So they can charge through eachother. This makes things considerably more difficult for me. The first unit tears into the King, only doing minor cuts and scrapes until one dude cranks the damage roll and nails the king for 13 damage.

I spawn a bunch of whelps all over, mostly in front to block charges. The next unit of Errants charges, not getting a lot of attacks on the king, but most killing whelps. The third unit charges, does very little, mostly running and killing whelps. They do run to engage my brick, and one gets a swing at Tor, but fails to hit. DEF13 yo.

Then the Reckoner, who my opponent has carefully left a hole for, (it has reach too, so that helps) charges in, and over the course of a few attacks, manages to eliminate an aspect. I'm doing pretty good.

A paladin charges, and singlehandedly does 11 damage. I drop a whelp to block the last paladin, but something kills it, and Dartan charges in and with a 14 damage roll, just barely kills the King.

Crap.

The Vessel of Judgement fires at the EBDT and the leaps kill a KSB dude or two, and the Daughters reposition.

So, that plan did not work. At all. Was rather disappointing. I was really hoping that the King would tank that better (ARM23, yo) but no dice. Well, lots of dice. Anyways. I forgot to take a picture, in the midst of my grief even. That bad.

Now we're in trouble. Doomy drops Wild Aggression, upkeeps Refuge, and the game goes on.

There's not a lot I can do. Tor Assaults the Paladins in a revenge scheme, and really fails to kill many of them, if any. I annihilate several Errants, but that's it. Wrathar whacks another one, and I think the two-sword dude growls angrily. Everyone else moves up, does the Earthborn animus shuffle, Janissa drops a wall (Which I've neglected to mention so far, but yeah, it's been happening) But I am contesting now. eDoomy primal shocks something too, maybe another Paladin, but I don't think it connects.



Now everything engages. The Vessel, which has been doing miracles and such throughout the game, has been faithfully repaired to perfect by the mechanics, takes a shot at the EBDT, and fries a another KSB or two, including the stone, which toughs. The Daughters charge in, attacking Mulg and EBDT, and do some damage, not a lot, but enough to spawn whelps. That's great, because I was running hot on fury. No more!

The Errants charge, but they can't do much with a wall in the way, so mainly, they engage things, and the guys with Ashen Veil are up front. Two of them get close to the KSB but that's it.

The Reckoner moves, shoots EBDT for some damage, but not a lot.

The Paladins get in there and do their stance for no attacks unless they're magic, which means that only eDoomy can swing at them.

"Yeah, the old troll with a stick, he can hit us. That's cool. No Mulg, bad Mulg. You can't hurt me. Just yoda over there."

Annoying.






I'm beginning to feel a little bit better about this game. He's running out of things that can kill my beasts at their wonderful ARM21-22. Between snacking and regeneration, they're doing decent.

I've got two whelps left. Mulg eats one and dumps his fury, and the EDBT eats one to heal. Doomy drops Refuge, upkeeps Wild Agression on Mulg (Forgot to mention that I think) and away we go.

The wall drops away, and Wrathar takes a swing at an errant. Tor assaults past the pillar to try and tie up the reckoner, but targets an errant and sprays all the way back into the Choir, killing a few. Wrathar kills his dude too, so that's cool.

The EBDT goes ballistic and starts killing Errants and daughters, goading along, and snacking like crazy. He kills two or three models, goads back to in front of Doomy and hangs out. Mulg moves in, kills whats left and sits next to the EBDT. Doomy moves over, primal shocks a Paladin (Hah!) and hides behind the two beasts. Janissa steps back, drops a wall to the right to prevent a charge from the Errants or Reckoner, and the stone gets up and moves, popping whats left of his aura while the last ksb foot dude whacks an errant hilariously, doing absolutely nothing.



This becoming a pretty serious grind. No points for anyone, except my opponent who has two because he killed my objective at some point, and scored a point in the zone after killing the King. But he still can't do much against my brick. Testament teleports around and hides behind his objective. The vessel shoots the EBDT, gets decent bounces and boosts damage on the one that hits Janissa, and kills her. That's no good.

The Errants try to kill Tor and the KSB, but only fail in killing the KSB. Three or four missed melee attacks are what keeps Tor alive. The Reckoner walks in and finishes him though. And that's turn.



With Janissa gone, my chances are looking slimmer by the minute. The Reckoner is still out there and pretty healthy, and I lost the best thing keeping the Errants back. So it's time to go. I've got two options.

Wrathar can kill a dude nearby in the way, and Doomy can use his powerful attack and whack the dude in front of the EBDT, cast Refuge on him, and call it a day. Maybe primal shock because it'd help. Then the EBDT charges the Vessel, kills it, refuges back, and Mulg uses the cleared charge lane to charge/goad to the Testament and kill him.

OR

Wrathar and Doomy kill the same dudes, EBDT tramples across (he's in the way of mulg's chargelane if he just stops in front of the vessel) to behind the Vessel and kills it from there, then Mulg charges.

So we begin. Wrathar smashes a dude, and Doomy misses... Buy... boost, kill him, cast Refuge, done. EBDT charges in, can't quite get a POW bonus from Wrathar or anyone really, and then proceeds to miss his charge attack, and to whuff his damage rolls from thereon out, leaving the Vessel at four or five boxes...

He refuges back, Mulg's charge lane is still busy, so he moves around to the other side of Doomy and gets ready for the Reckoner assault.



Lo and behold, the Reckoner gets full focus, and assaults, killing Mulg quite easily. No wall and no animus from the EBDT hurts. The few remaining Errants charge the EBDT, and kill him as well. The problem with Errants is the first three or four aren't hard to kill, but for every one killed, they gain +1 ARM/STR, and the last one or two are little light warjacks of their own. So the four or five left easily smashed an ARM18 beast that was already somewhat damaged.

In the midst of that, my KSB dude is dead too. It's literally just Doomy. So the last Paladin, maybe even Dartan, charges and murders him.

Except he toughs. Haha.






Doomy stands up, boosts to hit and kills the Paladin in a last act of revenge.

Back to my opponent's turn, the Reckoner gets fully loaded, walks over, boosts to hit, and pummels him into the ground.

And he toughs!

Buy. Boost. Stomp on yoda again.

No tough.



Thoughts on the game.

1. That was a lot of fun. I really thought I was in trouble after losing the Mt. King, but I actually weathered really well until I lost Janissa. I also had a serious chance of assassination. My opponent and I talked about it before I took off, and he actually suggested the route I took, and the EBDT threw the game away with a failed charge on a DEF10 object... That was the pretty critical point of that turn, second critical point of the game for me (the first being the death of the mt. king), and he just blew it.

2. That list weathered against the Menoth list pretty well. For being an ARM-cracking list as he described it, my EBDT/Mulg duo held on for a long time. Between snacking and regen, those guys are boss.

3. Losing the Mt. King hurt. That game would have been over if the King had survived. Whelps would have been eaten, he would have swept, which would have all been boosted thanks to Iron Agression. He'd of killed the Reckoner. The Killshot would have fried a lot of things, and then the EBDT and Mulg could just push forward and kill what was left. The Mt. King dieing was painful. And fairly unexpected. The feat helped him a lot just with positioning. The only things with reach were his paladins and Reckoner, and I could block charge lanes all day with whelps. The incorporeal aspect of the feat let him charge through his units, and get lanes in spite of everything. The feat helped him a lot. Which is the point of feats, I suppose, but it was legitimately perfect in this situation. On top of that, those three damage rolls were what he needed. He had a charge left from a daughter and a shot from the vessel, and both would have been minor cuts. But the three powerhouse strikes... Those were nuts. Still, I'm not sure what I would have done. I probably should have held back for another turn, but I didn't want to give him CPs. I ended up letting him have them anyways, but at the time, it seemed like a bad idea. I wish I had held him back just a turn, but even then, he'd of got the alpha on the king, and I would have had the same problem. We both agreed I made the right decision, but it simply didn't work out.

4. My list. Most people take maybe an Axer, or more KSBs, or something instead of the Sons of Bragg, but I really wanted the Sons for clearing up jamming lines, which they did quite well. I haven't decided if I'll keep them or not, but I do like them in this list. I just don't know if there's something that would serve me better.

5. Overall, this was a really fun game, and hinged on some pivotal moments. My opponent played awesome, and I made mistakes. It was a fun game and really enjoyed it. Probably my favorite loss.

Comments, questions, insults, suggestions, bring it.


@Vangeleon. Yeah lol, that second part took awhile to write.