3rd place SR overview with Madrak2 and Jarl

  A local-ish tournament opened up this weekend, and circumstances availed themselves enough to allow me to go.  For having owned Trolls now since January, I have not had the chance to get into a Steamroller yet until now.

  We were under the impression that it was Deathclock scenarios.  Right now, my three lists are Madrak2, Jarl and Grim2.  Madrak2 is my all-comers, anti-arm, anti-infantry caster.  Jarl is specifically against shooty lists, and support heavy lists, and Grim2 is straight up Cryx, and sometimes Menoth.  Obviously, I couldn't take all 3, so I put my bets on Madrak2 and Jarl.  Cryx was the main thing that worried me, but I was hoping that whoever I ran into with Cryx wouldn't be half as good as the Cryx player I lose against consistently in my normal meta.

Madrak2
*Runebearer
*Bomber
*Impaler
Min KSB w/UA
Max Fenns w/UA
Max Warders
Max Burrowers
Fell Caller
Stone Scribe
Fennblade Kithkar

  I keep trying to get away from the Bomber in my Madrak2 lists, but he's such a great drop against Khador, until they bring Kayazy. I have a really hard time handling max units of Kayazy with Mat6 base dudes or Warders at Mat7.  Warders slow them down a bit, but they usually just minifeat and bypass the whole unit.  The Bomber solves that.  Outside of Irusk1 or 2, the Bomber just annihilates them.  The Impaler gives him more time to do it, and then is pretty decent on feat turn when he needs to be.  PS14 w/ SS under feat with reach can do work.

  Everything else in the list is pretty standard for my Madrak2 lists.  The only recent addition is the Stone Scribe Chronicler.  I really liked the guy when I bought him, and then never used him.  This list normally has 2 Kithkars, but I only actually own 1, so I decided to swap him out for a SSC instead of proxying.  I had put one in my Jarl list already, so why not.

Jarl
*Runebearer
*Storm troll
*Slag troll
*Impaler
Max Fenns w/UA
Sorcerer
Max Longriders
Horthol
Fell Caller
Stone Scribe Chronicler
Sons of Bragg

  Pretty standard Jarl list for me.  Only new things are the Chronicler and Sorcerer.  +4 def because of Weald Secrets and Feign Death is pretty cool.  The Sorcerer is there because of Cryx and will attach to either unit I feel he needs to.  Probably the Fenns 90% of the time.

  We drove 3 hours to this tournament, and all four opponents were people from my local meta.  It was weird.  Go try a new meta, turns out you bring the old one with you.  We were half of the turnout.  The other half was from Lincoln, and the last two dudes were actually local.

  Once we got there, turns out that while they did have Deathclocks, they were using them for timed turns, which messed with a lot of lists.  Most of us pulled through just fine, and I got to see just how fast I can run Madrak2.

  Round 1 matched me up against one of the two players I really was hoping to dodge right off the bat, and he dropped Irusk1 to Madrak2.  I fought the same player and Irusk1 list last week, and got smashed by his bonker tough rolls on Feat turn, and then when my feat turn came around and I had burrowers all around Behemoth, I managed to deviate the bomber's AOE right onto Behemoth at a full 6'' deviation.  There was a 2.7% chance of that happening, and it did.  Anyways, his list is Irusk1, Kayazy, IFP, Behemoth, the Dog and the Great Bears, and Alexia as well.  The Scenario was Outflank, and I had a really hard time getting into both zones and just struggled all game long.  I should have focused on one or the other, and I didn't (Terrain at this tournament was really weird, and had huge obstacles or forests right in the middle of the board), and I again failed to kill Behemoth, this time with Warders.  I ended that game on a loss, and no CPs.  On the plus side, my Bomber wiped out his Widowmakers on turn 1, which was awesome since Behemoth had taken down 5 burrowers with his deviation on top of 1 as well.  The Bomber handled the Kayazy just fine too, so that was nice.

  Round 2 was yet another Khador player.  He had an Irusk1 list as well, but dropped a Vlad3 list instead.  Madrak2 got brought back out.  Scenario was close quarters, and I had a bunch of rough terrain right in the middle of my AD, and woods probably 4x6.  Definitely 40k terrain.  I lost the roll off so didn't have much of a choice.  Burrowers went into the woods, Fenns on the right w/ Fell Caller and SSC to protect my flag and everything else to the left to go after his.  His list was Vlad3 w/ max Uhlans, the battle engine, Fenris, the Kovnik dragoon, Max IFP, the Uhlan Kovnik and Widomakers.  Oh, and a Juggernaut.  Widowmakers and IFP tried to protect his flag, Uhlans center, everything else on my flag.  The Burrowers got into the IFP and Widowmakers early, and unbuffed, really failed to kill more than three or four IFP, but tied them up really well.  The Fenns spread out all over the right side of the board and got Hero's Tragedy, daring the Uhlans to go after the flag through them.  They ended up dismounting Fenris, and engaging everything else.  The Wagon shot some of them up, but Fenris and the Mounted Man-o-War spent most of their activations clearing out three or four fenns at a time.  On turn 3, my Warders got into the IFP and Widowmakers, and killed most of that group, and Madrak2 took the stone up behind them and held out.  The Uhlans decided against Hero Tragedied Fenns and went into the Warders and only killed 1.  Everything else cleared out Fenns, and Fenris forced them to fail CMD.  My feat turn followed up though, and the Warders killed all of the IFP and Uhlans, allowing Madrak2 to dominate the flag while the Bomber started moving right to contest his flag.  Vlad3 got a couple of Blood tokens and dominated my flag.  The War wagon killed the Kithkar, and the Juggernaut ran.  Fenris charged the warders to contest.  Warders cleared him out, Bomber charged the juggernaut to keep him occupied, and my Fell Caller charged Vlad to contest.  2 more CP.  Vlad kills the Fell Caller for 2 CP, and the Juggernaut tries to kill the Bomber, but just gets diced, and the stone didn't help.  Wagon runs to contest flag.   Warders and Madrak clear the Wagon out, and SSC contests the flag for the win at 6 CP, though I only wrote down 5 now that I think about it.

  Round 3 put me up against Rhyas.  I assumed that this was the last round of the tournament, so I was going to have to drop Jarl regardless, but it was a good drop for him.  Rhyas was running Tier 4 with Typhon, Scythean, a Raek and a Shredder, Warspears with UA, Solo, Warmongers, and I think Swordsmen.  Back when I was playing Kraye all the time, I fought a Legion player a lot, and one of his favorite drops was Rhyas Tier, so I was pretty familiar with what was going on, and this guy had never fought Jarl before.  Or Long Riders.  Or the Sons of Bragg.  I won the rolloff, and the scenario was Two Fronts, and chose to go first.  My Longriders and SoBs went to the left to protect my zone, beasts center and Fenns w/ Horgle to the right to get into his zone.  My opponent put Typhon and the Warspears across from the Long Riders, the Scythean and Raek center, and everything else on the other side.  First turn, Longriders ran, got Weald Secrets from Jarl and Feign Death from the SSC.  Fenns ran and got Quicken, and everything else just filled in behind.  The Warspears assaulted the riders, all of them missing.  Everything else ran, and the Ogrun engaged a couple of Fenns and Horthol.  Next turn I dropped upkeeps, got Weald Secrets into the Sons of Bragg and feated.  The Sons of Bragg one-rounded the Scythean, the Long Riders dropped half health on Typhon, and impacts killed 4 of the Warspears.  Fenns killed most of the Ogrun, and Horthol impacted some swordsmen.  Rhyas counterfeated, killed most of the Fenns, couple of Longriders, Horthol and Tor, so no more assault spray.  The left zone was still contested by two Long Riders, and my opponent's zone had a couple of Swordsmen and the left over Ogrun.  To get the feat though, my opponent had to leave Rhyas pretty centered and on her own, and only a few inches from the remaining two Sons of Bragg, and no transfers, and either forgot about Rapport, or didn't have it up.  Wrathar and Rhudd ended her pretty easy, and Jarl was waiting to put magic bullets out there if needed.

  That left me 2-1 with 5 CP, and we still had 2 undefeated people, so we had one more round.  I landed our Mercs player running a MacBain list with Boomies, Kayazy, two Nomads, a Mule and two Talons on Destruction.  I brought Madrak2 back out and won the rolloff.  On the top of 2, Burrowers trashed the mule, and most of two Talons, and it was pretty much a slugfest from there. Warders spent most of the game stalling Kayazy, while beating on the objective.  I destroyed it by turn 3, and MacBain made a last ditch charge, got caught in the freestrike, toughed it and landed in the middle of the zone, KD. I ended my turn for the 5CP I needed to win.

  3-1 and 10 CP was enough for 3rd apparently.  I liked my lists, and was pretty happy with how they turned out.  No Cryx helped  a lot.  The two TOs were both the only Cryx players in the meta.  1st place went to a Skorne player, and 2nd went to a Minions player with Rask and Carver.  I don't remember what the Skorne guy had.  Looked like a Fists of Haalek list from what I could see but I don't know what the second list was.  Was a good time though, enjoyed some good games.

5 Painters I like right now

  If you haven't noticed, there's some impressive artists that exist in our community, some incredible painters and hobbyists that blow us away with the expressions of art they place on the table.  I'd like to start giving a shout out to these guys, and maybe saving you some of the time you spend looking through the miniature forums, and blogs too.  Currently, my focus is Trollbloods.  The fastest way for me to go to your thread is to say Trollbloods anywhere in your title.  I'm somewhat biased...  But I do think some of the best painters currently play Trollbloods.  So, with no further ado, this month's top five.

1)  Right off the bat, the guy that inspired me to start this post, ConqueringWyrm.  I'm slowly beginning to like the Convergence models and playstyle, but I love it when a painter actually captures them in all their detail and recreates the wear and tear of a steel construct working it's way through the terrain of Immoren.  This guy, I think, does it best.

This post is here, and his blog is toadpainting.  There's not really anything of his that I don't like, and his battle damaged Cygnar are incredible.

2) PG_Menelker, or Tyson, won last years Iron Painter challenge at Lock and Load.  Remember the guy painted Axis while everyone else hopped around on one foot?  That's this guy.  His Borka2 is my favorite, by far.

The post is here.

3) Syresyphirin.  You can always tell who the Ret guys are because you can't pronounce any of their dozen syllables.  However, I'm a sucker for desert themes (My trolls narrowly missed being tan like my Cygnar), and this guy blows it out of the water.  Best Imperatus, period.

He's here.

4)  Arizona_Troll, my all time favorite Trollblood painter.  This guy is amazing.  There's three styles of metal that I've seen.  Regular flaked metal paints like we all have, then non-metal metalics, where you paint the reflection.  Then there's ignoring both schools of thought altogether and painting it like a comic book with blacklining, basic shades and etc.  This guy masters it, and I can't say enough about him.  On top of that, he freehands like no one else can.  He gets two pictures from me.

And his thread is here.

5)  Last but not least, Menace.  This guy has 2 winning threads, one we'll cover today, and another we'll catch next time.  This one is his older project with Khador.  He does none of the studio scheme with these guys.  Instead it's a creamy, high contrast, high detail, free-handed style with amazing custom bases.  His Conquest alone is amazing.  You owe it to yourself to browse it.

His Khador thread is here.

  Hope some of these threads end up on your notification list.  Most of these guy's pictures are in my reference folder.  Every time one of these people post, I save images.  If there's anyone like that for you, please drop me a comment and a link.  I'd love to expand this into a monthly post with new artists as much as possible!

  Enjoy your weekend, and what's left of fall!