50pts Kaya2 vs. Doomy3 Tier 3.

  One of our local circle players got convinced to stay and play a game into D3.  The guy driving the car basically sacrificed him to the game.  He added a few points to his Kaya2 list and away we went.

Kaya2

*Laris

*Druid Wilder

*Gnarlhorn

*Ghetorix

*Stalker

*Gorax

Max Bloodtrackers w/UA

Stones w/UA

Reeve Hunter
Tharn White Mane Ravager

My list is the same Doomy3 list I've been playing

Doomshaper3

*Mulg

*Mountain King

*Axer

Max KSB w/UA

Max Burrowers

2x Whelps

  I won the rolloff and deployed.  He counter deployed.  With this much battlegroup, everything is pretty central.

  My Burrowers run and go left.  He has little to no shooting, so I chance it.  The Axer runs to the hill on the right, Mulg runs to the hill on the left.  D3 puts Rush on the King, casts Implacability and dumps the rest to the stone.  Mt. King runs 16'' into the right zone.  He's ARM23 under Tier benefits and Stone for round 1.

  Bloodtrackers prey my Axer.  Everything else runs for the most part.  He's on his back foot with the King that far up the table.  Kaya hangs in the back, gets Forced Evo on Ghetorix, and everything just moves up. The bloodtrackers move to the right zone, and don't damage anything significantly, but they reform back and tuck a tracker on either side of the King and one in front.  I can trample to Ghetorix with the Mt. King, but I don't want to lose both initials either.

  Doomshaper3 moves up onto the hill.  The Bloodtrackers are something I can't deal with much atm, and I know a few are in range of him next turn but since he's feating, I decide to weather it.  Doomshaper feats, and the scroll does Signs and Portents in case I need the Burrowers to kill trackers.  I also want to try to kill the Tracker on the hill, but it's engaged with Mulg, so I end up filling the stone instead, casting Implacability and admonition on Mulg.  KSB pops aura, moves up and pops it and does +1 STR.

  The Axer charges into the Bloodtrackers near the King, and misses both, needing boosted 8s. I buy, boost on the one that definitely.  Four dice to hit, finally clear that one.  The Mt. King charges into Ghetorix, and hits the initial, does 11 or 12 damage.  The assault misses everything behind except the Gorax, which he does a four or five damage to.  The second initial goes into the bloodtracker blocking Mulg.  Boost, kill, and the Killshot misses everything again, except the Gorax, where I do another four or five damage.  Then I buy another shot on Ghet and do another six or seven damage.

  Mulg now goes, and charges Ghet.  I take a counter slam from the Gnarlhorn, but it does little to no damage, and Mulg can't be slammed.  Mulg finishes Ghetorix with the first swing, puts the second initial into the Gnarlhorn and over the next couple of attacks, finishes it as well.  I ended his activation at 4 fury, and the Doomshaper affinity extra hit finished the Gnarlhorn.  The Burrowers burrow, I run a few whelps into the left zone, and that's turn.

  Kaya2 isn't super excited about the King in her face.  She moves into the zone, puts Forced Evo on the Stalker and casts Muzzle at Mulg.  She does land it, and boosts damage.  So now Mulg can not advance towards Kaya2.  She then feats.  The Reeve hunter shoots down a bunch of whelps, including the one behind Mulg, and the ones contesting the zone.  

  The Stalker charged into the Mountain King, and Mulg moves back a bit, then Admonition expires.  The Stalker ends up doing about a third of damage to the King, two and three boxes at a time after a dice less damage and the regen.  Then he ports back.  Bloodtrackers move further into the right zone and do no damage to the Axer, even though most of them hit.

  Everything else runs into the left zone.  He dominates for 2CP.

  The split scenario isn't working in my favor at the moment, but he's nearly out of things that can kill the King or Mulg, so if I remove the Stalker, it's probably game even though it will take four turns to remove Bloodtrackers.  So, two whelps go away to deal with the Axer's fury and some of the King's while D3 takes the rest.  Burrowers pop up all over the left zone, mostly in back arcs. 

  Doomshaper moves up.  Scrolls do the psuedo lamentation, and D3 does Implacability and puts Amuck on the King.  I would have liked to have repudiated the Forced Evo, but I felt I was safer to just try and have the King go for it.  Mulg backs up.  The Mountain king walks forward, buys a headbutt.  I need an 11, which on my dice that day, had yet to happen.  I had missed 2d6 6s, three in a row, and boosted sevens, eights and nines all day.  I handed my dice to a proxy roller, he called a 14, rolled, and got a 14.

  Magic.

  With the Stalker knocked down, the King puts him in the dirt easily.  Killshots the Gorax again and buys an attack on the Whiteman Ravager, and kills him.  Axer moves to the right and swings on some Bloodtrackers, only kills 1.  Burrowers put some decent damage on Laris, kill the Reeve solo

 My opponent goes after the axer with the Bloodtrackers, but it doesn't hardly do anything.  With that, he decides to step back and call it.  His hope was to score that zone, but with the Axer tanking it, there's not any reason to keep going.

  Thoughts on the game:

1.  I think super High-Def is a shut out for me.  I got really lucky with the KD on the Stalker, and I was really struggling against Ghetorix.  Mulg only needed boosted 9s, but it was close on some cases.  DEF16 beasts are an issue, and I think a Kromac2 Druid list will pretty nearly end me with -4 MAT if he positions correctly.  This would be one reason to try going outside of the tier.  The issue is that I still really like the Mt. King, and what I'd be giving up in tier is trying to get Victor in with Lynus/Edrea for some accurate KD.  That's dropping the burrowers, and most of my tarpit.  Idk how I feel about that.  Otherwise, I'm dropping the King for... I don't know what all.  Maybe Rok?  The SP10 is pretty crucial to removing support I don't have access to otherwise.

2.  Ghetorix was too close.  The Mt. King was well within charge range, without even needing Rush.  If Ghetorix goes down, my game gets much easier.  Much much easier.  He could have filled it with bloodtrackers, and I would have had to goad into him.

3.  The Gnarlhorn wasn't in melee range with me at the beginning, but after the counterslam, he was, and then he died.

Pretty onesided game.  I like getting that far up the table turn 1.  On a central zone, it's pretty solid.  On a split zone like this, I like it less, but it's still good.  I get to dictate a lot of terms with it.  The issue is still the Mt. King, if he can hit.  Mat5 is brutal.  He's great against lots of infantry until they're like, Iron Fleshed kayazy or something.  Then we have issues.  We'll see.  I'm still working it out right now.

Hope you enjoyed this batrep.  I have a small tournament next week that will take me out of D3 for a bit since I don't have his actual model, but after that, we're going.  Enjoy your week!

Harby (Menoth) vs. Doomy3 (Trollbloods) + bonus Grim2 w/ GK into Kreoss1

  Swung into the Shoppe today for a couple of games.  I landed a Kreoss1 game with Grim2, but we'll cover that at the end.  My second game was vs. an opponent that has Harby or Sevvy1.  He built Harby as his Trolls drop.  I expected Harby, and Grim2 should have been my drop, but I really wanted to play Doomy3, so yeah.  The Harby list is identical to the one I played against in a tournament not that long ago.

  Harbinger Tier III
*Devout
*Reckoner
*Reckoner
*Avatar
Min Choir
Heirophant
Max Flameguard w/ UA
Paladin
Paladin
Paladin
Paladin
Vilmon

  The kicker here is that Harby doesn't really worry about martyring the Flameguard, she really only protects the Paladins who do nothing but impervious wall all game long so they can't be targeted by non-magical attacks.  My only magical attacks in the list are Mulg and D3.  Also, she gets walls.  My opponent took 2 walls.

  I, again, really wanted to play D3.  I almost beat this list awhile back with Madrak2, and he's in the same boat, only magic attack in the list.  The Paladins are issue, but I wanted to try it.  The list is the same as the last time I played.

  Doomshaper3 Tier III
*Mulg
*Mountain King
*Axer
Max KSB w/UA
Max Burrowers
Whelps
Whelps

  Tier III gets +1 to the roll, +2SPD on turn 1 and +2ARM on Round 1.

  I won the rolloff.  Scenario had 2 rectangular zones, perpendicular to deployment and with objectives in both zones.  I deployed pretty centrally.  He deployed with really everything to my left, just the Avatar and a few paladins to threaten me in his own zone.  The walls went way out, one in his own zone and one just outside of mine.

  Burrowers run forward.  He has little to no shooting.  I bunch them to the left to make room for the Mountain King.  The Axer rushes the King, walks up.  The King is SPD5, SPD7 because of tier, and runs 16'' forward.  D3 puts Admonition on Mulg, dumps the rest to the stone and charges the Mountain King.  Mulg runs forward 12'' and riles to four.  KSB pops aura and runs forward.  I have 2 whelps deployed, they run up with the King.

  My opponent now has a serious issue.  He wants to get up the field, but if he does, everything dies.  Doomy will feat and put some serious hurt on the battlegroup.  He has the walls to get behind, but I still have the additional dice attacks for the feat.  So he plays defensively.  The red Reckoner gets 2 focus.  The Avatar generates 2.

  Flameguard run up the left flank a bit.  On Paladin sprints up that side.  The other three move up and impervious wall, as well as Vilmon.  A Reckoner walks up.  The other walks up and shoots the Mountain king, boosting attack, boosting damage.  Only does a few points.  I whelp.  

  Avatar moves out to the right to threaten me in his zone.  Devout moves up with Harby, who decides not to feat, and camps pretty much everything.  Not a lot to do at the moment.  

  I really want my cake, and I want to eat it too.  I want the boosted attack rolls, AND the defensive bonuses.  Ideally, I would charge the Mountain King into the Avatar right now and kill him, or at least cripple him, then remain unkillable and finish the job next turn.  However, there's not enough room to get there and get past the walls too.  I can get pathfinder, but I can't land my huge base on the other side.  However, I can position a little better and force him to come closer, but he has zero pathfinder in the army, and two walls to cross.   Neither the Avatar or the Reckoners can charge across the walls.

  So the King moves up next to the objective, sprays two flameguard, kills one, Harby martyrs it for kicks and giggles. 

  Burrowers burrow.  Mulg moves up near the king, but out of charge range of the Avatar.  Axer steps into the left zone, ready to contest.  Doomy casts Implacable, fills the stone a little.  Nothing crazy.  

    Harby allocates a few focus to one reckoner.  Avatar generates 2 again.  The far right paladin moves to the corner of the zone and does Impervious wall.  Harby casts crusaders call, I think, and purifies Admonition off of Mulg, and feats.  The Flameguard run/charge.  One goes after the axer, six or seven after Mulg, the rest run.  The one on the axer does a few points.  Three CMA into Mulg and do two points.  The other four CMA and do seven I think.  He whelps once.  

  The reckoner with focus comes off the hill, shoots the King, boosts damage for a few points, and I whelp.  Avatar shuffles forward.  The other reckoner moves up, shoots the king and doesn't do much either.  Paladins overall shuffle up, one specifically standing between Mulg (who's damaged) and the Avatar.  Choir shuffle around, sing Passage

 Doomshaper pulls in his fury.  No upkeep since Admonition got purified.  Burrowers pop up.  The King moves up, takes a few points of damage.  I use the first initial on the objective, boosting damage and kill it.  My second initial goes into the back arc of the nearest flameguard, well out of Martyr range.  He squashes it, and killshot triggers.  I boost into the the nearest two, and then roll for the rest and kill... three or four.  I forgot to make them roll CMD checks for being in melee with a mountain with teeth, but meh.  I do two points of damage to my own objective with the spray.  The KSB activates, hangs out, pops aura.  Doomshaper activates.  The scroll does the Signs and Portents one, and D3 charges the King while the scroll runs away to be farther from Harby.    Doomy takes 2 damage from feat.  He doesn't even scratch the King. He boosts a Stranglehold into the Paladin in the corner and boosts damage, killing him.  Then he puts Implacable out.  

  Burrowers activate.  The one near the axer kills the Flameguard engaging the axer.  I forgot about passage, so I had this great line to target the reckoners with, but I couldn't shoot.  However, the TFG fail their CMD check, so there's that.  The Axer walks up and threshers.  I do five more points of damage to the objective, but kill all the TFG I'm engaged with, freeing Mulg up.  At this point, I had been fully planning to charge into the Avatar, but the Paladin was definitely in my way, and Harby wasn't going to let me through.  So Mulg walks into the Paladin, and hits him what amounts to six times (Doomshaper's affinity).  I really wanted to kill him so I could get goad and back up a bit since I was out of stone aura, but he martyred it every time, leaving Harby on four or five boxes, and Mulg well within charge range of the Avatar, and no admonition to protect him.

  However, with the objective gone, and Doomy in the zone, I scored 3 CP.

  Harby allocates 3 to the red Reckoner, and the Avatar generates 2 again.  The paladin near Mulg charges his left side, does ok damage under the feat, but I heal, and whelp.  Vilmon moves up behind the tier wall and does impervious wall.  The left paladins both move into my zone and impervious wall.  Harby moves up and cataclysms the five burrowers in front of her, and rolls snakeeyes for damage on two of them, but kills the three that she needed to.   Choir activates and does Battle.

  The Reckoner walks over the wall and into melee with Mulg.  He hits every time, but at dice even, only does two or three damage between feat, and my healing.  Every time though, I whelp.  The second reckoner aims, shoots Mulg and boosts damage.  Only a few points, but I whelp again.  Between the Paladin and the reckoners, Mulg spawns 6 whelps, and only has 14 boxes left out of 34.  However, he no longer has a charge lane into Mulg with Avatar because of the whelps.  Devout shuffles around, and Avatar gazes.

    Mountain king eats a whelp for fury and Doomshaper pulls everything else in.  Stone moves to pop aura and plus 1 STR.  Axer moves up, kills the Paladin engaging Mulg, which is when I took the picture above, or there'd be a Paladin under Mulg's left arm.  The burrowers move, do some light damage to the red Reckoner, but that's it.  The whelps behind Doomshaper run up to the wall near Vilmon.  Mulg activates, and I roll 7 dice.  1  For Hyper-regen, and 6 for eating six whelps.  I heal Mulg 14 boxes.  He charges Vilmon, takes a some damage from a freestrike from the Reckoner.

  Harby has... seven boxes now?  My charge attack hits, kills Vilmon.  She martyrs, takes 2 damage.  Buy.  Hit.  Martyrs for 2 damage again.  Buy, hit.  She martyrs, dies.  

Thoughts on the Game:

1.  This list is difficult for trolls in general because of the need for magic weapons.  On the plus side, I'm capable of killing everything else in the list, and POW16 SP10 is always a concern for Harby as well.  However, Mulg and Doomshaper can get after paladins ok.  However, as we talked about it and I wrote this report, I think the best thing he could have done is buried the Avatar and a Reckoner into the wall in his zone, with the Avatar to the outside, then get Harby up to within 8'' of the back edge of the wall.  This means whatever is attacking the Reckoner is -4 MAT, and whatever goes against the Avatar has to be careful with placement or he'll be facing the same issue.  Best case is -2 MAT from awe.  On top of that is the +2 DEF from the wall.  Mulg is basically MAT1 and the Mt. King is -1 MAT.  On my feat, I'll probably have to boost everything, even with additional dice.  That gives him a bit more time to deal with things, and lets his jacks be relevant to the game.  Here, the Avatar never killed a model, and the Reckoners both struggled to do anything.

2.  The walls were better for me than they were him.  He could have used them in the above example, but otherwise, he had no way to charge me, at all, so all game long I would be one step ahead of him in the positioning game.  Worse case scenario, I just powerattack his models out of the zone if I can.  

3.  The Paladins.  I probably would have started running them into which ever zone I was going for, try and keep Harby within 10.  I don't have the volume of attacks to kill them very well, so the whole game I am fighting them to control the zone.

Overall, good game, I learned some things, and so did he.  I still don't know that I think trolls are favored in this matchup, in this scenario.  A central scenario is much better for Doomshaper since Mulg can threaten anywhere in the square he wants to, and it's away from Harby's walls.

Game 2 or 1, chronologically

  This is a quick batrep here.  Just a bonus.  Enough that I won't even run the full Kreoss1 list by.  Errants, double reckoners, the book, some other stuff.  Zealots.  Etc.  However, my Grim2 list is janky as they come, and I really wanted to try it.

Grim2

*Glacier King

Max Highwaymen

Max Burrowers

Min KSB w/UA

Thrullg

War Wagon

Lynus and Edrea (Ayaina and Holt)

Dhunia's Knot (Runeshapers)

This list is designed to just kill the caster.  That's it.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Burrowers tarpit until the other guy makes a mistake and then Grim2 feats and unleashes the world.  I won the rolloff, deployed stuff.  All my stuff ran up, and the HWM got Mirage.  His stuff moves up, zealots get in front and mini feat.  Book does no knockdown.

  At first I'm just figuring to kill the stuff that makes my job hard.  Put shots into the Book, and kill Rhoven.  Get rid of the no Knockdown and such.  Probably kill most of the Errants.  There's one chance for kicks and giggles though.  Burrowers pop up, HWM mirage up.  So Dhunia's knot activates, puts markers on the Wagon, Grim2 and the King.  The Wagon shoots an errant central to a clump on the left flank, actually hits, kills and affects all of the reckoners and everything else around.  However, one reckoner and a couple of dudes on the right are close enough to the book to not care, but I pretty much kill everything else.  

  I ask what Kreoss's base DEF is so I can do math for my next turn, and he tells me he's DEF16 on the hill, that he's toed in on, though the picture shows him on the table.  Him being on the hill changes things.  Grim2 feats.  I boost the hit, hit, and boost damage, rolling 11 at dice -3.  I reroll the lowest dice in the group, and roll the same number lol.  I do 8 damage.  Burrowers run into the Zealots and one runs to the left to get Mark Target on Kreoss.  The HWM move up, six are in range.  They CRA for a RAT13 (RAT5 + 6 + 2 from mark target), hit and do several damage.  Second attack hits and kills.

  I didn't even get to use my Glacier King...  

  The list is teched for Denny3.  I figure if it can kill Denny3, it can kill most Warmachine casters.  I just have to hang in there until I have a way to get LOS to the caster.  E.G., Quake on the War Wagon, and then go from there.  Pretty janky, idk if I'll keep it.  But it's fun, and if the caster is left out at all, stuff goes nuts.  I may drop Lynus, they don't do a lot in this setup.  They're there for Grim2 or the Thrullg, and that's about it.  

  So, hopefully you enjoyed the batrep, learned a couple of things.  I'm loving this book for trolls, and can't wait to get some more D3 games in.

50pts Kromac2 vs. Doomy3 Tier III When an unstoppable object meets an implacable battlegroup

  This has been a pretty decent book for Circle and Trolls both.  I'm pretty sure Trolls won though.  This is the second book in a row I think they've won.  HWM and Fire Eaters have radically changed what Trolls can do (mainly Fire Eaters) and this book has possibly broke the EE/RoW pairing that's been so prevalent for awhile.  On top of that, we got Dhunia's Knot.  While Doomy3  is amazing, I don't know that he plays a different game than RoW does.  It's still a timewalk feat turn, but he does a lot more for his battlegroup.  We'll talk about him in a minute.  Dhunia's Knot is what changes a lot of what Trolls can do.  If that's not your cup of tea, feel free to skip to the batrep.  The next three paragraphs are Dhunia's Knot.

DHUNIA'S KNOT

  If you haven't read the rules yet, the Knot does three things.  They allow rerolls on threshold checks.  They can heal models that they are b2b with, and they have puppet master.  Puppet Master is a RNG10 magic action/attack that gives one reroll for attack rolls, damage rolls or cmd checks.  If you miss the charge, need a seven and roll a 5 + 1, reroll the 1.  If you hit, and roll snakes eyes, reroll.  It's great.  It can affect solos, beasts, units.  You only get to reroll one, and only one model in the unit gets to do it.  So, Grim2 can't get puppet master on Krump's gun, AND the mortality attack, you just use it for whichever one you need the most.  If you use it as an attack, you can land it on an enemy model and force them to reroll any of the same things.  They're Magic 5, so that's less reliable.  They're mainly support.  But 3 models for 3 pts...  and the ability is friendly.  You really need Victor's KD shot?  Reroll.

  So what Dhunia's Knot does is change how much we take so many corner case models out there.  Paralysis isn't bad on the Night Troll.  Mat5 sucks.  Rerolls.  A better instance is the War Wagon.  The War Wagon has an AOE5 quake, which is fantastic, except it's RAT5.  With Puppet Master, it's a lot less of a Lynchpin move.  It's not as much of a 9pt gamble.  Grim2's biggest downfall is the same lynchpin issue that Mortality is.  If you miss Mortality, it can be the game.  Rerolls make that attack far far more dependable.  I'm still working through the models with somewhat corner case abilities that Puppet Master brings back to consideration.  The War Wagon is the first.  Night Troll gets another shot.  The Thumper, anything with any kind of crits, Rok's critical Freeze is much better, etc.  They're great for solos.  Pendrake goes up quite a bit.  The new guy, Hutchuck becomes incredible, especially with Lynus and Edrea (All 3 become a Grim2 staple for me, btw).

  Before this Batrep, I did a quick 35pt game into Borka2 with Grim2.  Borka2 brought 2x axer, Mulg, Janissa, max Fenns w/ UA and a Fell Caller.  Grim2 had Rok, Pyre, Fire Eaters, Fell Caller, Max Fenns w/UA and a Runebearer.  And of course, Dhunia's Knot.  It was amazing.  It turned the reliability of Grim2 way up.  I landed Mortalities, charge attacks.  I rolled 8s and 9s when I needed them.  I rolled an 11 when the Pyre fired at the Fire Eaters, and rerolled that with the Dhunia's Knot.  Instead of killing the Fire Eater, I did 2 pts instead.  As the game dwindled, I lost my Fenns, Fire Eaters, lost Rok, and hadn't killed any of his beasts.  Left with the model count I did, I was rerolling low damage, missed attacks.  Medium value attacks became high value attacks simply because of dice.  Knotted Fell Caller finished a damaged Mulg, and Grim2 killed Borka2.  Dhunia's Knot is amazing.  They won't go in every list, but they're still very good.  In fact, it was joked about that Madrak2 could drop to one beast, cut for fury every turn, and DK could just heal him and help fish for crits.  They're good, amazing, and a reason that Doomy3 has to consider not playing in Tier.  That brings us to:

  DOOMSHAPER3, PROPHET OF DHUNIA

  Is he S-Tier?  Don't know.  He's got the same old man stats, he still has Goad, and he picked up Field Marshal: Hyper Regeneration.  Battlegroup wide, automatic D3.  His spell list is Admonition, Stranglehold, Repudiation (Haley3's idea of Purification), and 2 new ones.  Unminding.  Offensive Upkeep that I can land on the other warbeast.  They lose 2 fury, 2 thr, and I can cast their animus.  The other new spell is Implacability.  Not an upkeep, cost 2.  Battlegroup cannot be knocked down, slammed, pushed, pulled.  The kicker here is that Admonition is normally circumvented by being Knocked Down, but it with Implacability, that's not going to happen.  This means that Mulg is much more difficult to kill.  It also means that no more ATGM just pushing me around and knocking down my beat stick.

  It gets better.  The Feat is additional dice battlegroup attack rolls, so you could still boost to 4 dice.  But wait, there's more.  There's also a dice less damage on your battlegroup for both melee damage and ranged damage.  After every attack, my beast heals D3.  It's essentially a +5 ARM feat between the -3.5 damage and +1.5 healing.  So Mulg charges in with 3d6 MAT7, kills a beast, then sits at ARM23 with EBDT animi and stone, with a dice less damage and healing  Essentially ARM28.  

  We're not done yet.  Doomy3 is a unit, so he gets the little scroll bearer guys too.  They have 3 effects that can be activated one at a time, once per game.  The first is essentially Signs and Potents for infantry.  The Second is essentially Lamentation for one round.  The third is essentially battlegroup wide Awakened Spirit (Free animi).  Ever wanted to rush Mulg, and then do runebreaker when he gets there?  How about rush Rok, then primal?  Your Winter troll can go in with primal, then cast freezer on himself at the end of it.  It's pretty stupid good.  

  One more deal.  He's already very good.  He has a tier too.  It's not a stupid tier.  Mulg, Non character Warbeasts, whelps, Pyg units and KSB.  Tier I grants +2 ARM on turn 1. Tier II gives +2 SPD on turn 2.  Tier III is +1 for the starting roll.  Tier IV is 2 gargs or more and they go down 2 pts each.  I'm not in for Tier IV, but I'm still debating losing Janissa, Rok, and the new Dhunia's Knot for Tier III.  The extra 2 ARM from EBDT and Janissa's wall is super nice, but +2 SPD and +1 to the roll is ballbusting for scenario.  Right now, I'm leaning towards Tier, but mainly because Rok is crucial to my Grim2 list.  Don't laugh.  Or laugh.  This is a blog post, not a cop.

  THE ACTUAL BATTLEREPORT

  Of all the matchups Doomshaper3 seems to be less decent into, Kromac2 is what comes up for debate.  Pagini doesn't think a correctly piloted list under Kromac2 can be beaten by a living model list.  That was pre-Doomy3.  It's still rough, but Kromac2 is still someone I don't want to particularly face with D3.  That being said, it's what Circle should absolutely drop into him.  I went to the LGS to play D3, or a Dhunia Knot Grim2 list, but mainly D3.  The Scenario was whatever the two horizontal zones are, except we forgot the objectives...  Which would have changed a few things too, but by the time we realized it, we were too late.  

Kromac2

*Wilder

*Ghetorix

*Stalker

*Pureblood

*Winter Argus 

Gallows Grove

Druids w/UA

Stones w/UA

Stones

  Fairly standard Kromac2 list.  I beat a similar one with Runes, but only barely.  The cumulative -4 MAT is a major issue for MAT5 gargantuans.  Speaking of which.

Doomshaper3

*Mulg

*Mountain King

*Axer

Whelps

Whelps

Max KSB w/UA

Max Burrowers (Pyg unit gives Tier III)

  The Mountain King gets everything he wants in this list.  He gets boosted attack rolls, survivability, even more healing, and blocks LOS to Doomshaper really well.  I think D3 is really good for the King, and the Mountain King brings a good ranged game to the table with the 10'' spray.

  I lost the rolloff, and picked the side with the forest.  I immediately decided to go into the right zone, and would fail to score it as soon as I planned to.  Because it's my zone.  Without the objectives, I treated the game like Outflank.  It's not outflank.  Everything deploys centrally, and I put 3 whelps in play.

  

  Kromac2 stuff runs forward.  Awakened Spirit goes on the Stalker, and Aggravator goes up.  Druids move up and puts clouds down and countermagic.

  Burrowers burrow.  Mt. King runs 12'' up.  He's capable of 14, but I didn't want to feat turn 1 defensively when I could just hang back a few inches and stay out of melee range from the Stalker.  Mulg runs up to the same line, Axer in behind him.  D3 moves up, puts Admonition on Mulg and puts Implacability out.  No feat, no scroll things.  The rest of his Fury goes onto the KSB, which pops aura and runs.  

  Kromac2 upkeeps Awakened Spirit and drops Aggravator.  Druids move up.  Normally this is the drag phase of the game where they bring Mulg in close enough to kill, but Implacability prevents that.  So they counter magic, cloud up.  His spacing isn't perfect, so there are gaps, but it's still enough to stop most of my charges.  He's back far enough that I don't think I can get Mulg into anything worthwhile.  The other stuff files in behind.  Stones push hard, the grove gets in behind the wall.  Kromac2 camps everything.

    Pull in fury, upkeep Admonition... and implacability.  Which isn't an upkeep.  It needs to be cast every turn.  I had fury every turn, so it would have been cast every turn, but it would have mattered if he'd had purification.  Burrowers come up though.

  I was told a few games ago that I need to focus a lot more in gameplay.  Not so much on the game and ignoring other situations, but in killing specific things, accomplishing specific goals.  Not just killing everything.  The problem models here are the stones, groves.  The Stalker and Ghetorix are capable of killing things without involving the caster, but the stones bypass Admonition, and the tree will kill my healing.  So, the burrowers pop up in good positioning.  I have LOS to a few stones, and 2 of them I can hit with aiming.  I put 3 each to a stone from each unit.  

  D3 pushes in behind the King, feats.  The scroll does the Signs and Portents for the burrowers.  Stone pops aura and runs to keep everything in feat, and does +1 STR.  Mt. King assaults the Winter Argus.  This unfortunately puts me into the clouds for -2 MAT, but I do get the assault.  Misses the druid, the argus, but I boost on the tree, and kill it.  I miss the charge attack on the dog (Need a 12 I think).  I then swing and use the rest of my fury on killing the Stalker.  I miss twice, hit the last two times and at Dice +3, I leave it on two, three boxes.  

  Mulg walks and Runebreakers on the Pureblood and Druids nearby.  Axer walks up, trying to keep interference between Kromac2's army and Doomshaper3.  Whelps follow around.  Burrowers put 3 models in the enemy zone to contest, and the other ones shoot 2 stones, one from each unit and it takes all three each, but they kill them both.  No porting, no healing removal.  

  My mind was still on outflank, and I thought I scored a point here, but because it's not outflank, and this is my own zone, I score nothing.  I also have 7 fury on the table and 2 on D3.  Something has to roll frenzy next turn, and I can't afford to lose either heavy.

Kromac upkeeps awakened spirit on the Stalker.  The druids aren't able to countermagic.  A few do clouds, a couple shoot the burrowers and kill a few.  One wanders into the zone.  Blackclad runs to the corner of my zone.  The stones port around, trying to block charge lanes.  The Pureblood sprays on the burrowers and kills two more, can't damage Mulg.  Which is a shame, I wanted a whelp.  Kromac2 walks towards his zone, but is just short.  Stalker forces for regen, casts his animus for free, kills a Burrower and sprints behind the wall.  Ghetorix charges a burrower, it toughs.  He kills it, toughs, kills it.  They fail CMD to terror on Ghetorix.

  Mt. King is THR6 and Mulg is THR10.  I take all of the King's fury, and Mulg rolls a 3 for threshold, passing.  I upkeep Admonition.  Mt. King tiptoes up, twists to catch the druid in front of him, the druid to his right, and the Argus (which did nothing last turn) in a sweep, while staying out of the clouds..  Spend 1, spend another for Amuck.  He kills both druids.  He does 18 damage to the Argus, boosts the killshot on the Stalker.  I need a 5 to kill the Stalker.  I roll a 4.  He lives.  Another turn.  I should have boosted.  

  Mulg walks up, kills a stone, kills the Druid UA.  Both the King and Mulg are at 5 fury each now.  The Axer walks in, boosts the hit on the dog and connects, and kills it.  Doomshaper creeps into the zone, strangleholds the Blackclad and kills it.  KSB moves up, pops aura.  Whelps run to be relevant.  I score 1 CP.

  Kromac upkeeps Awakened Spirit.  Stones in the left zone move over, and toss a rockhammer at my Burrower in the zone (who failed CMD again).  He toughs.  Kromac walks up, casts Carnage and then kills him.  Tough.  Kills him again.  Feats.  

  Druids move around, kill more burrowers.  Pureblood charges Mulg.  I expected that.  It's PS14 base, but he warps for Str and has feat, so he's PS18.  I don't want to weather that, so I walk back.  I'll still take a stalker charge though.  

  Except, I move back to the left a bit to be closer to the left zone, and that leaves me in walking range of Ghetorix.  Ghetorix comes in, hitting at dice +1 w/ feat against Mulg.  He hits every time, needing not snakes I think.  Yeah.  Mat9 w/ Carnage into DEF11.  He rolls almost perfectly average rolls.  Sixes and Sevens over five attacks since he's out of range of the bite attack.  I have 9 unused whelps, so I pop a whelp with every attack.  Three are near, one with annoyance range but not melee.  This doesn't make him miss any.  Then, with the Stalker in the distance, I pop two whelps at the edge of 2''.  He has only 2 activations left.  The stone on the right, and the Stalker, so there's no way to kill the whelps.  That's good, because Ghetorix leaves Mulg on 2 boxes.

  The Stalker charges Mulg, but fails charge.  Stone ports to the left to stop Mulg from charging at Kromac.  He does not contest the zone.  I go to 2CP.

    I pull all the fury off of Mulg and the Axer, and the King eats a whelp to manage his.  Upkeep Admonition.  Mulg heals 2 pts with Hyper Regneration.  Mulg eats 5 whelps and heals 9pts.  He walks to the side of Ghetorix and headbutts him, boosting the hit.  That leaves me 3 fury, 4 attacks with Doomshaper's affinity.  I leave Ghetorix KD and with three or four boxes.  KSB blocks charge lanes to Doomshaper and the zone, pops Aura.  Mt. King walks up, takes a free strike from the lone druid (who never roll CMD even though the King is terror causing.  I forgot.  I remembered that Ghetorix has terror, and it caused my Burrowers to flee, but I forgot my model had it.).  The druid does no damage.  The Mt. King moves up, animus and sweeps.  I kill my second to last burrower, who passes his CMD check, and I kill both the Stalker and Ghetorix, leaving Kromac and the Pureblood.   I boost the Killshot and kill another druid.  Doomshaper walks up, puts out the Lamentation spell, and boosts a Stranglehold into the druid near my zone at DEF18.  I need an 11 and miss.  Axer runs into his zone to contest.  I go to 3CP.

  Not killing the Druid means that the game will not end next turn since he has an easy way to contest.  However, the pureblood doesn't have range to charge.  Kromac can't do it, and he's not sure he can survive the next turn anyways.  He won't kill Mulg, because Mulg will admonition away, and while he may or may not kill the Mt. King, (he will with Kromac and the Pureblood), Mulg will probably kill Kromac.  At the very least, the Axer can probably clear the opposite zone since nothing would have killed him, and the King will killshot what's left, and I'll go to 5 CP.  We go ahead and call the game since there doesn't seem to be a favorable outcome for him in any way whatsoever, and the store closes in 30 minutes and I have 2 boards worth of models (My grim2 list was the next table over) to clean up.  

Thoughts on the game:

1.  Doomshaper3 is stupid legit.  Admonition on Mulg with Implacability is really the crux of the match.  So many Doomshaper1/2/3 games are decided by how early Mulg dies and what got traded for it.  Admonition/Implacability really hurts what is able to manage and/or kill Mulg.  On top of that, the list is incredibly accurate for a turn, and virtually unkillable.  Doomshaper3 has a ton of adaptability on top of that.  Repudiate, Unminding, and the scrolls are all problem solvers that won't come up every game, but when they do, they are amazing.  

2.  The Mountain King.  I don't think he was MVP this game, but he was really close.  He should have killed the Stalker twice.  It would have been nice, and I would have been a lot less worried about where I admonitioned him, and it would have been farther from Ghetorix.  However, having Killshot every turn, and/or assault gives me a lot of answers for solos/support that have to die.  The Wilder was never safe, and the Tree died turn one.  It was a way to kill a stone too if I needed to.  Killshot was great.  The boosted attack rolls give him what he needs for a turn.  He and Mulg tag team very well in this list.  Mulg kill single hard targets, and Mt. King kills lots of things with boosted sweeps.  It's good.

3.  Mistakes.  I didn't force any CMD checks on druids.  They should have had to make at least two. Terror and Casualties.  Second, I admonitioned into walking range of Ghetorix.  Dumb.  I also went after the wrong zone.  I'd of won easy by doing the same thing in the other zone, and done better either way if I had remembered the objectives.  

4.  Mistakes for him.  Admonition was unavoidable.  Not sure where to go with that one.  He didn't contest a few times when he could have.  Kromac never did much.  He certainly could have primal howled a bit more.  Druids/Primal Howl is rough on Mt. King, and Mulg doesn't like it either.  Kromac2 never threatened my stuff though, and Ghetorix wasn't facing me on the turn I went all in on the right side so he didn't have a good charge lane.  Being 2 boxes from killing Mulg was the game breaker.  Without Mulg, I don't know if I could have won that game.  It's very possible that Mt. King can't kill Ghetorix.  Against Primal Howl, he almost definitely cannot kill Kromac2.  This is where the GK would be nice, but Killshot/Assault is a ranged attack or two that doesn't take from my melee attacks.  So there's that.  

5.  Overall, good game.  Much closer than it looks looking at the board.  I lost all of the Burrowers, but that's it.  6pts trade for winning the game.  The burrowers killed 2 stones and tarpitted.  That's it, but killing the 2 stones is what stops Admonition being worked around.  So pretty important.  After that, they were fleeing til the last turn of the game.  

  So, hope you enjoyed the article.  It's a lengthy read, but we're excited to see Doomy3 and what he can do.  Kromac2 vs. D3 is a matchup that bears more practice, I think he can be hard on D3, and I'm glad it was my first game.  I enjoyed it.  Hopefully you enjoyed this.  Any comments, crits or insults are welcome.  

  

3OCT Tournament w/ Trolls: RoW, Madrak2

  Had a local tournament come up last weekend that I was planning on dropping Grim2 and Madrak2 into, but decided to go RoW/Madrak2 instead.  Grim2 and Madrak2 both struggle into shooting lists unless Madrak2 bricks up with MMM style stuff, and Grim2 simply can't outshoot Cygnar.  By trading Grim2 for RoW, I was losing my dedicated Anti-Cryx list, but our local Cryx player has been running Denny3 and RoW handles that better anyways, IMO.

  My RoW list is a hair different.  I dropped the Mauler for Runebearer, Whelps and a Pyre troll.  It's worked a lot better for me, getting a boostable AoE, fire immunity to really shaft Legion/Menoth.  I also like whelps a lot, for the DEF bonus and other general adaptability I'm able to pull out.  Blocking charge lanes is a particularly fun thing to do.

Doomshaper1
*Runebearer
*Mulg
*EBDT
*Pyre
*Axer
Janissa
Whelps
Runeshapers
Runeshapers
Runeshapers
Runeshapers

  My Madrak2 list has developed a lot.  I bounced around with 5-6 units, and ended up with 5 units.  The biggest change is dropping the KSB and putting Scattergunners in instead.  I also dropped a Stormtroll and put a Swamp in instead to shave a point and get Swarm on Madrak2 regularly.

Madrak2
*Runebearer
*Pyre
*Swamp troll
Max Fenns w/UA
Max Burrowers
Fire Eaters
Fire Eaters
Min Scattergunners w/UA
Fell Caller
Fell Caller
Stone Scribe
Kithkar
Witch Doc Croc

  I have essentially 15pts of support, which is possibly too much, but the endgame is generally Madrak2 surrounded by Scattergunners, a Pyre and three or four solos that are either PS13 or weaponmasters before bloodfury and/or Flaming Fists.  Everything seems to work well so far except the Swamp.  Madrak needing to cast Swarm himself is less safe than just keeping two transfers.  The Witch Doc Croc is an easy fearless solution for burrowers, which means I can change my objective to the bunker one.  The other thing is that Kromac2 and Harby are both in my meta, and Harby in particular is making a comeback.  So the Witch Doc beat Victor Pendrake for support.  I've thought of removing the Kithkar for Pendrake, but he's really the only thing that can go and clear charge lanes for Fennblades, outside of Fire Eaters.

  So, for turnout, we were expecting upwards of 30 players, including some of the Des Moines guys, and maybe KS City, but Mayhem in Des Moines ended up doing their tournament simultaneously, and we landed the date that Omaha has it's Boardgames convention, so the turnout was actually only 12, 13 guys.  We ended up with 2 Legion, 2 Circle, 2 Trolls, 1 Skorne, 1 Khador, 1 Cygnar, 3 Menoth, 1 Cryx.

  Round 1 pitted me against one of our local Menoth players.  He had Harby and Sevy1.  I'm well aware that Harby is his trolls drop, so I automatically chose Madrak2.  When he put his list down, I was a bit more concerned.  His list was Harby, standard support, Devout, Avatar, Reckoner x2, Temple Flame Guard w/UA and... 4 Paladins + Vilmon.  Impervious Wall, Magic attack only, all day long.  Scenario was incursion, and I lost the rolloff.

  His army was Harby's tier, so everything pushed hard, and she feated, leaving me about 1.5'' of movement outside of my deployment zone.  My Runebearer paid the price, burrowers burrowed and everything else creeped up.  The Scats ran wide after the far right flag with a unit of Fire Eaters that killed half the unit.  For the rest of the game, those three units did little else other than kill eachother.
 On his second turn, stuff moved up, Avatar gazed and Paladins all went into Impervious wall and I had a problem.  So the Burrowers unburrowed behind the jacks, my opponent discovered that the Point Blank POW14s of the dygmies do not count as ranged attacks so the choir song didn't work. Also, between Fell Call, and Witchdoc, they were MAT8 against DEF10.  I was really happy with my decision on the Witchdoc. They did some damage, but not a lot, and the Fenns charged in as best they could.  Madrak moved up, boosted an attack into Vilmon on the far left and managed to crit.  Boosted damage to be absolutely sure and killed him.  One paladin down, 4 to go.  My opponent cleared a lot of burrowers, put a few shots into Madrak, but wasn't able to do much else.  On my turn, I was gazed, so it limited a lot of my movement, but bloodfuried fenns and Madrak killed both Avatar and a Reckoner and Madrak2 stood on the left flag.  I couldn't clear the Paladin unfortunately, so no points, but the attrition game was well in my favor at this point, and Harby didn't have a charge lane.

 She did, however, have a cataclysm assassination run, which required exactly 1 or less toughs on a group of 4+ trolls surrounding Madrak2.  None of them toughed, including Madrak2, and that was game.  Was very close, and I felt really disadvantaged going into the matchup against 5 paladins and only 1 magic attack.  I felt that I played it pretty well though, and gave it my best.  It also meant that the day had just become a casual game day, and I'm ok with that.

  Round 2 put me into the other troll player, and he had Borka2 and EE.  I looked at his lists and thought, man, I can't possibly screw this up.  RoW handles EE, but not Borka2 super super well, but Madrak2 destroys Borka2, and probably can handle EE.  So I dropped Madrak2, and I haven't been able to figure out why since.  Remember what I said about Madrak2 hating shooting lists?  Still true.  This was a horrible game for me.  I was pretty frustrated with myself for not dropping the clear choice of Runes, and forgot to fell call Burrowers, and I failed to mitigate freezer which removed most of my fenns and Burrowers.  Madrak2 ended up killing 2 beasts on his own, and almost a third, and actually nearly toughed out the assassination, but to no avail.  EE isn't bad if you can outshoot it, or just stack armor that's not warjacks, but trying to take a lot of infantry into that many attacks is horrible.

 Round 3 was actually the exact same game I played earlier in the week if you saw my twitter.  I went down for the FLGS WMH game night and played Madrak2 into Zaal2 on destruction, and the exact same scenario happened again.  In the game I played that night, Madrak2 absolutely smashed the Zaal2 list.  Fire Eaters killed most of his Keltarii, and Fenns didn't struggle with much ARM.  He also failed to use his void spirits from his Despoiler to contest zones by attacking things and losing incorp. (again, Madrak2 the only magic weapon in the list), and I pointed that out at the end of the game.  So fast forward to tournament day, and my list had changed a few things, but his had not, and he knew what was coming.  He still chose to drop Zaal2 into Madrak2, and it went even worse.  Burrowers popped up on his side of the zone, killed a few cetrati, his Brute, his objective.  Fire eaters nearly singlehandedly killed all but four of the Keltarii, and Madrak dominated the zone for a total of 3pts.  On his turn, he squeezed the Despoiler and one cetrati into the zone and popped a Void Spirit that tried to kill my Kithkar, once again losing incorporeal.  The Kithkar killed it by himself, and killed the contesting Cetrati on his own.  One unit of Fire eaters assaulted the Despoiler and left him on five or six boxes and Madrak2 killed it for the final 2 points and game.  There's only a few Skorne casters I don't want to see with Madrak2.  Zaal2 and I think Mordikaar was his other one.  Neither of those am I afraid of with Madrak2.  Hexeris1 concerns me more than anything.

  Round 4 had me locked into Runes, and I landed a Cryx opponent who dropped Gaspy3 with a bonejack, Revenant Crew, Raiders, Witches, Bloodgorgers x2 and the Combine.  Scenario was Fire Support I think or something.  He won the rolloff, I deployed my stuff.  The only thing he had with reach in the game was Raiders, and he deployed them front and central against me.  My stuff did typical Runes stuff, moved up, and I put my Axer up front and center.  The raiders failed to do much to him, maybe got one spiral.  With Fortune the next turn, he killed half of them.  Doomshaper1 stepped out in front of one of the tier walls and got next to the flag, which worried me a little but Gaspy would start dominating next turn as well.  I cleared that area with runeshapers though and Janissa got her wall in place.

  Every turn, more stuff would hit the walls and kill a couple more Runeshapers, the Axer would Thresher, Runeshapers kill revenant crew and witches that I could affect with the stone, and Mulg would kill important targets.  The only thing that could really hurt my army was Gaspy himself, and his feat turn was fantastic between all of my magic attacks.  I think he had like sixteen, seventeen focus.  Somewhere in there, I clocked, but the tournament was essentially over and we were really enjoying the game so we played on, and he clocked two minutes later.

  So, we continued. I fully expected him to try to kill Mulg and the EBDT at that point, but he didn't want to give up scenario, and didn't know if he could get it done and then survive whichever beast he left alive.  He went for a spell assassination, and couldn't make it work.  By that time, Mulg was across the board and swinging at him, and game ended 4 CP and an assassination for me.

 Outside of EE, I really enjoyed the tournament.  2-2 isn't my end goal, but that first game was super close and I'm pretty happy with it.  I felt that my list building was pretty solid, and most of my games were fairly clean.  The biggest mistakes were a few order of activation issues, but the main one was dropping Madrak2 into EE and not Runes.  Runes would have been great against EE, and plenty manageable against Borka2.  I don't know what I was thinking.

  Overall though, great tournament.  Really enjoyed it and enjoyed being a part of it

  All that being said, Doomy3 is probably going to replace Runes for me.  Holy cow.  That caster is amazing.  I'm pretty sure we won this book.  We'll touch more on that in the next few days once it drops.