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 Severius2 (Menoth) vs. Grim1 (Trollbloods)

My PG pulled me in for a game, wanting to work with his eSevvy list. Normally, my PG plays trollbloods, but sometimes he falls to the darkside and brings Menoth instead. He brought:

Severius2
*Reckoner
*Reckoner
*Crusader
*Crusader
*Blessing of Vengeance
Choir
Vassal
Vassal
Errants w/UA
Wracks
Heirophant
The Book
Vassal Mechanic

...I think... I imagine he'll swing by and correct me.

For my list, on the other hand, I wasn't sure what list he was bringing, and I wasn't sure what I had to bring. It was kind of a tossup between Jarl and Grim, (I had just played eMadrak), but the winning choice was whoever had the War Wagon in their list, which happened to be pGrim.

Grim1
*Impaler
*EBDT
War Wagon
Fennblades w/UA
Long Riders
Chronicler
Fell Caller
Sons of Bragg

I've been trying to get that War Wagon painted now for two months, so regardless of how well it did, I was excited to field it. We rolled off, and my opponent rolled a 7 with tier, and deployed first. Fairly straightforward, his list being pretty symmetrical. Errants were AD, so they ended up out in front after I finished.

My Fenns went to the left, Long Riders to the right, hoping to use the forest as cover with Cross country.



My opponent starts the ball by allocating a focus to each jack. Everything runs, and Severius gets Holy Ward onto the Errants for a DEF bonus.



The Impaler moves up, puts far strike on the War Wagon. War Wagon moves up and drifts his AOE into the Errants and kills one, which self sacrifices. The Fenns run up, and the Chronicler gives them Concealment. Grim moves up, puts Return Fire on the Wagon, and Cross Country on the Long Riders. The Riders move up, and the Sons of Bragg run as well.



Severius upkeeps Holy Ward. I think. The Choir move up and battle everything, and the Vassal gets Admonition onto the Blessing of Vengeance. The Errants shuffle/aim and shoot down a number of Fenns, a few of whom tough. Severius moves forward, feats, rolls a 6 for d3, and takes over four Long Riders and two Fenns. He then lands Fear of God onto my Fenns, through the KD guy. The Fenns just turn around and walk, swinging at other Fenns. Three Long Riders run across the map into enemy lines, and turn for the backstrike bonus, while the fourth rider runs back to about 6 inches inside my deployment zone.

The Reckoner and Crusaders on the right proceed to walk up and smash 2 of the long riders, the third one toughing. The left Crusader blocks lanes with the Book (no knockdown there) to Severius, and the left Reckoner takes a shot at the Fenns. The Fire of Salvation moves forward into a good position for next turn, and it's back to me.






Oh, and the Long Riders rode waaaay up into the flank, and on my opponent's turn, he blocked them with the Vassal Mechanic and choir members.

So, back to my turn, I'm down to the last chance assassination, which is pretty sketchy. The Long Riders move in, and the one in the back kills the Mechanic, and the other guy impacts and kills 2 choir dudes in front of him, leaving the EBDT room to walk around the Crusader, as I've now learned :P

The Fell Caller charges the Reckoner hopelessly, does some damage, but again, nothing great. The Sons move out of the way for Tor, Fervor, and Tor assaults, hoping to get range on Sevvy, but comes up shy. The EBDT walks around the Crusader, picks up the Reckoner, and pitches it across the choir and into Sevvy, hitting, but only doing maybe 3 boxes of damage. He then spends the rest of his attacks punching the Crusader.

Grim moves to the side, fires a shot off, hits, and needs a 16 to kill He does not roll a 16, and leaves Sevvy on 6 boxes.



The Reckoner gets 3 focus, walks up and smacks Grim into the ground.



Overall, reaaally good game. I got shot to pieces, but learned a ton.

1. The Feat isn't as bad as I took it. Like, I really struggled with how to counter that feat, and really, there isn't a way. It's 6 models, and unless it's Champions, it's only going to kill 6 models. That's 10+pts, sure, but Madrak's come from worse.

2. Grim sucks against Menoth. No magic shooting except Grim himself, Menoth doesn't really care about -3 SPD, so on, so forth. On top of that, I'm no good at landing Marked for Death. Madrak2 would have been a better match, especially since Grim can't do much against 4 heavy jacks.

3. All that being said, I put my Long Riders up too far. Knowing Sevvy had to come up to get them in his feat, I should have pulled them back and forced him to come out and play. I also mismanaged my Sons badly, and if I had moved them closer to the action, I may have gotten the hit with Tor's spray, and that could have been the make or break of the game for me. Also, charging with the War Wagon was dumb. I should have screened it with the Chronicler and Fell caller, and saved the Wagon for the assassination run.

Good game though, and looking forward to the next one.

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.

50pts Reznik2 (Menoth) vs. eDoomshaper (Trollbloods)

My opponent from the previous game was up for another one, as long as I was cool with a lot of proxying. The main proxys are pretty simple. One base is a second Vessel of Judgement, and the other with Reznik1 on it, is actually Reznik2.

I've never fought Reznik2, and I've only briefly read through his page. I figured when Vengeance came out that as rarely as I fight Khador, I wouldn't have to deal with him unless Sevensins decides to bring him in some janky list. So I speedread and headed straight for the storyline. I already own everything Cygnar spoiled except Stryker3 (I like my 60$, thanks).

So, my first thought was to play pGrim, since I'd already dropped eMadrak, but I reaally have been itching to buy the other caster that I got into the faction for, that being eDoomy (Though Jarl is close behind). So I went and got Kovnik Joe for my wife's new Winterguard Rifle unit, and eDoomy. If you can see the little headless, armless troll teetering on the base amidst the KSB, that's eDoomy.

I really like him on the card, and the few times I've vassaled him, I've really liked him. He's basically Cygnar's Kraye without the cav rules. +3 SPD on the charge, charges and power attacks are free. Legit, right? On top of that, he has Wild Aggression (boosted melee and free charge) so that I get basically Kraye's feat, EVERY TURN. YEAH.

The other thing is I really want to play the Mt. King, and with Wild Aggression and feat, eDoomy makes that happen. Unfortunately, I didn't have the King with me today, so I settled for other things, like Mulg.

Oh, shucks.

Reznik2
*Sanctifier
Vessel of Judgement
Vessel of Judgement
Vassal Mechanics x2
Max Bastions
Max Bastions
Min Cinerators (They look mysteriously like Trollkin Champions)
Wracks
Wracks (proxied for a brief second by various trollkin)

This is a Tier list for Reznik, so he can have as many wracks as he wants, pull as much focus as he wants on turn 1. Also, tier bonuses give his infantry, or bastions and cinerators at least, advanced move, which is nice for SPD4 infantry.

My list was:

eDoomy
*Mulg
*Earthborn
*Axer
Janissa
KSB w/ Elder
Fenns w/ UA
Sons of Bragg
Fell Caller

I won the rolloff, elected to go second. He deployed everything, and there's not much you can do, really. Infantry, and then three huge based models in the back. Done.

I put my Fenns to the right, beasts to the left, KSBs behind me with the Sons for a second wave and we started. I didn't get the deployment pic, but you're not missing anything.

Advanced move is nice. One focus to the jack, then everything moves up, then actually activates and "runs" 8''. Reznik pushes forward, casts Death March (+2 MAT and Vengeance) on the Bastions to the right, and casts Creator's Wrath on himself (Much better stats, upkeepable), and Iron Aggression on the warjack, after pulling 3 from my trollkin wracks, all of which conveniently blow up. Sanctifier runs up, and it goes to me.



Same thing. The Fenns run. Mulg runs, the Earthborn sprints to support the Fenns, the Axer moves up. Doomshaper puts Iron Aggression on Mulg, and Refuge on the Axer, then puts 2 to the stone. Stone pops aura, says no continuous affects, and moves up. Janissa drops a wall, Sons of Bragg filter in behind.



Reznik upkeeps all of his spells, pulls another focus from the Rack. The Vessels take shots as they move up, but nothing's in range of the right one. The left one hits Tor, forces him to tough (which he passes), and fails to damage Mulg (awww) and the other two Sons of Bragg. His infantry all run and engage my Fenns as best they can, pretty much neutering my charge with them. Reznik then gets brave, and moves up. First, he toes foward to juuust catch eDoomy in his control range, and casts Lamentation, which is pretty annoying for me, since it doubles all fury casting costs. So, my beasts can force like normal, but animus cost double, upkeeping costs double, so on, so forth. It's a solid spell.

He also gets brave and tries to drift "The Flesh is Weak" onto Mulg and my Sons of Bragg, which would prevent them from charging, running or special attacks this turn. He tosses it out, and it drifts back onto his own guys, doing nothing except leaving him at one focus, waaaaaay back behind his own lines.



By Waaaaaaaay back I mean almost exactly 14'' from eDoomy, and I know because he cast Lamentation. My stuff's tied up, I didn't get any Vengeance, and if you're aware of what Bastions do, let me educate you. They're a low-def decent-ARM 8 box medium based model that has the ability when it takes damage to spread it out over the whole unit. You can take 12 damage, and spread 6 of it to the dude in the back, and 5 of it to the dude on the right, and take one yourself. Battlecollege claims the unit can take 35pts of damage before one of them is killed.

That's a lot of work to clear these dudes out. They're spread out too, so I can't just walk the Earthborn up, apply 35pts of damage to one dude so they're all on one box, he might just kill that dude, and take all of it himself, and the other four would be out of reach. It's tough to deal with. I have 0 faith being able to attrition this list with what I have. eMadrak might could have done better, but Idk. pGrim with a lot of shooting, maybe. But nonetheless, I see a small glimmer of hope.

Reznik is 14'' from eDoomy, who is 1'' behind Mulg. Mulg is SPD4. Add 3 for the charge, 2 for reach, and we're at 9''. But factor in the Axer's Rush animus, and Doomy's feat, and now we're at 14'', which is plenty. On top of that, Doomy can Goad his beasts, so technically, I could kill a dude, move an inch, and kill another one, and just go until I'm out of fury on him.

Between Mulg and Reznik are 2 Bastions and a load of free strikes. Mulg can handle a few, but I still want to mitigate them. I do, however, need to clear those two dudes. At the very least, I need to clear the first one, but again, I have to essentially kill a heavy warjack's amount of boxes in order to do this.

So first off, I screw up and drop both upkeeps because I don't want to pay 4 fury to upkeep them. I reality, I should have dropped Refuge, and left Wild Aggression up since Doomy can upkeep one for free. But no. So we pull in fury back to full, and activate Doomy. I measure back (believe it or not, there's a scenario in play, and it's killbox), and Doomy is just two hairs inside killbox, but only 1 hair in Reznik's control. So we creep back, stay in the box, but get out of control of Reznik. Then Doomy feats, puts Wild Aggression on Mulg, and the Rush animus as well. He keeps the last two fury for transfers, but I really don't expect to survive the next turn regardless.

Now I have to clear things. The Axer starts first, and walks (Doomy's +3 SPD from feat isn't dependant on a charge.) 8'', and threshers, catching a few fenns and a Bastion, and a Cinerator. He murders the Cinerator, kills the fenns, who fail tough, and boosts damage on the Bastion, and puts a respectable amount on him, which he spreads throughout the rest of them. Then the Axer goads forward, and hits the one further back, boosting damage on him as well. Another decent roll for damage, and six, seven boxes get spread out.

The Fell caller gives the Fenns +2 to melee attacks, moves up, and sprays two Bastions, doing three or four boxes each. The Fenns then charge, and finally kill the nearest one (not in the path of Mulg, but ok), and kill a Cinerator as well, while putting damage into the second unit of Bastions as well.

So then the Sons of Bragg charge/assault, after Reveille. I wanted fervor, but with Tor knocked down, that wouldn't work, I needed his spray. Tor hits at an angle, and sprays across, catching three Bastions and a vassal mechanic in the back. He misses the center Bastion, but deals solid damage again to the other two, and kills the mechanic. His melee attack connects, damage gets spread out, and then Wrathar just murders the dude, cranking the damage and my opponent doesn't want to spread that out, and kills the Bastion.

At this point, Mulg can probably charge relatively safely to the last Bastion, and goad into Reznik, but I've got one more trick. The Earthborn walks up, and easily grabs the last Cinerator, and pitches him across the board into the Bastion, kding them both, and cranking the damage roll on that one as well, killing the Bastion, since the remaining unit is surviving one one or two boxes.

Mulg charges. I take a free strike from a bastion, but he rolls trip ones and a 3. It would have taken a pretty serious hit to cut him down, but that was unfortunately pathetic for a Bastion.

Mulg hits Reznik, and drops him to about seven boxes. The second attack whuffs it and takes him to two, but the third attack finishes him.



Thoughts:

1. I got lucky with some damage rolls on that. If the Bastions had held on a little longer, I'd of been in trouble. I also got lucky on their placement. If there'd of been one more in my way, I might have had problems.
2. Looking back, Assassination by Mulg may not have been my only choice, because Primal Shock is pretty solid with eDoomy as well, but under Lamentation and kill box, that was going to be difficult.
3. Outside of assassination, I did have Goad, and I forgot that. The Axer and the Earthborn could have cleared some swathes, and for that matter, so could have Mulg. I don't think I could have cut down enough of them to not get counterstriked hard though, and once I lose Mulg and the Earthborn, I'd be in serious trouble without a way to kill Reznik. It would have been an attrition battle starting from the back foot, and I think I would have lost, but I don't know that it was as hopeless as I made it out to be. Still, I really wanted to see what Mulg could do. I got into trollbloods and eDoomy so I could sling that monster around the map, so I was really excited to do that.

Comments, questions, insults, go for it. Hope you enjoyed the (short) batrep.

50pts Reznik (Menoth) vs. eMadrak (Trollbloods)

Saturday, I was lucky enough to land two games against Menoth. I don't get to play Menoth very often, so I had no idea what to bring, except Pyres. The problem is that I never bring Pyre Trolls, so I didn't want to metagame. My lists, therefore, stayed pretty much the same. My opponent brought Reznik1 out, and I dropped eMadrak, because... that's what I do.

Incidentally, when you see Reznik, it's not the original model, it's been modified, and actually legitimate, not the miniature armored dude the regular model consists of. It looks good. In fact, my opponents whole army looked legit. Anyways, as I said, I rarely play against Menoth so Reznik is new to me.

His feat isn't bad though. Strips all fury/focus points, applies fire to someone who casts spells (E.G., Runeshapers, TAC, etc), and doesn't allow focus allocation. Against me, it will strip the fury off of my beasts, I'll lose my upkeeps, and I'll have to cut my caster for fury. Not a big deal. In fact, in the right circumstances, him taking all the fury off my beasts is kinda cool. I imagine all of these full-blooded dire trolls charging around and then Reznik reads his stuff, and suddenly, they're less mad I guess? The other neat thing he does is when he kills a model, he creates a wrack right there.

His spells are Engine of Destruction, which boosts his SPD, STR and MAT for a round. Ignite, +2 damage and crit fire. Hex blast, a ranged AOE that clears upkeeps from a unit. Iron Aggression, boosted melee and free charges for warjacks. Perdition, a ranged attack that if it damages a model, a warjack may make a full advance.

Cool. I won the rolloff, and he elected the side of the map he wanted. We actually did a scenario, but if you've read any of my batreps yet, you know that 9 times out of 10, I completely ignore the scenario. It's not that I'm trying to, but in the case of this scenario, we have 2 melee monster casters smashing into the middle ground. By the time either of us gets close enough to dominate, the other has charge range. It's that simple.

Our lists were the following:

Reznik1
*Avatar of Menoth
*Reckoner
Choir
Maddie Corbeau
Vessel of Judgement
Vassal Mechanichs x2
Knights Exemplar
Knights Exemplar
Knights Exemplar
Wracks
Dartan Vilmont
Vassal of Menoth

I think that's right. I don't have Menoth on my Warroom yet to add up the cost, but I think that's it.

eMadrak
*Runebearer
*Impaler
*Slag Troll
*Axer
Fennblades w/UA
Long Riders
Sons of Bragg
Krielstone Bearer w/UA
Janissa
Fenn Kithkar

So, first off, I made a huge mistake not bringing the Chronicler, or the Fell Caller. I realized I didn't have room for it with the Long Riders. I think in the future, I'll be dropping the Sons of Bragg because A) They're a Character unit, and B) don't particularly need Madrak's help to be good, and C) They're in my pGrim list too.

Secondly, I really like the Storm Troll I normally have in this list, but I had a point extra so I took the Axer for feat. He did ok, but I missed my Storm troll. However, when I get Horthol, he'll replace the Stormtroll entirely, so there's that.

Thirdly, I found out that Janissa is not a small-based character. When I got her used, she was already glued to a small base, so I just assumed that since she was a petite as trolls can get, she got a small base. It was really nice too because she could be right near madrak (outside of grim salvation), and not block line of sight to him. No more. But I'm glad someone pointed it out.

So, we deployed. I put Fenns on the right, Long riders on the left and beasts right down the middle. Sons of Bragg go in the back as a second line, end-game piece, and an awesome unit at clear up jams for my Fenns.

He put his jacks to my left, and Exemplars everywhere. Remember, there's three units, so he puts one to the left, and one to the right, then carefully mixes the third one up in the middle, setting them up within the other units so everything's in CMD, but so I can't really kill a whole unit in a turn. The Vessel goes on my right to cause pain for my Fenns, and support most of the Exemplars. Apparently, the Vessel can martyr or something, a model that dies in it's CMD, and cause it to hit back before it dies. Which is legit. It's like immediate Vengeance. He also places his wracks, spreading them out all over the place.


I lead off. I do some math on the Vessel of Judgement (which has a ranged attack) and go forward with it. Moses puts Harmonious Exaltation on Madrak for a cheaper spell. The beasts run forward, riling up to 5 fury between the 3 of them. Madrak puts Blood Fury down on the Fenns for 1, dumps the rest to the stone, and moves up, KSB moves up with him, pops aura, and for a change, tells Menoth NO to fire and stuff. Felt good. Janissa moves up and completes the kodiak moment with a wall.

The Long Riders run, and the Fenns run. They're DEF10 now with Blood fury, but I'm hoping I mathed well enough to keep them safe from the Vessel for a turn. It's got a RNG12 shot that essentially electro leaps d3 times to the nearest models. Not like chain lightning, which is... you know, a chain, but all 1-3 strikes originate from the first target. The More you Know.

The Sons of Bragg move up, and I believe that's it. Oh, the Kithkar runs up behind the Fenns.



In reply, the horde of Exemplars runs forward. Remember now, there's three units. marked by red, white and black skirts (ha), and the red ones get Ignite from Reznik as he moves up. The Exemplars are neat because for each one that dies, it adds +1STR and ARM to the survivors. There's like, six in a unit? The last guy is basically a light warbeast. They're a pain. Not so much as the dudes with self-sacrifice, but still a pain.

Reznik is still activated, and he puts Iron Aggression on the Reckoner (I believe), and camps. The Avatar generates a whopping 4 focus (turn 1...) and runs. There's an upkeep token next to him, so I feel like he gazed, but I'm not sure if he can gaze and run at the same time, so it might not be gaze.

The reckoner assaults forward, misses a Long Rider, and the Choir shuffles up and says I can't shoot their jacks. My Slag troll's shoulders visibly sag.



But wait! There's a huge based model nearby that's not living! The giant portable organ is apparently not living, so the Slag's good to go. Madrak pulls in his fury, upkeeps Blood Fury on the Fenns. The Impaler moves up, far strikes the Slag, and pitches a spear at someone but misses. The Slag walks up, throws at the Vessel, ends up hitting twice, boosting damage, and taking the Vessel down to like, 5 boxes. Not bad.

The Fenns Minifeat and charge, and apparently the Exemplars are all fearless, which is cool, but my Fenns still pretty much tear them apart. I don't manage to kill all of one unit, but I kill a good chunk of two of them. My favorite was the far right Fenn that killed the Wrack, and got 2 more Exemplars because of it blowing up. And my Fenn lived. Ha. However, because of the Vessel of Judgement, two exemplars martyr, and kill 2 fenns who fail tough before the exemplars themselves die.

The Long riders shuffle across, and one charges the Avatar, doing 8pts of Damage and tieing them up for a bit. Sons of Bragg press forward, and Madrak walks up, drops Warpath, camps 2. The KSB moves up, pops aura, no continuous effects, and Janissa pops the wall again.






Not a bad turn. The counter strike is coming though. Reznik upkeeps both spells, and the Avatar generates 2 focus. My opponent starts by measuring control, but he's outside of 12'' for the assassination with Maddie. So, an Exemplar uses it to move up, and the Vessel moves up and shoots my Kithkar, boosts (by 'cutting' itself) and kills the fenn UA, but only just fails to get the Kithkar. The Exemplars counter attack, and takes the Fenns population down to about 5, including the drummer.

Incidentally! Did you know the Drummer has takeup? So I could park the guy next to Madrak, and when he grim salvations, another Fenn can run to take his place if he's within 3''. Pretty stupid. Madrak can never die. "Camp Fury? What for!?" he announces loudly to all of his nervous friends nearby.

The other Exemplar unit moves up in a charge run and tie up one Longrider, and kill the one engaging the Avatar. The Avatar then walks up, and gazes. The Reckoner assaults forward again, and kills a Long Rider. Then a Vassal gives him another shot, and he shoots my Long Rider leader, but he toughs. First Tough of the game.

Dartan runs up and does Stone and Mortar, stance, I think, creeping up on my flank. Reznik moves up, camps focus.



I think really hard about assassination this turn with Madrak. I suspect I can tide of death up to the caster, but it doesn't seem like it'll work so I go a different route. The Fenns kill a few Exemplars, which in turn kill them back because of the Vessel. One of them even finishes the Kithkar.

I drop Blood Fury, and Warpath both. The Long Riders want to charge lots of things, but the Avatar of Menoth says no. So the Slag lobs rocks at it, takes it down pretty respectably, but not quite enough.

Moses exalts Madrak, and Madrak walks up, puts Blood Fury on the Long Riders, and puts a fury to the stone, camping 2. Everyone else does the normal truffle shuffle, e.g. KSB moves, stations around Madrak, camps, and Janissa walls up.

The Long Riders go ahead and charge the Avatar and kill it, with ease. The Sons Assault forward, or really, just Tor, who sprays Dartan and cranks the damage rolls with Fervor, killing the noble paladin, my favorite dude in Menoth (granted, the rest of the faction sets such a low bar).

What I should have done is kill the Avatar with the sons of Bragg, and charge the Long Riders into other stuff, but I didn't. My PG pointed out that I could have put 3 or 4 ranged attacks into Reznik this turn with feat (Two thrown axes and 2 spears from the Impaler,), and finished him off with a Long Rider charge, but that didn't occur to me. Should have, it didn't. Once I figured out I couldn't Tide of Death around the place, I didn't want to assassinate anymore.

The axer, which incidentally, has done 0 this game, moves up into the zone and gets ready for late game carnage. The Storm troll would have been better for this list. Even Horthol... Or hey! Fell Caller and Chronicler, but no.

The Fenns charge, one getting into the Vessel of Judgement, and ending it's sad existence. The rest work on killing more Exemplars, which are now getting pretty ridiculous as far as ARM and STR. Little 1pt paladins all over the place. Not sure how that works. I assume they just put on all the armor their buddies had, and use their steroids too.

The Impaler moves over to protect Madrak from a direct charge and throws at something insignificant. Should have tried to crit smite the Reckoner, but I didn't. I've got 2 fury on Madrak, but I don't want to go over too much, even though I'm pretty sure Reznik is feating this turn.



Reznik is in trouble. He drops Iron Aggression since the Avatar is dead, and pulls a focus from his wrack which decides to esplode. Maddie lets him move up, but he really doesn't think he can get past the Impaler, AND kill Madrak enough times to get past like, 5 grim salvations. So he feats, and walks over to the wreck of the Avatar for cover. He kills a Long Rider, and wracks him up, then puts Iron Aggression on the Reckoner. The Exemplars move in and kill a few more Fenns, but they're both running low in numbers. One of them gets into the remaining Long Rider, the leader, and forces a tough check again, which he passes somehow.

The Reckoner assaults forward, and forces a Tough check on my Son of Bragg with reach, Wrathar. Then he whacks him, kills him, whacks Tor, and kills him too.



Now, I can assassinate. Fenns Vengeance around, I drop Blood Fury. The last Son of Bragg charges the Reckoner and does ok. The stones activate, move around. They lost all of their fury in the feat, so I have nothing left to pop, and I'm certainly not giving them any with Madrak. Madrak charges, and has plenty of distance to Reznik. He boosts to hit, hits, does solid damage. Buys, hits, buys, hits, and kills Reznik.



Thoughts on the game:

1. No Fell Callers and Chroniclers was dumb. I could have really screwed with some Errants if I'd had "Hero's Tragedy" (Enemy model is KD if it hits model in unit), and some +2 attack rolls would have been cool. Overall, I didn't miss them too much, but I very easily could have, and they most certainly would have done more work than my Axer did.

2. I had a solid assassination that I passed up. I didn't feel like I really needed to take it though. I was attritioning halfway decent, and my opponent had actually scored a point earlier when he killed an objective with an exemplar (forgot that) but I still felt like I was cutting down his forces well enough that I didn't need to worry about it too much. The reckoner might have been an issue, but if I hadn't felt confident on the assassination, I 1) wouldn't have gone for it and 2) would have moved the KDed longrider first to engage the Reckoner, getting another attack on him. Not enough to kill, but tie him up. Eventually it would have basically been Madrak vs. Reznik, but I still had an Axer left, a few Fenns (A force to be reckoned with on Blood Fury), and I still had a full unit of Kriel stones (Blood Fury makes them pretty decent too), Janissa (who has an AP attack, believe it or not), against Reznik, part of a Reckoner, a few Exemplars on the opposite side of the map from my Fenns, and Choir. I was doing decent, as long as I didnt' let Reznik kill me, which would have been difficult regardless.

3. I screwed on the assassination run, not getting Blood Fury onto Madrak with the Runebearer, that was dumb. Worked out, I had plenty to spare, because I could feat, kill the two Exemplars within reach of Madrak and get 2 more fury, plus another attack on Reznik and finish him off. Overall, it went fine, but I felt dumb for not getting blood fury.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed the game. I have one more, eReznik (The new Battle Engine Caster from Vengeance) vs. eDoomy. Comments, crits, all welcome.

eFeora (Menoth) vs. pCaine (Cygnar), 50pts. A Song of Fire and mainly more fire.

  The buddy I wasn't able to play at the shop met me online last night in Vassal, and we got after it.  I've been kinda wanting to try out the Silverline Stormguard before I buy both the Stormguard unit, and the unit pack for them.  On top of that, I had yet to use the Stormblade Captain's tactician for anything useful, and wanted to see how that went.  Our lists:

pCaine
*Stormwall
Stormlances (min)
Laddermore
Silverline Stormguard (max)
Tempest Blazers (max)
Rhupert
Gorman

  My opponent brought:

eFeora
*Reckoner (Bonded)
*Reckoner
*Vanquisher
*Redeemer
Holy Zealots (Max)
Daughers of the Flame
Choir (Max)
Wracks (3)
eEiryss
Vassal
Gorman

We rolled off and he got highest and took first.  Incursion was the Scenario rolled.

    Everything runs up, except the racks obviously.  Eiryss tucks into the trees, and Feora drops Escort and moves up.  Otherwise, nothing crazy.

  I do the mental math for the daughters.  I figure they're spd6 or 7, but 6 to be safe.  Between AD and my Blazer's 19'' threat range, I figure they're in.  So, Caine keeps his focus, snipes the stormwall, blurs the Blazers and Deadeyes them as well.  Then he moves up.

  The Stormwall moves up, and shoots his left Reckoner twice for nine damage altogether I think.  Rhupert toughs the silverline, they run, and the Lances and Stormblade Captain filter in behind them.

  The Blazers move up as far as they can, and proceed to hit four out of five times, but roll snakeyes for damage twice.  I still manage to kill all but one.  Gorman moves up and takes a smokebreak with Caine.  The right flag disappears.

       Hey, check it out, I forget to take a picture at this point, so bear with me.  The left Reckoner gets a focus, and the right one gets two.  The daughter runs into melee with my blazers, and the Zealots run forward and do their minifeat where I can't hurt them.  The Jacks get passage, I think.  Whatever doesn't let me shoot them.  Then with the help of the Vassal(s), they proceed to throw 6 fire templates out there,, which actually fail to kill a single silverline because they all tough like champs.  Apparently this is the one game I want them to not tough.  Figures.

  So he basically lights absolutely everything on fire, except Caine, two Blazers, and the Stormblade Captain.  Feora moves up, and of course, feats, and pulls fire off of the Stormwall and drops it on Caine.  She's now at ARM31.  Where's eStryker when I need him?  Or Eiryss for that matter.  Speaking of which, she moves in to engage the Silverline, and prevents focus allocation to my Stormwall.  

  In response, I run away.  I drop Blur and Snipe, cast Snipe on Gorman and the Blazers kill the daughter, and light cav into combat with the Zealots while two of them climb into the woods.  One Lance runs in to contest the center flag, the silver line back up, and kill Eiryss too.  I not only forgot to put templates out with the Stormwall, I forgot my pod too,  So he stepped back and Gorman moved into the woods and threw oil at the Reckoner beside Feora.  It, of course, missed, and deviated back towards me for nothing.  And that was turn.

  

  For his turn, the Zealots kill the two blazers in melee with them and sit on the flag.  The blazers proceed to fail CMD.  Gorman drops smoke on eFeora, and the Choir gives no shooting to the jacks again I think.  The two jacks on the right kill my Lance, the Redeemer shoots at Caine a bit, and the Red reckoner smashes Gorman.  Turn, and 3 CPs for Menoth.

  So I give it everything.  The Stormwall gets three focus.  Two of my Silverline die and the last guy's fire goes out.  Or doesn't hurt him.  I don't remember.  Rhupert toughs the Lances, and the Stormwall charges the red reckoner.  He hits him four of the five times (Needing fours) and leaves him on one box on his cortex.  With his Stormpod, he fries Gorman.

  

  The Last Silverline guardsman aims, and fires at the Green Reckoner and hits, dropping the 5'' AOE right there.  The lances assault the Vanquisher with Laddermore's bonus, who by now is a dismounted Dragoon due to fire.  Between her and the Silverline bonus, the ranged shots are POW16, and electro leaps are POW12.  Not bad.  All attacks hit, but one of the POW16s rolls snake eyes at like, dice -1 or 2.  I hurt the jack and took out his melee arm, but just couldn't really get farther than that.  The Stormblade Captain charges the red reckoner and finishes him, then shoots the Redeemer with the quickwork attack.  Which was fun.

  pCaine then moves into the woods, and feats.  He BARELY has the Zealots in range, and opens fire.  I need to kill enough of these guys to prevent them from scoring.

  I proceed to roll 1,1 then 1,1, and then 1,2 for my first three hits.  I need 4.  That's it.  After I used some extensive capslock on Vassal, I managed to hit the last few, then used my initials to miss one of the original three, but the second initial hits him. That takes them below half strength, and they can no longer score.  Caine teleports back behind the Tempest Blazers, who pass CMD this turn.

  I couldn't remember how far the flags are from eachother, and I was thinking 12, which is correct, but as I ended my turn, I realized I had no way to prevent Feora from dominating the Zealot's flag.

  That's indeed what happens.  She allocates focus to the Reckoner, drops firestep, and then charges her zealot, stopping at the flag.  For kicks and giggles, the Reckoner charges my Stormwall and smashes the right side, but can't quite finish him, and that's game.

Thoughts:

1.  I actually got a lot closer to winning this than I thought possible.  That last push was largely successful, and I think I could have seriously tied up Feona if my Blazers had still been in play.  Even then, my opponent pointed out that I really didn't push.  If I had engaged with the Silverline instead of backing up, I would have accomplished the same goal I had in mind of protecting Stomwall, but would have tied up his jacks as well.  

2.  Eiryss.  Not being able to charge in sucked.  That wasn't any fun at all, but I didn't have any way to handle her.  If I'd pushed with the silverline, she'd of had to stay back.  Otherwise, I keep thinking I don' t need her.  I might...  She alone would have forced my opponent to hang back a bit more, even with ARM31, since she could easily lose that with Eiryss, and Deadeye from Caine.  I may have to start having her in specialists lists.

3.  Outside of Vassal just mainly hating my guts, I didn't push enough, and I think I earned this loss.  My opponent played a strong game, and 6 AOEs of fire makes for a mean feat turn for Scenario.  I hung back to much, too cautious.

4.  The feat of pCaine is fun, if I can actually roll a four.  I like how on tabletop, I don't boost for a 6, but in Vassal, it's probably a good idea.  Dumb.

5.  The Silverline did alright.  I think I want to try this list again, but drop Stormwall for an Avenger and Stormblades.  Deadeyed Stormblades running around behind Silverline sounds like a lot of fun.

50pts, High Reclaimer (Menoth) vs. pCaine (Cygnar)

I apologize to the few of you that are email notified.  For some reason, this particular post proved to be pretty troublesome to get posted.

 I managed to get down to the Shoppe yesterday and snuck in a demo game against a poor soul who wanted to play his new circle caster with my circle warbeasts. I felt pretty bad, taking pStryker, Stormclad, and an Avenger up against pKaya, Megalith, and a Woldwarden.... Did you know that PS17 does absolutely nothing to an ARM26 Stormclad on feat turn?

Anyways, the second game I got in was actually a 50pt game against Menoth. I really like playing my normal opponent, but after so many games of Legion, I kinda wanted a faction not typically chosen by the lowlifes of this world who hate people in general. So I landed Menoth instead. I feel like very little changed. 

He ran his High Reclaimer list, and I brought pCaine. I hadn't played pCaine till the tournament last week, and had only brought him then as my backup caster to Kraye. Out of four games, pCaine played three of them and won two. I love Deadeye. Deadeye is awesome. Deadeye, Snipe, Blur, all in the same package? It's fantastic. I also thought it was a good chance to try out my new Stormlances. And, while we're trying out one cav unit, we ought to bring out the other cav unit too. On top of that, I hate vassal. I understand that I'm running a Vassal tournament, and that it's a great way to play you clowns, but I hate vassal. Boomhowlers do not do well on Vassal. My tough checks fail 8 times out of 10, they can't hit anything, it's ridiculous. Every time I play vassal and Boomhowlers, I'm mad at them and wish I'd brought Nyss instead. Generally, what works in Vassal and works on tabletop are not the same thing. You need to spend more points on stuff that's going to hit on fours and fives, rather than averages of sevens. So usually, the Nyss are a better choice for me in Vassal, even without the higher POW the Boomhowlers have, because at least they hit.

The tabletop, however, actually doesn't have an avid hate against the human race, and I wanted to try the Boomhowlers off of the computer screen. I own them, they're partly painted, they look cool, yeah, I want to try them.

I'm also not looking forward to the Menoth game. The guy normally runs an infantry machine list unless he brings the Judicator. I have yet to go up against dual units of heavy Menoth infantry. pCaine, I figure, is my best matchup. eStryker wouldn't be bad, but I reeeeeaaallly want to try pCaine.

So, lists.

High Reclaimer
*Avatar of Menoth
*Blessing of Vengeance (I think. Had shieldguard)
Exemplar Bastions
Exemplar Bastions
Holy Zealots
Monolith Bearer
Choir
Exemplar Bastion Seneschal
Saxon Orrick
Orin Midwinter
Gorman di Wulfe (Proxied by Harby)

My answer:

pCaine
*Stormwall
*Squire
Boomhowlers (Max)
Tempest Blazers (Max)
Stormlances (Min)
Nyss (min)
*Jonas (Proxied by pStryker)

We rolled off, I got it, deployed first, and Justin stuck his hand in the way of the picture.

Guess what? Everything ran. Except Caine and the Stormwall, because I forgot to give him focus, but it's ok. The Nyss made it nearly halfway up the board and Jonas sent them to ground. The Blazers forged forward and the Lances swung in behind them. Boomhowlers ran up the left flank and Stormwall moved forward every bit of his 5''. Caine moved up and gave Snipe to the Stormwall and Blur to the Nyss. My opponent pointed out that the Blazers were farther than 6'' away from Caine. Ha! Caine has +5 range on his spells. My opponent had an excellent point, I just am bragging that I actually remembered a stat on my card. Heck, I'm bragging that I even read the back of the card.

Everything of his ran too. The Avatar generated 3 focus and went down the left flank, headed for the Boomies. The High Reclaimer moved up and threw five clouds, and the Zealots lined up behind them. The Bastions swept in behind them and Orin Midwinter stealthed himself. Saxon climbed into the woods and the game came back to me.

Look!  Action Shot!

I opened the ball by upkeeping both Snipe, and Blur, and pulling a focus from the squire, which Caine kept. Boomies ran forward, pushing into the woods a bit more. Stormwall moved up a bit, sniped and shot the Avatar twice, hitting both times, boosting damage and doing ok. Nothing crazy, but ok. Mainly got lucky though, because Jose forgot to give him the enchantment from the Choir to prevent any non-magical shooting. It didn't happen anymore after that.

Caine threw Deadeye to the Blazers, and Deadeye to the Nyss. The Nyss moved up into the clouds and killed three or four Zealots. The Blazers moved into the woods, and only one had LOS, so he shots a Bastion with Electro leap (I debated against brutal), and did only a little damage to him, but more importantly, zapped Saxon. Unfortunately, I only took three boxes off of the sniper's life, so meh. But I was pleased with the tactic. The Blazers lightcavved back, and the Lances moved in behind them once more. I was really excited to try the lances. That's another unit that disappoints me in Vassal pretty consistently. But I haven't tried them with Caine yet either, so yeah.

Jose camps his focus once more on the High Reclaimer, and the Avatar generates 4. The Choir casts Battle on the Avatar, who then proceeds to charge into the Boomhowlers, kills one and lights two more on fire. The High Reclaimer steps forward, and casts Ashes to Ashes, needing not double ones to hit his Zealot in the back. Guess who gets double ones? He then drops 3 clouds with the Focus he has remaining. The Zealots creep in, mindful of the templates that Stormwall put down and I forgot to tell anyone about. They manage to do most of what the Reclaimer failed to, and kill off all of my Nyss. They also minifeat, where I can't hurt them this turn except with feats and spells. Jonas, however, survives, and passes his CMD with a 9. Just baaaarreeely scraping by. He's terrified, but it's under control. I guess.

The Bastions on my right flank are staring down my blazers, but can't actually see any of them. So, Saxon gives them Pathfinder, and they run through the woods to engage one blazer. The other Cinerators move up the left flank as much as they can, and one hits a Boomhowler, who toughs.

I, on the other hand, realized I was an idiot, leaving Boomie himself that far forward and exposed. But ok. The other stuff moves up, and Orin does his 12'' no magic thing.

Caine pulls another focus from the squire. He upkeeps Snipe, but not Blur, since it's probably pointless at this point anyways. Two go to the Stormwall. The Stormwall moves forward, shoots at the Bastions on the left once with the big gun, but doesn't get much from it. Hurts one maybe, and then shoots one on the right with the other big gun. That one does much better. 7 damage I think, and Jose scatters the pain around to his unit. I then roll a 1 for his left d3 gun, which doesn't do any good either, and drop a template on the temple terrain in the middle with the right. Caine casts Deadeye on the Blazers, and Lances both, and gets behind the wall.

The Boomies stand up with a call, losing their 4, 5, 6, tough, and going to just 5 and 6. I then charge. In retrospect, this was really stupid. I only got one charge bonus in against the avatar, and everyone else just basically ran. I should have just stood up, gotten some shots off, a few guys would have gotten more melee attacks. As it is, I just tarpitted really well, and put a few more points on the Avatar.

The right flank, however, opened the ball. One blazer moved forward to engage one of the two bastions engaging the leading pony. The other three got LOS on Bastions as much as possible. With Deadey, absolutely none of them missed, and I annihilated one engaging me, electro leaped Saxon to death, and killed another one. With the damage getting kicked around, three of them were still doing ok, including one engaging the horses. The Blazers backed up as much as they could with the light cav, and the stars of the show, our Medium-based infantry with horses under them, assaulted.

With Deadeye, nothing missed. The damage got spread around some more, but it wasn't enough. Between the Impact attacks, 2 electro leaps, POW12 Assault show and PS13 charge attack, the last three bastions died, and took Saxon with them. The whole unit dieing is important, because the Reclaimer's feat is very similar to eMorvahna's in that he can bring back the dead soldiers of a unit that still has a Khador Arc node on the table.

Jonas, not having much else to do, ran like a maniac and engaged Rhupert and Orin, surviving a free strike from a Zealot.

And another ACTION SHOT.  Because I can.

So, Menoth turn begins. The Avatar generates four focus again, I think? The Reclaimer keeps his focus once more, moves towards the right and casts Ashes to Ashes at my leading Lance, needing an 8 to hit. He boosts, and misses... Which sucks, really bad. Then he hit Jonas, who toughed. So he hit him again, and I think... he died finally. Jose moved on to the Avatar, who killed a few more Boomhowlers, except they kept toughing. The Bastions got in and did some damage as well. Between the Zealots (Which there may have been two units of...), the Left Bastions, and the Avatar, they killed 16 Boomhowlers over two turns, and I made 9 tough checks.

Yeah! Suck it Vassal!

That left me with five, KD (Except Boomie, who's in the back for a change, but on fire) Boomhowlers still tarpitting the left side. Specifics though. The Avatar hit one that was pretty central, and gave it the flame thing he does, which is how he ignited Boomie. Then he spent two focus trying to kill one Boomhowler who kept toughing like a champ. The Zealots grenaded some more, one punched a boomie. The other unit on the right flank threw some grenades at the Lances, but to no avail.

Hey! A solo I forgot. The acrobati daughter or the flame or something? Yeah, she went charging across the field from way in the back left and attacked that front Lance? He didn't care. On four dice, she only got him down 2 boxes I think. So yeah, she's right there in the front engaging a lance too.

The left side Bastions killed (tried) a boomie or three more. The right flank Zealots threw more grenades, but pretty much everything deviated, except one, and that one actually killed a Blazer. I think he rolled an eleven to hit, and that actually got him.

My turn. I'm feeling pretty decent with this game. I'm generally just really excited that the Boomies and Lances are doing so well. The Lances lucked out, because after the last two vassal games, I wasn't buying any more of them. After this, I think I'll get Laddermore on order now too. Anyways. I debated about Scenario, or Assassination. I was an activation into my turn when Jose realized he'd completely derped his turn, forgetting Orin's activation, Gorman's, the Shield Guard jack in the back, and the Seneschal. He'd also forgotten to put clouds down.

With left me with a pretty decent chance to assassinate. Not an amazing chance, but not bad. To win by Scenario, I'd have to clean out what was left of the Zealots on the right, all the supports, and tarpit the High Reclaimer, who'd have 16 focus next turn from all the souls he got this turn.

My Boomies would have to keep tarpitting the left flank with increasingly worse odds while Stormwall moved up to help, and at some point, Caine might could use his feat to clear stuff out. In fact, I'd have to on the next turn because the Zealots would be coming back with the Reclaimer's feat.

So, Assassination it is. Stormwall got two focus. I upkept Snipe, moved Caine over, and deadeyed both the Lances, and Blazers. The lances assaulted and the Zealots, and the right most lance chance a free strike from a zealot to attack Orin. The Zealot actually hit him, and then rolled trip boxcars.

Seriously.

So... basically, my horse stepped in a hole, the guy fell over and off the horse, landed next to the Zealot, completely unconscious, and none of my blazers liked him, so they just watched while this Zealot slit his throat.

Ok.

Anyways, between the electro leaps, boosted ranged attack rolls and MAT9 charge attacks, I fried what was left of the Zealots, and opened LOS to the Reclaimer. The Blazers activated next, also deadeyed. Conveniently, Gorman was not only the main model blocking LOS to the Stormwall, he was the closest model to the High Reclaimer. The first shot was an electro leap, that didn't do much to the Reclaimer, but fried Gorman. The next three shots were brutals that all hit (haha) and took him down to just below half heath.

Stormwall shuffled over, fired two boosted-to-hit shots, and a dice minus three, put paid to the Menoth Caster.

Thoughts:

1. MVP is a tough choice. The Lances and Boomhowlers both did fantastic. The Lances pretty nearly handled the Bastions on their own (Not quite), but pretty darn close. The Boomhowlers, however, tied up... 20, 25pts? All by themselves, which left 30 something points to focus on the right side of the battlefield. So I think MVP goes to the Boomies, but lances take a close second.
2. Speaking of Lances. Those guys are not quite as support-free as the Blazers are. They're nice, but not quite as self sufficient. However, tag them to pCaine, or anyone with Deadeye, and they become monsters. Masters of the Ride-By attack. I need the other 2, and Laddermore.
3. Boomhowlers. Are they better than Nyss? Idk. I think Nyss are better against Hordes, where I need the Higher MAT to deal with Beasts higher DEF, and the POW9 weapon master works fairly decent against lower ARM beasts anyways. With Rhupert, they gain tough, so there's that too. They're absolute winners in my eStryker list. For Warmachine matchups though... The 3pt cheaper (Factoring Rhupert in with the Nyss) Boomies are kicking butt. 50% chance of Tough? PS13? Assault if I give them Jonas? Deadeye under Caine, if I so choose? How would you like to deal with Assaulting POW12, PS13 medium based infantry?
4. pCaine. He's awesome. I don't know how I haven't played him before. 
5. I also got lucky. Clouds on the High Reclaimer would have made life infinitely more difficult, and Jose had a solid next turn coming with the Feat, and my left flank losing steam. If the Avatar had managed to finish the Boomies, I'd of had Bastions into my Stormwall, and that's not a good thing. 

Overall though, fun game. Nice change from Legion.