Saturday 15 March 2014

Pacific Grim

Here's a nice pictures of a game I fought versus Guillaume J.'s Cygnar, it has nothing to do with this post but I just recovered pictures from that game and needed something good-looking enough to make you click and read this post.





I decided to try out my Mountain King for my Trollbloods for the first time ever against Jonathan B. in the Charsaug League.
I did my list five minutes before going to work so it might not be the best but here's what I did with models I had:

My List:

Warcaster:
Madrak Ironhide (+5)
Mountain King (20)
Troll Axer (5)
Champions (Min Unit 6)
Kriel Warriors (Full Unit 6)
Fell Caller (3)

While unpacking my list I realized there was some cool synergies between Madrak's spells and the rest of the list=
-The Kriel Warriors can form a nice screen to protect the Mountain King from enemy heavy hitters' first strike.
-In turn, the Mountain King affected by Madrak's ''Sure Foot'' will grant it to its protective screen of Kriel Warriors.
-Carnage + Madrak's Feat + Lots of Kriel Warriors sounded good too.

The Axer was there for giving some extra speed to the Mountain King while cutting down infantry, the Champions and Fell Caller were my ''back up anti-heavy'' plan.

Does that list sound good? What would you change? If you leave a comment, I'll read it. :)

-Game #1 vs Jonathan B. -Charsaug League, Region 3 -Scenario 2 (having your warcaster in a burning forest empty of enemy models in order to score one out of the three control points required to win the scenario)

(-no pictures for this game as they are in the other camera and its 3:00 in the morning (I'm working today...see what I do so you can read cool stuff!?)

Jonathan's list:
Venethrax
Slayer
Defiler
Skarlock
Mechanithralls (full) and 1 Brute Thrall
Bane Knights (min)
Nectrosurgeon and Stitch Thralls
Pistol Wraith x2
And 6 other points worth of stuff that I'm forgetting.

It was a relatively one-sided game in Jonathan's favor mostly due to my mistakes while he played relatively well (except for that lone Pistol Wraith aiming while standing in a wall of fire).
Nonetheless, this game was very important for me:
-I learned Madrak has only 10'' control area and managed to get my Axer frenzy and kill a poor Kriel Warrior on turn 2 (oups! Well I've only been playing with 6 fury warlocks so far so the 5 fury does hurt... a lot)
-I learned that 10'' control area will force me to move forward big time in order to get any effect out of my feat.
-And that a 20pts Gargantuan, is the absolute saddest thing of Warmachine when there is a Pistol Wraith in your opponent's list. (Funny thing: Madrak has an almost similar effect in his ''Stranglehold'' spell).
Yup, losing movement or action on a Mountain King...is not fun.

Basically I sent my infantry first, but against cryx infantry, your Kriel Warriors are more important than the Mountain King under Madrak's feat so instead of making a screen of Kriel Warriors, you should put them behind the King so they still benefit from sure foot while staying out of reach of most things.
I, of course, learned that the hard way as all my Kriel Warriors got slaughtered by his Thralls leaving a lone Madrak to do the job under his feat while the Mountain King was mourning the loss of its action from a Pistol Wraith.
Two turns later, the Mountain King was killed by Venethrax (in almost two shots...holy Toruk!) while the Cryxian caster was freeing the forest to score the last missing control point.
I could have played scenario and truly get a chance to win this one but I let the blood-lust takeover my actions and went with trying to kill as many models as I could (Its a trap!!).

-Game #2 vs Lennard P. -Charsauf League, Region 2 -No Scenario (because we forgot it was steamroller so we just played for casterkill)


Lennard's list:
Nemo 3
Stormcaller x3
Precursor Knights (full) and UA
Arcane Tempest Gunmages

Colossal vs Gargantuan game! Alright!
After all I have eared about the Stormwall, I was a little worried of its firepower but there 's no turning back when you have to wreck face!
I did mostly the same deployment as in my game with Jonathan except that this time I was more focused on one side of the board.

Front view


Rear View

Easy: Kriel Warriors around, Madrak close to grant sure foot, champion as a flanking unit with the Fell Caller on one side, Axer not too far from Madrak this time.

Here 's Lennard deployment:


He did roughly the same 'encirclement tactic' around the Stormwall with his high defense gunmages.

I got turn one so I moved forward very quickly (aka: ran)

 
On his turn he moved the gunmages forward and a couple of Stormsmith but stayed overall quite static.


On my second turn I ran some more, getting into position to have as devastating a feat as I could while bringing the Mountain King to Cygnar's line.



His second turn saw the charge of Precursor Knights killing three of my Kriel Warriors (thanks for though + ''Sure Foot'') while the Gunmages shot down the Fell Caller Hero and the Stormwall laid down some covering fire and dropped a pod right in front of my Champions. I think the big guns fired at my Mountain King and dealt no real damage.



On that most awaited third turn, I realized that if I wanted to deliver the Mountain King anywhere, I was going to need my Kriel Warriors out of the way...



I activated Madrak first, casted Carnage, threw Rathrok at a lone Precursor Knight out of close combat and killed him and then used his ''Crusher'' Feat.
I activated the Kriel Warriors 



and they proceeded to wipe the Precursor Knights while still staying in my Mountain King's way. 



Madrak's Feat is beautiful, one of the funniest I've had to play so far! (too bad he has such a small control area!!)
Two champions tried to engage, both crossing the Stormwall's covering fire, one suffering no damage and the other losing half its life.
The one reaching the gunmages did nothing. (8s to hit...I wich my Fell Caller Hero was still alive!)
The third champion took care of the Stormwall's electric pod: ''I don't know what it does, no way I'm leaving this intact!!!''
Axer moved and did a whole lot of nothing, even more when I realized he had left Madrak's control area.
Mountain King activated and started getting angry at all the little ant-like Kriel Warriors in his way...of rage he shouted at some nearby Gunmages, missing all but its intended target. The flesh flew away from the bones.



On Lennard's third turn, the pieces of his puzzle started falling in place, in other words he activated Nemo, casted some spells and used his Feat.
This was followed by Stormsmith triangulating my Kriel Warriors to electrocute them while some decided to stay though and not die. Honorable mention to a Champion that soaked up A LOT of lightning with its though.
Having successfully cleared the way, the Stormwall charged through the empty space between it and the Mountain King and proceeded to do a remake of Pacific Rim.



After four punches (one missed) my poor mountain King was looking quite grim. 



Even worse, lightning kept killing the whelps shedding from it.
The remaining Precursors finished the remaining Kriel Warriors.

On my fourth turn, the Mountain King counter-attacked, while I totally forgot Madrak activated first and had cast ''Carnage'' to help it so I missed an attack that should have it (while the second attack that missed was double 1s) I dealt a fair amount of damage to the Stormwall but didnt manage to finish it whatsoever...I knew the Mountain King would not survive at that point.
Champion and axers did irrelevant stuff.

As predicted, the damaged but ''Failsafe''d Stormwall finished off the Mountain King, the rest of Lennard's army was fairly ineffective on that turn.



On my fifth turn, I charged the Stormwall with a Champion and managed to do some heavy damage, 



Madrak shouted his battlecry 



and went in for the kill. (Okay, that is awesome! How often do you get to wreck Colossals with your caster?!? :D)
With no fury on Madrak and my Axer full, I knew I'd take damage this turn, thankfully, I also knew I had the scroll of Perseverance to prevent damage from a successful attack.



I did take a fair amount of damage on Madrak mostly from Stormsmiths rolling quite well (I lost half my life to two Stormsmiths). But no Gameover.

On my sixth turn, I tried to charge nemo with Madrak after he received Rush from the Axer, 



sadly I was 0.001 inch away to catch him with reach and failed my charge a little more than two inches away from the enemy warcaster.
He activated, attacked, I transfered to the Axer until the beast died, he paid for a last attack, Madrak was at four life and he hit with a boosted attack at dice minus four and.......



Rolled four!!!! Madrak survived in front of Nemo!!!



This was a big deal because our Boss' 3 year old son had played with the dice we were using to keep track of turns so we thought we were on turn 5 and that I had another turn to kill.

On my ''second sixth turn'' I activated Madrak and proceeded to kill the focus-less Nemo.

If I have one advice to give you: don't write battle-reports, you tend to notice mistakes that were done or...''second sixth turns'' happening...and that kinda spoils any victory you got. They say ignorance is bliss.
Now I have to figure out how to deal with this game ending...

Anyway, great game and super fun Colossal vs Gargantuan action in a ''we want our land back'' fashion Trollbloods vs Cygnar game.

Thanks for reading!
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2 comments:

  1. Fun bat rep, but quite a few mistake here... for one thing, Rush is Warbeast only, so it cannot be caster on your Warlock. For another, Precursor Knight have Blessed Weapons and ignore Spell that increase Defense, so they would ignore the +2def from sure foot.

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    1. Yeah I noticed the Rush in my next game. As for the Knights' weapons my opponent didnt pay attention I guess...
      The more I play the less mistakes I'll make!
      Thanks for pointing out stuff to correct and commenting. :)

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