I got out to a nice little game store called Unique Games & Gifts (which in my head, is sometimes pronounced as "eunuch") while out of town for business in Illinois. I'm going to temporarily be traveling a bit for the job, so occasionally I'm going to seek out other game stores and play groups and play some more warmachine and hordes.
It's great because I'm out of town with nothing to do anyway, and this way my hobbies aren't cutting into family time.
I have been feverishly painting my Grim Angus list in preparation for some playtime, and I set myself a New Year's goal to get it done (well, by New Year's day, which it was). I managed to finish my Champion Hero solo on December 30th, so it's all done. I got some more Troll models for Christmas, so I'm now far from done with Trolls (again), but I'm hoping to devote most of the winter to Troll painting, with a few possible exceptions.
I decided to take this list with me to IL. I also grabbed a few more pieces to vary up my list if I got a few games in, as I actually hate playing a single list/deck/whatever multiple times in a day (tournaments! Bah.).
I arrived early, but eventually someone showed up to play with, and we decided to get it going.
The scenario was Overrun, which features a huge, ridiculous rectangle in the middle of the board, and to score a player has to have a model or unit in the rectangle, and the opponent can't have anything in it. It's tough to score. The foe can easily run a model around a flank into a hard-to-reach corner to prevent scoring, or just jam up the middle and fight for the center. It does promote aggressive play, which is nice.
I played
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| Grim Shot First |
Grim Angus, Bad Ass Troll
Earthborn Dire Troll
Troll Axer
Troll Impaler
Full Pyg Burrowers (Dygmies)
Fell Caller Hero
Champion Hero
Janissa Stonetide
Trollkin Runeshapers
Swamp Gobber Belows Crew
The gobbers are mostly filler, though I try to run them with the Runeshapers to give them concealment or block LOS. I won the roll to go first and deployed first. I put most of the battlegroup in the center of the table, with the Runeshapers on my right and the support staff for Dygmies on my left. There was a wall in the center of the table gumming up the works. There was also a building on either side of the table near the center, and a forest and hill on each side of the table, more central to the 4 1'x1' quadrants.
My opponent played prime Irusk, with:
Behemoth
Full Iron Fang Pikemen with UA
Man-o-War Drakhun
Great Bears of Brokenness
A Manhunter
Yuri the Manhunter Axe
Widowmaker Marksman
War Dog (?)
It was a bit of a mirror to my own list: a big unit to gum up the middle, a 3-man specialist unit (well, the Bears are specialist at wrecking whatever they hit), and a lot of expensive support. He didn't have any extra 'jacks, but the Behemoth is a huge pile of points and tends to murder stuff pretty well if it can get to and hit it (it's slow and inaccurate for an expensive character heavy) . The IFP set up across from Grim's battlegroup, with the Bears to my right (across from the Runeshapers), and Irusk, the Drakhun, and Behemoth between the Bears and the IFP. The 3 solos hung out in the forest on the other flank, opposite my support staff (not so good).
I read Irusk's cards (I hadn't played against him) and I was impressed. He's got a spell to increase the damage output of a model/unit, and his feat makes all his warriors super-Tough. He also has one of the best jack-buff spells in the game in Superiority, which gives a 'jack bonus accuracy in melee and speed, both of which the Behemoth needs. Nice.
First turn I ran all my stuff and fail-charged Grim up. The Dygmies burrowed.
My opponent put Superiority on the Behemoth and moved his stuff up a bit, but not the full movement. He moved a manhunter into a building on the centerline, in cover, but kept his other two solos back in the woods.
I popped up the Burrowers, saw that they were going to get to the IFP and Drakhun easily, and decided to pop Grim's feat to improve their meager attack skills. Grim moved up behind the recently un-burrowed and did so, then shot at and killed the manhunter in the building (true sight and a decent RAT help) and put the Earthborn's animus on himself.
The Runeshapers moved up and dropped their Rock Hammer attacks on the Drakhun, but the thing was too tough. It absorbed the 3 POW 14s like it wasn't a thing. I buffed the Dygmies' accuracy further with the Fell Caller, and they charged in and killed 8 of the 12 Iron Fang models on the table. I would have killed more, but the last four were a second line, and the Dygmies' attacks are both melee (they are an odd unit). Still, they already killed their points worth of models, and any that survive are gravy after that as far as I'm concerned. They also unhorsed the Drakhun with some fancy rollin', but his unhorsed self was back from their melee range so they couldn't continue to pound on them.
The Champ Hero moved up behind the Dygmies to shore up their command for the inevitable massive casualties check. Grim's beasts moved up, but not much. The impaler threw a spear at one of the IFP in the back, but missed by a wide margin. Janissa put up her wall in front of Grim. The gobbers blew smoke between Yuri and the marksman and the support staff (Champ Hero etc.).
My opponent hadn't expected the Dygmies to massacre so much of his infantry. He spent most of the turn retaliating, with the IFP killing a pair of Dygmies (one was tough), Yuri threshing to kill 4 (one was tough), and the Drakhun and one of the Great Bears killing another 3 (one was tough). This forced the massive casualties check, but they passed easily.
He also popped Irusk's feat and the Behemoth tossed a couple rockets at my backfield (that's what it does, but it's terribly inaccurate) to little effect. At the end of his turn he realized I was going to score a point, and then another on mine assuming I didn't move all my models out of the zone (most of them were in or close to in it). So I won by scenario. Boo. I asked him if he wanted to play it out and he said no. He was done with those Dygmies.
Still, a win by any other name.
I switched opponents for game two. A local Retribution of Scyrah player wanted to show me how nasty Ossyan can be, and I said sure. He built a list on the spot and we set up for game two. I played the same list. We moved terrain around a bit, with the hills in the center of each of our half of the board, and forests flanking on our right-hand sides. The buildings got shucked to the sides (by him so as not to block LOS for his arrowstorm), and I put a pond near my half (for earthborn animus shenanigans).
His list was something like:
Ossyan
Wishnailer (I know it isn't right, but for real: hell no)
Phoenix
Hypnos
Arcanist
Two units of Stormfall Archers
Full Dawnguard Invictors
The scenario was Gaining Ground, with three rectangles on the board, and scoring can only be done on the center one or the one on the opponent's side of the board.
I lost the roll to go first, but my opponent asked me to go first anyways. I did pretty much the same thing I did the previous game, though Grim cast the Earthborn animus on himself. My opponent fired some long shots with Snipe on the Stormfall Archers (who seem pretty sweet unbuffed to me, but I guess they are reviled by Ret players? I like AOEs I suppose), but they didn't do much, as most of my stuff is multiwound, except for the Dygmies, and the Dygmies were underground. He ran with much of his other stuff, and moved the jacks to the middle of the table, on the other side of a rock wall on the center line. Ossyan was a bit to the side of that, and the Invictors got Quicken and flanked hard on my left hand side (they were opposed by my Runeshapers this game). Admonition went on the Pheonix.
I popped the Dygmies back onto the table and then started planning my turn. I should have reversed that order. After popping them up I realized I might be able to move Grim up, pop his feat, catch Ossyan, knock him down with a boosted snare gun shot, and then have the Dygmies walk into him and fill him full of slugs. I vacillated for a second, and decided that the game is really about these Rube Goldberg assassination runs, so I went for it. I was thinking out loud as I did it, and after successfully knocking down Ossyan and popping the feat, I moved up the burrowers and my opponent said "this is where your plan falls flat", and he moved the Admonition Pheonix to engage my Dygmies. In hindsight, I remember thinking I should knock the Pheonix down with the snare gun or try to slam it with the Impaler, but alas. Only one Dygmy escaped the Pheonix's reach, but he cranked his damage roll with the slug gun, rolling boxcars and doing 10 damage to Ossyan. (in double-hindsight, I think I could have just charged 3 or 4 Dygmies into Ossyan with impunity and gotten more attacks that could have ended him quicker and in that event Admonition wouldn't save him as easy.)
I made some room for the Impaler to move up by charging in the Axer at the Pheonix and doing a substantial amount of damage, breaking the sword arm. I also moved up the Champ for that command check. Then the Impaler had a window to get LOS to Ossyan, moved up, hit, boosted damage, needing a 9 to kill, and rolling a 9.
So I diced my opponent in that game. He asked to play it out so we did. Of course, if the assassination run fails then the failing side tends to be overexposed. So I moved up Janissa and put a rock wall in front of Grim (who was on a hill; in hindsight I can't place the rock wall on other terrain, but the hill was a flat circle, so I did during the game without thinking. I might not have been able to get the cover bonus from the wall, which might have made a difference the next turn, though Grim still would have been at 18DEF on the hill from the mess of ranged attacks), and had the Earthborn put his animus on Grim (who would have gotten the armor buff regardless; he was close enough to the edge of the hill for a rock wall to be within 2"). The Fell Caller hung back, the Runeshapers killed two (one?) Invictors and the gobbers dropped some smoke for cover.
Ossyan's feat is a mess of ranged damage. My opponent allocated 3 to the Pheonix in preparation for some beatdowns. Then he moved the Arcanist up, but it failed the repair check. The Pheonix hit the Axer for a handful of damage and killed two Dygmies, one of which was tough. Then Ossyan popped his feat and missed with his gun at my backfield. He put Admonition on the Pheonix again. Hypnos moved in front of Ossyan to cover him (he may have had to run with the speed debuff from Grim's feat) and had it slap two burrowers around, one was tough though. Then the Stormfall archers activated and killed the Earthborn with authority. The next group killed a bunch of Dygmies but they passed their command check. The Invictors moved up, but did not engage anything, instead shooting at the Runshapers, Fell Caller, and Impaler. 4 of them managed to kill the Impaler. Another killed a Runeshaper, another missed, and then next two shots killed but their targets (Runeshaper and Fell Caller) were tough.
Ossyan hadn't landed his DEF debuff to go at Grim. Grim was DEF 22 on the hill with the wall (without the cover he would have been 18, still a tough call for most of the enemy shots at RAT 5-7), and ARM 17 with the animus. So he ignored Grim.
My army was decimated when my turn began. However, Ossyan was still pretty close with only Hypnos blocking the path to victory (again). I moved up Grim. My opponent triggered Admonition, but the clusterfuck of Burrowers, Champ Hero, Axer, and Hypnos left him little space to move. The Pheonix siddled up next to Hypnos. However, my target wasn't the man himself but Hypnos. Grim nailed a snare gun shot on the warjack to knock it down and get LOS on Ossyan. Then Grim managed to land Marked for Death on Ossyan, debuffing his DEF by 2. I decided not to try a Lock the Target as well.
Then the Runeshapers, who weren't engaged, moved to take Rock Hammer shots at Ossyan. One missed. One hit and did 7 damage, more than enough to rekill him. Janissa moved up and hit him again for 4 more.
So that worked out. I'm thinking Janissa with the Earthborn is absolutely ridiculous with Grim. His naturally high defense really milks that cover for all it's worth.
I played another game, again against the first player I'd played against. However, I switched lists to mix things up for myself. My thoughts on the Grim list, as this is the first time I've actually played it against people are that it isn't as pillowfisted as I thought. Sure, the Dygmies and Runeshapers are only (only!) kicking POW 14s, but that's more than enough to mug infantry and threatens a lot of multi-wound stuff too. The solos which I was fearing wouldn't pull their points in weight (the Fell Caller and Troll Hero) didn't get to do a lot, but the games were both over quick and they aren't normally in the thick of things until turn 3. I was afraid the Axer would be pillowfisted, but he cranked the Pheonix pretty well with two boosted Axe hits under Grim's feat for accuracy. Overall I still like it. I might drop the Axer for a Slag Troll, or the Axer and Swamp Gobbers for a Pyre and the Stone Scribe Chronicler, who makes the Dygmies _even more_ annoying.
For game three my Khador-playing opponent decided he wanted to Butcher my Dygmies with prime Butcher. I wanted to switch lists, but it was late and I wanted to keep things moving. I swapped warlocks, but instead of playing my normal prime Doomshaper list (feat. the Nyss Hunters and a pile of the warbeasts I own), I just swapped out Grim for Doomy and the Impaler and Gobbers for a Slag Troll.
I realized later that Doomy has 7 warbeast points and could have kept the goblins. Ah well.
Doomshaper, Shaman of the Gnarls
Earthborn
Axer
Slag Troll
Full Burrowers
Fell Caller
Champ Hero
Runeshapers
Janissa
My opponent played
Butcher
Juggernaut
Beast 09
Full Man-o-War Demolition Corps
Yuri the Axe
Great Bears
Kovnik Joe, the Winterguard buffing agent
Winterguard Mortar Crew
The scenario was a radial (corner-to-corner) scenario called Sacrifice. The players start corner to corner, and on the first player's left hand side is a control zone 8" or 10" in diameter (we never measured, just marked the center and contested thereby). On the first player's right side is an objective. To score the player must control the zone (his doods in it and the other guys doods not in the circle) and have a model base-to-base (B2B) with the objective. It looked incredibly difficult. To really make it work for many warcasters and warlocks they have to sit midfield and disperse their troops all over. Otherwise they would have to have excellent, self-sufficient flanking forces and hope the opponent didn't allocate enough resources to get at them.
I won the die roll and went first. I deployed pretty centrally, which was an issue since we left terrain as-it-was from the previous game. So my battlegroup started the game in the woods. The Runeshapers were on my left with the support solos, and I kept the Axer in reserve to move toward the objective. My opponent deployed the Great Bears closest to the objective (an incredible and self-sufficient flanking force, damn), with the Demo Corps central, Beast 09 in the very center of deployment, and the Juggernaut on my left/his right, ready to go contest the zone (Khador 'jacks are excellent zone contesters, they're stupid-durable and can be tough to move via slams and throws because of their strength). My burrowers deployed centrally with Advanced Deploy, as did Yuri the Axe.
First turn I had to cast a lot of Animi to get moving, due to the silly rough terrain. I had the Earthborn go with pathfinder first and run out of the woods at +2" because of the rough terrain. Then Doomy went and cast the Earthborn animus on himself to get some extra movement (without pathfinder) and the Axer animus on the other two beasts to give them +2" and pathfinder, allowing them to move out of the woods with ease. The Dygmies had burrowed before this, of course. The rest of my stuff just ran up, with the Axer being closest to the Objective and Runeshapers closest to the control zone.
My opponent ran most of his stuff, but was careful to keep out of my threat ranges for the most part. He moved the Bears toward the Objective, and the Juggernaut toward the zone. The mortar fired a shot into the Slag troll and did a few damage (20" range?! I had no idea!). Yuri moved into the center of the table, behind a wall that was on the center line in a normal game, but because of the corner-to-corner nature of the radial scenario it was diagonal to our play now.
Dygmies popped up. I moved around my support staff to get the Fell Caller to buff their melee attacks. The Runeshapers tried to lob AOEs at the DemoCorps but were out of range and the blasts didn't deviate well. They were in the control zone at least. The Dygmies didn't really have targets aside from Yuri. I had two of them get to him and manage to kill him with their attacks. Other than that they just gummed up the center of the board. I positioned my Earthborn and Axer what I thought was about 12" away from the Great Bears. This turned out to be a mistake. They were closer.
My opponent sent in the 'jacks, with the Juggernaut killing a Runeshaper and Beast massacring three Dygmies. The DemoCorp managed to kill a couple more, dropping the unit to 4 (some were Tough, but the Demo Corps have two attacks and finished a lot of them). They made their command check for casualties. My opponent sent two Bears into the Axer and killed it easily (it's tough as nails! It stood up to the Phoenix no problem the previous game!) and put a bunch of damage onto the Earthborn. If he'd charged differently I think he had a shot at getting two on the Earthborn, and that would have ruined my game, I think.
As it was I was still bogged down by a lot of big, tough buggers. I had some tough choices to make. First off the Bears had to die. But there wasn't anyone to get to them aside from the Earthborn, which one of them was engaging, or maybe Doomy himself. If I moved some pieces around I could get a Fell Caller on them, but that was no guarantee of killing Tough bears. I also wanted to get the Earthborn onto Beast 09, as otherwise he was going to ruin my day next turn. I moved the Slag and shot at Beast, but I'd forgotten that Beast 09 is Hyper Aggressive, so he walked into combat with a Burrower after my first shot and the second missed. Sad. Whoops.
I made up for it when the Fell Caller buffed his own melee attacks (he's reasonably accurate anyway) and charged at the two Bears who'd killed the Axer. He managed to kill both of them and neither were Tough (whew!). Then Doomy himself charged the last Bear and killed him, but he was Tough. I had Doomy beat that Bear with a stick until he wasn't tough. Then he healed the Earthborn's broken mind aspect, cast the Earthborn Animus on himself, and the Slag Troll animus on the Earthborn. He also popped his feat (spending focus in his control area HURTS). Then the burrowers burrowed again to get out of the way. The Earthborn walked into Beast 09 and used the power 8 Ice Axe to hit for P+S 22 with the Slag animus. Beast didn't make it. I only had 3 fury on the EBDT so I regened him for one as well. The Runeshapers and the Champ Hero managed to kill two of the Demo Corp so there were only 3 left. If I could keep the Earthborn alive another turn I might be able to table the Butcher. I put Janissa's rock wall up perpendicular to another wall in play, so that the Demo Corps still alive couldn't charge the Earthborn.
Butcher moved around a bit behind his stuff and popped his own feat, choosing not to spend any other focus due to Doomy's silly feat. He managed to blunderbuss a Runeshaper, but it was tough (and steady). The DemoCorps moved up and pounded the champ hero and runeshaper, but failed to kill the former and the latter was tough (again). The other two DemoCorps engaged the earthborn, and one of them managed a big 4-die roll to nearly kill it, but then the last missed his two backswing attacks because of the wall between the earthborn and him. The Juggernaut killed the runeshaper in front of it twice with boosted melee attacks (taking 4 damage for the boosts), but the 'shaper was tough twice. My opponent was not happy. Tough can be infuriating like that. The Mortar missed the champ hero but the deviation still did a bunch of blast damage, but left the Champ on 1 box.
So now the game is looking mighty different. I was worried that the Butcher could camp all day and stay alive, and without the Earthborn I wouldn't have an answer for that. However, the earthborn was hurt badly but survived. I popped the Dygmies up behind the Butcher, but only one had a backstrike on the dog. The dog had to go before I had a chance to hit Doomy. The Dygmy managed to hit the dog with his gun (aiming at RAT6, meh) and kill him. The dog was not tough. The other three Dygmies shot the butcher in the back, and two hit, but he was sitting on a pile of focus and I only managed 2 damage. Now I needed to get rid of the DemoCorp engaging him and heal him up with Doomshaper. The Champ Hero managed to kill one quite handily, but the Fell Caller and Doomy had to kill the other. Doomy used Stranglehold to nuke him after the Fell Caller spray didn't do much. Then the EBDT backed away from the butcher and regenerated for 6 with that damn trollblood regeneration ability.
The Runeshapers knocked the Juggernaut down with Tremor and hit the last DemoCorp with a Rock Hammer but didn't kill it. The Slag Troll maxed out spitting corrosive acid on the Juggie, but it had a few boxes left. Janissa's armor piercing pick finished it off. Now I had the control zone, but nothing B2B with the flag.
Butcher went into "endgame" mode. He moved, shot the Fell Caller to death (no tough) and cast Iron Flesh well away from the EBDT. The last demo corp killed the champ hero and either missed the runeshaper or it was tough (again!). The mortar cranked a shot at Doomshaper, who I'd left close enough to be hit by it, without a rock wall or any protective hookups. That hurt, but I lived.
Next turn the Dygmies ran to engage the mortar crew and Joe. The Runeshapers killed the last DemoCorps and I actually prepared for a butcher rush by backing up and healing the crap out of the EBDT. Janissa gave Doomy cover and he used the EBDT animus for protection.
Butcher was alone except for the mortar. He upkept Iron Flesh, moved forward camping a bunch, and shot a blunderbuss at Doomy, but missed. The next turn I had Doomshaper Purification the Iron Flesh, cast Corrosive Fists on the EBDT, and the EBDT made short work of the Butcher, using the huge power of Lola against the maniac. I think he was rolling dice +1, boosting his to-hits. Two hits finished the job. It was a pretty epic game. Not sure I like the scenario though.
Overall it was a damn good time. I'm thinking that Janissa and Earthborn are absolutely ridiculous together, but going into 2012 I can only take Janissa in one list for multi-list tournaments. The burrowers are pretty mighty as well, and the support they require is good when it gets to the front. The Fell Caller and Champ did a lot of melee damage against the Butcher's front line after the dygmies made a mockery of the front line, so I don't mind the support I like to take, but early spot removal of those key pieces could be really rough.
-Merlin out
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