TrollSkorne

Brice and I got a 50 point game of Hordes in on Monday. We played some Skorne v Trolls, in the radial scenario Command and Control. There is a zone in the middle of the board and four equidistant flags on the center lines of the four sides of the board. To score the warlock must be contesting a flag (be within 4") and you must control the zone.

I won the roll and went first. Brice brought some of Charlie's Skorne for me to play. Which was sweet. My list was:

Naaresh
Marketh of the Pillow Pants
Titan Gladiator
Tiberion
Archidon
Cyclops Brute
Immodium Pu-36 Explosive Space Nihilators (full)
2 min Paingiver Beast Whippers
Swamp Goblins
Agonizer
Saxon Orrik
Skorine Midwinter
Tyrant Commander and Standard

I deployed in a hot mess at the center of my deployment zone. The plan was to push the Nihilators out to feed the trolls. Then my caster can kill some infantry and hide behind a wall of beef.


Brice played:
Grim Angus, who Shot First
Dire Troll Mauler
Axer
Impaler
Full Champs
Full Burrowers
Full Kriel Warriors w UA and a Caber Tosser
Min Krielstone with Elder
Fell Caller
Champ Hero
Swamp Goblins

Brice deployed in a wider arc. The extra 3" is a big deal in radial scenarios.



Turn 1 I ran most everything and put Iron Flesh on the Nihilators. My stuff was still packed up pretty serious.



Brice Burrowed his burrowers. Then everything else advanced. The Champs hid behind a building.



I had a decision to make: throw the Nihilators into the meat grinder past the burrowing marker, or keep them in front of the marker and only offer a few to Brice. The first option played more to scenario. The second was riskier as Brice would have an opportunity to score if he killed the few I offered him, and he had a pile of possible attacks.



I decided to go with option 2. Iron Flesh Nihilators have a chance to live, and I'd placed them in such a way that one was screened by two others with their reach blades, so Brice would have to use Grim and/or the Impaler to finish him.

Brice isn't happy with his choices. He unburrowed his Pygs and then ran them out of the way, laterally 12". So then they were flanking my force. His Fell Caller moved up to spray a Nihilator (needing a 10 to hit; this move cost him big) but misses. Then Grim put a bullet in my hard-to-reach Nihilator but I made the tough check. The impaler finished him off unfortunately.

The Kriels smash into the Nihilators and kill 3 more, but the Caber misses his 7 crucially and one survives the attack in the zone, meaning my gambit has worked. I don't lose a point and Brice shuffles the Krielstone and Champs for the next round.

I drop Iron Flesh so my Nihilators can charge. They Manage to kill a couple Kriel Warriors but they miss the burrowers. I punch Brice hard this turn. My warlock gets 2" of movement from the Tyrant Commander and whipped by his beast handlers for +4 strength. The Archidon casts Lightning Strike on Naaresh as well. Then the Archidon kills two burrowers.

Naaresh is as buffed as he's going to get. I have him advance to two Kriel Warriors and he killed them but one made a tough check. I killed it again with a Fury. Then I cast Cyclone and moved to some other screening troops and kill them. I then cast Bleed and managed to hurt the Fell Caller but don't kill it. Naaresh then Sprinted away. I looked at the table and I realized that now Tiberion may be able to walk up to the Fell Caller and squish him with the war club. But it needed rush from the Gladiator. I have the Gladiator cast rush and the Brute put Safeguard on Naaresh to give him knockdown immunity. Then the beast handlers whip off most of my excess fury but can't get to the Archidon.



Tiberion walked 6" and had about a quarter of a inch distance for his reach club. He mushed the Fell Caller into paste. This was a bad spot for Brice. Then Tiberion tried to crit slam a Kriel Warrior but didn't get the crit. With his last fury he murdered a burrower and they'd lost enough dudes for a command check, which they failed.

I had also killed 5 Kriel Warriors, so killing 2 more would force a command check from them and Brice was having some epic dice fail so I thought i should go for that. Marketh had 4 souls from deceased Nihilators and charged a Kriel Warrior, missing it. Then he bought an attack and killed it. Then he bought another attack and killed another. They failed their command check.

Which was super bad for Brice.

He killed another couple Nihilators and my support solos with Champs. I had left Tiberion hanging a bit and he got the Mauler to him, but first he had to run the Krielstone up to tarpit and the Kriel warriors away to make room. The Mauler rolled poorly and did not kill Tiberion. Marketh died as well this turn.



Again Brice doesn't score because I have a tough Nihilator who stayed in the zone.

I decided that it's my feat turn and played accordingly. I spent a bunch of my turn killing the Krielstone to remove the armor buff. It took a LOT but I get it done. The Archidon becomes enraged by beast handlers and I kill the Mauler with a Fury to spare (rolled crazy talk). Then Tiberion is free to charge the Axerq who is screening Grim. However, in my zeal to kill the mauler and Krielstone I forgot to heal Tiberion at all and his aspects are mugged. He only has spirit. So he charged but did minimal damage.



I had the Gladiator with a big Strength buff Slam the hell out of a Champ and kill it. The collateral didn't kill the other though. The Brute kills another Champ.

On Brice's turn Grim feated and his stuff killed Tiberion, wounded the Gladiator, hit the Archidon a bit and killed another Nihilator. The Agonizer got killed by Grim.



I don't have a lot of movement options on Grim's feat so the Archidon runs away. The Brute and Gladiator kill the remaining champs. The game has gotten ugly. It's down to Grim and his battlegroup with a Champ Hero vs Naaresh with a heavily damaged battlegroup and a bunch of paingivers.



He kills the Gladiator but the Brute takes a lot of abuse without dropping. The Achidon kills the Axer and the Brute hurts the impaler. I put Naaresh in harm's way and he goes for a long shot assassination but falls way short and concedes.
It turned into a serious grind at the end but it was fun playing 50 pts of Skorne.



Brice said that my army was odd because of my weird Synergies whipping my own caster and beasts for fun and profit. But hey, it worked out for me in the end.

-Merlin out.


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Blue Vs Blue

More accurately, Blue Vs Purple/Green/Ochre. In the background of the Warmahordes setting both Cygnar and Trollbloods have a blue standard color scheme, and my partner from the league and I realized recently we've never actually played against one another. So we decided on some trolls v Cygnar.

My Cygnar has a lot of standard colors for the faction, while Brice's trolls are an amalgam of his own green trolls, my ochre trolls, and a bunch of our friend Charlie's purple trolls.

Still, it was a fully painted 50 pt match, so it looked amazingly sweet on the tabletop.

I played a tier list, anxious to play my favorite warcaster with my new Stormwall colossal toy.

Constance Blaize, Knight of Stabbing Face
Gallant (Advance Move from tier)
Stormwall
Journeyman Warcaster
Min Sword Knights
2 x Min Precusor Knights with UAs (one UA free from tier)
Archduck Runewood (grants Knights +2 speed on first turn, which is crazysauce tier bonus)
Harlan Versh, Dude in Floppy Hat
Min Field Mechanics

Brice rocked
Green Grim Angus
Green Impaler
Green Earthborn modded to be wrecking a Cygnar warjack(!)
Purple Slag Troll
Max Purple Champs
Purple Fell Caller
Purple Horthol
Min Purple Long Riders
Max Ochre Burrowers
Min Purple Krielstone Bearer and UA

It was sweet. The scenario was Diversion, a radial scenario that's eminently scoreable while not an auto win for either side. Each player is attempting to control a flag on their right and contest a zone on the opposite side of the board.

I won the roll to go first and went first. Brice took the side of the table with the forests, leaving me the walls. I ran everything. Jr put arcane shield on the stormwall. Brice ran a bunch and positioned. He put cross country on his long riders.




Harlan missed his shot on the long rider in the woods.
I gave my PKs pathfinder and Constance moved up, feated, and cast Crusader's Call. The PKs got to and killed two long riders. Another hit the slag for a few. The rest gummed up the works (I minifeated with the purple team). My sword knights repositioned and the other PKs and gallant advanced defensively. Stormwall shot two shots, hitting and nearly killing a long rider and missing with the big guns. He also dropped covering fire and a lightning pod to cover up burrower territory.





The burrowers killed a bunch of infantry, giving me some souls. The last long rider and horthol charged stormwall and did 20 ish damage. The champs charged a PK and ran to engage my lines. Grim didn't feat yet. The earthborn repositioned to get to Stormwall.





Gallant and the sword knights killed two champs engaging my second unit of PKs. Runewood gave a buff to that unit and they charged into the remaining champs, minifeating and killing the rest. Stormwall failed to kill horthol, but did un-bison him, and murdered the last long rider, though it took all its attacks due to dice and tough checks.

Blaize moved behind a wall and got arcane shield, as I felt I was going to lose stormwall next turn and was positioned to counter strike with Blaize. The mechanics put 6 boxes back on stormwall.




Brice spent his next turn feating and attempting to kill Stormwall on one side and PKs on the other. Both go poorly. The earthborn gets all the buffs but is still at dice -1 for 6 attacks (charge boosted). Brice got some bad dice and left 12 damage on the wall, and horthol didn't finish it. The burrowers popped up with nowhere to go and killed PKs.




Mechanics healed storm wall (reattaching its broken arm) and it tried to kill the earthborn but just failed. I repositioned my stuff and gave ground to the slag troll on the other side of the board. I put arcane shield back on stormwall.
Brice's earthborn frenzied but didn't kill stormwall. Horthol didn't either. Many PKs died.




These dudes all died.

Stormwall killed the earthborn and horthol. The slag troll manages to kill a nearly cherry gallant. I'm out of morrowans for flanks. Sad. Stormwall gets repaired and mugs the impaler. My sword knights remaining start working over the KSB.




Burrowers failed to kill most of my backfield, and Sugar Ray killed the one on him. Runewood mauled the Slag Troll. Constance cast sunburst on the Fell caller. The sword knights kill the stone. Stormwall kills the impaler.

Grim stands alone.

He goes for Constance and manages to hit her twice but doesn't finish her, and Stormwall punches Grim into oblivion.
Sweet, epic game. We both gamed for scenario enough that no scenario points were scored while we destroyed each others armies. Nice attrition slugfest.

-Merlin out

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League Finale

My little home league came to a close with our final game being a team game. The "bad guys" (Khador and Legion) were in the lead by 3 points, so they had 70pts + WJ/WB points and some extra. We had the same but less extra due to league rules.

My partner and I decided that Grim was awesome, but I argued with him for a bit and we finally settled on two lists with some good combos. I played my shiny new Stormwall colossal and my battle engine with new triptych Nemo (mainly to play new stuff).



Nemo and Finch
Stormwall
Storm Strider
Reinholdt
Journeyman Warcaster
Stormsmith Stormcallers (3)
Gorman Di Wulfe
Arlan Strangeways

My partner rocked
Grim
Impaler
Earthborn
Full Champs
Full burrowers
Min KSB and elder
Fell caller
Troll champ hero

Our opponents played

Pvlad
Spriggan
Decimator
Gun Carriage (the player was trying to surprise us with a sweet new piece of tech in the battle engine, but he hadnt planned on me getting a stormwall. . .)
Full IFP w UA
Great bears
Eiryss

Epic Lylyth
Angelius
Seraph
Carnivean
Blighted Nyss Striders w UA
Strider Deathstalker
2 forsaken

I think? It's been a few weeks. There might have been a shredder or something else in there.

The scenario was supply and demand.

We won the roll and opted to go first. The burrowers burrowed. Stormwall trampled, put out a pod, and got Failsafe. Strider got electrify. Champs got arcane shield (!). KSB got full on fury and armored up. Grim advanced. We were careful to stay out of epic Lylyth's retarded threat range.

Our opponents didn't want to deal with a burrowers charge, so they played very conservative. For buff casters this might have worked okay, but Lylyth and vlad have no buffing upkeeps. So they just tried to stay out of the game another turn. Khador assumed we'd throw the burrowers at the IFP, and Legion assumed their warbeasts were safe. The enemy only moved 6 or 7 inches out of deployment, leaving only a few targets for the burrowers.

However, we had placed the burrow marker fairly central, and two of the legion beasts can't trample due to Serpentine, so I told my partner we should feat with Grim to lock down the enemy front line and send in the burrowers.

Before doing that I got my electroleap on, killing all but two of the Striders. They failed their command check.

Then Grim feated. He blocked off some LOS to himself w his Runeshapers. The burrowers charged in and managed to wreck two of the three legion heavies. Our legion friend was not super happy about this. The burrowers needed 8s to hit and never missed. It was pretty sweet.

Our opponents never recovered. We shuffled around outside the Khador charge ranges. The Khador player moved up a bit and the forsaken, Carnivean and Lylyth killed a pile of burrowers who failed their command check. They'd already killed three times their worth in points though.

Stormwall advanced and put a LOT of damage onto the Spriggan with its guns. Nemo feated and the Storm Strider wrecked the Spriggan more. Runeshapers clogged up the Carnivean. The Earthborn wrecked the decimator. We ran the ARM 23 champs in at the IFP and great bears.

We got a control point.

The IFP and great bears only managed to kill one champ and hurt the earthborn. Vlad couldn't finish the earthborn. Lylyth feated to kill our objective so we couldn't win on scenario.

The champs mauled a bunch of IFP and a great bear. The earthborn ate vlad and ate the gun carriage. The stormwall crushed the Carnivean. Our opponents conceded.

It was pretty epic. Burrowers won us the game super early. We are planning more team games in the future.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Flint MI

Warmachine League posited

My Dungeons and Dragons group has gotten tired of D&D, and two of them already play Warmahordes. So we decided to play a house league of sorts, asking one other person to join. I'll go into the details in another post (after we begin the league and I know all of them), but I'm excited to be playing some more WMH.

I played two games against Charlie, our DM, as a refresher. I played Constance Blaize in both. The first was in mercenaries and the second was Cygnar. Charlie played Trolls in the first and Khador the second.

First game was the supply and demand scenario, where each of us needs to defend a fuel cache while trying to destroy the opponent's.

Constance
Gallant
Full Nyss Hunters
Harlan Versh

Vs

Grim Angus
Earthborn Dire Troll
Impaler
Full burrowers

Charlie Lost the roll and I got to go first. My Nyss ran halfway across the board to threaten his objective the next turn with charges. Harlan hid behind a building (Grim can see through his stealth). Constance and Gallant moved up. She put Banishing ward on the Nyss and Transference on herself.

Charlie burrowed his burrowers, had Grim kill a Nyss, and positioned his beasts to counterpunch the Nyss.

The Nyss charged up under Crusader's Call and mauled the objective, but left it on 3 boxes. I had no other attacks to get to it. Gallant moved to protect Blaize and Harlan did an extreme flanking maneuver, running around the building to threaten Grim's backfield.

I wasn't sure how Charlie would deal with my shenanigans. He decided to use his burrowers to kill Harlan. They did so easily. He managed to kill two Nyss with the Earthborn and Grim, but they were outside Blaize's feat range so no souls. The Impaler missed his targets.

I had the Nyss charge again (at angles or at other targets to allow new Nyss to get the charge boost) and they crushed the fuel cache. Then I backed up Blaize to my objective to control it, and the onus was on Grim to kill Blaize or lose the game by scenario.

He didn't have a lot of options, and wound up losing by scenario. Constance was sitting at armor 22 and had a shield guard nearby to soak up a shot from Grim.

Game two was a radial scenario, command and control. Players must control a circle in the center of the board and have their warcaster contest one of four flags in the four cardinal points of the board.

I played
Constance
Gallant
Harlan
Journeyman warcaster
Min precursor Knights with UA

Charlie had
Sorcha1
Juggernaut
Greylords ternien
Full Kayazy assassins

I think he was a point short.

I went first again. Put banishing ward on gallant and transference on Blaize. Everything moved forward.

Charlie didn't do anything special aside from running the assassins in a flanking action. Sorcha parked herself near a flag in case I gave him a chance to score. The greylords put up some clouds.

I moved the PKs in shield wall around a bit but didn't try to charge in. Gallant charged into the Juggernaut but did minimal damage. Constance feated.

Charlie froze Gallant with his feat and kept the PKs locked down while the assassins continued around the back arc of Constance, running into striking position. The juggernaut scrapped the frozen Gallant.

I needed to kill a bunch of assassins without my PKs. Harlan moved within 5" of them to avoid stealth and managed to kill two with his quad iron needing 6s to hit. Constance moved back and cast flashing blade twice and killed 4. She then cast sunburst to kill another. The journeyman cast arcane shield on Blaize to protect her and charged in killing yet another Kayazy.

Charles was down to sorcha (the PKs had killed the greylords), the juggie, and two assassins.

He went for the assassination. He was about 50/50 on his chances of success, and the dice tilted in my favor by one wound. The PK battle chaplain killed sorcha before Blaize even joined the fight.

More from Monday. Peace out.

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Cinci Warmahordes

So, this week I had a job in Cincinnati. I decided to look up local playgroups and found one connected to the Prime Generation podcast. They have a forum so I posted that I was looking for a game and someone offered to be around for some at Eastside Games.

I played three games.

Game 1 vs Khador

I generally like to play scenario games, as they prepare me for tournament play (though I rarely play in actual tournaments). The scenario was Destruction, which features two monoliths on each side of the board. They are armor 20 structures with 20 hit boxes each. Destroy your opponent's monoliths to win.

Easy enough.

My opponent played epic Butcher, with
Beast 09
Fenris
ManOWar Drakhun
Full Nyss Hunters
Madelyn Corbeau
War dog
Great Bears

I played a prime Madrak list I've been mulling over.

Madrak
Impaler
Swamp Troll
Dire troll mauler
Min champs
Max burrowers
Fell caller hero
Stone scribe chronicler
Min Krielstone with elder

It was a rough game for the trolls. I had to deploy right because I went second and protecting the objective was going to be incredibly difficult. I essentially lost during deployment because I didn't put sacrificial models up near the objective. The issue was with my slow trolls not being able to screen the objective.

In hindsight I should have left my burrowers undug to screen the monolith, keeping Fenris and the Drakhun from reaching it.

Instead I did not do this, and Fenris and the ManOWar managed to wreck it quickly (I underestimated their threat). My opponent then positioned the Butcher, full Nyss, Beast 09, and the great bears to threaten the second objective.

I tried to damage control with my burrowers, but the damage was done, and eButcher got to the objective and I lost by scenario right quick.

Game two I played a different opponent who was a Retribution of Scyrah player, who played

Garrath
Gorgon
Magister
Madelyn Corbeau
Two Mage hunter assassins
Narn
Full sentinels with ua and soulless
Full Mage hunters with ua

The scenario was supply and demand. There are two objectives on the board, and to score is actually easy, have your warcaster stand near the objective on your side of the board and run a model to contest the zone surrounding the opponents objective.

There's a lot of shenanigans that can go on and other scoring conditions, but it's kind of a wash because I ignored my objective and went for my opponents force. It's actually difficult to play for scenario with the Mage hunters around. They are a long range threat that needs dealing with ASAP.

So I deployed aggressively in the hopes that I could jam my burrowers into the strike force on turn 2. That's precisely what happened. I won the roll to go first, moved up my stuff and burrowed, and my opponent moved up and put Mirage on the Sentinals.

I popped the burrowers into a threatening position, and decided to b e aggressive and put madrak's feat and crusher into play. This is dangerous against Garrath, because Garrath (especially with Corbeau), has great threat range and Grievous weapon master blades, meaning my tough trolls aren't tough against him, and Madrak also can't transfer his attacks. Camping fury is useless.

I decided I had to gamble on the Krielstone and madrak's scroll of "I get to ignore one attack's damage roll" to keep him safe. Maddy moved up and popped feat and carnage. The stone gave bonus strength and armor. The fell caller and chronicler gave +2 mat to the burrowers and if a warrior model killed one with a melee attack they would fall down. Then I sent in the clowns. They managed to carve up 4 Mage hunters and the commander from that unit and 4 sentinels from the other, which overall isn't bad.

Then I had the impaler spear another sentinel, the mauler moved up and riled a bit (unnecessarily and stupidly I might add), the swamp troll moved to contest my zone for no good reason, and I moved the champs in front of madrak as an armor 20 8-wounds tough screen.

My opponent had an assassination vector if he played his cards right, but again the dice weren't great unless he could get some attacks on madrak before Garrath got there. His sentinels with vengeance and mirage managed to position for some good charges and kill a few burrowers.

Then the strike force killed some burrowers, the sentinels killed some more and charged the champs and mauler but did negligible damage. Corbeau allowed Garrath to move during the maintenance phase, and then the magister let him move again with whipsnap. I was surprised at the last, as force bolting a champ out of base to base would have reduced their armor enough to make them killable.

The Mage hunters and narn did some damage, but not enough to kill anything except a stone scribe.

My opponent decided that the assassination was a go anyway, but after mulling over the dice myself it was a bit sketchy. Garrath got to madrak, but he couldn't charge so no autoboost on the first attack, and when he boosted damage I canceled the roll with Maddy's scroll. He hit twice more for 12 wounds, but his turn was over with Garrath standing next to a very alive madrak on zero focus.

The mauler gave fury to madrak. The stone gave him strength. He hit with the first attack and I rolled an 11 for 15 wounds. Madrak missed his next two boosted attacks needing 9s. The fell caller charged into Garrath's back arc and killed him with a weapon master attack.

If Garrath had gotten a charge off on madrak for a free boost it might have gone differently, but my opponent still would have had to crank a damage roll on the last hit (and hit 4 times needing 6s on two dice, never a guarantee) to finish it out. Might have still been sketchy.

Nonetheless it was pretty fun and I learned a lot about retribution shenanigans.



Game three was again against the Khador player who brought

Old Witch
Scrapjack
Behemoth
Full winterguard with Joe
Full winterguard riflemen
Gorman di Wulfe
Epic Eiryss

Against my Grim list

Grim
Earthborn Dire Troll
Impaler
Axer
Full burrowers
Fell caller
Champ hero
Janissa
Runeshapers
Swamp Gobbers

The Scenario was incursion, with 3 flags in the center of the table, one of which disappears at the end of turn 1. First to score 3 points wins.

The old witch's feat does a power 14 attack to any model in her 14" control bubble (if they end their movement in it). The witch went first and so she had the initiative. She hit mid table on turn two and popped feat. None of my burrowers could do much but walk out of her control area and try to kill winter guard. Further, my opponent showed me how the behemoth works and managed to kill a bunch of my stuff with it's bombards. At the end of my turn two my opponent had an easy time getting two control points. I tried some hail Mary nonsense but it was essentially over, and he scored again on his turn 4 to win.

I don't understand why folks don't like the old witch. She's a baller. Lots of good table control, which is one of the only ways to deal with burrowers: deny real estate. I was thoroughly impressed.

Also impressed with the behemoth play. I hadn't seen that jack do much, and maybe it's better against my lower-defense trolls, but it picked off 3-point solos in my backfield like a boss.

I might swap the earthborn for a bomber and see how that works for me. I've heard good things.

My madrak list didn't impress me. It needs some work, and maybe more screening infantry. I may drop my burrowers package for some Kriel warriors and change the beast composition as well. Madrak's fury 5 really hurts his play, and his style tends to be brickish, which I'm not sure I like.

I'm working on pDoomy and eGrissel next, with maybe eMadrak in the works. I'm also considering some Cygnar lists. I still do love me some swan meat.

-Merlin out
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Cincinnati, OH