The Ol' ball and Chain

No, not your significant others. Talking about the new battle box beast, the Troll Bouncer. Gotta be honest, I was one of the many that never paid attention to him before in MK ii, and I'm not really giving him that much of a look in MKiii except that he comes with the battlebox. He's got a ball and chain and a shield for attacks, very low POW on either weapon though. He's more of a defense guy than offense. He has the same Earth's Blessing animus as the Earth Born and he also packs shield guard to help block shots off your caster. I haven't been that impressed with him as of yet, but mainly because I have the Axer and the Impaler as more heavy hitters and the battle box games are usually over before shield guarding comes into play.

So with him being finished, I now have my entire battle box done and I can now field a fully painted and based force for the first time since playing trolls. Also decided on the slag troll for my addition to the Journeyman force and decided to get a group shot.

Battle Box Tourney

Kinda late getting this on here, but I played in a battle box tourney at the Gopher last Saturday, 7-9. No pictures sadly as we didn't have much time during the rounds and I'd rather be fighting than taking pics.

First game was against Menoth. That box is super strong. Between the Castigator getting ignite to go to P+S 18 to the revenger and it's shield to Malakus' feat, it's a pretty put together box. Ended up losing this one on time as the round ended before I could take my turn.

Game 2 was a mirror match. Ended up with a Ragnor v. Ragnor battle and I left him on 4 health. Next turn he finished me off.

Game 3 was against Khador. This one was an interesting one. He was way to willing to accept free strikes from me instead of sticking in and killing me with his heavys. This led to his caster death when he decided it was worth taking free strikes from the Axer and the bouncer to pull off an unlikely assassination.

So, finished 1-2 for the day and don't really feel like I just got beat up on. I also won best sportsman and that's always nice to be recognized as someone people like playing against.

Journeyman week 1

So. Got some action in with the new Journeyman League at the Gopher. Two games in and I'm 1-1. Here's a quick rundown since there's not much to report with these low point games.

Game 1
Ragnor
Bouncer
Axer
Impaler

vs.

Tanith
Pureblood Warpwolf
Wild Argus
Gorax Rager

So my new strategy with this box is to stand back, put pulverizer on the impaler and let him snipe from 12" away. It makes my opponent either hang back and keep taking POW 15 shots (granted only 1 per turn) or run up to engage me. Thanks to pre-measure, I don't have to step foot inside their threat range and nothing at this level can charge far enough to hurt me. Throw in Earth's sanctuary to make me DEF 16 against ranged and I'll be fine.

The circle player was fairly new and I was able to play this out really well and got her to expose her caster. Axer charging in at even dice and Tanith went down.

Preparing to take on those pesky druids

Trying my hardest to stay away from the Purebloods charge

Took everything I had, but the Wolf bites the dust

Gorax and the Argus try to eat Ragnors face. Feat turn saved me. 

Tanith exposed, Axer and bouncer go to work. 

Good, fun game and I got the win.

Game 2
vs. Khador

Kozlov
Decimator
Juggernaut

Well, I for sure have a higher model count, but those two heavy's are gonna hurt. Not to mention his caster has a spell that negates my knockdown tricks. I played out my strategy from earlier and it worked fairly well. I stayed out of his threat range and got a pretty solid hit on the Juggernaut. He then feated and ran up to engage my guys. Swings from my Axer (put 10 damage on him from one swing) and the Impaler took out the cortex and arm of the Jug. I feat. His next turn, Kozlov decided to jump in the fray and took Ragnor down to 7 health. Now I'm base to base with his caster and here's where I went stupid. Instead of just using my 6 fury to try and kill him (I was only dice-3) I decided to get cute and hex blast him to get rid of chosen ground so I could potentially knock him down. Well, 4 whiffs later and I hadn't done any damage to him and he then killed me. It was sad and totally my fault for not being smart.

Next week I'll be adding in either a swamp troll or a slag troll, I just haven't made my mind up yet.

The Lights In the Window........

......is just a crack in the sky.

Picked up my battle box (more on that in another post) and immediately started work on this guy. Ragnor Skysplitter, The Runemaster. I've used him in a few games so far and he has done excellent for me. He is a good all around caster that supports beasts and infantry well. His only major drawback is his 6 fury. It does hurt some, but if he was 7 FURY he'd almost be too good, so I understand why they did it. He has pretty decent assassination potential seeing how his hammer is STR 14 and can crit knockdown. His spell list is also pretty good. Pulverizer gives you +2 STR and beatback. Shockwave is a RNG 10 POW 14 shot that when it hits, creates a 4" AOE knockdown. Hex blast is a RNG 10 AOE 3 POW 13 that removes upkeeps and animi from a model/unit. Earth's Sanctuary lets a model become dug in, gain cover and not block line of sight. Given the fact that Earth's sanctuary is the only spell on his list that cost less than 3, I feel like you have to include a Runebearer with him. Early on he gives you FURY efficiency making things 1 less, and later in the game he can start shooting off Shockwave and Hex blast as well since he's no longer limited to one spell per game. Ragnor has a defensive feat (which seems to always anger the internetters and makes some overlook him instantly) that says any enemy damage rolls one less die. The important part there is "damage" not damage from attacks, not magic damage, just blanket damage, so things like electroleaps and other things that say they aren't considered an attack, it still protects from those since they still cause damage.   

So far I've been running him with a small battlegroup of Runebearer, Mauler, EBDT, and Axer. Filling in the rest of the holes with Fennblades with UA, a Kriel Stone and Elder, 2 units of Runeshapers (which, despite being the Rune Master, he does nothing for really) Janessa and a Fennblade Kithkar. It's been working for me so far. The combo of the Earthborn and the axer creates a catapult effect that can send the EBDT 12" on a charge. With pulverizer up and Stone strength, that's a POW 18, 12" charging troll in your face. It's fun to watch. Anyway, enough talking, here are the pretties. 

I enjoyed painting this guy up except for the scrolls on the back. They just seem out of place and I didn't really like how they fit. It's almost like they didn't know what to do with his back, so they just stuck a bunch of scrolls there. All in all I'm pretty happy with him and can't wait to start the league next week. 

A Bit of a Rocky Relationship

Finished up my Earthborn Dire troll and let me tell you this guy was an adventure.
I picked up the all metal one as part of a lot from eBay. This dude is HEAVY. It was a PITA to assemble too. The metal parts didn't mesh together right and left some horrible gaps. Here's a couple WIP shots.

Thought I had better shots of all the green stuff I used, but I can't find 'em. Basically, there is a giant gap between his right and left side torso and where the head joins to the body. Those had to be filled totally and sanded smooth. The actual painting part was rather easy. He's pretty much just an exercise in drybrushing and highlighting. Not too difficult overall.

I've been using him in game with Ragnar so far and he's worked out pretty well. His Transmute ability gives him pluses to DEF, ARM or SPD depending on the terrain he's near. With the Axer's animus he can get up to a 9 spd. That's pretty good for a lumbering troll. His fists are only one point lower than the Mauler and for that he gets shoved to the side and forgotten for some reason. He's the same price, has a great animus and can be boosted in STR to 21. He's also immune to all typed damage. I think he's a pretty good beast and plan on using him for a while, especially since the internet seems to hate him for some reason.

What a Bunch of Stoners

Here's my take on the Krielstone Bearer and Stone scribes. Next to the Dire troll Mauler, this is one of the most iconic units for trolls. You see them in lists everywhere and deservedly so. They give your army a +2 armor bump and with the UA can give it either +1 STR, make it immune to continuous effects, or remove stealth and incorporeal. The real downside is that your caster has to power the stone with fury and with some, that's pretty difficult to do. Madrak, for instance, is only a FURY 5 and it makes it really hard for him to do what he needs to do and power the stone. It's still taken in his lists, just hard to do. I don't take one in my Gunnbjorn lists, I just can't fit one in and don't really need it that much in his list.

  

You Make the Rockin' World go Round

Finally got around to painting up my trio of fat bottomed girls, the Dhunian Knot. I love these models in game. Their puppet master ability comes in real handy when you just have to have that re-roll. They can also heal and potentially stop a beast from frenzying, though I've only used those sparingly since you need to be much closer than with Puppet master. Model wise, they were a bitch to paint. All the little baubles and bits hanging off them was annoying and at times seemed over the top.

Batrep 06-22-16

Ok. Second game with MK III and it was an interesting one. Here was my list:

Ragnar
Dire Troll Mauler
Earthborn Dire Troll
Troll Axer
Runebearer

Runeshapers x2

Fennblades w/ officer and drummer
Troll Sorcerer
Fennblade Kithkar

Krielstone bearers w/stone scribe elder

Janessa Stonetide

And here is the mega list my opponent brought.
Karchev
War Dog
Mad Dog
Drago
2x Rager
7x Berserkers

Battle Mechaniks

So yeah. Let's just put 11 'jacks on the table. My list was not built to handle that, not sure I have any list that is. Scenario was Outlast. Two 12" zones in the middle, control for one, dominate for two, no kill box. Terrain was spread out fairly evenly with two linear obstacles around the bottom of the two zones one on the right hand top of the zone, a hill in the middle of the upper deployment zone and two structures that really didn't come into play. I won the roll off and took first turn. I put my fenns and their buddies on the right side with the Mauler for support, Ragnar and his buddy went in the middle along with Janessa. EBDT and Axer went on the left side and the runeshapers go on each flank. He deployed everything in a straight line as much as he could in order to remain in Karchev's control area.

MK III is GO!

Well, MK III is upon us. The rules are now available for free. You can pick up either the Prime or Primal versions of the rules, though each contains the other. I played my first game under the new edition last night and to be honest it doesn't feel that much different. If you're curious as to the main changes then I'll point you here as a user on the privateer press forums has done a great job of summing that up. As for the game, here's what I took:

Ragnar Skysplitter
Runebearer
Dire Troll Mauler
Earthborn Dire Troll
Troll Axer

Fennblades w/officer and drummer
Fennblade kithkar

Krielstone bearer and stone scribes
Stone scribe Elder

My opponent was

Kaelyssa
Manticore
Hydra

Dawnguard Scyir
Manticore

Mage Hunter Assassain

Arcanist Mechanik x3

Dawnguard Sentinels w/ officer and standard

My opponent won the roll off and took first turn.

Top of 1.
Not a lot of action, as per the usual. Seems not even a new edition can change that. He hands out focus to the Hydra from the mechaniks in addition to it's free power up points. And everything else ran to get into position.

Bottom of 1
Ragnar dumps all his fury into the stone, the Fennblade mass runs up and to the right of the table near the flag. The earthborn runs (14" thanks to his abilities) and sits there, the mauler runs up with a pathfinder assist from the axer, axer moves up, runebearer runs, and finally the KSB uses their protective aura and runs. Lot's of positioning going on here.

Top of 2
Again, not much. The Hydra moves up and takes a shot at the EBDT and softens him up just a bit, the manticores advance and use covering fire to make life difficult for my fennblades to move (POW 12 vs ARM 16 is not good) The sentinels advance and get into position for next turn and Kaelyssa feats to keep me from charging and gives her forces stealth.

Bottom of 2 EBDT runs again, trying to get to his flag and hopefully score a point. Mauler hangs back a little since I don't want to lose him this early and it sadly was going to be my Earthborn or my mauler that left the table. Fenns advance in the only direction they could, and surround the flag. However, they're now kinda trapped from the covering fire and the building to their right. Runebearer moves up and casts Earths Sanctuary on the Fenns, making them dug in and giving them cover. The KSB advances again and uses their aura, the elder hands out stone strength. Ragnar goes, tops off the KSB and feats. This is where I made a pretty big mistake, I should have cast pulverizer now instead of waiting till the next turn. Axer advances and bides his time till the next round.

Top of 3
He moved the dawnguard up and surrounded my EBDT and took him out. Both Manticores laid down covering fire and trapped my Fenns in the corner yet again.

Bottom of 3
Ok. Getting a little desperate to get some action in this game. KSB activates first, protective aura and stone strength. Next, Ragnar activates and does two rages on the axer and mauler and puts the rest on the stone to top it off. Axer charges into the grouped up Dawnguard and uses Thresher. POW 18 hits all around and most of the dawn guard are dead. Then they run away!! Except no, no they didn't since there are no more command checks. Runebearer activates and uses his spell slave ability to cast shockwave at one of the manticores, knocking him down and giving the Mauler a nice juicy 'jack to kill. One little problem with that, when I pre-measured, I added in his melee range twice, so since I was going to be an inch short, I charged the remaining Dawnguard instead and took all but one of them out. Then, since I had a 'jack laying on the ground I decided to go ahead and charge my Fenns through the covering fire. Bad idea. I ended up having to make 8 tough rolls and I failed 7. Not much left to do but pass the turn.

Top of 4
Again, not much moving from him. He knew I didn't have enough to out last him, so he held back and just took shots at me. His Hydra landed a good hit against Ragnar and took 9 health off him. The last two Dawnguard and the Scyir moved over to engage the mauler and failed. They did no damage to him at all. More covering fire from the manticores, since that's been effective all damn game thanks to my mispositioning them. Magehunter assassian moves over and takes a swing at Ragnar and misses.

Bottom of 4
Ragnar casts shockwave and knocks the Mage hunter down, then charges him to finish him off. Mauler rages and finishes off the Dawnguard and the Scyir while using beatback from Pulverizer to get closer to the flag, he ended up just a hair away from touching it. This had the bonus effect of causing one of the Manticores to go inert since it's 'jack marshall had been killed. Fenns stayed put, and the runebearer shockwaved the hydra this time. Still no scenario points scored on either side.

Top of 5
Seeing that the end is near, my opponent makes an assassination run on Ragnar. Between Kaelyssa's shots, the Manticores shots, and my opponents dice betraying him, Ragnar was left on one health and Kaelyssa was in a terrible position.

Bottom of 5
Not much to do now. Ragnar moves over and Shockwaves Kaelyssa and knocks her to the ground. Mauler walks over and takes his swings at dice +2, 3 hits later and she's dead. Trollblood win!

So, what did we learn from this? Well, MKIII isn't nearly the doom and gloom the internet made it out to be (I knew that already). The point values have made it a little bit smaller of a game if you can believe that. 50 point games are small. Both my opponent and I couldn't believe how few models were in our armies. The Earthborn has the potential to be a speed demon. His +2 speed from being near rough terrain, combined with the +2 from the Axer makes him SPD 9 and running 18. The combination between Ragnar and the Runebearer gives you two 4" POW 14 AOE's that have knock down. Throw those out there before charging the Fennblades in with cleave and you have a whole lot of dead models. It's going to be interesting to see what lists come out of this.

I bring you these 15.........*CRASH*......

......10. Ten Commandments.

Here's my Trollkin Runebearer. He is changing pretty significantly in the new version and his home in my Gunnbjorn list may be disappearing. Seeing as how he can no longer cast upkeep spells or spells that have a RNG of CTRL or self, he can't cast a single thing on Gunny's list. He still lowers the fury cost of a spell, and that's useful, but most of the time I want Gunny to be empty so that my multiple beasts don't frenzy, so I'll evaluate him and figure it out from there. He will still be found in my other lists that I plan on running. He's going to shine with the new Troll caster.

This guy was a nightmare to assemble, putting that one single piece of metal on a base was really hard, lol. He wasn't especially hard to paint either. Lot's of leather and then his runes and that was about it. Here's the final product.

I really like this guy, both his rules and the actual sculpt.

Bombs away!

Yeah, cause the title didn't totally give it away. Here's a look at my completed Dire Troll Bomber. He comes as part of a multi-kit with the Mauler and Blitzer so naturally I looked into magnetizing to keep my options open. I ended up only doing the bomber and mauler since the Blitzer doesn't really impress me much. That may be different in MK III, but who knows.

I have to say it was difficult at first glance to see how to get this done. After looking at it some more and looking at what others had done, here's what I came up with.

 The heads were pinned. This kept me from needing to trim anything off their necks and allow for a flush fit.

 Magnets were placed on the right hand, and left arms (the kit comes with two left arms). This is the only place I had to do any trimming, all the other magnets fit right into the sockets. The left hands were glued in place, so if I ever do run a blitzer he'll have one open hand.

Magnet placed directly into left arm socket

Magnet placed directly into the right hand socket.

The hardest part was figuring out the back. I ended up angling the front part of the torso a little forward and now the back pieces slide in and out and stay in place on their own.

Here's the finished product, well, the bomber anyway. See my previous post for the mauler.

These guys look to be killer in MK III and he'll almost always be in my Gunnbjorn list.

Testing....Testing I, II, III

Well, it happened. As per the usual, a gigantic leak happened and showed all the cards for the upcoming MK III faction decks. Now, as with any leak, this info is highly suspect and should be taken with a massive grain of salt. I don't believe it was a total forgery, but some of the cards do contradict the confirmed stuff we have from PP and some of the cards match dead on. It's more than likely an early playtest version of the new rules. So, what to do with this info. Well, I took what I did know to be true and built an army with that info and played a game of "early MK III" Here's what I took:

Gunnbjorn
Bomber
Dozer and Smigg
Pyre Troll
Storm Troll
Rune bearer

Trollkin sluggers
Dhunian knot

This was a 50pt MK III game which is the new 35.

Some of the changes to the trolls have been huge, both good and bad. They were particularly good to Gunny who got an actual feat now which makes friendly faction members in his control range immune to ranged damage, immune to knock down, and gives them all cover. He also now has Field marshal: Kill Shot which lets you shoot at something after you've boxed a model in melee. Now, I'm not a huge fan of my gun line beasts getting into melee, but it's cool to know it's there. The bomber stayed about the same, he changed out his animus for the new Far Strike which costs 1 and is range self now. Dozer changed very little, going up a point in MAT, STR and AOE 4 on his gun now. Sluggers now no longer need to stand still to get their d3 shots and under snipe from Gunny, RNG 14 POW 13 shots are pretty strong. Especially when you can get up to 15 of them. I always thought they were cool, just didn't work well. Now they work well and will be finding a place in my lists. The elemental trolls changed as well. They gained a point of RAT and 2" of RNG but their animi are now all RNG self. All that info was confirmed by privateer press in the troll insider and the official answers in the forums. They were identical to the leaked cards.

My opponent brought Menoth
Harbinger of Menoth
Vassal
Templar
Avatar of Menoth
Choir of Menoth
Holy Zealots
Wracks

I'll spare you most of the boring details, but here are the highlights as they pertain to the new rules. Pre-measuring, is awesome and a blessing to someone like me who can't judge distance to save their life. I was able to skirt around control ranges, correct what would have been a failed charge, and measure optimal distance for my guys to shoot and not get charged. We were not on the clock however, and I don't know how much it slowed me down. The Power Up rule for 'jacks works really well. The spirit bond rule for beasts, eh, not as good. The rule that really got me (and the one that won me the game) is the change to overboosting on warcasters who camp their focus. Before you could just add the amount camped to your armor and it never went away. Now, you spend a focus point and it prevents 5 damage. He had Harby on full focus which would have made her ARM 24, under the new rules she was at ARM 14. I shot once with the bomber at POW 16 and rolled 13pts of damage. He took off 5 and that let 8 get through. Under the old way, it's only 3 pts getting through. I roll the second shot and do 15 and he can only take off 5. Harby dies from 2 shots. Before hand, she would have only taken 10 points total, not 18. It's going to make a huge difference in the game IMO.

So, there ya have it. Game one of MK III (kind of) in the bag and it's a win for Gunnbjorn. Can't wait till June 12th to start playing actual games in this new era of Warmahordes.

Intoducing, the tag team champions of Immoren!

Dozer and Smigg!!

I finally finished this bad boy up and man does it feel good. I really feel like I leveled up in terms of painting. Every little detail on this guy was a challenge. I did more shading, blending and highlighting than I've ever done before and I'm very happy with the results. Usually this is where I give you a run down of what the model can do, but with MK III coming in just a couple of months, there's not really any point. I have no idea what he's going to be able to do in the new edition. Don't really care either. He's one of the reasons I started this faction and a badass, highly detailed model. I never painted anything in 40k that even comes close to the detail on him. Anyway, here are the pretties.

Going to kinda take a break from painting for a little while and recoup my energy since I have like 40 some models to paint and have no idea what they're going to be like in June. I am still currently playing though and have a couple of batreps to post when I find the time.

MK III Musings

Ok. So Privateer Press have announced their new system for Warmachine/Hordes called MK III. What do we know? Well, We know that the core rules will be released for free on June 12th with the books being released on June 29th. We know that they have "rebalanced" all of the units and jacks in the game. There are going to be new battleboxes for each faction except Minions, Mercenaries, and Convergence (insert sad face here). New faction decks also for every faction, since you'll need a shiny new set of cards to go with the shiny new rule set. We also have a couple of the updated rules for the new system.

First up, what they are calling "Power Up" basically all 'Jacks in the game with a functioning cortex (so no convergence or cephalax monstrosities, more on that later) will get a free focus for being in their casters control area. This is kinda big. Now you don't have to choose between running your 'jacks first turn or casting those upkeeps on first turn. Warcasters have much more flexibility than before. This was done in an attempt to balance the game against Hordes since Hordes has a pretty large advantage in the early stages of the game when compared to Warmachine.

Now, I mentioned that Convergence and Cephalax do not benefit from Power Up. That's because they get their own rules. Convergence has always had induction. Power Up + induction would have been broken as hell. Instead, they removed the restriction on induction so you can now induct up to three focus from one 'jack to another. This is amazing.........as it stands right now. We don't know what (if anything) they've done to re-balance the 'jacks and units in the army. So yeah, right now the Corollary is able to hand out 6 focus a turn, but we have no idea if that's going to be true in the new edition. Until that new card is in my hand, I won't know.  Cephalax on the other hand, now power their Monstrosities through damage. They get one focus (up to the usual three) when they take damage. This focus stays on them until they use it. It doesn't go away at the end of the turn. I haven't played against these guys and only know one player locally who plays them, but this sounds like it could work really well for them.

The second major rule is something called "Spirit Bond" This is a Hordes specific rule that was put in to balance out them in the late game where Warmachine has the advantage. This rule lets you gain one additional fury from each of your dead, destroyed, or removed from play Warbeasts. Like I said, this is meant to shore up the Hordes late game since once they start losing beasts, it gets harder and harder to get work done as your Warlock has less to pull fury from. I don't think it'll alleviate all the fury you need late in game, but it will help.

The third major rule is the one I dislike the most. Premeasuring has come to Warmahordes. Yes, you may now pre-measure anything on the table. I think it takes a major skill out of the game. The ability to judge distances is key and without it, you either play more conservative or you end up failing charges or that shot you lined up misses by just a hair. It's a skill I lack completely. So why am I complaining about something that's going to make my life easier? I think it makes the whole game much easier and I'm not sure I'm happy with that. Like everything else though, it remains to be seen. There is the limiting factor of the timed turns that will make it hard to pre-measure a lot of things and still be able to move and attack. We'll just have to wait and see how it will fully impact the game and I may change my opinion on it over time.

That's about all we know for sure. Like usual though, the internet is exploding with pointless speculation and rumor mongering. There's no point in it. I've watched it happen with 40k countless times and it's beyond pointless.

So where does this all leave me? Well, I'm going to continue to play MK II until the new rule set comes out. I'm not, however, going to be buying any new models until MK III releases and we see how things are going to shake out. There's no use purchasing something only to have it not be that good in the new system.

Don't Make Me Angry

Finished up the Dire Troll Mauler for my army. I imagine him kind like the Troll version of the Hulk. He's pretty strong already, but add in his Rage animus which give +3 Str and the fact that he has 5 fury, and he becomes a real monster. He has real value in just about any list. Hell, I even have him in one of my Gunnbjorn lists. Being able to pass around rage to other beasts gives him lots of synergy with just about everything. I mean, come on, who doesn't want to punch harder.

I built him from the newer plastic/resin kit and magnetized him so that I can use it as a bomber (or a blitzer if it ever comes to that) as well. It wasn't terribly hard to do, as most of the magnets went in with no trimming of the joints. Just glue down and done. The back piece was the hardest to figure out. In the end though, I figured out a way to position the front part of the torso a little further forward and now the back pieces slide in and out easily and stay put without anything holding them down.

I'm not sure what happened with his paint, but it turned out sort of undead-ish looking. The grey highlight layer didn't wash like it usually does. Really happy with the leather and the rust though. Also, I'm playing around with the LightRoom app and it's having a huge impact on my pics. Here's a before and after of my Gunnbjorn I took a couple weeks ago.

Before (with minor iOS editing)

After LightRoom editing

As you can tell, it brought the colors back to more true and took out a lot of the washout caused by the lighting. I'd highly recommend it.