Pretty quick turnaround on this tourney. Just 2 weeks after the last one, the Gopher hosted a casual, off-schedule tourney. The format was 35 points, single list, and it had to be a current ADR caster so you got to bring 20 points of specialists. Since Gunnbjorn is now on the ADR, I thought it was the perfect time to bust out my trolls to the tourney scene. Here was my list:
Gunnbjorn
Dire Troll Mauler
Slag Troll
Storm Troll
Runebearer
Pyg Burrowers (max)
Croak Raiders (max)
Northkin Fire Eaters
Specialists
Storm troll
Kriel Stone bearer and Stone Scribes
Dire Troll Bomber
There were 8 people and we were going to do three rounds. First round I hit the same guy I started with last time and the reigning store champ. He brought a Ret assassination list and used it like a scalpel. I went down at the top of turn 3. I'm not sure I'll ever beat this guy. I could have subbed in the Storm troll for the slag and the bomber for the mauler, but honestly, I'm not sure it would have made much difference.
Game 2 was against a new Khador player. He brought Sorscha to the party with Beast-09, a Devastator, some winterguard, Kovnik Joe, and some snipers. Not sure what his plan was, but I had him from the first turn. I took first turn, and ran everything up and sent the dygmies under ground. He moved his stuff up and put up some defensive things. I put snipe on the croaks and laid waste to half the winter guard and moved the fire eaters up behind his lines and took out his mortar and Joe. The dygmies pop up and charge both his jacks and surround both their bases. I didn't have any hope to damage them, just wanted to tie them up. Runebearer put snipe on the storm troll and I electrocuted his snipers off the board. His turn 2 he tried to free himself of the dygmies by spraying them with the winter guard, that only took out one. Next his Devastator trampled over them and his dice failed him amazingly and he only took out two. Beast had to go next and was able to clear his own base, but basically wasted his turn doing it. 20 points of 'jacks to kill 6pts of Digmys, I'll take that. Lastly he moved Sorscha up (into what would become a terrible position) and feated which froze most everyone in their tracks. I say most since the fire eaters that he ignored were immune to cold. Top of three, I move my fire eaters around and put a few wounds (less than I'd like) on Sorscha, Gunny activates, places snipe on the slag troll (the croak raiders were all frozen) and guided fire. He lit Sorscha up with a bazooka shot and then the slag troll finished her off. I don't blame my opponent for moving her like he did, he had no way of knowing the fire eaters were immune (he didn't ask and I didn't tell) he was simply making the best move he thought he had. Honestly though, the digmys tying up both his jacks for a turn made a huge difference.
Game 3 was against yet another Khador player, though with an entirely different list. He had Vlad1, the Great bears unit and 7 Berserkers. Holy shit that's a lot of jacks. This game actually played out a lot better than I thought it would. It ended up being a grind and had it not been for a couple of bad fire rolls on my part, Vlad would have died before the beserker took Gunny's head off. In the end, I took out 4 of the 7 and had the other 3 hurt badly.
So, I finished the day 1-2 and I'll take that. No prize for best painted this time since half of my stuff still isn't done.
That leads me to my next little issue. I've put myself in a position I swore I'd never do again. I went and bought my entire army without painting it. Now I'm suffering from major painting ADD and nothing is getting finished. Especially when I look at my transports and see all those primed and unpainted models. It's just a bit overwhelming. Nothing to do but barrel through it I guess, it's just going to be a while. Going to tackle the beasts first (in fact I've already got the mauler done and the bomber isn't far behind) then move on to the more tedious units and all 20 friggin croak raiders.
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Tourney number 2
Played in my second steamroller event this past weekend. It was 50 points and there was bonuses for being fully painted so I took my Convergence since it's painted and I still don't have all my trolls anyway. I also have no earthly clue how to play either troll list on the clock, gotta get more practice for that. It was a two list event and here's what I took:
Syntherion
Assimilator
Cipher
Corollary
Diffuser
Galvanizer
Prime Axiom
Reflex Servitors
Optifex Directive
TEP
ADO
Pretty heavy list designed to break armor. I usually play it into other 'jack heavy lists.
My other list was:
Lucant
Corollary
Inverter x2
Max Reciprocators
Max Obstructors
Enigma Foundry x2
Optifex Directive
Reflex Servitors
Attunement Servitors
My main scenario list. Designed to run into zones, sit there and hold the rest of the game.
My first game was against the best player at the store. He was playing a skorne list with a mix of Nhilators and Immortals with Molik Kharn and another big non-elephant elephant. This was the three flags scenario so that took my synth list out of the running right there as he is terrible at that one. Played Lucant, and did reasonably well. He ended up winning on scenario because I was all jammed up in the middle and he was able to take the right side flag and I had nothing to challenge it with. Good game that probably wasn't as close as it felt for me.
Second game was against trolls. He was taking a pGrissel list with warders, champions, a blitzer, mauler, pyre and Impaler. Also he had the pig solo Maximus. Seeing as how it was likely to be an attrition game for both sides I picked Lucant again. Not a lot happened. I stuck into the zone, he stuck into the zone, neither one of us could clear the other and we ran down the round timer. It went to the third tiebreak before he was declared the winner.
We only played the two rounds due to there not being enough players. So, finished 0-2. I did however walk away with some store credit for being fully painted, so it wasn't a total loss.
Syntherion
Assimilator
Cipher
Corollary
Diffuser
Galvanizer
Prime Axiom
Reflex Servitors
Optifex Directive
TEP
ADO
Pretty heavy list designed to break armor. I usually play it into other 'jack heavy lists.
My other list was:
Lucant
Corollary
Inverter x2
Max Reciprocators
Max Obstructors
Enigma Foundry x2
Optifex Directive
Reflex Servitors
Attunement Servitors
My main scenario list. Designed to run into zones, sit there and hold the rest of the game.
My first game was against the best player at the store. He was playing a skorne list with a mix of Nhilators and Immortals with Molik Kharn and another big non-elephant elephant. This was the three flags scenario so that took my synth list out of the running right there as he is terrible at that one. Played Lucant, and did reasonably well. He ended up winning on scenario because I was all jammed up in the middle and he was able to take the right side flag and I had nothing to challenge it with. Good game that probably wasn't as close as it felt for me.
Second game was against trolls. He was taking a pGrissel list with warders, champions, a blitzer, mauler, pyre and Impaler. Also he had the pig solo Maximus. Seeing as how it was likely to be an attrition game for both sides I picked Lucant again. Not a lot happened. I stuck into the zone, he stuck into the zone, neither one of us could clear the other and we ran down the round timer. It went to the third tiebreak before he was declared the winner.
We only played the two rounds due to there not being enough players. So, finished 0-2. I did however walk away with some store credit for being fully painted, so it wasn't a total loss.
Monday, February 22, 2016
When All Else Fails, Get a Bigger Gun
Here's my take on Captain Gunnbjorn. He has to be one of the least loved and under-represented casters for our faction. Why? Well because he doesn't have a stupid overpowered theme list or any particular synergy with troll melee troops. That and his feat is somewhat on the weak side. So why do I take him? Well, for one he looks bad ass. Two, when people don't see something, they usually don't know how to counter it. He can use that to his advantage....some, a good player will know what his limitations are and push them. I think he works just fine. His ability to give out snipe to some pretty hearty ranged units (croak raiders) and his spell guided fire which gives boosted attack and damage rolls to his battle group, makes him straight deadly in a fire fight. His feat, like I mentioned, is not really the greatest in the world compared to the others. It's not bad either, just has to be used defensively. It gives friendly faction models cover, immunity to knockdown and blast damage. Used correctly and your guys will be +4 DEF and won't get knocked down if they have to make (and pass) a tough check. He really does have a hard time cracking heavy armor though. If you're facing down a gargantuan or a colossal or hell, anything from Khador, it's going to be an uphill battle. Also, since he doesn't really have much in the way of melee, when you get closed in on, it's pretty much done. Proper positioning and good use of snipe should make short work of anything that can really hurt you before they can touch you.
I posted this the other day, but here's the list I'm building toward:
Captain Gunnbjorn
Runebearer
Dozer and Smigg
Dire Troll Bomber
Troll Impaler
Dhunian Knot
2x Max Croak Raiders
2x Feral Geist
2x Northkin Fire Eaters
It's just a straight up shoot the shit out of people list. The Fire Eaters are there to help with stealth, the geists are there since I had extra points and didn't know what else to put in there. They may come in handy every know and then, but I don't expect a lot of return out of them. The croaks are monsters under snipe and can easily take an armor 18 heavy with one unit of them. ARM 20, gets a little sketchy though.
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Doing a little catching up.
It seems I've fallen behind on my "battle reports" if you can call them that. So, let's recap the last few weeks.
I had the opportunity to play a few small points games just to finish getting my feet wet. I played against Menoth twice and a mercs list once. I lost all three. This is just the latest in a long line of disappointing low point games. I seem to have no luck or skill in building lists suited for these matchups. I've said it before in other posts, and I'll mention it again, I just don't feel like the game is balanced at low point levels.
Last weeks game was a little more interesting, as my Gunnbjorn list made it's (proxied) debut.
Here's what I took
Captain Gunnbjorn
Rune Bearer
Dire Troll Bomber
Dozer and Smigg
Troll Impaler
Feral Geist x2
Max Croak Raiders x2
Dhunian Knot
Northkin Fire Eaters x2
His list: (as much as I can remember)
Goreshade 3
Defiler
Aiakos
Kraken
Darragh Wrathe
Scrap Thralls x3
Max Blackbane's Ghost Raiders
Max Soulhunters
That leaves 3 points unaccounted for, I just can't remember what it was.
I win the roll for first turn and take it. He puts his Kraken to the left of center. I deploy the knot, the beasts and gunny in the middle of my zone. He sets up the rest of his army with the Blackbanes going on the left, the soulhunters on the right and Goreshade directly in the middle. My advance deploy I put the fire eaters up in the center toward the zone and cover each flank with the croaks. My plan is to use the fire eaters to clear the zone in front, juggle snipe around on the croaks and use them to hurt his flanks. I have no real answer for the Kraken, I was just hoping to tie it up some.
My turn 1: I run everything but Gunny. He walks and puts snipe on the right side croaks, and puts a wall in front of the fire eaters for cover.
His turn 1: He moves up the Kraken and takes a pot shot at my fire eaters, misses, but still manages to take 3 points off the pyg buddy. Blackbanes run and spread out (explosivo makes my weapons magical AOE's and could put the hurt on them), Soul Hunters move up (and into a nice little line) and finally Goreshade himself moves up and into the zone casts occultation on the hunters and camps 4 focus.
This is where it gets interesting.
My turn 2: I see an opening to his caster and by all means I'm going to take it. First I move the fire eaters and try a trick they can do and light themselves on fire. They get +5 ARM against fire and boosted damage if they're on fire. So I have the pyg in the group do his charge move and use his assault ability to breathe fire on the other two guys. Roll to hit, hit. Roll for damage...... double 6's. Enough to kill him. Damn. And then I failed my tough roll. The other guy fared better and he managed to charge and assault the hunters and take out 3.Next, Gunny goes and casts snipe on the left flank croak raiders. The knot activates and casts puppet master on the croaks. Croaks, if you don't know already, have a two pronged way of attacking. One or more of them toss an oil gourd and gives the unit boosted damage rolls. If you throw the gourd, you can't use your flame darts however, and that makes perfect sense to me. Anyway. The gourd is 2 inches shorter range than the darts so one guy moves up, and hits dead on Goreshade. Now he's primed for damage. The next three shots I took were some of the hottest dice I've ever rolled. I threw a 15, a 15 and a 11 at dice -9. I used puppet master to reroll that last number as it wouldn't have been enough to kill him and get a 16. Goreshade dead, Troll victory!
So. Couple things about this game. I am not in anyway going to discount the amount of luck I had in that shooting round, or the mistake by my opponent to not hide his caster a little better. I'm really liking this list, but I still don't really know what it can do when the game gets down to the latter rounds. It's going to require some more testing, but it looks good so far. The Knot is an awesome support piece, and the Croaks under snipe are pretty heavy on the damage even on average dice. I didn't even get a chance to try Dozer or the Bomber but they look like a good pairing on paper.
I had the opportunity to play a few small points games just to finish getting my feet wet. I played against Menoth twice and a mercs list once. I lost all three. This is just the latest in a long line of disappointing low point games. I seem to have no luck or skill in building lists suited for these matchups. I've said it before in other posts, and I'll mention it again, I just don't feel like the game is balanced at low point levels.
Last weeks game was a little more interesting, as my Gunnbjorn list made it's (proxied) debut.
Here's what I took
Captain Gunnbjorn
Rune Bearer
Dire Troll Bomber
Dozer and Smigg
Troll Impaler
Feral Geist x2
Max Croak Raiders x2
Dhunian Knot
Northkin Fire Eaters x2
His list: (as much as I can remember)
Goreshade 3
Defiler
Aiakos
Kraken
Darragh Wrathe
Scrap Thralls x3
Max Blackbane's Ghost Raiders
Max Soulhunters
That leaves 3 points unaccounted for, I just can't remember what it was.
I win the roll for first turn and take it. He puts his Kraken to the left of center. I deploy the knot, the beasts and gunny in the middle of my zone. He sets up the rest of his army with the Blackbanes going on the left, the soulhunters on the right and Goreshade directly in the middle. My advance deploy I put the fire eaters up in the center toward the zone and cover each flank with the croaks. My plan is to use the fire eaters to clear the zone in front, juggle snipe around on the croaks and use them to hurt his flanks. I have no real answer for the Kraken, I was just hoping to tie it up some.
My turn 1: I run everything but Gunny. He walks and puts snipe on the right side croaks, and puts a wall in front of the fire eaters for cover.
His turn 1: He moves up the Kraken and takes a pot shot at my fire eaters, misses, but still manages to take 3 points off the pyg buddy. Blackbanes run and spread out (explosivo makes my weapons magical AOE's and could put the hurt on them), Soul Hunters move up (and into a nice little line) and finally Goreshade himself moves up and into the zone casts occultation on the hunters and camps 4 focus.
This is where it gets interesting.
My turn 2: I see an opening to his caster and by all means I'm going to take it. First I move the fire eaters and try a trick they can do and light themselves on fire. They get +5 ARM against fire and boosted damage if they're on fire. So I have the pyg in the group do his charge move and use his assault ability to breathe fire on the other two guys. Roll to hit, hit. Roll for damage...... double 6's. Enough to kill him. Damn. And then I failed my tough roll. The other guy fared better and he managed to charge and assault the hunters and take out 3.Next, Gunny goes and casts snipe on the left flank croak raiders. The knot activates and casts puppet master on the croaks. Croaks, if you don't know already, have a two pronged way of attacking. One or more of them toss an oil gourd and gives the unit boosted damage rolls. If you throw the gourd, you can't use your flame darts however, and that makes perfect sense to me. Anyway. The gourd is 2 inches shorter range than the darts so one guy moves up, and hits dead on Goreshade. Now he's primed for damage. The next three shots I took were some of the hottest dice I've ever rolled. I threw a 15, a 15 and a 11 at dice -9. I used puppet master to reroll that last number as it wouldn't have been enough to kill him and get a 16. Goreshade dead, Troll victory!
So. Couple things about this game. I am not in anyway going to discount the amount of luck I had in that shooting round, or the mistake by my opponent to not hide his caster a little better. I'm really liking this list, but I still don't really know what it can do when the game gets down to the latter rounds. It's going to require some more testing, but it looks good so far. The Knot is an awesome support piece, and the Croaks under snipe are pretty heavy on the damage even on average dice. I didn't even get a chance to try Dozer or the Bomber but they look like a good pairing on paper.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Rock On!
Finished up work on my Krielstone Bearer and I'm actually pretty happy with the results. These guys find a home in just about any Trolls list. The unit has multiple functions. It acts as a fury vault for your warlock, it provides an armor bump to your guys and with the unit attachment (which only costs 1 point, so why not) you can negate stealth, give +1 strength or makes your beasts and units immune to continuous effects for a round. All this goes down inside their radius which is determined by how much fury you put on them. At max size (full unit plus UA) you can have 7 fury on them and the area affected will be 13". I like these guys a lot and will be running them in all but one list I'm currently building.
I'm currently working on the other 5 guys in the unit and will be posting them up as soon as they're done.
I'm currently working on the other 5 guys in the unit and will be posting them up as soon as they're done.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Thunder Struck
Here's the first of my 3 Storm Trolls for my EE list. Yes, I'm still building it cause I haven't had a chance to see how it's going to effect me in my meta.
Storm trolls are a light warbeast that have an electric shot that leaps to d3 targets within four inches of the original target. It's animus lets it give immunity to electricity and electroleap to a melee weapon. Like the rest of the lights it's RAT is kinda on the low side, but the d3 leaps hit automatically. Hitting something then having it arc to some high DEF low ARM solo is a thing of beauty cause then you hit auto and can boost the damage. It's one of the trolls included in the Doomshaper alternate box and it's easy to see why.
Again, another model that I'm rather pleased with how he turned out. This faction is really testing my meager skills as a painter and it's going to have a positive end result.
This may be my last set for a while. I'm moving on to the Krielstone bearers unit and that will take me a while to do.
Storm trolls are a light warbeast that have an electric shot that leaps to d3 targets within four inches of the original target. It's animus lets it give immunity to electricity and electroleap to a melee weapon. Like the rest of the lights it's RAT is kinda on the low side, but the d3 leaps hit automatically. Hitting something then having it arc to some high DEF low ARM solo is a thing of beauty cause then you hit auto and can boost the damage. It's one of the trolls included in the Doomshaper alternate box and it's easy to see why.
Again, another model that I'm rather pleased with how he turned out. This faction is really testing my meager skills as a painter and it's going to have a positive end result.
This may be my last set for a while. I'm moving on to the Krielstone bearers unit and that will take me a while to do.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
This one may stick with you for a while
My first of two troll Impalers. Another member of the battlebox group, the Impaler is a decent all around light beast with a great animus. The ability to give itself +4 RNG or for your warlock to give out that same bonus is awesome. It's spear can do a fair bit of damage on it's own. He may find a home in my Gunnbjorn list, but seeing how Gunny has snipe in his spell list already, probably not. Another for the "paint it pretty, but probably won't use" pile.
Great model to paint and I really got to stretch my blending and shading skills to new limits on him. Like most of the trolls its just detail piled upon detail. I didn't think I'd ever get him done. Now to finish his twin.
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