While I make my list selection sound fairly rational here, it was by no means as clearly thought out at the time. I didn't finally decide on a caster until a few minutes before tournament start, and ended up handing in my registration sheet as the first wave of player assignments was being called. The lists and battle reports are after the break.
There were three factors that went into deciding on my lists for the Tieranny tournament. The first was that I had come to the conclusion that I didn't want to play Borka any more that day after five grueling rounds in Hardcore. However, due to my late entry and a desire to keep my carrying tray light I reduced Borka's Family Reunion list from Hardcore down to 35pts. by dropping the War Wagon and a few other elements.
The second was that I was under the erroneous belief that the tournament games during the weekend were counting for Iron Arena points. Not wanting to pass up a chance for free stuff, I was set on trying to maximize my points by playing fully painted armies. One of the reasons I bring Trollbloods to big events like this is that they are one of three factions I can play Hardcore with due to the painting requirement. However, while I like many of the casters in Trollbloods, I only have a few of them fully painted; I've spent more time painting infantry, beasts and support in this faction than the others.
Finally, the third factor was an observation of the NoVA Open meta from Hardcore. In Hardcore, there had been nearly a dozen Colossals on the fields of play, and I wanted to make sure I was good to go if I met an Arcane Shielded Stormwall. Consequently, I was self-limited in picking my casters from both the full painted and "hits like a truck" categories. I settled quickly on Epic Madrak as my main caster. He is almost as durable as Borka, but he's much more offensively powerful due to the spell Blood Fury and his feat. His list follows:
Epic Madrak
Dire Troll Mauler
Pyre Troll
Bouncer
Fennblades (6)
Horthol
Long Riders (5)
I'll note here that I'm not posting the Borka list because I ended up not running it at all during this tournament. Therefore I don't have any photos or other notes even indicating what was in it.
My deployment strategy in this one was to keep eMadrak surrounded by squishy and expendable Fennblades at all times, and get him up to the wall as soon as possible. This strategy worked remarkably well, as eStryker's tier list fails to give any form of Pathfinder to it's models. Thus Dan would be forced to try and work around either side of the wall to deliver an assassination with eStryker. As the photo shows, I also decided to focus on my left flank. Dan had deployed first, and thus I was going to use the wall to deny one of his Stormblade units easy access to my models. This effectively forced Dan to play down by several points for a chunk of the game, and dictated the order of battle in my favor.
The highlight of this game was when Dan tried to screen with his Stormblades opposite my Long Riders, in between the forest and the wall. Apparently he wasn't familiar with impact attacks, or Bull Rush, and my cavalry quickly smashed the unit to pieces with only a few commited to dying from the inevitable counter charge by Dan's two Stormclads. I positioned Horthol to one side of the forest behind the Long Riders to set up a Bull Rush for my following turn. Dan couldn't have been more predictable in his response. He cast Polarity Shield on one one of the Stormclads, and threw it into the Longriders, and positioned the other on the corner of the wall. While the first Stormclad managed to gut two of the Long Riders, the second failed to do significant damage to my list. This was enough to execute my plan the following turn.
I juggled Blood Fury on Horthol and the Long Riders. Horthol's slam knocked down both Stormclads, and his follow up attack nearly wrecked it under Blood Fury. The Stormclad was quickly dispatched by one of the Long Riders, and the second dealt significant damage. I then feated, and proceeded to smash the second jack, Laddermore and most of the remaining Stormblades.
By this point, Dan was down his jacks and nearly all of his infantry, leaving only Stryker as the threatening model. Dan tarried at this point, and finally feated eStryker and charged the Long Riders. He overboosted eStryker with 3 dice, and one shotted all but one member of the Long Riders, as well as dismounting Horthol. He had left himself at only 7 health however, and decided to retreat under his feat and try to survive another turn. I moved up to position the battlegroup on the flank, killed the last of the Stormblades, and pulled the remaining Fennblades back around eMadrak to give him models to sacrifice. I also left eMadrak with 2 fury for transfers, anticipating that between four attacks mitigated, eStryker wouldn't be able to finish the caster in a single run.
It turns out this planning was all for nought. The following turn, Dan only had eStryker remaining. His clock was starting to run low on time, and it became clear as he did the math that he would only get one run on eMadrak, at best. He decided to go all in on an assassination attempt, throwing three dice to boost eStryker. After rolling a 17 on the damage roll, eStryker was dead, and I had my first complete tabling of the weekend.
We both had all star models this game - for him it was his necrosurgeon, who repeatedly filled my defended zone with new mechanithralls. At the same time, they ran fruitlessly against my Bouncer and a pair of Fennblades, the latter of whom managed to make tough check after tough check without ever conceding the zone. On the flip side, I easily butchered his Bloodgorgers and Gerlak, putting eMadrak's throwing arm to good use each round. This would allow me to threaten his control zone every round after the third and lead to two control points before the end of the game. However, these all star models, nor the control points would be the deciding factors.
My opponent's inexperience with the game helped me considerably. He spent a fair amount of time attempting to get Chiller off on the Dire Troll Mauler, only to have a shot miss or redirect by Shield Guard to the Bouncer. Eventually he lost both Pistol Wraiths and was left with Venethrax facing down a couple Long Riders, Horthol, and eMadrak himself. Rather than face them down however, he spent at least three turns attempting to flee from my army with one of the premier melee casters of Cryx. After Horthol slammed Venetrax out of the control zone, I was able to jam him for multiple rounds as eMadrak manuevered into position with his Dire Troll Mauler. With Rage up, eMadrak charged and easily cut down Venethrax with his P+S 18 axe to end the game.
It turns out lVlad really doesn't like terrain, and Khador cavalry doesn't like forests. With the obviously superior advantage in speed, my opponent feated in turn 2, and engaged with my forces just outside of my own deployment zone. The lost inches on the forest however, were just enough that models from both units of his cavalry fell short on charges, and were unable to take advantage of lVlad's feat. Furthermore, one of those units was sent in directly on eMadrak himself, who proceeded to sacrifice a pair of Fennblades to the powerful charge attacks.
My opponent had overextended well over half his force and only managed to kill a couple Long Riders and Fennblades for his effort. My following turns became a attrition heavy slug fest. Eventually I was able to unseat the pair of Drakhuns, and wreck Drago as he attempted to block the Dire Troll Mauler from reaching lVlad, who was stuck hiding in the woods. My opponent did a good job of threatening the scenario, as I had to keep my Battlegroup committed to clearing my defended control zone, but not before he scored two control points. The third control point would never come though.
The Trollbloods were able to eventually kill every member of lVlad's army, and were free to chase down lVlad. My opponent wanted to avoid losing to scenario however, and kept his warcaster in his own control zone. Eventually Horthol and a Long Rider were able to slow lVlad down with slams, and eMadrak followed up with his own charge, boosted by the Rage animus. A single swing later and my third game was in the bag.
At this point, it was 2am on Saturday morning. This tournament had been scheduled to end at midnight to allow for the start of the Midnight Madness event. The organizers decided to call an end, which left me and one other person with undefeated records. The tie break went to him on Strength of Schedule, leaving me with second place overall. As I had already qualified with my Hardcore win, the outcome of the tournament wasn't really important. I was very satisfied with my undefeated record of 8 games thus far in the weekend. Now it was time to grab some sleep and prepare for the following day's battles...
0 comments:
Post a Comment