Post by gdnerd on May 1, 2017 23:09:48 GMT
Copied over from my dojo thread on Grim1. Lists were as follows:
Trollblood - Doom2
THEME: The Power of Dhunia
Bunker - Steamroller Objective
Hoarluk Doomshaper, Rage of Dhunia - WB: +27
- Troll Axer - PC: 10 (Battlegroup Points Used: 10)
- Mulg the Ancient - PC: 19 (Battlegroup Points Used: 17)
- Dire Troll Mauler - PC: 15
- Earthborn Dire Troll - PC: 15
- Earthborn Dire Troll - PC: 15
- Dire Troll Mauler - PC: 15
Janissa Stonetide - PC: 0
Troll Whelps - 5 Whelps: 0
Troll Whelps - 5 Whelps: 0
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9
- Stone Scribe Elder - PC: 3
SPECIALISTS
Storm Troll - PC: 9
Slag Troll - PC: 10
Slag Troll - PC: 10
Slag Troll - PC: 10
Trollblood - Grim1
THEME: The Power of Dhunia
Armory - Steamroller Objective
Grim Angus - WB: +29
- Trollkin Runebearer - PC: 0
- Dire Troll Bomber - PC: 19
- Troll Axer - PC: 10
- Mountain King - PC: 36 (Battlegroup Points Used: 29)
- Dire Troll Bomber - PC: 19
Janissa Stonetide - PC: 0
Troll Whelps - 5 Whelps: 0
Northkin Shaman - PC: 4
Northkin Shaman - PC: 4
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9
- Stone Scribe Elder - PC: 3
SPECIALISTS
Earthborn Dire Troll - PC: 15
Earthborn Dire Troll - PC: 15
Troll Whelps - 5 Whelps: 4
Dhunian Knot - Leader & 2 Grunts: 6
Unfortunately, due to a quirk in the tournament format, ADR was NOT in effect for the qualifiers but I don't feel like the ADR is a must have for either list, just more of a tool to smooth over certain matchups. Also of note, there was some wacky terrain there, namely these area pieces that had rocks on them that counted as obstructions. I didn't mind too much because it meant easy application of Speed and Armor for my Earthborns whenever I played Doom2.
Round 1 - Cygnar (Entrenched)
What a way to start off the tournament, eh? Nick had Nemo3 and Hayley2. I felt pretty confident he wouldn't drop Nemo3 and risk facing double EBDT. Still, I toyed with the idea of playing Doom2 anyways as he was playing a Heavy Metal variant that was more bricky than Storm Division or the assassination heavy variant. Went with Grim anyways because this is what I built him for.
I won the roll and elected to go first. The terrain split the middle of the board pretty hard for us because we were using huge bases. I decided to put the Mountain King closer to the right flank and dedicate the bombers to the left. He matched my Mountain King with his Hurricane, Hammersmith, Thorn and Charger, and put his Stormclad, second Charger (both under Journeymen) to deal with the Bombers.
Turn one I push out aggressively to project threat onto the side flags and dump everything into the stone. He positions similarly but forgets/decides not to feat (unclear which). On my turn two the Mountain King goes in on the Hurricane and one rounds it (failing to hit strangeways with the kill shot), while my Bombers cleared the flag and give me threat on scenario. His turn two he contests the Bombers on the flag and plinks at them with guns, then sends the Hammersmith in to try and kill the Mountain King (failing), then feats to prevent me for going in for the kill. I kill his contesting Stormclad and charger (Janyssa Rock Hammer for the kill), smack down the Hammersmith with the Mountain King and at this point it's looking pretty over. He engineers an assassination run by landing a TA'd Thorn on Grim and TKing him backwards but I have two transfers and am under Krielstone so the math doesn't add up. I eventually score him out and win.
The not fearing bottom of 1 was a big mistake on his part IMO but in the end it really only sped up the game. The beauty of Grim Feat is that you can use it to ensure the Hurricane can't match the MK threat and effectively time walk them back.
Round 2 - Retribution (Recon)
Hoo boy, another faction that can give you a run for it if you aren't careful. Tucker had Rahn and Vyros2 with Helios which made Doom2 a no brainer. Earth's Blessing is critical for both. On top of that there was a giant thing of shallow water in the center for my Earthborns to use as a home base / springboard.
He won the roll and went first, running up hard. I bricked up in such a way that I had flexibility in dealing with his Griffons wherever they went, while boxing them in sufficiently between whelps and EBDTs so they couldn't be pushed around by Helios. Despite lots of experience versus Vyros2 I forgot about Birds Eye ignoring intervening models and dumped everything into the stone. He decided to go for the shooting assassination (on average dice it forced a tough roll to decide the game) Long story short, I passed the tough roll. He retreated behind a house with reposition and puts all of his Gryphons in the way and feated to keep himself alive.
The next 20 minutes is the most widget use of my life. The judges basically lived at our table that round. Under feat I managed to throw Imperative into Vyros2 to knock him down with a Mauler, three Gryphons with every other heavy except Mulg (careful to not destroy models and give him free moves to get more I the way) so that he can land on Vyros2 with the help of Rush and finish him off for the win.
It was a silly game but it sure was fun to play out.
Round 3 - Circle (The Pit)
Opponent had Krueger2 and Wurmwood. Doom2 was seriously advantaged into both so I dropped him happy with whatever he chose. He ended up settling on Wurmwood.
I ended up going first which suited me just fine. I aggressively positioned threatening him over the first couple of turns. On bottom of two he blinked and dumped everything into hellmouthing Mulg then putting Curse of Shadows in a bid for Megalith to one round him. After the charge, I smited him away with the retaliatory strike which set me up for a major attrition play in the next turn, also clearing the zone and putting scenario pressure on him. From there it led to a series of desperate attempts to contest the zone and piece trade that ended in a pretty resounding near tabling by the end (they had Loki gorax lanyssa and 2 of 3 shifting stones left).
Onto the top 16!
Round 1 - Khador (Incursion)
My opponent had Zerkova (but not in Wall of Steel) and Butcher3 in Winterguard theme (2 units of infantry, one unit of riflemen with rockets, 2 field guns, 4 heavies and joe). I assumed he would drop Zerkova because with PROPER PLAY (this comes up later) Butcher3 can't really kill anything, and I felt his Zerkova list wasn't much of a threat to Doom2 either so I dropped him. My opponent picked Butcher3 feeling that he couldn't crack that much armor with Zerkova. I won the roll off and decided to go first. There was a nice pocket of water and obstruction near the middle flag as a home base for my Earthborns.
I can't remember the play-by-play of the whole match so I'll give the important cliff notes. He sends in his Clamjack to try and force me to risk resources / waste my time and let him hold flags. I end up killing the Clamjack from a conservative position and let him score 2 points. I think I could have allocated a heavy to a far flag that was under-represented to hold off scenario but he was pulling hard to one side with Butcher3 and his heavies so I wanted to make sure I could keep up with the piece trade. He goes up to 2 on his turn positioning to clear the flags again and puts a bunch of winterguard in my way. I feat and use a Mauler plus an EBDT to kill ruin and another heavy, then run my third earthborn to also hold the flag by butcher (first mistake, I place him where it's too easy to yank him in and get the flashing blade clear off, rather than putting him in a more obscure place). Mulg and axer go to contest a flag to the side.
Here's where my big mistake comes into play. In my paranoia over field guns, Doomy cast Earths Blessing as his free animus rather than Arcane Suppression. Butcher goes in with energizer -> yank spell -> flashing blade - > feat. Everything after the energizer would have been in Doomy's Arcane Suppression bubble and he wouldn't be able to afford to kill all my models. He proceeds to kill all the heavies and shoot the resultant whelps with his field gun to clear the flag and gets my contesting models off of the middle flag going to 4.
And the final mistake that put the nail in the coffin, I forget to stand up a knocked down Mauler in charge range of a dog and overtake range of Butcher (sitting on 2 camp). I don't realize this until I finish using Mulg to clear a lane for him. I roll it out anyways to see (swapping Wild Aggression over, Rage, Stone Strength) and fall short by 2 boxes so I don't feel super salty about the miss.
Disappointing to not perform on the day of, but it was gratifying to know with cleaner play I was advantaged in the matchup (much easier to clean up personal play than fix a list or faction in my opinion). I decided to not drop as my flight wasn't until the evening and I could still theoretically make third under proper tie breaks.
Round 2 - Mercenaries (Entrenched)
My opponent is a NorCal local which is painfully hilarious as Dohyou saw fit to force NorCal players to dreamcrush each other in literally every event we played this weekend (something about us being Inbred Hill People, perhaps). He's a VERY experienced ET player, and his other list is Magnus2 warjack spam. I know for sure he's going to drop ET so I drop Grim.
At this point I'm kinda over the event as I'm still recovering from a cold, mildly hung over and generally exhausted (lots of talk about 80s and 90s cartoons/anime past midnight). With the way he deploys there's this choke point between a forest and a house I can plug the mountain king into. He's only got 2 Wreckers, so if they fail to kill it, I basically win on scenario on the spot. Long story short he barely does get it with a boosted Hex Blast (last attack that could kill it), but he ambushes his Drudges on the wrong side so I try and go for it still. Unfortunately on the turn where I need to clear his zone and dominate it with my Bombers, I catch a Wrecker with blast damage (dice off 9) and boxcars it, letting him hyper aggressive into the zone) which cost me two points. I also forget my plan of double mantrapping one turn and boost grim's shot out of paranoia which cost me a third. I end up getting assassinated with 2 CPs to my name, so with slightly better luck and seriously better play I would have pulled it out despite offering the coin flip with the mountain king.
At this point I was 0-2 and my opponent from the first round lost and dropped so I dropped to get some much needed lunch. In the end Sunday was a massive disappointment compared to my play on Friday.
Final Notes:
In the end I was quite pleased with the lists performance in spite of my own. For all the complaining the community does about the current state of the faction, I find it quite amusing to see that I made the Master's top 16 cut at Kingdomcon despite my not so great play. I looked at who I would have played each round in the top 16 assuming I had followed the path of the winner each round and Khador->Cygnar->Circle->Khador was a faction spread I was easily advantaged into on lists alone.
There was a LOT more Ret, Cygnar and CoC than I anticipated at the tournament. Not super worried about Ret but I think the Vyros2 with Helios setup needs some dojoing to figure out whether it's okay or not. Basically, I'm going to alpha to kill his Gryphons and it then becomes a question of whether Helios and Imperatus can kill 5 troll heavies when they hit first. I think Doom2 is advantaged but again this requires some dojoing.
There was a lot less infantry than I expected as well. People have seen the success of newer combined arms setups and have been predicting the meta will go full infantry but the future was not here yet. There were still a lot of bricks that brought tools to punish infantry.
I'm not sure how many SR 2016 tournaments I have left before the switch over, but I'm quite glad to see Incursion go away. The scenario is too hard for a 5 heavy list to not lose turn 3-4 on in a lot of matchups (anything where you're playing the threat projection game). I've been avoiding SR2017 to focus on practice for Kingdomcon but I'm expecting not auto-losing early on will allow me to achieve an attrition advantage and eventually turn the game in my favor by the end of turn 7 / clock.
Grim1 did me proud and he'll be presumptively in my pair going forwards but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop tinkering. I don't think I finished exploring Horgle2, and I think there's some cool stuff possible with Gunnbjorn and Doom3 to play around with. Hopefully results like in this batrep convince people to take up the banner of Doom2 because I'm sick and tired of people saying Trolls are bad.
Trollblood - Doom2
THEME: The Power of Dhunia
Bunker - Steamroller Objective
Hoarluk Doomshaper, Rage of Dhunia - WB: +27
- Troll Axer - PC: 10 (Battlegroup Points Used: 10)
- Mulg the Ancient - PC: 19 (Battlegroup Points Used: 17)
- Dire Troll Mauler - PC: 15
- Earthborn Dire Troll - PC: 15
- Earthborn Dire Troll - PC: 15
- Dire Troll Mauler - PC: 15
Janissa Stonetide - PC: 0
Troll Whelps - 5 Whelps: 0
Troll Whelps - 5 Whelps: 0
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9
- Stone Scribe Elder - PC: 3
SPECIALISTS
Storm Troll - PC: 9
Slag Troll - PC: 10
Slag Troll - PC: 10
Slag Troll - PC: 10
Trollblood - Grim1
THEME: The Power of Dhunia
Armory - Steamroller Objective
Grim Angus - WB: +29
- Trollkin Runebearer - PC: 0
- Dire Troll Bomber - PC: 19
- Troll Axer - PC: 10
- Mountain King - PC: 36 (Battlegroup Points Used: 29)
- Dire Troll Bomber - PC: 19
Janissa Stonetide - PC: 0
Troll Whelps - 5 Whelps: 0
Northkin Shaman - PC: 4
Northkin Shaman - PC: 4
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9
- Stone Scribe Elder - PC: 3
SPECIALISTS
Earthborn Dire Troll - PC: 15
Earthborn Dire Troll - PC: 15
Troll Whelps - 5 Whelps: 4
Dhunian Knot - Leader & 2 Grunts: 6
Unfortunately, due to a quirk in the tournament format, ADR was NOT in effect for the qualifiers but I don't feel like the ADR is a must have for either list, just more of a tool to smooth over certain matchups. Also of note, there was some wacky terrain there, namely these area pieces that had rocks on them that counted as obstructions. I didn't mind too much because it meant easy application of Speed and Armor for my Earthborns whenever I played Doom2.
Round 1 - Cygnar (Entrenched)
What a way to start off the tournament, eh? Nick had Nemo3 and Hayley2. I felt pretty confident he wouldn't drop Nemo3 and risk facing double EBDT. Still, I toyed with the idea of playing Doom2 anyways as he was playing a Heavy Metal variant that was more bricky than Storm Division or the assassination heavy variant. Went with Grim anyways because this is what I built him for.
I won the roll and elected to go first. The terrain split the middle of the board pretty hard for us because we were using huge bases. I decided to put the Mountain King closer to the right flank and dedicate the bombers to the left. He matched my Mountain King with his Hurricane, Hammersmith, Thorn and Charger, and put his Stormclad, second Charger (both under Journeymen) to deal with the Bombers.
Turn one I push out aggressively to project threat onto the side flags and dump everything into the stone. He positions similarly but forgets/decides not to feat (unclear which). On my turn two the Mountain King goes in on the Hurricane and one rounds it (failing to hit strangeways with the kill shot), while my Bombers cleared the flag and give me threat on scenario. His turn two he contests the Bombers on the flag and plinks at them with guns, then sends the Hammersmith in to try and kill the Mountain King (failing), then feats to prevent me for going in for the kill. I kill his contesting Stormclad and charger (Janyssa Rock Hammer for the kill), smack down the Hammersmith with the Mountain King and at this point it's looking pretty over. He engineers an assassination run by landing a TA'd Thorn on Grim and TKing him backwards but I have two transfers and am under Krielstone so the math doesn't add up. I eventually score him out and win.
The not fearing bottom of 1 was a big mistake on his part IMO but in the end it really only sped up the game. The beauty of Grim Feat is that you can use it to ensure the Hurricane can't match the MK threat and effectively time walk them back.
Round 2 - Retribution (Recon)
Hoo boy, another faction that can give you a run for it if you aren't careful. Tucker had Rahn and Vyros2 with Helios which made Doom2 a no brainer. Earth's Blessing is critical for both. On top of that there was a giant thing of shallow water in the center for my Earthborns to use as a home base / springboard.
He won the roll and went first, running up hard. I bricked up in such a way that I had flexibility in dealing with his Griffons wherever they went, while boxing them in sufficiently between whelps and EBDTs so they couldn't be pushed around by Helios. Despite lots of experience versus Vyros2 I forgot about Birds Eye ignoring intervening models and dumped everything into the stone. He decided to go for the shooting assassination (on average dice it forced a tough roll to decide the game) Long story short, I passed the tough roll. He retreated behind a house with reposition and puts all of his Gryphons in the way and feated to keep himself alive.
The next 20 minutes is the most widget use of my life. The judges basically lived at our table that round. Under feat I managed to throw Imperative into Vyros2 to knock him down with a Mauler, three Gryphons with every other heavy except Mulg (careful to not destroy models and give him free moves to get more I the way) so that he can land on Vyros2 with the help of Rush and finish him off for the win.
It was a silly game but it sure was fun to play out.
Round 3 - Circle (The Pit)
Opponent had Krueger2 and Wurmwood. Doom2 was seriously advantaged into both so I dropped him happy with whatever he chose. He ended up settling on Wurmwood.
I ended up going first which suited me just fine. I aggressively positioned threatening him over the first couple of turns. On bottom of two he blinked and dumped everything into hellmouthing Mulg then putting Curse of Shadows in a bid for Megalith to one round him. After the charge, I smited him away with the retaliatory strike which set me up for a major attrition play in the next turn, also clearing the zone and putting scenario pressure on him. From there it led to a series of desperate attempts to contest the zone and piece trade that ended in a pretty resounding near tabling by the end (they had Loki gorax lanyssa and 2 of 3 shifting stones left).
Onto the top 16!
Round 1 - Khador (Incursion)
My opponent had Zerkova (but not in Wall of Steel) and Butcher3 in Winterguard theme (2 units of infantry, one unit of riflemen with rockets, 2 field guns, 4 heavies and joe). I assumed he would drop Zerkova because with PROPER PLAY (this comes up later) Butcher3 can't really kill anything, and I felt his Zerkova list wasn't much of a threat to Doom2 either so I dropped him. My opponent picked Butcher3 feeling that he couldn't crack that much armor with Zerkova. I won the roll off and decided to go first. There was a nice pocket of water and obstruction near the middle flag as a home base for my Earthborns.
I can't remember the play-by-play of the whole match so I'll give the important cliff notes. He sends in his Clamjack to try and force me to risk resources / waste my time and let him hold flags. I end up killing the Clamjack from a conservative position and let him score 2 points. I think I could have allocated a heavy to a far flag that was under-represented to hold off scenario but he was pulling hard to one side with Butcher3 and his heavies so I wanted to make sure I could keep up with the piece trade. He goes up to 2 on his turn positioning to clear the flags again and puts a bunch of winterguard in my way. I feat and use a Mauler plus an EBDT to kill ruin and another heavy, then run my third earthborn to also hold the flag by butcher (first mistake, I place him where it's too easy to yank him in and get the flashing blade clear off, rather than putting him in a more obscure place). Mulg and axer go to contest a flag to the side.
Here's where my big mistake comes into play. In my paranoia over field guns, Doomy cast Earths Blessing as his free animus rather than Arcane Suppression. Butcher goes in with energizer -> yank spell -> flashing blade - > feat. Everything after the energizer would have been in Doomy's Arcane Suppression bubble and he wouldn't be able to afford to kill all my models. He proceeds to kill all the heavies and shoot the resultant whelps with his field gun to clear the flag and gets my contesting models off of the middle flag going to 4.
And the final mistake that put the nail in the coffin, I forget to stand up a knocked down Mauler in charge range of a dog and overtake range of Butcher (sitting on 2 camp). I don't realize this until I finish using Mulg to clear a lane for him. I roll it out anyways to see (swapping Wild Aggression over, Rage, Stone Strength) and fall short by 2 boxes so I don't feel super salty about the miss.
Disappointing to not perform on the day of, but it was gratifying to know with cleaner play I was advantaged in the matchup (much easier to clean up personal play than fix a list or faction in my opinion). I decided to not drop as my flight wasn't until the evening and I could still theoretically make third under proper tie breaks.
Round 2 - Mercenaries (Entrenched)
My opponent is a NorCal local which is painfully hilarious as Dohyou saw fit to force NorCal players to dreamcrush each other in literally every event we played this weekend (something about us being Inbred Hill People, perhaps). He's a VERY experienced ET player, and his other list is Magnus2 warjack spam. I know for sure he's going to drop ET so I drop Grim.
At this point I'm kinda over the event as I'm still recovering from a cold, mildly hung over and generally exhausted (lots of talk about 80s and 90s cartoons/anime past midnight). With the way he deploys there's this choke point between a forest and a house I can plug the mountain king into. He's only got 2 Wreckers, so if they fail to kill it, I basically win on scenario on the spot. Long story short he barely does get it with a boosted Hex Blast (last attack that could kill it), but he ambushes his Drudges on the wrong side so I try and go for it still. Unfortunately on the turn where I need to clear his zone and dominate it with my Bombers, I catch a Wrecker with blast damage (dice off 9) and boxcars it, letting him hyper aggressive into the zone) which cost me two points. I also forget my plan of double mantrapping one turn and boost grim's shot out of paranoia which cost me a third. I end up getting assassinated with 2 CPs to my name, so with slightly better luck and seriously better play I would have pulled it out despite offering the coin flip with the mountain king.
At this point I was 0-2 and my opponent from the first round lost and dropped so I dropped to get some much needed lunch. In the end Sunday was a massive disappointment compared to my play on Friday.
Final Notes:
In the end I was quite pleased with the lists performance in spite of my own. For all the complaining the community does about the current state of the faction, I find it quite amusing to see that I made the Master's top 16 cut at Kingdomcon despite my not so great play. I looked at who I would have played each round in the top 16 assuming I had followed the path of the winner each round and Khador->Cygnar->Circle->Khador was a faction spread I was easily advantaged into on lists alone.
There was a LOT more Ret, Cygnar and CoC than I anticipated at the tournament. Not super worried about Ret but I think the Vyros2 with Helios setup needs some dojoing to figure out whether it's okay or not. Basically, I'm going to alpha to kill his Gryphons and it then becomes a question of whether Helios and Imperatus can kill 5 troll heavies when they hit first. I think Doom2 is advantaged but again this requires some dojoing.
There was a lot less infantry than I expected as well. People have seen the success of newer combined arms setups and have been predicting the meta will go full infantry but the future was not here yet. There were still a lot of bricks that brought tools to punish infantry.
I'm not sure how many SR 2016 tournaments I have left before the switch over, but I'm quite glad to see Incursion go away. The scenario is too hard for a 5 heavy list to not lose turn 3-4 on in a lot of matchups (anything where you're playing the threat projection game). I've been avoiding SR2017 to focus on practice for Kingdomcon but I'm expecting not auto-losing early on will allow me to achieve an attrition advantage and eventually turn the game in my favor by the end of turn 7 / clock.
Grim1 did me proud and he'll be presumptively in my pair going forwards but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop tinkering. I don't think I finished exploring Horgle2, and I think there's some cool stuff possible with Gunnbjorn and Doom3 to play around with. Hopefully results like in this batrep convince people to take up the banner of Doom2 because I'm sick and tired of people saying Trolls are bad.
