Trollocks Troll Tournaments - The Cripple Fight!

Game 3 - Jarl vs Zadesh 2
Normally, this would have been the finals, since we are the only two undefeated players, but we will continue to 4 games no matter what.

He has Zadesh 2 with 4 heavies, swordsmen and a krea and some support. He also has Morghul 2 with Zadesh 1 with an archidon, who threatens like 30" with an incorporeal charge. He got my buddy with that one on turn 2 in game 1, so i am aware of it, hehe. I decide that i like Jarl against living beasts, so Jarl vs Zadesh it is.

We play Outlast and i get to go first for the third time in a row!

He has basically no shooting, so i run up super aggressively, especially with my quickened EBDT.

He runs too and spends his fury on putting up his upkeeps. He is actually well within melee threat of the EBDT (we talked afterwards and he figured he would have to take that charge no matter what he did) but he has also placed his Despoiler just outside the Krea Bubble (the Krea was guarding the swordsmen, making them like ARM 18 with IR against shooting). I activate the Knot followed by Jarl and i feat, placing clouds so that i will not be attacked next turn. I Rage the EBDT with my Mauler and then i unload all the shooting i have against the Despoiler and kill it! I also charge in the EBDT against a bug beast and just kill that too. He counter charged with Zadesh, doing a big chink of damage, but i spawned a whelp and ate it to heal.

He has a guy that can grant eyeless sight to one model, and apparently he had a potential slam from the gladiator that could have followed up to a knocked down Jarl if he rolled high enough, but i accidentally played excellent and repositioned a Bomber to be in the way, so that is off the table. Basically he uses his beasts to kill the EBDT, and he walks up and engages one Bomber with his swordsmen, but missing the attack. Jarls feat is very strong here, since i got an alpha strike, and then suffered almost no retaliation.

I go for a repeat performance. Jarl disengages the Bomber from the swordsmen with shooting. Then i unload the Bombers against his Gladiator and i roll insanely well, almost killing it. I Rage the Swamp troll who charges it and punches it to death, and even gets a shot on to the remaining bug beast. He now has one heavy, a Krea and after the Slag, Janissa and Mauler are done he has only a couple of swordsmen. I think i managed to clear one zone and score 1 point here.

He has no real chance at attrition, but he goes for scenario instead. I am not entirely sure on how every one activated, but he kills the Swamp and the one whelp that was contesting the other zone and puts up clouds to block charges from my Bombers to his heavy. He contests and scores to 1-2 to him.

I check that the bug beast is actually within 8" of the closest Bomber so i Rage and quicken that and walk up and try to murder the bug. This time the dice gods are not with me. Effective DEF 13 from me being in the cloud is more than enough to prevent me from one rounding it. Now i start seeing the danger. If he can dominate again, i will be in serious trouble. Therefore i run my second bomber in to the zone to contest too. I have an errant whelp behind a wall in another part of the zone, and it will be hard for him to kill both heaves AND the whelp AND any whelps that i can spawn from my beasts (still have 1 left). My other stuff focuses on finishing off his remaining support staff and be in threat range of his beast if he goes for the Bombers.

He feats (right, he has a feat!) and zadesh kills first the errant whelp and then heavily damages the one bomber. I do NOT spawn a whelp. Then the bug beast starts punching the damaged bomber and kill it (straight dice damage). He starts in on the second one and actually kill that too! However, i spawn a whelp on the first attack that is in the zone but outside melee of the beast. I thus contest.

On my turn i take the boring way out. I COULD try and have Jarl charge his caster, but instead i run jarl to the other zone and dominate to 3. He has a single beast handler left who can contest after this turn, and since i remember that his feat gives defensive strike, i just posture in front of his beast and let the whelp keep contesting. He has no way to kill me, and as long as i can kill the beast handler next turn, i win by scenario. That is what happens.


This is why i hate this scenario, and will be glad that it is changes in SR2017. I had 3 heavies and 2 lights against his one heavy and caster. Still i had to feed him 2 of my heavies for free just so that i could spawn a whelp and keep him from scoring 2 more points. The rush to 5 points forces this and it is a bit boring to have to give up 40 points of army to not lose a game you are stomping. Still, i saw the danger in time and acted correctly and it payed off. If the game had been just a bit closer he could have forced me in to an "you have to kill me now or lose" scenario that i do not want to be in. It is very possible that i could have done it, but that is definitely not my style if i can prevent it.



Game 4 - Jarl vs Goreshade 3
Since most ppl have already played each other, the pairings get very weird here. I have 3 wins but get to play against my local friend who has only 1. He has Goreshade 3 and Aiakos 2, both in infernal machine. I actually played by Grissel 1 against his Goreshade last monday during practice and that did not go well for me. I griped about Jarl being a much better choice then, and since Aiakos can out threaten Grissel, i do not want to play that either. Hence i drop Jarl and he drops Goreshade. He has death jack, 2 seethers, carrion thralls, mech thralls with brutes and soul hunters (one max and one min). We play entrenched and i do NOT get to go first this time.

He gets occultation on his soul hunters and runs the max unit in a swarm in the middle of the table. The min unit goes on my east flank more carefully. Carrions run up an a swarm too and his jacks stay centrally behind his infantry.

I decide that i want to try and do work on turn 1. Jarl kills 3 carrion thralls with 2 shots and a magic bullet. My bombers scatter blasts toward the soul hunters and i actually kill one or two. EBDT runs up centrally behind a wall to be threatening. Mauler stays toward my zone if he ambushes in Mcthralls there. I do not claim super much of the board, but i have the slag and EBDT who can threaten his jacks if they go up, and the swamp can run to contest his zone in a pinch. His feat could stationary a couple of things, but he would not have any attacks to follow up with, so i am not worried.

He decides not to go in very hard. I think two sould unders charges my ARM 22 ebdt and do very little. I think he gets 1-2 back with mockery. His jacks posture a bit, and his carrions swarm out between me and his zone. he brings in the mechs and fans out near and in my zone. He does not walk in to his zone, so he will not be scoring.

I feat to cover LoS to the jacks, and get EBDT animus on jarl just in case. Then i clear out my zone to score it with jarl and the Mauler and janissa. one bomber and swamp unload on to his carrions and kill all but 1. the EBDT and Slag troll kill soul hunters. the second bomber helped with the McThralls. I score 1 and he will not do anything significant the next turn due to the feat.

He does indeed not do anything significant. He COULD have switched infernal machine to a seether and walked up to the slag and maybe killed that BUT they HAVE to run or charge. He can not see a single thing, so he has to run. Hilarious! I think one Brute thrall gets on to my Mauler and does a few points, and he dings up my objective a bit, but basically he does nothing. He does move in to his zone to score though i think.

I decide that the only way i lose now is on assassination, so i get EBDT animus on Jarl again and plinks some more mcthralls. I will not score this turn, so Jarl moves back a bit and is surrounded by the stone for good measure. The Mauler Rages the EBDT. I think i shoot down a seether with Bombers and slag (there was a soul hunter blocking the way for hyper agressive) and i punch the other to death with the EBDT. I think i run in the swamp to contest his zone. Attrition is looking very good for me now.

He kills the swamp with goreshade, but it takes a lot of focus. a whelp remains afterwards, and i do not think he gets it this turn, or he managed to spray it with a WWsiren. Death Jack goes in against the EBDT (i think, i really wish i had pics...) and probably kills it. He will die to my counter punch though. His Mcthralls do almost nothing again. I think i ran a Knot to block landing space around my Mauler, and there is a wall nearby that restricts him further.

On my turn i think i kill every model he has left. Then he does nothing for a turn, and i can finish the game on scenario by killing his objective and score his zone and my zone since casters do not contest.


For the record, i know there was a key whelp moment in this game too, but i can not remember it for sure. probably it was the remaining whelp after the swamp troll who contested or something.




Musings
So, i went 4-0 and won this cool custom made Steam Roller glass, along with eternal honor and glory



Also, i scored 419 army points and 16 control points in 4 games. Two things became abundantly clear. Trolls are very strong against the casters who are not top tier. We have only 2 garbage casters and Jarl and Grissel felt more than strong enough against this field of casters. Against the super top tier things are much harder, but our "middle of the pack" trounces the middle of the pack in many many factions.

The second, and probably more applicable thing is: Whelps FTW. I have said it before and i have said it again: Whelps are one of the core strengths of trollbloods. Not only are they among the best fury management that still exists, but the fact that they can plop up during the opponents turn means that they work much like counter charge, but since they are so small, and do not make attacks, ppl are even more prone to forgetting about them. They saved my hide on scenario and they blocked lanes which made attrition very favorable. They also allowed me to force ~20 times in a single turn with no frenzy afterwards. 1 unit is a must in PoD, but 2 units are even better imo, especially if you are not facing world class players, and most of us only do that occasionally. The ppl in my meta know how they work and hate them with the heat of a thousand burning suns, but they still work very well. They are the reason why we can fight cheap jack spam. They work best against low volume of attacks, and forcing even a cheap jack to kill a 0.8pt whelp rather than contributing is a major victory in the long run. If you do not already play 2 units in PoD, try them out at least. There are so many things they can help you with. Score a zone (especially in SR2017), contest, block lanes, manage fury, be a beacon to shoot at to place a template etc etc etc.

This time i played Janissa in both lists. She is OK for sure, especially when free, but i get so damned frustrated that the hill can not be placed b2b with a model. This means she will most likely only protect your caster every other turn at best, and what is worse, she CAN NOT protect the caster while it is trying to score a flag. I find this restriction needlessly harsh, and i am thinking about going back to Shamans more often, even if i can only get 1. The concealment it can provide is way easier to apply, even though it is slightly worse than a hill, and the spray is at least comparable to the rock hammer. some times better and some times worse. tectonic shift is a uniquely good ability, but it is so rarely applicable. The -2 DEF though is also hard to apply, but can help with some key things, especially against Legion, who has high DEF fast beasts who often come in to my lines and are then annoyingly hard to remove. -2 DEF makes removing them WAY easier.


So, that is it for this time. Thanks for reading, and please ask any questions below.

/T

My regular Khadoran opponent hates whelps more than anything in the faction, except maybe Calandra. They are awesome, and I love double whelps in POD.

I made alot of pgrissel lists on warroom. I think she is a good alternative to edoomy.

In my list I play an Axer and an Storm troll instead of an bomber.

I know u are not a big fan of the axer but in my opinion the possibility of the +2" threat helps alot in the psychological game.

Do you think this list is able to handle jackspam and the edoomy matchup?

Game 2 is up now

As can be seen from my game 2, the Grissel list could piece trade favorably against khador jacks. Beasts are more expensive, but a 7 point Night troll is cheaper than a 10 point marauder/crusader/what ever. The key is that she allows your lights to initiate piece trades by killing a heavy. Then you still have your real heavy hitters left and only give up 7-10 points worth of light beasts.

Our heavies also trade well with many other heavies. A 15 point beast is more expensive than a 10 point budget jack, but our beasts kill such a jack with ease, while it takes 2 of those to kill a beast. It is possible to end up winning the trades because the opponent runs out of steam. Whelps are key here in many respects. They allow for fury management after you force like 20 times in a round AND they can pop up to block lanes and landing zones and thus completely overthrow the opponents plans. Even good players will make mistakes that you can exploit, and the jack spam lists suffer the worst from the sudden appearance of a whelp, since they usually have very few attacks. Many many times have i had opponents use a heavy warjack to kill a whelp and nothing else. If he uses 10-12 points to kill you 0.8 point whelp, the numbers start to swing in your favor after a while