Post by gdnerd on Oct 10, 2017 6:01:49 GMT
Hey all, I posted the cliff notes on Facebook this weekend but I figured I'd put a more full accounting here. I went to Crucible 6.5 this last weekend partially to visit some friends in the Florida meta but also in a last ditch attempt to farm points to get into Warmachine Weekend. Unfortunately attendance was a little on the low side (this was the second Crucible this year as they move to a new time of year for their con) so attendance was just under 32 (powers of two effect the points payout of qualifier events). They broke things into two heats of 16 and 14 with 8 players from each making it to day two. I ran the following lists unchanged from Phoenix:
Doomy Power of Dhunia
Doom2 - +27
- Mulg - 19
- EBDT - 15
- EBDT - 15
- Mauler - 15
- Mauler - 15
- Axer - 10
Max Krielstone + UA - 10
Janyssa - Free
Whelps - Free
Whelps - Free
Total - 74/75
Gunnbjorn Power Of Dhunia
Gunnbjorn - +27
- Mountain King - 36
- Bomber - 19
- D+S - 18
- Axer - 10
Min Stone + UA - 9
Knot - 6
Janyssa - Free
Shaman - Free
Shaman - Free
Whelps - 4
Total - 74/75
At this point I feel pretty comfortable with this pair. I don't really WANT to see CoC Cygnar or Cryx as it's hard to get reps into those matchups in NorCal but I think it's a game for all of those. Technically I could have fit Gobber Chefs but I was too lazy / busy to make a trip to the store to pick one up the week leading up to this.
As a precursor to this, I'm going to warn y'all that I got like no sleep this weekend. This was my first time traveling more than 1 time zone for an event and I never got more than like 3-4 hours each night. I don't think it effected my play (not going to try and take away from my opponents this weekend) but it definitely has effected my memory so I'm going to give the notes on what I remember as being standouts from the games.
Day 1 Round One - Menoth (Standoff)
My opponent was running Amon and Testament, I picked Doomshaper, but realistically I think this pair dumpsters pretty much any common PoM pairing at the moment. He picks amon. He's running 4 crusaders one devout and the rest dervishes. I win the roll to go first. Top of two I proceed to kill everything but a devout and 2 dervishes and his support and he concedes on the spot. If he had made more judicious use of Enliven he would have been in a better spot but it's hard to play a game into a list whose walk threat is greater than your charge threat.
Day 1 Round 2 - Cryx (Pit II?)
My opponent had standard Ghost Fleet and Coven Dark Host double cav. I drop Gunnbjorn knowing it has to be coven for him. I win the roll off which is HUGE because it means he has to feat bottom of 1 instead of top of 2. Bottom of two he gets in my face with cav and banes to try and force a scenario lockout and parks Egregore behind a house thinking he was safe. I proceed to pull off a really nasty mcguiver assassination which involves using Fury Vault on the stone to pull fury off of it so its fury stat is low enough to remove stealth from Egregore but not remove incorporeal from the wraith engine AND not block a landing zone for my mountain king to bulldoze assault a bane to have assault + kill shot angle on Egregore. D+S Bulldoze charges to where he can dual attack + kill shot onto one of the witches hiding behind the clouds, and the bomber kills him with his first shot. This is one of those games where without reps with gunnbjorn understanding all the weird angles you can get I would have had 0 chance to win out. Hell of a match.
Day 1 Round 3 - Cryx (Recon II)
Round 3 I roll Brandon Andrews who is a monster of a Cryx player. He's rocking Ghost Fleet and Skarre Dark Host. We joke about list chickening but I drop Gunnbjorn because I want to see how playable the matchup is. We go back and forth for a bit and I get some poke attrition advantage down on his bane knights and stalkers. He eventually decides to hit the go button. I think he can only land one wraith engine and one stalker but it turns out he could get the second around the house in the middle and leap over the house into exact melee. I could have spawned a whelp to block the landing zone when his first stalker was going but didn't decide to spend the time to measure it out and check. I grind out some scenario points then concede. No Mountain King means no dead Wraith Engines (well you can send in both heavies to kill one but you're going to lose at that point unless you killed pretty much everything else they have). The matchup was a LOT more playable than I had previously thought and I feel pretty good about it going forwards (ESPECIALLY if you win the roll-off).
Day 1 Round 4 - Retribution (Outlast II)
Round 4 is against a particularly shark-y ex-local of mine, Adam Stewart. Due to the fact that the top 8 make day 2 we figure at this point on SoS we are guaranteed in no matter what happens so we have a pretty laid back game. He has Kaelyssa teched as a cryx answer and Vyros2. I drop Doom2 knowing he's going to play Vyros. He positions in such a way that I have things set up to kill all 5 of his Gryphons before he can really do anything. Unfortunately I spike too hard and end up killing 4 instead which opens me up to an Imperatus assassination. It all hinges on Helios killing an Earthborn in his first couple attacks and clearing whichever whelps get spawned in Imperatus' path. Due to missing the charge and rolling snakes on his second initial damage roll it takes all of helios' attacks to clear the Earthborn and he has no way of clearing the whelps outside of artificer and magister spells into melee. Both fail and he concedes as I could land an earthborn AND a mauler on Vyros, one with Wild Aggression for good measure.
End of day one I take third in my heat (tied on SoS with second place but I had like 15 less CPs). I go out with a bunch of the locals to get Sushi and then stay up till 4am because I haven't acclimated to EST. I get woken up at 730 with the siren call of a text to go to iHop and Breakfast of Champions my way back to wakefullness. With 2 Cryx in the top 16 I keep Gunnbjorn unlike Phoenix.
Day 2 Round 1 - Cryx (Outlast II)
I get paired against the second Cryx player at the event, Nick Herting. He took second in my heat the day before - solid player, cool guy. He was running the exact same pair as Brandon and as such we played the same matchup. I could have played Doomy and tried to list chicken it but I wanted more reps with Gunny to get a better picture. I win the roll-off and feel VERY good about going first. He's REALLY afraid of losing his wraith engines and stalkers and plays them super far back. By the time he sends them in I've basically killed all of his bane warriors and bane knights. He engineers a way to chip the stone down to the point where the MK isn't in the aura and kills the Mountain King between a Wraith Engine and a Stalker. At this point I'm playing to try and clock him out because he's got 5 minutes left. Eventually I concede on top of 6 because I misunderstood the death clock rules.
He had 22 seconds left and I thought he could spend the minimum 15 seconds on his bottom of 6, then clock on bottom of 7 and win due to being up on points, but that only works if he'd be up by 5 points. 100% my fault for not knowing the rules, if I had shipped clock it would have been physically impossible for him to win, he wouldn't have had the time to kill Gunny behind a wall or score enough points. Not as an excuse but as an acknowledgement of my lack of experience - I pretty much never go past turn 4 in my games with trolls, either forcing a concession or losing by that point and didn't know how the turn 7 stuff worked. Frustrating to lose on lack of rules knowledge, but good to know going forwards for future play.
Day 2 Round 2 - Grymkin (The Pit II)
Opponent had Wanderer and Child. I dropped Gunny because his Child list wasn't as meaty as the other one's I've seen and I felt Gunnbjorn was way better into dreamer. With good triage and feat timing I table him until he concedes. He ended with like eilish a crabbit and half a unit of dread rots left. Guided Fire really overpowers Star Crossed. I didn't play super clean here (I blame sleep deprivation), and screwed up math a LOT on the turn where he used the -1 to hit and damage arcana and I think it aggravated my opponent, but I always acquiesced to him whenever he called me on something so hopefully there's no bad feelings there.
Day 2 Round 3 - Mercenaries (Spread the Net)
My opponent (Clint I believe?) was playing Magnus2 and Ossrum. I dropped Gunnbjorn. He achieved a scenario advantage and a crushed flank with his feat while I crushed my own feat. I felt pretty behind on scenario despite being up on attrition (I think I only lost my northkin shamans at this point), so I engineer an assassination on him. I mess up and don't rush the mountain king to trample punch magnus so I have to shoot with the MK instead. It's still an assassination on average dice before puppet strings but I fall short by one box and concede. Really cool guy and fun game, wish I had played it a bit cleaner and closed it out though.
Due to how behind schedule they are, they end the tournament there for everyone but the final table. I end the day 1-2 and the weekend 4-3. That was 2-0 with Doomshaper and 2-3 with Gunnbjorn. I only earn .3 Wildcard points which AFAIK won't change my standings and it seems my run ends on that. All 3 matches were lost / severely hurt by unforced errors on my part which while frustrating just goes to show me that my list pair is correct and I just need to work on personal play to take things further. IMO it shows that even pre buffs, Trolls can easily win major events off of the back of even/advantaged matchups the entire way up.
Going Forwards
Before this weekend I was salivating at the opportunity of dumping Gunnbjorn but I might keep things unchanged TBH. PoM is looking to be on an upswing on the back of ToM and Gunnbjorn just styles on him. CoC is starting to experiment with its infantry theme too which I can't imagine being a bad matchup for Explosivo (and a time walk vs TEPs is nice too). Grim1 PoD might be a candidate if I feel Cryx is still going strong and I want a better Dark Host / Khador match in the pair. Madrak1 SotN is also something that interests me but IDK if it's good enough into Ghost Fleet to justify dropping gunny/grim for it (and you can pry Doom2 from my cold dead hands). I also kinda want to see how good my dumb MK Double War Wagon Ragnor Kriel Company is into things Doom2 doesn't want to deal with.
For the next few weeks I'm going to still be playing this exact pair because I'm already list locked for the I5 Team Tournament for the 21st, but after that I'll be tinkering.
Doomy Power of Dhunia
Doom2 - +27
- Mulg - 19
- EBDT - 15
- EBDT - 15
- Mauler - 15
- Mauler - 15
- Axer - 10
Max Krielstone + UA - 10
Janyssa - Free
Whelps - Free
Whelps - Free
Total - 74/75
Gunnbjorn Power Of Dhunia
Gunnbjorn - +27
- Mountain King - 36
- Bomber - 19
- D+S - 18
- Axer - 10
Min Stone + UA - 9
Knot - 6
Janyssa - Free
Shaman - Free
Shaman - Free
Whelps - 4
Total - 74/75
At this point I feel pretty comfortable with this pair. I don't really WANT to see CoC Cygnar or Cryx as it's hard to get reps into those matchups in NorCal but I think it's a game for all of those. Technically I could have fit Gobber Chefs but I was too lazy / busy to make a trip to the store to pick one up the week leading up to this.
As a precursor to this, I'm going to warn y'all that I got like no sleep this weekend. This was my first time traveling more than 1 time zone for an event and I never got more than like 3-4 hours each night. I don't think it effected my play (not going to try and take away from my opponents this weekend) but it definitely has effected my memory so I'm going to give the notes on what I remember as being standouts from the games.
Day 1 Round One - Menoth (Standoff)
My opponent was running Amon and Testament, I picked Doomshaper, but realistically I think this pair dumpsters pretty much any common PoM pairing at the moment. He picks amon. He's running 4 crusaders one devout and the rest dervishes. I win the roll to go first. Top of two I proceed to kill everything but a devout and 2 dervishes and his support and he concedes on the spot. If he had made more judicious use of Enliven he would have been in a better spot but it's hard to play a game into a list whose walk threat is greater than your charge threat.
Day 1 Round 2 - Cryx (Pit II?)
My opponent had standard Ghost Fleet and Coven Dark Host double cav. I drop Gunnbjorn knowing it has to be coven for him. I win the roll off which is HUGE because it means he has to feat bottom of 1 instead of top of 2. Bottom of two he gets in my face with cav and banes to try and force a scenario lockout and parks Egregore behind a house thinking he was safe. I proceed to pull off a really nasty mcguiver assassination which involves using Fury Vault on the stone to pull fury off of it so its fury stat is low enough to remove stealth from Egregore but not remove incorporeal from the wraith engine AND not block a landing zone for my mountain king to bulldoze assault a bane to have assault + kill shot angle on Egregore. D+S Bulldoze charges to where he can dual attack + kill shot onto one of the witches hiding behind the clouds, and the bomber kills him with his first shot. This is one of those games where without reps with gunnbjorn understanding all the weird angles you can get I would have had 0 chance to win out. Hell of a match.
Day 1 Round 3 - Cryx (Recon II)
Round 3 I roll Brandon Andrews who is a monster of a Cryx player. He's rocking Ghost Fleet and Skarre Dark Host. We joke about list chickening but I drop Gunnbjorn because I want to see how playable the matchup is. We go back and forth for a bit and I get some poke attrition advantage down on his bane knights and stalkers. He eventually decides to hit the go button. I think he can only land one wraith engine and one stalker but it turns out he could get the second around the house in the middle and leap over the house into exact melee. I could have spawned a whelp to block the landing zone when his first stalker was going but didn't decide to spend the time to measure it out and check. I grind out some scenario points then concede. No Mountain King means no dead Wraith Engines (well you can send in both heavies to kill one but you're going to lose at that point unless you killed pretty much everything else they have). The matchup was a LOT more playable than I had previously thought and I feel pretty good about it going forwards (ESPECIALLY if you win the roll-off).
Day 1 Round 4 - Retribution (Outlast II)
Round 4 is against a particularly shark-y ex-local of mine, Adam Stewart. Due to the fact that the top 8 make day 2 we figure at this point on SoS we are guaranteed in no matter what happens so we have a pretty laid back game. He has Kaelyssa teched as a cryx answer and Vyros2. I drop Doom2 knowing he's going to play Vyros. He positions in such a way that I have things set up to kill all 5 of his Gryphons before he can really do anything. Unfortunately I spike too hard and end up killing 4 instead which opens me up to an Imperatus assassination. It all hinges on Helios killing an Earthborn in his first couple attacks and clearing whichever whelps get spawned in Imperatus' path. Due to missing the charge and rolling snakes on his second initial damage roll it takes all of helios' attacks to clear the Earthborn and he has no way of clearing the whelps outside of artificer and magister spells into melee. Both fail and he concedes as I could land an earthborn AND a mauler on Vyros, one with Wild Aggression for good measure.
End of day one I take third in my heat (tied on SoS with second place but I had like 15 less CPs). I go out with a bunch of the locals to get Sushi and then stay up till 4am because I haven't acclimated to EST. I get woken up at 730 with the siren call of a text to go to iHop and Breakfast of Champions my way back to wakefullness. With 2 Cryx in the top 16 I keep Gunnbjorn unlike Phoenix.
Day 2 Round 1 - Cryx (Outlast II)
I get paired against the second Cryx player at the event, Nick Herting. He took second in my heat the day before - solid player, cool guy. He was running the exact same pair as Brandon and as such we played the same matchup. I could have played Doomy and tried to list chicken it but I wanted more reps with Gunny to get a better picture. I win the roll-off and feel VERY good about going first. He's REALLY afraid of losing his wraith engines and stalkers and plays them super far back. By the time he sends them in I've basically killed all of his bane warriors and bane knights. He engineers a way to chip the stone down to the point where the MK isn't in the aura and kills the Mountain King between a Wraith Engine and a Stalker. At this point I'm playing to try and clock him out because he's got 5 minutes left. Eventually I concede on top of 6 because I misunderstood the death clock rules.
He had 22 seconds left and I thought he could spend the minimum 15 seconds on his bottom of 6, then clock on bottom of 7 and win due to being up on points, but that only works if he'd be up by 5 points. 100% my fault for not knowing the rules, if I had shipped clock it would have been physically impossible for him to win, he wouldn't have had the time to kill Gunny behind a wall or score enough points. Not as an excuse but as an acknowledgement of my lack of experience - I pretty much never go past turn 4 in my games with trolls, either forcing a concession or losing by that point and didn't know how the turn 7 stuff worked. Frustrating to lose on lack of rules knowledge, but good to know going forwards for future play.
Day 2 Round 2 - Grymkin (The Pit II)
Opponent had Wanderer and Child. I dropped Gunny because his Child list wasn't as meaty as the other one's I've seen and I felt Gunnbjorn was way better into dreamer. With good triage and feat timing I table him until he concedes. He ended with like eilish a crabbit and half a unit of dread rots left. Guided Fire really overpowers Star Crossed. I didn't play super clean here (I blame sleep deprivation), and screwed up math a LOT on the turn where he used the -1 to hit and damage arcana and I think it aggravated my opponent, but I always acquiesced to him whenever he called me on something so hopefully there's no bad feelings there.
Day 2 Round 3 - Mercenaries (Spread the Net)
My opponent (Clint I believe?) was playing Magnus2 and Ossrum. I dropped Gunnbjorn. He achieved a scenario advantage and a crushed flank with his feat while I crushed my own feat. I felt pretty behind on scenario despite being up on attrition (I think I only lost my northkin shamans at this point), so I engineer an assassination on him. I mess up and don't rush the mountain king to trample punch magnus so I have to shoot with the MK instead. It's still an assassination on average dice before puppet strings but I fall short by one box and concede. Really cool guy and fun game, wish I had played it a bit cleaner and closed it out though.
Due to how behind schedule they are, they end the tournament there for everyone but the final table. I end the day 1-2 and the weekend 4-3. That was 2-0 with Doomshaper and 2-3 with Gunnbjorn. I only earn .3 Wildcard points which AFAIK won't change my standings and it seems my run ends on that. All 3 matches were lost / severely hurt by unforced errors on my part which while frustrating just goes to show me that my list pair is correct and I just need to work on personal play to take things further. IMO it shows that even pre buffs, Trolls can easily win major events off of the back of even/advantaged matchups the entire way up.
Going Forwards
Before this weekend I was salivating at the opportunity of dumping Gunnbjorn but I might keep things unchanged TBH. PoM is looking to be on an upswing on the back of ToM and Gunnbjorn just styles on him. CoC is starting to experiment with its infantry theme too which I can't imagine being a bad matchup for Explosivo (and a time walk vs TEPs is nice too). Grim1 PoD might be a candidate if I feel Cryx is still going strong and I want a better Dark Host / Khador match in the pair. Madrak1 SotN is also something that interests me but IDK if it's good enough into Ghost Fleet to justify dropping gunny/grim for it (and you can pry Doom2 from my cold dead hands). I also kinda want to see how good my dumb MK Double War Wagon Ragnor Kriel Company is into things Doom2 doesn't want to deal with.
For the next few weeks I'm going to still be playing this exact pair because I'm already list locked for the I5 Team Tournament for the 21st, but after that I'll be tinkering.
