Repping Trollbloods at the I5 Team Tournament

Hey all, I figured I'd go a bit more into depth than my facebook post on the Trollbloods Facebook Group for anyone interested. Yesterday was the I5 Team Tournament in Portland Oregon. I went as captain of team Thick and Firm. I'm going to focus on my matches and solo play here over drafting strategy as Dominate For Two is going to have an episode out on the I5 Drafts hopefully later next week.

Here's the lists I brought (surprise surprise):

Trollblood - Doom2
Theme: The Power of Dhunia
3 / 3 Free Cards 75 / 75 Army

Hoarluk Doomshaper, Rage of Dhunia - WB: +27
- Dire Troll Mauler - PC: 15 (Battlegroup Points Used: 15)
- Dire Troll Mauler - PC: 15 (Battlegroup Points Used: 12)
- Earthborn Dire Troll - PC: 14
- Earthborn Dire Troll - PC: 14
- Mulg the Ancient - PC: 22
- Troll Axer - PC: 10

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

Trollblood - Gunnbjorn
Theme: The Power of Dhunia
3 / 3 Free Cards 74 / 75 Army

Captain Gunnbjorn - WB: +28
- Mountain King - PC: 36 (Battlegroup Points Used: 28)
- Dire Troll Bomber - PC: 19
- Dozer & Smigg - PC: 18
- Troll Axer - PC: 10

Janissa Stonetide - PC: 0
Northkin Shaman - PC: 0
Northkin Shaman - PC: 0
Troll Whelps - 5 Whelps: 4
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes - Leader & 3 Grunts: 6
- Stone Scribe Elder - PC: 3
Dhunian Knot - Leader & 2 Grunts: 6

Technically I had a Gobber Chef in both lists due to a weird ruling on points changes from CID between list lock and the actual tournament but I was too lazy to get my hands on it in time so I just played my standard lists. Instead of the Runebearer I have the second Shaman in Gunnbjorn because I made this list before I got sold on the Runebearer.

As a bit of a change to my standard format, I'm going to be adding the lists my opponents played this time. This is mainly because due to the team format I have all the team lists well documented.

Round 1 - Cygnar (Spread the Net)

Theme: Heavy Metal
Commander Adept Nemo - WJ: +30
- Squire - PC: 0
- Firefly - PC: 8 (Battlegroup Points Used: 8)
- Lancer - PC: 10 (Battlegroup Points Used: 10)
- Dynamo - PC: 18 (Battlegroup Points Used: 12)
- Firefly - PC: 8
- Centurion - PC: 17
- Stormclad - PC: 18
Captain Arlan Strangewayes - PC: 4
Journeyman Warcaster - PC: 0
- Firefly - PC: 8
Lieutenant Allison Jakes - PC: 0
- Reliant - PC: 14

We get put into the Gentleman's League of Ordinary Extras and once the drafting is all said and done, I get paired into Tim Baer and his Cygnar. He's playing an interesting brew of Nemo1 and Haley3. Naturally I drop Gunnbjorn and he picks Nemo1. I think this was a mistake and he probably would have gotten more mileage out of Haley. He wins the roll off and goes first, I pick the side that hampers me the least.

After he gets up on the approach, Gunnbjorn devastates Dynamo and a Centurion back some number of inches and D&S falls JUST short of killing the Journeyman Warcaster through Decel and focus. He responds by sending a fully loaded and damage buffed Stormclad into the MK and falls short of killing it, especially after his other pieces are hampered by lack of pathfinder. He runs up a Firefly to engage/contest my rectangular zone. On the crack back I try and clear 2 zones but the MK misses 3/7 attacks and I'm only able to just barely kill the Stormclad with it. I also cripple his Lancer but fail to kill it.

On his turn he tries to shoot down the MK but falls short. I respond by eating a bunch of whelps, killing the firefly engaging the MK and Kill shotting Jakes to death.

At this point he decides going for the assassination with Dynamo is his best bet but without a firefly to bump the damage he just doesn't get there. We call it there as I can walk D+S into his zone and win immediately on my turn. My team ends up winning the round with I believe our only loss due to a really nasty Gravediggers brew that took advantage of Anistasia to get +2 to start and just got pantsed on scenario.

Round 2 - Legion (Pit II)

Theme: Oracles of Annihilation
Absylonia, Daughter of Everblight - WB: +28
- Proteus - PC: 19 (Battlegroup Points Used: 19)
- Carnivean - PC: 19 (Battlegroup Points Used: 9)
- Neraph - PC: 12
- Neraph - PC: 12
- Seraph - PC: 14
- Naga Nightlurker - PC: 8
- Blight Wasps - PC: 8
- Blight Wasps - PC: 8
Blighted Nyss Sorceress & Hellion - PC: 0
The Forsaken - PC: 0
The Forsaken - PC: 0
Blighted Nyss Shepherd - PC: 1
Spell Martyr - PC: 1
Spell Martyr - PC: 1

Round 2 we get a crack at Canuckistan, the only Canadian team who made the trip down (spoilers: they won the whole thing). When drafting is all said and done, I get paired against Lukas who is playing legion. His pair is Vayl2 and Abby2, so I obviously drop Doom2. He wins the roll off and I pick the preferred side which has a nice spot in their zone where my EBDTs can get all 3 terrain bonuses.

Round 1 we both position to make plays on our turn 2s. He doesn't feel great about the top of 2 and nudges forward a bit to prep for a turn 3 alpha (this being a scenario with objectives is actually unhelpful as it lets Abby go after it instead of one of my models. I make a play to score out his zone with an Earthborn but fail to kill the objective or the Sorceress in the zone and don't want to send in a second EBDT to try and make it happen (womp womp) and position to retaliate after his alpha.

His alpha ends up being a bit underwhelming and he only kills Mulg (no crit smite on a carnivean feelsbadman.jpg) and an EBDT but scores 3 points and puts a fair amount of pressure on me. On the flip side he has like... 4 minutes after ending his turn. At this point my goal is to get so much in his face that he can't score the last few points and close it out. Doomy feats, wild aggressions a mauler agitates and hands out buffs, going empty. EBDT kills a neraph plus some blight wasps and kills his objective to give me a bit more of a buffer vs him winning on scenario. A mauler revenge kills the Carnivean and puts his Naga to 1 box. Janyssa tries to finish it off but crit misses the rock hammer. Axer clears a path for the Mauler to charge into a contesting spot in the rightmost zone.

Here's where a screwy bit of the game happens. He takes a free strike and forgets to hit the clock back. We notice later and he says that he should get a minute back. I agree to let him play until -1 min left on the clock (the model counts up once it zeroes out).

The Mauler charges the wrong target and gets a obstruction melee bonus and misses the Seraph. I turn the rest of my attacks onto his other neraph and end up killing it plus a blight wasp (maybe 2?) and contest the zone.

After frenzies are all said and done he has 2 minutes left and try to kill me. He tries to walk his Seraph to avoid free strikes from the mauler and Axer and shoot Doom2 but I think it's close and I call a judge. My opponent gets VERY frustrated over this, which is understandable on short clock. Judge ruled in his favor and we continued. He shoots with the Seraph (max shots) and does a bit, then sends the diminished unit of blight wasps in and clocks himself on the final attack from them.

At this point I don't think he had any attacks he could land on Doomy so I'm not sure if my being a stickler on the one measurement made a big difference but it was pretty obvious that Lukas was upset with me. I hope there is no lasting animus there, my intent was definitely not to cheese him on clock but rather to prevent the shortcuts that people make when tunneling on short clock.

Irregardless our match did not matter because literally the rest of my team lost to their opponents so we lose the round handily. Maple Syrup OP.

Round 3 - Mercs (Outlast)

Theme: Llaelese Resistance
Ashlynn d'Elyse - WJ: +29
- Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator - PC: 4
- Mariner - PC: 14 (Battlegroup Points Used: 14)
- Mariner - PC: 14 (Battlegroup Points Used: 14)
Major Harrison Gibbs - PC: 4
Ragman - PC: 4
Taryn di la Rovissi, Llaelese Gun Mage - PC: 0
Anastasia di Bray - PC: 3
Gastone Crosse - PC: 0
- Mariner - PC: 14
- Mariner - PC: 14
Choir of Menoth - Leader & 3 Grunts: 4
Flameguard Cleansers - Leader & 9 Grunts: 15
- Flameguard Cleanser Officer - PC: 4
Thorn Gun Mages - Leader & 2 Grunts: 9

Round 3 saw Thick and Firm facing off against the Tacoma Honey Badgers. I end up facing off against Nathan's Mercenaries - ET and Ashlynn. I choose Gunnbjorn as the no brainer and he goes Ashlynn. According to my opponent, he was the cause of Ashlynn getting lunge in CID so I prepared myself to get manhandled. He wins the roll off and goes first.

He advances up with his mariner brick but chooses to run the choir instead of casting passage. Big mistake. My bottom of 1 saw me killing the Cleaner Officer and crit devestating 3 mariners 6" back (and feating to ensure I didn't randomly die in retaliation). On his next turn he remembers to passage and jams with his cleansers but decides to hold the feat. I then cast explosivo on myself and repeat this, then use the bomber to kill Gastone and Tarryn. D&S and the MK kill all of the cleansers.

He then decides to make the assassination attempt with his feat and falls short. We rolled it out afterwards as if Ashlynn was through CID by now (veteran leader would have had a both barrels shot hit) and he would have killed me. But alas, the MK hits her once and she dies horribly.

The rest of my team splits the remaining matches and we win the round 3-2. With a decisive victory in round 4 we are still in contention for 2nd or third (no SoS in their tiebreaks).

Round 4 - Circle (Breakdown)

Theme: Call of the Wild
Kaya3 +27
- Druid Wilder - 0
- Scarsfell Griffon - 8
- Scarsfell Griffon - 8
- Scarsfell Griffon - 8
- Scarsfell Griffon - 8
- Razorwing Griffon - 7
- Razorwing Griffon - 7
- Gorax Rager - 7
- Wild Argus - 7
- Pureblood Warpwolf - 17
- Pureblood Warpwolf - 17

Blackclad Wayfarer - 0
Blackclad Wayfarer - 0
Gallows Grove - 2
Shifting Stones - 3
Shifting Stones - 3

I get paired into James and his Circle. He's running Wurmwood and Kaya3. I play Doom2 and feel like this is a pretty much slam dunk matchup.

He wins the roll off and sets up to alpha turn 2 if I'm not careful. I brick around Mulg so he can't Hunter's mark anything and prep to hit him REALLY hard if he's not careful. He puts dodge on everything he can, feats and gets in my face. Here's where things get annoying. Between feat and dodge there are a LOT of 50-50 rolls where you need boosted 9's, 10s, 11s and whenever you fail one the dodges REALLY screw you up. I missed a LOT of these rolls. However I still kill 4 birds and a pureblod and break both his sets of stones. I've taken like ~3 damage on all my beasts in total this game. Things are looking bad for James.

However I made a capital mistake this game in the sense of a lazy measurement. I moved Doomy to somewhere where he couldn't be charged by any of his remaining birds and measured with my tape measure and never corroborated with my opponent. When it went to him, he measured it with sticks and was in. He lands a primaled max synergy Scarsfell on 0 transfer Doomy and POP.  It was in by such a small margin that I don't know whether I bumped Doomy or whether it had been a bad measurement (there was room for him to be out of melee where he'd be in B2B with the krielstone unit which I think bumped him when I moved them afterwards) but since we didn't agree until it was too late it stood and I died.

Really frustrating to end a ~12 hour day that way but it just goes to show that if you aren't careful and clean you're going to lose matches you have no business losing. Thankfully James was an absolute treat to play against and a real cool guy, I hope I can get my revenge on him sometime soon.

To compound my frustration at my throw, our team loses the round 2-3 and we end the day 2-2 as a team. As a small consolation our tiebreaks wouldn't have seen us in top 3 even if we had won the round but it still sucks to know that your minor mistake cost the entire team.

Conclusion

Outside of the frustrating finish, I was happy with my overall play this weekend. I think every round I went second and was still able to pull out wins / advantaged scenarios with a high amount of regularity against a pretty solid caliber of player. Working on tournament stamina and clean play up until the very end is going to be my goal going forwards for the near future, I feel that my ability to bully the board is sufficient that as long as I don't make any crucial errors/mistakes in measurement I'll be in a really good spot.

For any of you interested in the team/draft portion of this, Dominate For Two will be recording an episode on drafting / I5 Recap (all of us were either captains or partially responsible for drafts on 3 separate teams at the event) in the next couple days and hopefully it should be up on museonminis.com by Thursday.

There was some hope I'd make it in on byes to WMW but after Roll Call I'm first alternate and with less than a week's notice I cannot reasonably pay for last minute airfare and lodging on the chance that someone has an emergency and can't make it. Instead I'm going to be dojoing Madrak1 SotN, Madrak1 BoH, and Grim1 PoD between now and whatever the next big event is for me. I'll post dojo threads once I've gotten a feel for the Warlocks and hopefully they'll find their way into my pairings going forwards.

Many thanks / shoutout to the event staff for I5, it ran surprisingly smoothly for a 15 team WTC style event. I think it only ran a little bit less than an hour late which is a freaking miracle (even the tightest small events I've seen run at least 30 behind). Despite 35 games going on at a time, I never saw much of a wait for judging the entire day. VERY happy with how well it was run and definitely reflects positively on my decision to go next year (BTW for those interested, they are expanding to 24 teams for next year).

Until next time!