Arcaux
Junior Strategist
Posts: 724
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Post by Arcaux on Jan 28, 2018 13:19:20 GMT
After playing 20+ games with Madrak1 against a variety of factions and opponent skill levels my list has come back around to nearly where I started. I've tried a lot of the suggestions in this thread and from other sources. List I've settled on now (for the moment).. lol. Madrak1 - Band of Heroes 75/75 Rune Bearer Glacier King Fell Caller Hero Trollkin Champion Hero Max Stone and Elder Max Champs, Skaldi and 2 Sorcerers Max Fennblades and UA Min Warders B. Can I suggest moving the second Sorcerer. 2 on champs is gimmicky and almost certainly less effective that sticking him on the fennblades.
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Post by allinontrolls on Jan 28, 2018 20:08:44 GMT
I considered a gargantuan with madrak1. Currently playing in boh for mirror and cryx.
Can't decide between glacier and mk. Or old school bomber + mauler.
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Post by Bomma on Jan 28, 2018 21:07:17 GMT
Good idea on moving the sorcerer to the fennblades, I just had in him there after having 3 points spare. Probably better than just being another 5 wounds for the champs.
What I found with the beast load out is with lights it was a good idea, impaler for snipe and bouncers for shield guards, when it came down to the meaty part of the game they just weren't scary enough or could do enough work.
Bomber and mauler combo ended up using to much fury to reave back when they were doing their thing, a light with rage would be amazing..?
Chose GK for the concealment and the range shots.
B.
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gdnerd
Junior Strategist
Posts: 656
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Post by gdnerd on Jan 29, 2018 4:40:02 GMT
Played Madrak to 1-2 today at LVO, beating Mike Puryear's Harbinger on assassination and losing to both Keith Christianson's Gaspy3 9 slayers and Bret Fogel Maelok Meat Mountain on bottom of 7 short clock CP breaks. Combined with my bye I either got 4th or 5th (I lost to 1st and 2nd respectively). I learned a lot about the list and my shortcomings and I'll post a full breakdown here and on DF2 soon but my flight boards in 5.
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gdnerd
Junior Strategist
Posts: 656
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Post by gdnerd on Jan 29, 2018 21:34:09 GMT
Okay so here we go.
I flew into Vegas around 9am on Saturday. I didn't plan on playing in either of the qualifiers (I don't like playing when I'm not testing or there aren't stakes, and felt squeamish about dream crushing. I watched a few games but mainly helped run Iron Arena and did table prep - Tyson and Will (the guys who run LVO's Warmachine stuff) are super amazing dudes who put their heart and soul into supporting the community and I felt it was important to make their jobs easier wherever I could.
When the dust settled from the two masters heats, there was a pretty decent faction spread in the top 16. I believe everyone but Retribution and Grymkin were represented and AFAIK no faction had more than two players. I was in particular worried about the two Cygnar players - both were VERY good and both were playing Nemo3. Deciding to keep my Madrak1 list as is, I ended up changing my standard Kolgrima build to a melee anti-cygnar option by swapping the bombers and knot for 2x EBDT, a Storm Troll, Eilish and Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew (Spoilers: I never played against Cygnar the entire weekend).
Round 1
Round 1 I get paired into Keith Christianson who is pilotng Cryx with Gaspy3 9 Slayers in Black Industries and Skarre1 double Bane Riders in Dark Host. I'm expecting him to drop Skarre but either way I'm going to drop Madrak1. He ends up surprising me with Gaspy3. He wins the roll-off which is a bit of a problem because his threat matches/beats mine is a lot of cases. I pick the board edge that least restricts the Glacier King's positioning. There is a large, oddly shaped obstruction in the middle of the board, and my plan is to use it to triage the slayers from getting on the Glacier King, so I deploy the king on the opposite side of the obstruction laterally from the majority of his Slayers. He presents an aggressive initial opening where he is just out of charge range of everything except for a single bear if I give it speed instead of strength with the stone. Instead of pulling the trigger I unpack out of walk threat and feat, using the Glacier King to push and stationary some of his stuff back. He does some repairs and modifies his positioning to prepare for the post-feat turn.
I go in with the Bears to contest his zone and start doing some damage while the GK pokes and sets up for the following turn. Here I make a mistake with the champs and put them couched to the left and slightly behind the Glacier King which causes jam issues on following turns. The Fire Eaters just run to engage all of the slayers on the non-GK flank so they can't contest my zone / flank me. He retaliates by killing all but 1 fire eater, killing all but one of the bears (but not the handlers) and jamming the GK in. At this point the game is 2-1 my favor.
Here's where the Champs positioning becomes a problem - they need to go after the GK but for the Bear Handler to confer Gang to his last bear he needs the GK to go first, but the GK needs the Battle Bear and Handler to go first so he can get to where he wants to be. I end up having a milquetoast turn with the bears to empower the GK and Champs, Jackhammer the Slayer and bonejack in the King's way currently so he can walk to punch more Slayers. I get greedy and don't boost my first punch onto the Slayer expecting me to hit the 7 and miss either 3-4 of my attacks before I finally land, but manage to kill it still. Additionally, my greed got me to try and blood boon off of one of the ogryn repair dudes but I fail to kill (needing a 4?). The Champs, jammed in could only land 3 on the remaining 2 slayers on this flank and cripple (but not kill) both. I go to 3-1.
Keith sets in motion a plan to kill the stone, GK and all my hopes of winning. Unfortunately, he provokes a free strike from the Glacier King on the only repair guy who can fix a key slayer and things go off the rails. Additionally it takes his entire stack to Hellfire down the Krielstone through it's Self Sac targets so he can't mobility to shift other Slayers over to assist or Calamity the king. He ends up dong just under half to the King and contests my zone. He clears the circle zone on his strong flank but can't walk Gaspy3 into it so doesn't score. Scenario stays 3-1.
I run all of my Krielstone unit to jam in his heavy / contest the circle zone in prep for his scenario catchup play. At this point I'm trying to see if I can manage to crank up the scenario pressure so he has to do sub-optimal plays and let me keep my attritional advantage. Champions and King clear the 2 remaining slayers and the objective but can't clear the zone, so I go to 4-1.
Keith kills the GK on this turn with one slayer and sets up another to retaliate when the champs go in. He clears and holds the circle zone with Gaspy this turn starting the catch-up at 4-2. He also puts bodies such that it's pretty difficult for me to contest the circle zone.
From here the game gets walked down pretty clearly with the game ending bottom of 7 with him 5-4 on CPs. I used the last of my champions and Madrak to try and kill the last slayer in his zone and left it on 9 boxes. If I had killed that I would have won on AP tiebreaks but TBH I put myself in the do-or-die situation because of mistakes I made in the early game that hampered the effectiveness of my troops. I needed to play more forward on bottom of 1 and offered trample threat to him on bears/champs so I could pressure him on turn two. Additionally I needed to be more conscious of how the GK was blocking in other pieces on the board and played a bit more wide to compensate.
Keith was a super cool dude and played incredibly (he won the entire event). He only made two mistakes in our entire game - taking the free strike on the repairman and repairing arms over the cortex on his Slayer so he could power up / get focus. Just as sharp as you'd expect from hearing him on podcasts and a real pleasure to play against. Hopefully I'm able to give him a tougher time next game.
In general a theme of this weekend is that I'm struggling to play the long game with any reliability, especially against players of Keith's caliber. Historically I've been playing games where I pull the trigger all in turn two or three with no consideration for scenario and haven't been practicing skills necessary for playing to the board and turns. It's an entirely different skillset and getting put up against top tier talent really exposed this. I'm looking forward to growing in that regard over the course of the 2018 season but it's going to be a long and bumpy road. Hopefully I get my act together in time for Kingdomcon (my next big event) in April.
I'll post a breakdown of my game with Bret and Mike later but this took longer to write than I thought.
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gdnerd
Junior Strategist
Posts: 656
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Post by gdnerd on Jan 30, 2018 3:32:54 GMT
Round 2
Due to a winners bracket player dropping (one of my local buddies had lethal food poisoning), there was a pair up / down situation. I ended up being paired up into the excellent Bret Fogel. We had been bantering about how good our lists were into each other's before pairings went down so I was excited to prove him wrong (whoops).
I was a little shaky on all the new stuff that Minions had gotten but felt a good enough understanding for a quick skim before the game. Big mistake. I misinterpreted Maeloks feat as being like Denny2's and not like Testament's (which by the way would be the most broken feat of all time). That played a big part of my downfall this game.
Once again I lost the roll-off and went second. Funnily enough I think this list can play pretty decently on scenario if given the opportunity. It's fast enough to hit most of the contesting models they toe in and the Glacier King can bump out things with either his gun or bulldoze pretty handily. It does require being cognizant of what you can get away with without losing on attrition though and it's something I want to develop as a skill more.
In this case by the time my bottom of 2 rolls around all I need to do to score 2 CPs and deny him any is to push/kill a Thrullg hiding behind an obstruction, and kill 2-3 gators and a half dead bone swarm. I decide to pull the trigger on the plan, feat and hold back the rest of my forces anticipating his feat (which, since I'm expecting the feat to maintain the incorporeal for a round, I'm holding back my champs w/ sorcerer for magical weapons). He decides to hold his feat in response, kill the last of my Fire Eaters and present threat. I use my Bears and a champ to clear the right zone again, and the Glacier King to kill his Wrassler and a gator or two, going to three. I should have sent my champions in more aggressively as well but I hold them back still anticipating a feat that does not exist. At this point I'm feeling pretty happy because I've eliminated pretty much anything that can one round the Glacier King and the bulk of his surviving forces are on the other flanks.
Here's my other MASSIVE mistake. I give him an angle to Mortality my Krielstone, which then allows him to snack away the Krielstone Bearer with no chance to Self Sacrifice. Things go downhill from here. My entire flank collapses across a couple of turns and he is able to repeatedly contest the zone I took with the Glacier King. By the end of the game it's 5-4 his favor. I could have cleared the zone but I had 19 seconds left and even with that I think he still wins on AP tiebreaks at that point.
Bret came into the matchup knowing more and playing cleaner/better than I did and he definitely deserved the win. Really great opponent and there is nothing bad I can say about my time versus him.
Again, my game came down to details in the long term game plan and insufficiently protecting the Krielstone. These are both things I'm looking to resolve in my play going forwards because it's clearly an issue. I think some combination of playing practice on short clock (50 mins or less) and giving my opponents a CP handicap to simulate extra scenario pressure might be in order.
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gdnerd
Junior Strategist
Posts: 656
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Post by gdnerd on Jan 30, 2018 3:54:36 GMT
Round 3
Bye
Round 4
Final round I got to play against Mike Puryear. This was really cool for me because I started the game with Menoth and had spent a lot of time on the PP Faction Forums where he was a constructive force. I think his participation there has shaped my level of participation here on Lormahordes trying to encourage people to play competitive warmachine and advance Trollbloods as a faction.
He had Harbinger and High Reclaimer. I expected Harbinger because High Reclaimer really doesn't like a bunch of heavies with snacking, and I like the tools of Madrak into Harbinger. Once again my opponent wins the roll-off to go first and I get to pick the side I want. I'm not going to go deep into this game because it devolved into sillyness real quick. For one turn he walked Harbinger up past the wall bunker she had (presumably to maximize feat value) and only had one Shield Guard. I decided to pull the trigger on an assassination between the Glacier King and a Madrak Ricochet and fall short by 2 boxes. I think I should have started fighting first to force some martyrdoms before he realized what was going on but alas. He returns to his bunker behind the wall, healing back up to 6. At this point I could have played for attrition and had a time of it but my flight was soon approaching so I decided to go for the second run even with the wall. I ricochet off of Vilmon (who she martyrs) but miss her, but the Glacier King gets there by hitting 2/3 attacks on boosted 13s and getting the hard 8 to kill her through focus. Really silly/stupid game and I wish I could have played a real game but I was under the gun to pack up and head out.
With all said and done I end up 2-2 on the day thanks to my bye and end up 4th on tiebreaks. However, the TOs had decided that the losers of the semifinals would play each other for 3rd/4th as a top table so I ended up 5th. By winning 1 game all weekend I came 5th at one of the most popular Warmachine events major events by attendance, and earned myself a little over 13 WMW qualifier points. Jokes aside, I think it goes to show how important it is to keep playing in a Masters finals after losing - perseverance will get you a long way when people are dropping as soon as they lose a game to make flights.
All in all a disappointing weekend for my personal performance. I've outlined my issues and where I think they've stemmed from / how I plan to work on my shortcomings going forwards, and I hope my failure this weekend helps people look critically at failure points in their own games so they can clean their issues up as well. Above all I love this game because it is so deep and technical that there is ALWAYS something you can be doing better, something you can fix with your game. My goal is to elevate myself from decent to great, and being brutally honest about your failures over pride is key to that. I've got a ways to go until I'm a serious contender for WMW or WTC, but I'm just enjoying the road there.
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gdnerd
Junior Strategist
Posts: 656
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Post by gdnerd on Jan 30, 2018 21:09:45 GMT
This is the list I'll be practicing with post LVO:
War Room Army
Trollblood - Madrak1 More North
Theme: Storm of the North 3 / 3 Free Cards 75 / 75 Army
Madrak Ironhide, Thornwood Chieftain - WB: +29 - Trollkin Runebearer - PC: 0 - Glacier King - PC: 35 (Battlegroup Points Used: 29)
Fell Caller Hero - PC: 0 Lanyssa Ryssyl, Nyss Sorceress - PC: 4
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9 - Northkin Elder - PC: 3 Trollkin Champions - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16 - Skaldi Bonehammer - PC: 0 - Trollkin Sorcerer - PC: 3 Northkin Bear Handler & Battle Bears - Bear Handler & 2 Battle Bears: 10 Northkin Bear Handler & Battle Bears - Bear Handler & 2 Battle Bears: 10 Northkin Fire Eaters - Leader, Trollkin Grunt, and Pyg Grunt: 7 Northkin Fire Eaters - Leader, Trollkin Grunt, and Pyg Grunt: 7
THEME: Storm of the North
The main difference is northkin shaman -> lanyssa rysyll. I was expecting more low/medium quality infantry where the spray would come in handy as well as cloud hiding to be a valuable hold/contest tactic. From what I've seen of the current meta / what people will drop into this, that isn't really the case and so I want further melee threat instead.
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bundeez
Junior Strategist
Posts: 325
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Post by bundeez on Jan 30, 2018 21:22:04 GMT
Great reports as allways gdnerd, thanks for the writeup. I am curious why you drop Madrak1 (with a gargantuan) into Cryx. Is your other list even worse at handling them? The assassination threat from Kolgrima is scary into many of their casters, and cloud wall prevents charges which weapon masters rely on to do enough damage to heavies.
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gdnerd
Junior Strategist
Posts: 656
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Post by gdnerd on Jan 30, 2018 22:02:00 GMT
I thought Kolgrima would have a worse time. Gaspy3 is borderline un-assassinatable by a PoD brick and 9 slayers will beat 4 premium heavies and 2 lights. And that Skarre1 list would easily trade up with my heavies.
If I had piloted better, I think my list had the advantage no matter which he dropped there.
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Post by deviantcad on Jan 31, 2018 1:49:50 GMT
Thanks for taking the time to write these up.
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gdnerd
Junior Strategist
Posts: 656
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Post by gdnerd on Feb 1, 2018 20:47:23 GMT
Played again on tuesday night but forgot to report here. Lost to Durgen of all things. My opponent had built a list "specifically for Madrak1" which comprised of double pressgangers, Alexia and the risen, idrians, ragman, a+h, 4x gunbunnies and 2 drillers plus a repair solo. We played on spread the net and I specifically decided to play for scenario.
Everything went off the rails. I dumped all of my GKs fury into trying to shoot down a dug in Idrian because I thought it blocked LOS to Alexia, I made a bunch of random positioning mistakes with my stone that let him kill the GK in the late game and ultimately I ran out of clock (I was playing 50 mins to my opponents 1 hour as extra pressure). Interesting list but it just helps to further emphasize my need to go back to fundamentals on scenario with this list.
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gdnerd
Junior Strategist
Posts: 656
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Post by gdnerd on Feb 1, 2018 21:04:48 GMT
Dominate For Two's LVO postmortem episode is up, split between my experiences already recounted here and those of a local who made the final day with Legion. museonminis.com/dominate-for-two-lvo-2018-postmortem/Week after next we will have the third place player from LVO, the wonderful Chris Dancocks, to talk about his LVO experience, compare/contrast BoH and SotN Madrak and more generally how to play for the 7 turn grind / lategame.
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Post by deviantcad on Feb 2, 2018 3:24:01 GMT
Great, looking forward to both podcast.
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Post by Trollock on Feb 2, 2018 7:15:43 GMT
I tried finding the lists played at the LVO... but i sucked... Can any one help me?
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