Where is the Love for Madrak2

I played him extensively at the start of mk3 with only mediocre success. And that was even during the crazy Karchev Mad Dog spam days.

All he does is enable Fennblades to kill jacks and himself to stay alive.
His control area is small, 2 other spells meh, feat is meh, does not really support a battlegroup and is now forced to have a larger BG than in mk2.

I think it's more Trollbloods fault he is not seen more. He obviously likes melee dude spam which boils down to 2 x Fennblades in BoH. Which is bad.. Fennblades do not have great stats to get across the board on their own. In a lot of games I Typically lost ½ before crossing the centerline and after that it gets really hard to keep up on attrition.

Now, if he had Madrak3's feat or some other spell to help units get across the table, he would be way more intriguing.
Or give us back mk2 Burrowers, they were soo good with him, since they always got to the fight.
Or FA 3 on Fennblades, in order to reach the critical number for any proper dudespam list (no, Kriel Warriors are not a good alternative).
Or a new effective unit to apply Blood Fury on. Light Calv maybe.
Or fix the Kriel Warriors (or scouts?)

Why is Madrak2 not seen anymore?
Because your list is 10 times better run by Madrak1 unfortunately

I still want to try building him not just for Blood Fury, but also Warpath.

conflictchamber.com/#c7201b_-0G4XjnjniUjq6Gj20li-iZiZj5

Trollbloods Army - 75 / 75 points
[Theme] Storm of the North

(Madrak 2) Madrak Ironhide, World Ender [+28]
- Dire Troll Brawler [16]
- Dire Troll Brawler [16]
- Rok [19]
- Trollkin Runebearer [0(5)]
Fell Caller Hero [5]
Valka Curseborn, Chieftain of the North [0(6)]
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes (max) [9]
- Northkin Elder [3]
Northkin Bear Handle & Battle Bears [10]
Northkin Bear Handle & Battle Bears [10]
Northkin Raiders (max) [15]

Both warpath and his field marshal are excellent battle group support. Had he been fury 6 and had a spell that could affect beasts (or been allowed to take a single proper unit) i would happily play him ob PoD. Rök + Brawler seems like a superb battle group in sotn.

Long riders love battle fury. They are fast, accurate and durable. Making them hit hard too makes them superb.

Bears are great even if totally unsupported.

Season to taste with what ever else you want.

You could also do double fenns and tripple kriels. That is enough tough models to overwhelm many lists.


With the nerf he went from being broken to being ok. He no longer does anything spectacular, but he is totally fine. He stopped seing play for lots of reasons. The nerf was the trigger. You also had a meta at the time with more ARM than he could handle. Then themes arrived and BoH was garbage. This made us look elsewhere. In our minds we can only remember how much he was nerfed, and we have a hard time swing him for what he does. It is the same thing with Grissel 1. I say take him for a spin and see what hppens. He has some match ups that he should crush (pun intended). They might not be super common, but trolls are less reliant on specific casters than most armies. You ca still do fine with basically any caster.

I had fairly good luck with him before SR17 when everyone was bringing jack/beast bricks. Ran it with double champions to trivially remove heavies and exert a pretty strong scenario presence and warders kept things alive. It was slow but trivially removed heavies which was probably better a year ago than it is now. The list looked a little like this

conflictchamber.com/#c7201b_-0a4X9D0hjq6G6G2Q6M0l0miTbKiTcAcA

Trollbloods Army - 75 / 75 points
[Theme] Band of Heroes

(Madrak 2) Madrak Ironhide, World Ender [+28]
- Dire Troll Mauler [15]
- Troll Axer [10]
- Trollkin Runebearer [0(5)]
Fell Caller Hero [0(5)]
Fell Caller Hero [0(5)]
Feralgeist [2]
Stone Scribe Chronicler [4]
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes (max) [9]
- Stone Scribe Elder [3]
Trollkin Champions (max) [16]
- Skaldi Bonehammer [5]
Trollkin Champions (max) [16]
Trollkin Warders (min) [10]
Trollkin Warders (min) [10]

Seems like the Brawler could be really really good with him and his feat. In MKII I would consistently use Crusher to surf Mulg and anything else with reach and a decent P+S and Mat though the enemy forces. Only downside is MAT 6 is going to struggle a bit against high DEF. Not sure how to get that up for him.

Here's what I don't I get. Everyone acts like the nerf took him from hero to zero, but what actually changed? He can't personally surf all the way to the enemy caster anymore. That's it. Rok, Mulg, a Brawler, or even Valka can still do the same thing very well. Madrak 2 can still throw waves of weapon masters at opposing armies with MAT as high as 9 for 22 Fenns or 8 for 30 KW. His feat turn can still be downright explosive with as little as one unit of Fenns and one heavy. He is still very good, very tough, and one of the most powerful offenses we have.

What about Rök and Axer with him? Axer with primal is a p+s 16 Mat8 beast with 2 inch melee range that can buy additional attacks once the surfing stopped due to tough or something similar.
Problem I see: Rök means SotN while BoH might work better with his feat.