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Post by challenger on Mar 31, 2018 22:59:21 GMT
Hello there! so i've decided to start just generally documenting my games into battle reports. I'm new to grymkin so you'll be seeing my very first derpy experimentation as i flit between "meta" lists and my own builds to try to discover the best builds and how to play them. To kick it off i had a really great game vs Elara2 Halberdiers i want to share with you. i was running Dreamer with 2x ragers, 2x skin and moans, and 2x rattler for a fairly balanced load out. He played triple halbs, 2 harpies, 1 siren, 1 chimera, fane knight and double heavy rifle team + some assorted support. My opponent had Issy and Elara and i actually thought this match up Elara vs Dreamer would be super tough as there was no way i was not getting punched in the face ridiculously hard. I took the Desolation and Fortune's Path Arcanas. Desolation was meant to be annoying to his halberdiers but it never panned out After his advance move and turn 1 the board looked like this: Ouch! even if i stood still in deployment my front line could get skewered by a heap of halberdiers as his entire front line was in range with feat and desperate pace. Elara is there chilling out by his objective. I moved up super cautiously, the furthest models in my army only advancing just further than 6" out of deployment. i was doing everything i could to minimise the alpha, while also keeping the dreamer's control range away from his halbs to give me Desolation opportunities. I hid the rattlers very deep in my formation, this game going to come down in my eyes to a rattler living the dream. Here's my brick formation, ready to meet his sledge hammer of an attack Here i am chuckling about how he'll never find a good landing spot on the right and he just decides to back up and to flank me. i get enveloped by the army surrounding me on the left in a curved line. the only models he has forwards in any kind of aggressive position are 2 halberdiers that are on the flag, just to make it annoying for me to score. i'm deeply regretting my initial cautious advance. I figure its time to charge ahead recklessly or lose the game on scenario. the worst part of it all was his harpy and siren teams were not in range to do anything particularily useful last turn, but now they will be in range to shoot gremlins and charge heavies. Dreamer uses Wraith Walker to go incorporeal this round my cage rager runs up within 5" of the middle halberdiers. she then floats through her own models, puts up manifest destiny and enfeebles the middle halberdiers. that -2 to their damage feels super critical against armor 21 ragers, and that mat 8 down to mat 6 feels very meaningful against my skin and memes. a crabbit goes and eats the juicy halberdiers by the flag thanks to Manifest Destiny and it spawns the cute little phantasm which shows how cute it is by running to hug the right halberdiers. a single gremlin swarm runs to contest because i have to be as annoying as physically possible when playing with swarms. my glimmer imp goes onto my flag and takes the score to 0 ret, 1 grymkin Its go time for my opponent. my skin and memes on the left gets thunderbolted twice and i don't bother shield guarding it. the halbs then slam into me. Despite taking a massive series of charges i never felt like i had a great chance to trigger Desolation my cage rager took the entire unit with scything blow on one of its members. After their mini feat and enfeeble they were effectively mat 6, P+S 14 (adding scything to their pow). my opponent barely scratched the cage rager, taking only about 1/3 of his health with 8 charge attacks (!!!) Being at dice -7 instead of -5 made a staggering impact his heavy rifle teams aimed and shot the cute phantasm, a serious crime against cuteness. then his siren went in on my skin and memes on the right and went base to base so even if i triggered desolation for a forest the halbs would still have easy LOS and it took about half the skin's health off. the right halbs charged, turning the skin and moans into mincemeat and moans. they also charged my glimmer imp but missed, as only a single mat 6 model went after him During this, i gave up on Desolation mattering and just triggered Fortune's Path His charges on the second skin and moans took it down to a single box remaining(!!) my second beast to get a bit lucky this turn. After his turn, the score went 1-1 grymkin to ret Take a look at this mess: This really put me in the think tank. i figured i needed to do some insane damage to his list, double quick! Dreamer puts up Manifest destiny and heals the skin and moans for 2 points. i neglected a chance to shoot at one of the few nearby halbs just to stationary them. two brave halberdiers are dragged down and killed by a crabbit behind them like something out of monty python Skin and moans activates, eating some models around him and the chimera. he healed 4-5 times and rolled 3 and 2 nearly the entire time taking him from 3 hitboxes up to 14 boxes for 11 points of healing. It was go time for the rattler. This is where the game went from a standard match into me being shocked and horrified as i watched a rattler eat halberdiers like popcorn. it killed thirteen halberdiers with its initial attacks. the last four of which were out of my control range so was done without Manifest destiny and with no way to buy or boost. There as a chunk of the board that was now just empty of all life. i should also mention he took two free strikes during these shenanigans but due to enfeeble + the armor buff from the death knell he only took 4 damage all up and even that was more than expected lady karianna rose rages one of the cage ragers and it moves up and kills both the harpy and the siren, as Fortunes Path + Manifest Destiny + Enrage will tend to make it do. This spawns the cute pumpkin phantasm my second rattler eats its way through four halbs including the officer, and the heavy rifle gun + its grunt and the halb standard bearer for a 7 model kill activation. it put up countercharge for fun. my other crabbit eats a halb, my glimmer imp scoops a halberdier eye out, spawning the tiny phantasm. Finally my other cage rager moves up and kills his harpy dead. the death knell moves up and refills the skin and memes who ate all its corpses and my gremlin swarm runs to contest his flag. Without swarms i'd be seriously hosed on scenario when he took the board so aggressively No one scores anything this round My opponent is convinced the game has ended, but wants to play on and play to his outs, which he believes is scenario and assassination. Elara charges and kills my rattler with scything touch before teleporting to a safer position. o7 i salute my hero rattler who ate an entire army by himself. the fane knight removes my gremlin swarm because it has to, magic weapons are now in short supply for his side his halbs charge my forces, with a decent amount of them focused on the skin and moans and it falls down to about 6 boxes left, its 13 def very critically saved it from an extra hit. his heavy rifle team blows a hole through my rattler. --no photo this turn as i'm not sure if lormahordes has a photo limit, need to check on this later-- on my turn i'm faced with some serious fury problems. i choose to leech from my cage rager and my skin and moans, and take frenzy checks on the other rager, 2 crabbits and a rattler and they all frenzy. the cage rager kills the gremlin swarm that was trying to calm it down, the crabbit bounces off the pumpkin phantasm. the other crabbit kills my cute phantasm and my rattler kills the souless escort my opponent left in front of it. Dreamer gets to go incorporeal again this round but i ruin that pretty quickly by using her gun. i move her up and shoot the first of the halb officers, missing him. i use future sight to boost and land a crit. he walks closer to the skin and memes and kills another halb. This spawns the cute little phantasm. dreamer then reloads and shoots the officer in melee with my cage rager and rolls 5,5 to hit, critting him too. he walks down to join the skin and moans party and kills the standard bearer. Dreamer puts up Manifest Destiny because i need to spend my fury or i'll get another turn of frenzying skin and moans eats all three of its corpses to heal 5 damage and then starts swinging. he kills five models and eats them all. by the time hes done hes gone from 6 boxes back up to 16 boxes. my cage rager kills his objective to even out scenario. Lady karianna contests his zone and the cute phantasm contests his flag. my glimmer imp goes and scoops the eye of his houseguard thane that was sneaking around. the medium phantasm sits on my flag, and the death knell charges a halb and kills it and hands some corpses off to that skin and moans that has proven to be unkillable. my opponent concedes, as he can no longer see a way to deal with my list, and i'm one turn away from clearing scenario on the right, and i have three heavies still alive. Victory to the Grymkin!
my thoughts:
On my Arcana
-Desolation is damn hard to use. You can only trigger it as people enter your control which is a difficult trigger, and the AOE4 may not even be particularily helpful. For me, this is a "more testing needed" arcana and it strikes me as a very skill based one to use effectively. -All fall down gets used as often as i always use it, as in i don't use it. i think i would have actually used it vs something like a decently defensed beast attacking one of my models because the knockdown becomes very high quality, and especially if the model has something like countercharge. So bad match up for this arcana when its just a bunch of low cost infantry doing the killing -Fortune's path seems like a great "generic arcana" when you don't explicitly need a counter tech like Ruin. One thing i was struggling with in previous games was having an arcana to use that wasn't so specialised. the opponent cant really play around Fortune's path because its trigger is so easy, and its effect is very strong. -I really missed sacrifice this game. I thought my opponent running a strong melee army would give him the ability to focus fire my heavies down one at a time, but the reality of dice, and positioning 36 halberdiers made it actually way more difficult than i thought. Sacrifice is definitely coming along for the ride in almost all my games at this rate. -Pandemonium would be really effective in a vacuum but its trigger relies on the officer being in my control range which is super hard to achieve. glad i didn't take it as it would have never gone off. Although in theory wraith walkered dreamer with shield guards and arcane vortex heavies can play pretty far up. On my List
-Rattlers are amazing. just to count the raw points of its kills, the first one killed 18pts of halberdiers and the second killed 7pts of halbs and a HRT for 11pts just with their initial attacks. They are the primary reason i do not fear infantry spam, its absolutely glorious. I only wish i could take more. -Cage Ragers were a bit derpy to me on paper being slow models compared to Skin and Memes, but i'm starting to really appreciate them more. Even when i didn't need arcane vortex having them pay for my upkeeps made dreamer so much more flexible. -Skin and Moans are way better into infantry than i gave it credit. That one skin and moans went down to one box and from there healed around 13-14 d3 which is ridiculous as i just kept feeding it corpses and models. it became a massive sink of my opponents halberdier resources to just keep bouncing off it. either you kill a skin and moans or you don't bother with infantry! -The little phantasm is so easy to spawn, and barely useful beyond a rat bump for dreamer. But then i realised i can spawn one/turn and just keep running it 14" at the opponents flag and zone and it became an amazing contesting tool. its very interesting that spawning it is also spot RFP, meaning any model you have can kill something vulnerable to RFP like certain unit leaders -Dreamer is incredible. her toolkit is so flexible despite having such a small list of spells. On the Match Up:
I was really worried going into it due to that many infantry charges into just a few heavies. But afterwards i feel actually surprisingly confident. Next time i can even potentially try playing more aggressive with something like pandemonium and sacrifice as my setup and using a wraith walkered dreamer with shield guards to stand in very aggressive spots to threaten to deny a whole unit their charge which when coupled with enfeeble on another is insanity! Great game by my opponent, had a lot of fun and absolutely fell in love with rattlers all over again, even if i never got to spawn the cuddle monster (large phantasm)
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Post by gedditoffme on Apr 1, 2018 3:14:03 GMT
Wow, that was amazing. My eyes were popping out when I read your 3rd (?) turn and killed 18 models between the rattlers, and went from way down to way ahead.
I thought you’d struggle with attack volume against a list like that, but you did it easily in the end.
Was it played on vassal, or was it just to draw game state? Not a big fan of the grymkin vassal icons, really struggle to tell them apart. But better than nothing I guess.
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Post by challenger on Apr 1, 2018 6:51:47 GMT
Wow, that was amazing. My eyes were popping out when I read your 3rd (?) turn and killed 18 models between the rattlers, and went from way down to way ahead. I thought you’d struggle with attack volume against a list like that, but you did it easily in the end. Was it played on vassal, or was it just to draw game state? Not a big fan of the grymkin vassal icons, really struggle to tell them apart. But better than nothing I guess. Thanks for the positive response I made you this when you said you struggled to tell the models apart: It was played entirely on Vassal, as i find those games are the easiest to document. you can take a full recording of the game and go through it at your own pace and even consider alternate plays at various times in the saved log. Really love it for that. I'll try to make the images higher resolution in future so they're a bit easier to tell apart too i was really worried about volume of attacks until my rattlers did their thing!
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Post by challenger on Apr 2, 2018 7:25:13 GMT
Okay! second report time. This time i tried out that excellent Old Witch 3 Bump in the Night list that was floating around online. Old Witch 3 is a massive draw to the faction for me and i'm super interested in her in general. While The Dreamer is the one on my painting table right now, Old Witch will be my second, or at latest third pick up for the Wicked Harvest Here are the lists, and a massive thank you to someone on the CID forum who gave me the idea to do this exact list layout. he/she did the exact same thing so i'm being a huge copycat because its a much better way to write the lists out! So, Scenario was Spread the Net (lovingly referred to as Spread the Legs by yours truly) and my opponent lost the roll off. There was some serious terrain problems and my army isn't particularily fast so i went with going second so i could score first and pick the side with less terrain. Old witch can cackle and pull all the levers on her walking house while it slowly sinks into the puddle in front of my deployment A legend, for those unfamiliar with Vassal
So, Grymkin models as was pointed out to me are not so distinct. I made a legend with the most relevant models for this match. Retribution Turn 1 (Round 1)
Admonition goes on Hemera (she has a blank base in vassal, but you'll spot her in front of the sentinels), inviolable resolve goes onto the sentinels and issy flies into the forest to hide which much inspire much confidence in the legions of dawn. everyone else basically runs up and creates a large envelopment to give me some real fun times to advance into. Left up issy's impressive 16" control range to give a sense of scale, although i really hate the old opaque control ranges and prefer to use the new vassal bubbles Grymkin Turn 2 (Round 1)
my trappers just walk up and make admiral ackbar proud by becoming trap markers. Their main goal is to just muck with scenario, i need all the contesting i can get on spread the legs. After that i begin dealing with the absolute mess that this list is by running everything forwards. A bunch of derpy pumpkins running at you is the name of the game, while the neighs are the silent hard carries. my neighs play pretty far back on both sides as they are key models, they obliterate anything they touch and its glorious. My derpy pumpkins and my hollowmen are there to die en masse Originally i really hated the silliness of the grymkin models, but now im rather lovingly attached to my silly pumpkin men. They're so stupid i've grown attached. Old Witch does vexing alignment and puts up wind storm, and respawns the cage rager on the left which has to face down the sentinels. if anyone is going to need it, he is. I left her 18" windstorm up for comparison with Issys tiny control range my goal is to take a punch into my worthless models, and then wipe his forces out with my high quality pieces (rattler, rager x2, neighs x2) Retribution Turn 3 (Round 2)
Hemera moves up and blasts two of my derpy pumpkins away, Issy gives her an ancillary shot which kills another and the witch gets blinding lighted. She'll need an eye test after this game with the amount of blinding light about to happen to her.. the destors on the left charge in and kill two pumpkins and make a third tough. His quickworks are very poor due to windstorm. The right invictors advance forwards and gun down my hollowmen. a withering volley of fire leaves the unit rather hollow with only 2 survivors. His invictors give up being able to fire at anything important and just run. His sentinels run too, and he makes a very costly mistake by leaving some of the sentinels too close to Hemera with Admonition. Something i felt was a rather big misplay was his sentinels opted to mini feat this turn rather than saving it for another turn. I was definitely in charge range with some models, but not enough that mattered, it'd be just giving him vengeance for free Grymkin Turn 4 (Round 2)
I think i can make a huge impact this turn even without offensive spells. If i had access to the Witch's gun the match would nearly be trivial, but alas. Issy has that spell for a reason. My trappers pop up within 3", one of them quickly darts around behind Hemera, who now can't admonition to safety as if she pulls back to the left she bumps into the sentinels, and if she tries to walk around the trapper to the right she still ends up in range of a boundless charged Cage Rager. She takes the admonition movement regardless for a bit of extra distance and the trapper doesn't harm her. the other trapper walks around behind the middle left destor, kills it with backstab weaponmaster and then sprints down to contest the flag. I'm super happy with this activation. It achieves a lot of important things (killing high value target + contesting) all in one 3pt model. I definitely rate trappers. the old witch cackles like her grandkids have finally come to visit the old folks home and feats, making three models return through hellhole, all three are derpy pumpkins. she windstorms for 2, boundless charges the cage rager for 1, boundless charges the right neigh slayer leader for 1 and just backs up. If i can open a path, that neigh slayer leader can go deep with the extra 2". My main goal is not to get the old witch killed at this point since i can see attrition swinging hard in my favour this turn eilish puppet masters the Cage Rager that got boundless charged and teleports behind the witch for safety. two invictors get debuffed by my glimmer imp running to the flag. my derpy pumpkins manage to kill an invictor on the right, that corpse ends up on the rager when he does his thing. the right Neighs charge killing two destors, with the other three neighs just sitting back, even out of CMD just because i dont want the unit to get wiped by invictor fire so i can keep cycling them forwards. The cage rager kills hemera. my pumpkins and neighs remove the last two left invictors (the minimum unit) and the rager toes the zone. i sent a pumpkin into his chimera too but i avoided the sentinels completely its not worth the pain of vengeance to kill one. you massacre that unit or you don't bother. My rattler moves up into "counter punch" position. Sentinels tend to clump whenever they kill something important and my rattler wants to capitalise on that. the twilight sisters return 2 more pumpkins. at this point with 5 models returned my opponents entire last turn only managed to kill 4 hollowmen who are worth like 1.3 points each or something?. Not very good trade at all. Longfellow blasts an invictor to death Score goes 1 to 1, Grymkin and Ret equal Retribution Turn 5 (Round 3)
Its feat time for Issy, who moves up and blinds the witch again, who doesn't deserve this abuse. shes just an old lady making her way in the world the surviving Destors take vengeance for their dead brothers and kill two neighs and quickwork a pumpkin to death. The harpy knocks my cage rager down while blasting it twice from outside my windstorm. His scyir cuts my trapper in half and the arcanist takes the flag instead. His sentinels go in for a big charge on my cage rager and a pumpkin nearby. My cage rager is obliterated, and so is my hollowman, and two pumpkins. His invictors move up and gun down most of my troops on the right with extended fire, there's a massive gap where my forces used to be and i'm keenly feeling it. Score goes 3 Retribution, 1 Grymkin Grymkin turn 6 (Round 3)my derpy pumpkins on the left put some charges into his sentinels and chimera. His chimera is badly damaged at this point. My surviving neigh slayer on the right moves into the zone and receives two new friends back from the twilight sisters. Old witch activates and i actually do not opt for 18" windstorm, instead i pick Divinator for re-rolls and place wraith bane (to ignore inviolable resolve) and boundless charge onto my hero rattler. my cage rager executes that damaged chimera and takes the corpses off the nearby pumpkin friends. my neighs unsuccessfully charge a sentinel as well as just generally running forward. i leave one back on the killbox line so the unit can't be destroyed by focus fire. my pumpkins charge too unsuccesfully, bummer. i jam hard down at that flag, as hard as possible. Eilish gives puppet master to the hero rattler who goes in hard at the sentinels. It kills 9 sentinels, including the officer. Have i mentioned i love rattlers? because i do. This means that only 2 sentinels survive in the unit, along with a soulless escort on the right three pumpkin charges kill two invictors, with one pumpkin contesting the zone. the glimmer imp hops over the flag and scoops an invictor eye out, killing it. Long fellow guns down another invictor but fails his second roll. Score goes 3 to the retribution, to 3 to the grymkin, we originally miscounted it though and thought it was 4 to 3, woops! Retribution Turn 7 (Round 4)
Issy does something very brave and flies over the rock in the middle and puts up admonition on herself as well as blinding the old witch. My opponents harpy shoots my rattler twice, shoving it around. Between the invictors and the destors my right side is wiped out with only a single survivor, the hollowmen contesting the zone (what a legend). his arcanist runs to my flag i lose a heap of models on the left too but his flag remains contested and he is unable to contest my rectangle zone, and with only issy in the middle i will score it with my Neigh Slayers. A fairly small round, but both sides are running out of models! Score goes to 5 to the Grymkin, 5 to the Retribution Grymkin Turn 8 (round 4) dear god, is it over yet?? So this turn has a simple goal, end the game. Issy is way over exposed. i run a neigh slayer to block her escape on the right, she refuses to admonition. Then i charge her with the second neigh in the unit , once again blocking her retreat and walling her off from the right, which forces her to move towards my beasts. she refuses to move once again and eats a serious neigh slayer charge dealing 5 damage through focus, this is in addition to an extra damage she took earlier from targetting witch with ANGRY EILISH nearby the twilight sister remaining (the other one was gunned down on his turn) moves up and spawns another neigh, in a wall so issy struggles to admo. then old witch activates, chooses divinator and charges issy. Issy finally takes her admonition away and it leaves her exposed to my rager and rattler. the rattler cant actually see her, so boundless charge is placed onto my cage rager but not rattler. Eilish gives puppet master to the cage rager the rattler walks over to issy and leaves her on 0 focus and 5 health. then the cage rager with puppet master charges her for free and smashes her face in Issyria's corpse is added to the Wicked Harvest Victory to the Grymkin!
Thoughts on the List:
- Will i ever have a game where Rattlers don't steal my heart? I don't think so. Absolute MVP of the Grymkin roster.
- Recursion between Old Witch and Twilight Sisters feels super strong -- I think i want to trial this with a variety of high quality models to bring back such as Piggy backs as well. I initially felt like the twilight sisters were quite weak, and that returning 2 models to play per turn was very meh. But once you actually play it, it feels way more impactful than it reads, probably because returning those models kind of "buffs" your army size ie - playing 5 points up if you return 2 neighs, and as the game goes on your opponent can make less and less attacks per turn
- Old Witch 3 is so fun. Like, actually incredibly fun. i love her model, her spell kit is incredible. Getting to choose with arcane machinery you use is also a lot of thought, the 18" windstorm is a super easy one to default to, and i don't think i'd ever use hellhole on non feat turns. Even this game where i was unable to use her gun, Curse of shadows or scourge i barely felt like i was impacted at all. i felt like i had a lot of options and angles.
- I'm kinda meh on the minimum unit of hollows. But its tough to fit a max unit. i wonder if hollow holden will make me like them more? although he demands the lantern man is brought
Thoughts on the Match up:
- I was very very lucky my opponent mini feated too early on the sentinels, and also blocked in Hemera, those two mistakes proved to be super costly
- I have to be mindful about scenario, i nearly lost the right entirely, and by the end i did!
- I think this match up overall is one i am happy with. There's a lot of guns to neuter with windstorm, and if i get corpses onto the cage ragers i can protect the witch from blinding light which starts to open up a lot of options like curse of shadows on the sentinels (maybe.. damn soulless) or scourging the jack with admonition on it.
- Destors feel super derpy, i'm really not a fan of them. They don't trade well into my army of glorified chaff
- If the invictors didn't have that rock they'd have made my life tough with assault + extended fire giving them quite a potent range despite windstorm.
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Post by challenger on Apr 2, 2018 13:37:05 GMT
Hey There! This is my third battle report, and a double whammy today! I met a new trolls player who was experimenting with a kriel company calandra list. He asked to see my best tech into it but when i said i had Old Witch 3 he changed his mind and we decided on something a little bit gentler into guns. In my (very limited) experience so far, Dreamer has been great into guns, so we fired it up! The Arcana i took were Sacrifice and Ruin - i basically default to sacrifice these days, and Ruin seems good vs befuddle and has some upkeeps it can knock off like Bullet dodger! The lists were: A legend, to help tell the models on Vassal apart:
Not all models represented -- Although these are the most important ones. The Death Knell should be pretty self explanatory too
Trollbloods Turn 1 (Round 1)
My opponent is going first puts up Bullet Dodger, Swarm and Star crossed on Calandra (curse her!!). His pygs storm down the left side along with the thumper guns (which i incorrectly thought were the other troll guns). His highwaymen took the right, and his pyres moved very aggressively up behind the obstruction. Personally this made me fear them less. Walking around obstructions for a single sp6 and then dying isn't that bad for me, but when they can assault multiple angles at you its really terrifying. Grymkin Turn 2 (Round 1)
This was a pretty standard dreamer turn 1 for me. I ran a lot of my stuff, provided cover, and put as much stuff under Warmth of the Grave as possible. Mirage went on my right rattler who hid behind the forest. His main mission was to keep the highwaymen honest. Manifest Destiny and Starcrossed can kind of cancel each other out, and nothing is going to deal with his highwaymen like a rattler can. i enfeebled his pyg burrrowers because Rat 2 makes them struggle vs cage ragers in the open, and pow 12 pulls the teeth out of their guns. What i should be aiming for is to split my brick into two teams who move around, killing as they go with the knell sitting central behind the big obstruction in the middle providing warmth of the grave, and feeding corpses to the cage ragers so that Calandra struggles to get easy befuddles. This reasonable plan is not what happens... Trollbloods Turn 3 (Round 2)
his pyggies just move up around the zone, they dont want to really engage and fight anything just yet. His pyre lights the 3 fire eaters in the middle on fire and they walk around the obstruction and spray some heavies. i take some moderate chip damage but its really nothing to write home about. On the right his fire eaters have one model move up to contest the flag, and otherwise his highwaymen just run up and take up a defensive position to shoot anything that enters the zone (scary!) Calandra puts down her star crossed again, left up in the picture just so you can feel the pain of an 18" star crossed through your phone or computer screen Grymkin Turn 4 (Round 2) - scoring begins this turn
with a lucky fire check, both my ragers and my skin and moans goes out. the remaining skin takes a fire roll but it just bounces off his arm 19 exterior. I pay for enfeeble with a corpse, and i pay for mirage with a fury, and proceed to make some serious misplays. Dreamer moves up first and takes control of one of his highwaymen with a boost from her gun. Me and my opponent try to see if my miraged rattler can get to him (it can!) and then bounce to the rest of the unit (it can't!) With that plan hosed, manifest destiny goes up and artifice of deviation goes down to protect dreamer. She's camping 0 but i'm really not that scared in cover, with shield guards, arcane vortex and Ruin / Sacrifice my rattler moves up and kills his fire eater contesting the flag, this i consider to be a serious mistake because it exposes my rattler, a model i need to keep up on attriton. This does spawn the pumpkin phantasm though which just runs to be in the way On the left, skin and moans eats both fire eaters and the rattler whiffs a lot of attacks but eventually makes a pyg burrower tough and a crabbit walks up and finishes it off. i brick up on the right too. i hand two corpses to the right cage rager to keep arcane vortex open. i value defending the right more because dreamer is there on 0 camp. my gremlin swarms take the flag, contest his flag and zone, and the last one just sits in cover with dreamer. Score goes to Grymkin 1, Trollbloods 0 Trollbloods Turn 5 (Round 3)
His pyre troll just runs at me because its in his way and he doesn't like its spot. Calandra activates, feats and with Harmonious exaltation can throw 3 befuddles at my skin and moans and still put up star crossed. the thumper guns shoot it, i shield guard into the crabbit and its killed. the second one hits the skin and moans and knocks it down and does some damage. His pygs dont really get much done, Enfeeble is a legendary spell the sons of bragg eat my skin and moans, giving them something to brag about. his highwaymen gun down my poor rattler and the gremlin swarm on the flag. then his swamp troll charges my cage rager and does absolutely nothing due to the great stats its up against. It puts up swarm to try to annoy me. No one scores because gremlin swarms are good models Grymkin Turn 6 (round 3)
Dreamer recieves wraith walker in her control phase, and i let everything except enfeeble drop. Enfeeble i pay for with a corpse. God i love Cage Ragers. Dreamer shoots the officer of the sons of bragg unit, reloads and misses the second guy by a lot due to cover. she puts up manifest destiny because its basically mandatory vs star crossed. i had considered if killing camp 0 calandra was possible, but there was just no angle. my cage rager kills both sons of bragg close to him and puts a huge damage spike onto the pyre troll. my death knell swings over and kills a pyg burrower. My rattler kills the spawned whelp, kills the pyre troll and kills another whelp before running out of fury. my glimmer imp debuffed his swamp troll for my cage rager who beat it to death. my crabbits hop forwards to the right and try to kill the highwayman jamming me but only manage to make him tough. even with 2 of them, in his back arc, under manifest destiny and hes glimmer imped. Lady karianna gives the skin and moans an ancillary attack which finishes him off. Then skin tramples over the whelp (big mistake!) into the fire eaters and highway men and keeps eating corpses and killing and gets itself up to nearly full health (2 boxes off) i bring my gremlin swarms back in right apart from the one contesting his flag and zone. Really, i just cared about protecting the dreamer. Score remains 1 to grymkin, 0 trollbloods Trollbloods Turn 7 (Round 4)
My opponent quickly punishes my over extended skin and moans by walking into its 2" melee with his rune bearer and spell slaving a befuddle that lands. he walks it further away from my allies and makes sure the highwaymen have easy back strikes Wanderheart alone does about half the skin and moans health as damage my opponent fired a heap of shots into its back, although it was in melee with the fire eater and the rune bearer rendering him unable to CRA and needing 10s to hit in the back. Calandra provides a couple re-rolls through this. Critically my opponent makes a huge mistake and attacks my pumpkin phantasm with his sorcerer. it fails to kill it, but had he killed it i could have triggered a massive sacrifice and healed my skin and moans to full as well as the chip damage on my others his bone grinders charge my gremlin swarm but cant remove it, so it remains contesting his flag and zone (lol) his pyg burrowers land some nasty spikes and hurt my rattler, who takes a thumper gun shot after that. the other thumper gun has to walk away from the gremlin swarm instead of aiming (as it has a melee weapon and can engage it) and shoots my cage rager, knocking it down. Calandra chills behind the obstruction with star crossed up the son of bragg survivor charges the KD rattler and whiffs, Calandra helps him out and he kills it his slag troll walks around calandra and shoots the death knell. we agreed before the game that the obstruction wasn't tall enough to block line of sight. the death knell takes 5 damage and very critically for me he riles his slag to full because he is out of beasts the score remains 1 to grymkin, nill to trolls thanks to the power of gremlin swarms Grymkin Turn 8 (Round 4)
So, i'm dealing with way too much fury on the table, my battlegroup has been mauled with only 2 ragers left, and my arcana has mostly been useless due to my opponent generally playing around them well with the exception of that one time he almost gave me sacrifice for almost a full heavy heal. So, i do what any respectable dreamer would do from behind. i just kill the opponents caster. easy. i leech from my crabbits as priority. my first cage rager frenzies on the son of bragg, but doesnt kill him. (damn you star crosseeed!!!!!) the second one frenzies on the whelp next to him and he pulversies it which spawns the cute phantasm. lady karianna rose walks around and stabs the other whelp in the back. With the glimmer imp staring it in the eyes and a backstrike she only needs a 4 after star crossed which she gets easily, and she executes the whelp. so much more reliable than going for a YOLO cage rager ancillary. From this point, my glimmer imp runs to where calandra can see him within 5", and my cute phantasm runs and marks her as a target. Dreamer floats around and shoots her. Calandra benefits from cover but due to glimmer imp + mark target i only need a 7 to hit. i hit it without needing to boost even under star crossed. i then abyssal her for the pow 12. Unfortunately, i roll a 1,1,5 which whiffs. so i figure, hey, all i have to do is boost and not roll a 1. Well i boost and roll a 1. my oh my. this leaves dreamer on 3 left, so i manifest my destiny. the death knell runs to the other side of the obstruction to project entropic aura. its going to be hard enough killing her without a tough check in the mix. my first crabbit charges her and between its charge and its bought attack deals 9 damage leaving her on 7 boxes. the other crabbit walks, leaps behind her, auto hits its attack due to stationary and i boost damage. i need to roll a 13 to kill as i need to do 7 damage. Well, i go above and beyond and roll 6,6,6,5, dealing a total of 12 damage after dropping the 5. Calandra falls and the game ends. Victory to the Grymkin!
My Thoughts on my Mistakes:
So, i'm playing a counter punchy brick and i needed to stick my chin out and take an alpha strike and then retaliate with force. What i did however was stick my chin out in the completely wrong way and it nearly got me knocked out. The Rattler should not have been exposed, RNG8 guns + medium bases means they have to get close together to shoot a target. i needed him to keep them honest. the skin and moans should not have charged off by himself, with perhaps one except, if it was to kill Wanderheart to remove backstab. If i had more fury available to me i could have perhaps killed wanderheart with some arcing so that befuddle isnt that scary anymore. I need to cover my advance with Warmth of the Grave, Crabbits and Arcane vortex. i still had sacrifice in my pocket so chip damage was no problem, and scenario was dead. i rushed it! Those are the most serious mistakes that come to mind, i think my opponent capitalised on them very well and really pushed me. I also probably could have used Dreamers gun a little bit more General Thoughts on the Match up:
One advantage calandra has going for her is that she has more fury she can afford not to use. Befuddle only costs 2 and she has harmonious exaltation. because i have to manifest destiny to hope to fix my accuracy back to where it should be and i don't have cheap spells or harmonious it shuts down a decent amount of dreamers offensive spell casting threat like abyssal gating something. Overall, i like this match up and would be happy to play it again. i think dreamer has all the tools to beat it, just has to play it well in the end i got a hail mary and it paid off however though. Low arm casters without the krielstone have to respect the danger of even crabbits. my opponent generally made sacrifice super hard to use, as i only took bits of chip damage hee and there and lost on model at a time.
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Post by challenger on Apr 5, 2018 13:57:43 GMT
Hey everyone, for my next battle report the Old Witch is going about her shenanigans when Xerxis and the army of the western reaches gets in her way. Will the disciplined army led by a military genius be able to overcome a crazy old lady riding a scrapjack that hit the gym and got huge? find out! The scenario was Outlast, here are the lists: List Thoughts:
I really wanted to try Mad Caps. Like really really badly. They're only 4 points each but seem so fun! Double Neighs + Twilight sisters seems to be a staple of Bump list building. The double hollowmen with UAs was to try to take advantage of just really pushing the recursion angle and after previous experiences i need more units with pathfinder please and thank you. A legend, to help make sense of Vassal:
Deployment, and Pre Game thoughts
So i won the roll off and opted to go first. I figured that going first would help me with scenario because his list is a bunch of guys who basically just want to run at me every turn, so i can set up shop as far down the board as i can get and then proceed to back up and shoot while contesting. i had a fairly balanced deployment but i skewed a little to the left because it was a bit more open The thing that was really on my mind was all his remove from play! a fair amount of the lists real strength is being able to constantly be making and using a steady stream of neigh slayers. Not only that, but my Mad Caps catastrophic explosion wont even go off if it gets removed from play. On the flip side -- Xerxis feat feels very underused here in theory. I don't have many things that survive a charge anyway Grymkin Turn 1 (round 1)
So, my mad caps walk up and spawn 3 cask imps each. I run my trapper up into the forest where it hides just beyond 3" deep. A unit of hollowmen and a unit of neighs take each flank. the cage ragers largely opt to stick with the old witch. I don't actually need 18" windstorm in this game since the opponent has zero ranged threat beyond a krea, and the kreas gun is wasted against most of my army. I do -1 spell cost and get out respawn and a heap of boundless charges and get everyone up the board. I don't even bother rolling for holden's benefit this turn since the unit wont be able to benefit either way. i use an extra zoomed out shot to give you a good idea of the battlefield and where everyone is just for this photo, so if things are hard to see just wait until next photo Skorne Turn 2 (Round 1)
Xerxis defenders wards himself, Tactical supremacy goes down onto the Karax who get to do the 8" walk, 3" repo shield wall advance which gets them down the board pretty fast. They're working in pairs. His Keltarii run hard down the flank on the left with the legends behind. The swordsmen take the right. His beasts sit generally centrally and try to zone the old witch out. Grymkin Turn 3 (Round 2)
My hollowmen apparition between two of the cask imps, feeling very uneasy about the whole thing. Holden has a lot of skill and rolls Reposition 3 which is what i want him to roll in 90% of situations. My trapper walks right into the maw of his army and then the skorne army watches as it puts down a trapdoor, opens it and jumps inside. No skorne warrior even considers opening the trapdoor and spearing the thing inside. My cask imps all stumble forwards, terrain being annoying for 2 of them. One explodes, 1/6 is reliable odds when you have 6! The old witch activates and takes her spell range enhancer effect. i shoot a blind into the karax landing it and blinding 4 of them including the UA. she then drops curse of shadows on them which hits easily. Curse of shadows + Apparition feels like a great answer to skorne's best defense which is just run and hug my dudes. my hollowmen advance forwards and holden gets the luxury of aiming. He uses his sniper ability to shoot a karax dead which lets me easily dispatch the one standing next to it with single shot. i do a few 2 man CRAs as RAT 7 POW 13 kills def 12 arm 17 pretty easily, but i whiff a lot. the unit repo 3s backwards but i have to send a couple forwards so that i don't give him any easy way to side step into the main body of the unit. my mad caps cackle with glee and roll 3 and 1 cask imps respectively. i place one b2b with the flag so i can score if he does not contest me on his turn. my left hollows do some aiming and some advancing. i try to ghost light his unit leader so i can walk it away from the others which would put three keltarii out of formation + he would be turned around so if the unit charged he would not be able to target anything. but i miss. ah well. a 3 man CRA brings down J'deth of the legends and i manage to kill two keltarii otherwise with CRAs. Its not amazing but its better than nothing. The rest of my models do some assorted shuffling around. Its mostly about protecting my Neigh Slayers until they can punch holes through his heavies Skorne Turn 4 (Round 2)
So i'm totally in range of an Aradus soldier with the old witch and a 3" lurch, rush, and a charge. The downside for my opponent is theres 2 cask imps in the way and the witch is not that easy to kill at 6s to hit and arm 19 + 3 transfers. He decides against it as he doesn't think he can kill the cask imps. His kelts go in on my hollowmen and kill a couple and then repo in tight to try to jam them up. i lost way less than i should because 6s to hit gave me a reasonable chance to survive. his swordsmen cut down my sacrificial forward hollowmen and some cask imps but don't really do any major damage. Hollowmen i don't mind losing really. his karax just advance towards me in shield wall as most of the survivors are blind. he kills a single cask imp. His gladiator moves up just outside of my threat with my cage ragers because he has a definite threat range advantage. to round out his turn xerxis gets on the flag by charging the old witch and his soldier and the legends move up. its a fairly slow turn for him as nothing really solidly connected, its just skirmishing between our forward elements. we both score 1, bringing the score 1 to 1 Grymkin Turn 5 (Round 3)
i keep both my upkeeps in play and my hollowmen apparition forwards. on the left i do my best to get out of melee or get behind the kelts. low mat into def 13 is rough, but back arcs make it manageable. i roll Weaken on my poisoned fate roll, sad face. i prefer repo 3. my cask imps start exploding. the left one rolls a 6 and immediately takes out the hollowmen and 2 karax next to him. Next one rolls a 6 too and takes out a neigh slayer and a swordsman. the rest get some small moves in the forest. my left hollows get in a fight with the keltarii and karax and with some hot rolling i manage to bayonet quite a few of them to death. my lantern man uses ghost light on cidaar and pulls her 3" in and turns her around so she can't defensive strike which is a good ability. Its a great way to get serious value on my lantern man even though bloodbound has only triggered once in the entire game (returning my guy that got cask imped) my cage rager opens the path and then two neighs go in at valgesh and cidaar (one each) and the others run. they are both skewered. I feel very happy about taking the legends without a single loss to them. they're a great character unit. its worth committing my neighs even though it risks RFP Longfellow guns down two swordsmen that are close by because hes a baller. my right hollowmen gun down a few swordsman and holden weakens the soldier so it has a rougher time. One thing i made sure to do was to CRA his officer as he poked his head out into the open by standing in the forest. Concealment does not matter! And taking power swell off the table means my cage ragers can sleep better at night. the twilight sisters bring that neigh that got cask imped back and my mad caps go and spawn 3 more imps each. Its a serious imp party at this point. Old witch uses her spell range enhancer and she throws curse of shadow at the titan gladiator and then walks back outside 13' of both heavies. she doesnt want to die for nothing. i score my flag with a cask imp and every other zone is contested. Score is Grymkin 2, Skorne 1 Skorne Turn 6 (Round 3)
The shattered remnants of a once brave karax unit advance and kill a cask imp as well as contesting my flag. His keltarii kill the lantern man and two more hollows. his swordsmen charge and kill some hollows which is followed by his rhino charging in and threshering down three hollowmen and two cask imps. This leaves my unit a little bit hollow, with only one grunt, holden and the lantern man left. His soldier moves over into the zone behind the rhino, making it seem like hes trying to set up a piece trade where i kill the rhino with my infantry and then the soldier kills them. The titan gladiator is enraged, and then xerxis moves over and lurches it. it puts rush on itself and charges my cage rager but thanks to the fact it placed 3 fury on itself before charging even on hot dice my cage rager lives. only on 3 boxes, but lives still! his tycomm kills another of my hollow men and xerxis scores his flag taking the score to 2 grymkin, 2 skorne Grymkin Turn 7 (Round 4)
i have to cut for 1 because i got lazy counting fury. i upkeep curse for a corpse and pay to upkeep respawn. my hollowmen on the right again do the dance of trying not to get blown up. my cask imps start exploding, one taking only himself out, another taking out the swordsman standard bearer. my mad cap on the right goes and walks around. one of the grunts throws a bomb at a swordsman and hit and kills him. i then put 3 more imps into play (lol). my trapper i had pop up stabs his krea in the back but it does 1 damage on 4d6 so, eh. hollow holden guns down a swordsmen because hes the only reliable one of the lot. ANother cask imp on the flag blows up and takes a mad cap grunt with it. the mad cap moves back out of the way of my cage rager who wants to charge his rhino. Then it puts 3 more cask imps into play which is starting to get silly the twilight sisters heal the cage rager and it beats both the gladiator and the standard to death giving it 2 corpses. Long fellow kills my cask imp that the rhino is engaging so it doesnt get better def, and then kills a swordsman. Old witch goes and feats. she slams curse of shadows onto the rhinodon and boundless charges two neighs. she boundless charges and wraithbanes the cage rager. I didn't actually need wraithbane because he didnt have spiny up, but i didnt realise this until later. i bring back a hollowman that the rhino killed i send a neigh into his soldier and it knocks 9 boxes out of it, then the rager eats the rhinodon. between my neighs and my hollowmen i clean up the left circle leaving only a lucky karax and a tycomm alive in there. The turn ends with neither of us scoring anything and my opponent concedes believing there is no hope left Victory to the Grymkin!
Post Game thoughts:
- Mad Caps are fun, even though i dont think i used them right. I should have used them defensively by keeping them near both my heavies so i could stumbling drunk around if he abused his further threat ranges. I also should not have been spawning so many in the forest. i spawned a total of 22 cask imps (6, 4, 6, 6) and had an average of 10 imps in play at any turn after the first. That's roughly 11 free points (!!)
- Hollow Holden is worth it alone for his gun and pathfinder for the unit
- Hollowmen preformed better than i thought they would against def 13 and 15 models.
- I think i gained a lot of ground by neutralising key models like the Legends of Halaak without breaking too much of a sweat while screening my neighs as a counter punch to his heavies.
- Old Witch feels really powerful even when shes not windstorming. -1 cost to spells or range enhancer every round is a lot of fun. I just wish i had more chances to use her gun this game. i think i would change her positioning a fair bit next time
- i feel like i under used the twilight sisters. They could have been using their MA7 bone shaker attack to be getting me some value on the left. kill a karax and make him kill his friend, win win.
Not even close to a perfect game played by me, many positioning mistakes. But it turned out to be a way better game than i thought. I always felt this pressure on me because i was worried about his super long range threatening heavies who could see me through a forest but i couldnt see them and i never really felt like i had a chance to kill xerxis thanks to the middle forest. But, in the end i only really lost hollow men. my neighs were in pristine condition and he broke on my skirmishers. It makes me very terrified to see what hollowmen can do when they have full access to bloodbound instead of getting RFP'd One Request to Readers
Please drop me a reply if you have anything you like or don't like about the format of my reports. i greatly appreciate any and all feedback as i spend quite a while on these and want to make them just right.
One extra thing: i made some bad mistakes with my images originally using thumbnails instead of the actual image. you should generally notice images are sharper in this post and will be from now onwards especially if you right click --> view image. Sorry about previous images
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doopsie
Junior Strategist
Posts: 341
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Post by doopsie on Apr 6, 2018 3:22:14 GMT
So the only thing I saw was you being VERY bold with Cask Imp placement. Maybe I'm overly cautious, but I generally have Mad Caps on the far flanks of the table and always(ish) activate Cask Imps first, as I really don't like when a Cask Imp rolls a 6 and kills itself and other models (typically 1-2 more Cask Imps) in the process.
That said, yes Mad Caps are a blast. They are why I plan on owning 18 Cask Imps, as me and a friend figure that's probably the most that'll be on the board at one time. So far, my max has been 12 at once.
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Post by goodjazz on Apr 6, 2018 11:25:41 GMT
As far as feedback goes: I really appriciate the efford you put into this. I really enjoy reading them and think it is really easy to follow what's happening. Totally looking foreward for the next one. If I really want to criticise anything the only thing that bothers me is your turn couting. "Grymkin turn 3 (round 2)" seem unintuitive, but hey that is really a minor concern.
Good job, keep it up!
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Post by challenger on Apr 7, 2018 13:51:03 GMT
Hey there, for my next report its actually a blast from the past. This is one of my very first grymkin games! I took a brief break from the game for a month or two before i dove into the crucible guard CID to see if i'd like them. i came to the conclusion i didn't, and so jumped into Grymkin. Everyone had said The Heretic was straight forward, so i windmill slammed him down, against a forum regular MapleWhisky no less. The Arcana i took were Reckoning, Fortune's Path, and im not sure! Sorry, an older game that i had less memory of. Take a look at the lists! A guide, for making sense of Vassal
Deployment and Thoughts
So my opponent won the roll and i chose the bottom side. Pathfinder is an issue for me and so is burning to death so i didn't want the side with the burning forest. i deployed skewed a little to the right, with dread rots on each side, my beasts central. But the frightmare and neighs went on the right to try to force a victory on that side to push scenario. Top of Round 1 (Circle Orboros)
So my opponent pushes his woldwatchers straight down at me. a blackclad takes each side, and his sentry stones go to the middle. Bradigus puts up Mystic wards to stop me from walking and casting gallows at his wold watchers. As two are in range, i totally 100% would have as well. Heretic is a tough guy who doesn't afraid of anything. Synergy goes up as well. Bottom of Round 1 (Grymkin):
I have an interesting puzzle ahead of me. I can't really collect corpses until i start getting sprayed, and when i get sprayed im going to get obliterated. Hollowmen can usually hold up okay against ranged attacks with the lantern man, but models that ignore concealment turn it into a massacre real quick. my frightmare takes a shot at his watchers and it gets shield guarded back to a wight, i spike massively and leave it on 1 box and corroded. i Fury my pumpkin men and put down a wall of fire that discourages cheeky mannikins from getting to spray me (as easily). My troops then fan out with the beasts, knell central, and the dread rots leading the charge to die with honour. Of course, dread rots that survive are officially terrifying as each survivor is potentially a MAT 10 PS15WM, AKA a mini butcher. There's barely any action from my side apart from that frightmare shot, so i pass the turn after quick run. Top of Round 2 (Circle Orboros)
His Woldwight gets to live on the corrosion check. Then i suffer a barrage of forest creating gunfire. thanks to two succesful tough checks i only end up with two forests on my hands, but they do effectively cut me off from interacting with the right which feels bad. They're all in stone form too making them super hard to kill. His sentry stones move up and so does his wights. He does not want an engagement yet. His wold wight receives a ton of healing to make it healthy again. Mystic wards goes up again and earth blessing on brad. His wayfarer backs up fearing the frightmare's vengeance. He's positioned much more firmly in a bunker position now. His stones are positioned to be able to shift his wold guardians forwards too which is terrifying for me. Bottom of Round 2 (Grymkin)
My derpy pumpkin Rises, and i upkeep fury and drop my fire wall. My objective gives pathfinder to my pumpkin nearby to give it distance to charge a shifting stone. Which it kills succesfully mind you! the rest of my pumpkins just run and sprad out. heretic swaps Fury over onto the left pumpkins and they charge another shifting stone, get three charges onto a wold watcher and one charge onto the other watcher. the stone dies. i leave the wold watcher that took 3x charges on just a few boxes. the spider and my frightmare are both unable to finish it off so i charge it with a skin and moans and kill it. The skin and moans part is so hard to me, because my infantry will lose the battle unassisted against the watchers and all the sprays, but if i assist with my heavies then bradigus is going to land those wold guardians onto me. My biggest benefit right now is that i managed to kill a shifting stone from each unit denying their ability to port. My hollowmen take up a central position, and my neighs position on the left ready to counter punch. I brace myself, his turn is going to hurt Top of Round 3 (Circle Orboros)
True to prediction, his blackclad fires a spray hitting five dread rots and my skin and moans. i lose three of them and the other two tough succesfully. Mannikin sprays clean them up too and make another dread rot tough. On the right, his sentry stone takes more dread rots down. Bradigus feats and slams his battlegroup forwards into me. he begins building synergy with the watchers just murderising my dread rots and turning them into lovely little trees. His wold wight sets more on fire and hurts my neigh slayer bad. Once hes built up synergy 3 his left wold guardian casually walks around and kills my skin and moans AND my death knell. His other guardian clears my objective. Once bradigus' turn is done ive take na sickening amount of losses. both my dread rot units have been obliterated, ive lost a heavy and my battle engine. That leaves me with basically one heavy, one strong melee unit (neighs) and one okay melee unit (hollows) to claw back attrition. i trigger Fortune's path during his turn - its not Reckoning but it is a whole army buff. Bottom of Round 3 (Grymkin)
My dread rots on the left go in on the objective and his wold watcher. the objective is fairly fine and the wold watcher gets the life punched out of it. my cage rager beats on his wold guardian but leaves it with quite a strong amount of health which is concerning. I decide the only way i'm going to get anywhere is to get Heretic personally involved. he hot swaps fury over to the hollowmen (the fake trenchers) and walks in and stabs a wold wight to death. at dice -1 i kill it in three swings letting heretic camp 2 comfortably. Longfellow walks up and blasts his blackclad to death. thats one quite important thing since the blackclads have meanie sprays. my hollowmen then get a monstrous series of charges off. Three into his wold watcher, three into his wold guardian, and two more into his wold wight. At mat 6 PS15 i kill all three. Now thats the counter punch i was looking for. My spooky tree kills his blackclad too, screw that guy! my right neighs have two charges go into his wold guardian as only two have line of sight. Two neighs manage to put 22 damage into the guardian with fortunes path due to some hot rolling leaving it on only a handful of boxes. as scoring is for chumps, the score is still 1 Circle, 0 Grymkin from the objective kill. Top of Round 4 (Circle Orboros)
i delivered a really strong blow to his army, and for a lot of forces i would actually have a really strong fighting chance of clawing my way back into this. However i wasn't up against just any forces! my charging neighs are cleared, as is my witchwood and a neigh by his wold guardian. Bradigus puts some personal work in and gets dangerously close to The Heretic in the middle. His wold watcher goes in and turns two of my hollowmen into trees. This is where i slam down my trump card, the reckoning. through mannikin sprays most of my remaining troops (who clumped to charge his models) were wiped out. His wold watcher remaining on the right kills my frightmare too. Overall i'm left with two dread rots (one out of formation), Longfellow, Glimmer imp, One neigh, Heretic, three hollowmen and a lantern man, and a cage rager. a pretty rag-tag force. He scores an additional point for clearing the right zone bringing it to 2 Circle, 0 Grymkin Bottom of Round 4 (Grymkin)
I quickly pre-measure my chances of killing Bradigus -- Absolutely zero. Had my skin and moans been alive i could have had Reckoning swapped to brad, put up lurker and walk around to auto hit him with PS15s, PS18s if i wanted to Fury as well. But none the less, i decide that Heretic must do personal work and expose himself to danger, its the only way to potentially earn enough value to win -- and potentially make my opponent lose if his dice goes cold. Unfortunately, stone formed Watchers are really hard to kill and i go down to 1 fury and lave it still on quite a decent number of boxes. Longfellow executes the local mannikins for me. Two Hollowmen go into it with Fury. PS17 charges on them is serious business and they execute it. I hot swap Reckoning to his sentry stone which is killed by the next hollowman's charge along with dread rot support. Reckoning gets swapped to the wold guardian and my last neigh goes into it and punches a big hole through it. its still standing and fully functional however. All my cage rager could do was kill a shifting stone and rile up. it cant really get anywhere when dealing with that big obstruction. Nobody scores this round, maintaining a score of 2 to Circle, 0 Grymkin Top of Round 5 (Circle Orboros)
My opponent did not have a hard time closing the game out. He built synergy to three by using a wold guardian to kill the neigh that charged it. He had a wold wight (the same one that went down to 1 box on my first shot at it) to kill the hollow and dread rot that went for the sentry stone. He also sent his watcher in to the heretic. Finally, with synergy three bradigus just walked around and killed The Heretic. Victory to Circle Orboros
Post Game Thoughts
On the List:
- Death Knells do not belong in Bump lists without a good target to buff. Even in the best case scenario i don't think feeding corpses to my models was worth it. 13pts was essentially dead weight in this match, and i think in every match almost unless your opponent is shooting with a lot of pow 10s which is where the arm 14 --> arm 16 of the dread rots will make a decent amount of shots bounce instead of being almost auto tough.
- Double Hollowmen would have been quite effective as i could have been shooting at his sentry stones more aggressively due to eyeless sight. Hollow Holden would have also potentially given Repo3 which makes the hollows way less vulnerable to sprays after they charge. Pathfinder is also super important.
- The Witchwood just felt bad. it couldn't really do anything or hurt anyone. Its a cool model and i'll test it more i think
- Skin and Moans probably should not be brought at arm 16 and with less boxes. Cage Ragers are where its at for Bump.
- The frightmare was being tested too and i wasn't a big fan. But im happy to try it a few more times. it got a few reasonable shots in.
On The Match up
- Initially i despaired at this match up but reviewing the game results i think it was a faulty list that caused me problems. Had the skin and moans been a cage rager, and the death knell had been anything else (another cage rager, other hollowman unit, another Neigh Slayer unit) i think i would have been happier. Not to mention the frightmare. i just had some lesser efficiency models than i needed.
- I'm worried about what happens if he drops kreuger with all the lightning hazards his wolds can spawn.
- overall i think the match up is winnable. Especially if you can survive bradigus' feat turn and use gallows to counter punch. the main big problem is dealing with the wold watchers tree your path up a lot.
One of my very first, most experimental games with Grymkin. I've learned a lot since then, but its nice to post this slightly older game up where you can see me experimenting quite a bit with the build.
Feel free to discuss and leave a comment. I'll be responding to comments tomorrow i'm dead tired!
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Post by challenger on Apr 12, 2018 8:22:07 GMT
Hey guys just an update since i haven't posted a report in a few days (Life!) I've decided to take a little while, depending on how many battle reports i get in and just play Pat Dunford's latest list pair for the grymkin. It's an especially appealing idea because it has two casters i actually love. The Dreamer and Old Witch 3.
So i'll talk about my experience with both of the casters and what i hope to get out of it. Old Witch 3
Old Witch 3 seems like the best Bump in the Night caster grymkin have access too in the current "meta". She has an armor debuff, she has infantry control with her gun. she has probably the single best anti ranged spell in the game in Windstorm on an 18" control range on a huge base. She also has threat range extension for up to 7 models a turn if using the right arcane machinery. the Eilish/Longfellow/Trapper all seem super standard. I don't think theres much reason not to bring Eilish for free in Bump. hes just solid. Many builds pay 5pts willingly for him. the glimmer imp is MAT/RAT fixing which is handy. Although part of me wonders if a free Hollow Holden would be better in this slot. Still, 15 free points is up there with the best of them. the battlegroup seems like a standard old witch battlegroup with a twist. Usually the 2 i see are "Cage Ragerx2" or "Cage rager + Frightmare + Gorehound" This one takes a rattler instead which i'm okay with. Sprint seems only okay on the witch who has a lot of things she *can* be doing. Rattlers with re-rolls to hit aren't quite manifest destiny rattlers but they're solid. Things get interesting outside of the standard double neighs which is double murder crows and double hollows (no UA). i think hollowmen are a great unit despite their accuracy problem, which is compensated at least by eyeless sight which is a very powerful rule. the double murder crows is interesting because it seems like it plays into a few elements of the list. Ambush will keep people concerned about 13.5" of the edge, which looks like this: add in some terrain considerations, old witch's AOE and the threat of a rattler and you start to get a real squeeze on you. Murder Crows have a decent output too when they have a max output of MAT 10 POW15 (gang, prey and curse of shadows) Overall - gunlines struggle against this caster, and seems like she'd face down infantry pretty well too! Cloudwalls have an answer in the frightmares animus allowing the witch to fire into clouds with her gun and hollowmen ignore it anyway. The Dreamer
This is very similiar to my current Dreamer list but with a key change - cut karianna, cut a glimmer imp, and no longer paying for a pair of crabbits. this pushes the free models up to 6 from 5, and allows Pat to slip an extra cage rager in. He fills out the rest of the points with gorehounds. It definitely gets a lot weaker against infantry spam, a lot. two rattlers are just insanity. But manifest destiny skirmishing gorehounds may be able to achieve some consistent value. i haven't used gorehounds seriously before so i'm hoping its quite an interesting experience. Another potential infantry consideration is just that perhaps Skin and Moans take over late game and just eat lots of infantry corpses and keep healing through the pain. I've experienced this once and can imagine its quite terrifying losing karianna seems to be offset by the extra heavy. This also makes it better vs spells! Which is quite a big thing in my meta. Krueger2 is a serious problem and perhaps this dreamer list has both high enough armor, and enough spell hate to defeat him consistently when familiar with the match up. It also greatly helps that The Shadow becomes super valuable vs a wold wrath. I'll have some reports for you soon, i'm looking forwards to playing both lists!
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Post by challenger on Apr 15, 2018 8:24:51 GMT
Hey There! for my next report the dreamer had gathered together a dark menagerie of beasts and was stomping around when she came into contact with Magnus2. So, without further ado, i take on the mercenaries! The Lists:
A legend, for making sense of vassal
Pre Game Thoughts:
This was 100% the match up i wanted. His pair was Crosse2 and mine was Old Witch 3. I was unsure of if the witch could deal with the amount of beef in his magnus list, the fact that the heavies gain +3 armor which isn't from spells make neighs a little sad since they're at dice-4. Orin midwinter makes it very difficult for the witch to throw out non windstorm spells too. In comparison, i think dreamer can deal with his crosse2 list (stormblades, trenchers, a galleon) better than witch3 would deal with 5 heavies and an arm 20 renegade. I had a major scenario battle ahead of me thanks to how magnus feat works. Arcana Selection:
i picked The Shadow and Ruin to go with All Fall Down. he had a lot of heavies and The Shadow lets me essentially cheat a piece trade. Gorehounds are incredible for triggering it with the dreamers decent CMD7. Ruin is really great because Magnus2 doesn't have enough focus to cast Calamity more than once, and Aiyana hates it. Cancelling magic weapons or kiss is top notch. I could also trigger it at a moment magnus tried to bullet dodger something potentially. Deployment
i lost the roll and my opponent opted for second for scenario pressure and took the better (more open) side with a hill. i weighted my left side with my cage ragers because i wanted to get in and contest both zones and it was a bit more open. Right side which was just full of rough terrain got two gorehounds instead. my opponent did a roughly symmetrical deployment but weighted his left with the mangler + meg + kayazy team. Flank + Crush + Free charge = scary! pow 20 wm! Top of Round 1 (Grymkin)
Super easy turn for me. my heavies run, with my skin and moans using their animus and trampling through terrain. Dreamer slams down cover and charges after miraging a gorehound. My gorehounds fan out to act as a buffer against annoying models. with 12" charging threat and a 28" manifest destiny -- beware! Bottom of Round 1 (Mercs)
My opponent throws all his muscle downrange at me. Orin Midwinter protects 2 of his heavies and otherwise he just makes sure to stay outside of threat of the skin and moans. threat ranges favour Magnus so this isn't too surprising. Eiryss1 shoots my rightmost gorehound through a gap between the nomads and strips its fury. This actually helps me because i had one too much fury out but neither me, or my opponent realised this Top of Round 2 (Grymkin)
with leeching and serenity i go to 0 fury on all my beasts and a full dreamer. i upkeep both my cover, and my mirage using corpses. making the call that he has so few spells that matter that Ruin is essentially almost enough. Basically the 2 scary spells being Calamity and Kiss and both are one shots. Lanyssa's hunters mark is definitely a thing but this turn i had a plan to keep her occupied. I wraith walker dreamer. my mirage'd gorehound quickly struts into his army and with a double boost kills Orin Midwinter. at this time i could have opted to sprint but i decided engaging magnus and his node with a model with Pull was more valuable. This opened up the nomads to my spells. my intention was to throw abyssal gate at the first nomad (the red one) and see if i could spike an 8~ for damage. its like under a 50% chance but due to future sight its something i can just do. If i get it, i will abyssal gate the other and try for it. If i get both i can potentially just remove / cripple 2 heavies and win the game on the spot. my cage rager runs into the zone and within 8" of the nomads and i abyssal gate, rolling abysmally for damage. A boost would require a 5 or 6 (33%) to place the nomad so i just throw another and Dreamer spikes the damage roll and places him without the boost letting me camp 1. My cage rager charges it contesting both zones and leaves it on a couple boxes and my skin and moans finishes it spawning the big phantasm -- the cuddle monster. it goes and hugs his nomad pushing it back out of the zones and it contests both. my other gorehounds play defensive, positioning themselves to block my heavies and be within 7" of the dreamer (CMD range). One swarm runs to the far right of his zone to contest. one positions to block his nomads. the other 2 relax behind my lines. Bottom of Round 2 (Mercenaries)
Magnus counter attack begins. Lanyssa moves up right within 5" of my swarm and tries to spell it. At the time i didn't realise there was Rubble i could have gained cover in, but thankfully she whiffed even with me not having cover. Aiyana and holt try to clear my gorehound off magnus and his renegade but aiyana misses her kiss and so holt does a lot of damage but leaves it fully functioning. he brings a nomad over that executes it. my opponent runs 2 kayazy eliminators, one to the objective and one to my gorehound. He tries to play around The Shadow by using his renegade to shoot my cage rager (rather than shooting the gorehound before the kayazy run) but i shield guard the shot back to the crabbit behind my lines. the crabbit explodes in one hit. he sends in the mangler and blows up the gorehound but this allows me to trigger The Shadow which i place right near his Renegade. I'm prepared for most of my army to be unable to move so taking a renegade "for free" should compensate. I spawn a skin and moans in particular because of better melee range and better def against thunderbolt spam. his mangler repos. a nomad goes in on my right gorehound and doesnt connect once. the curse of mat 6. his remaining white nomad walks around mr cuddles and wounds my cage rager. the right gun mages remove a gremlin swarm and push my heavies back. left gun mages push the shadow back and KD it. the cuddle monster is lit on fire and takes a point of damage. Finally magnus goes and forces my army to do an awkward left/right crab walk. no going forwards or backwards. He tags absolutely every model in my army except the gremlin swarms. Thankfully for me, nobody scores this turn. Top of Round 3 (Grymkin)So this is a turn where i don't have to fear scenario much because even though i can't score, Magnus isn't scoring either. i pay another corpse to keep my cover around. now that i've played The Shadow i'm primed to play Ruin so having no corpses is fine with me. Magnus sometimes allocates pretty hard to his jacks and cant find the time to cast calamity my right gorehound gets out of melee with his green nomad and just chills. it can't contest or fight anyone and i dont want it giving in melee penalty to his nomad. the death knell hands 2 corpses over to the right cage rager. i arc an abyssal gate onto the green nomad and spike my damage roll placing him without needing a boost. i place him within melee range of the shadow skin, an actual skin and moans, and the cage rager can walk sideways. Manifest destiny goes up because its Manifest destiny and its incredible. the shadow removes his renegade, spawning the pumpkin phantasm. my teal cage rager on the left walks sideways so that my skin and moans can walk sideways and get into melee with the nomad but i end up killing it anyway. this spawns the little mouse khador soldier phantasm. i remove his green nomad too with a skin and moans and a cage rager. my gremlin swarms run, one b2b with his mangler (contesting), one b2b with his nomad (contesting) and one behind the forest of his zone where it hopes to not get removed easily (spoiler: it does) at the end of this turn, nobody scores anything (phew!) Bottom of Round 3 (Mercenaries)
Magnus, sensing that escort wont be lasting long lets it drop so he can have the big cuddle monster killed. Lanyssa continues her vendetta against gremlin swarms (they work for legion after all??) and walks around and spells the swarm to death. Taryn trivially removes the swarm mucking with his nomad which then runs to the sweet spot between zones where hes contesting the circle and scoring the rectangle on the right. Magnus fires his shotgun at the phantasms in front of him missing the mouse and failing to kill the cuddle monster thanks to its arm 18. Magnus tries to calamity my cage rager and i Ruin it. he places bullet dodger on himself in the off chance the cuddle monster doesnt die. Aiyana gives the kayazy elminators magic weapons and holt kills the cuddle monster big phantasm. If my opponent did not have gun mages with black penny as a shot type i would have considered saving Ruin for this instead of blocking calamity at the time. I personally think that perhaps that was the better play now thinking about it because even though the gun mage could have walked and fired at the gremlin swarm, what if he had missed and he couldn't score? Scenario is the only way i lose at this point. the gun mages thunderbolt all of my heavies out of the circle and kill the small phantasm. the elims remove my swarm and his mangler kills my objective as well as wounding my cage rager. it repos into me. my opponent sent his gunmages after my gorehound and my pumpkin phantasm. i personally think he should have moved his entire unit in and taken a double barrel shot instead of two regular shots and leaving a model out (can't score even if he killed it). Had he killed the pumpkin he would have scored an extra point that way. My gorehound goes down to 5 boxes and is on fire. Eiryss1 runs to my backline. Mercenaries score the left and right zones and my objective taking it to 3 to 0 Top of Round 4 (Grymkin)
Fire takes my gorehound to 1 box. I can remove all the fury from the table except 2 on a skin and moans and he takes a frenzy check but passes with flying colours. Good! my number 1 goal is to A) not get killed and B) Not get scored on twice. at this point losing attrition is impossible. i'm up four full health heavies to his two and i'm about to hit him with them. my goal is to clear the left zone, score it, and just jam my army so hard down into the scenario on every side while killing the gun mages that thunderbolt me out. As long as my opponent cant score 2, or i can score 1, i win. Artifice of deviation is upkept for a corpse again. I appreciate this ability so much its insane. I would not get half the work done that i do if i had to pay for upkeeps. Dreamer uses wraith walker and she has a fairly quiet turn of hiding in cover, healing my gorehound 2 and my rager 1, then manifesting destiny. my cage rager in the middle beats his mangler to death and respawns the cuddle monster which just runs down and pushes his eliminator closer to meg. the other rager goes into the 2 elims and meg and kills one elim. i boosted to hit my charge and rolled 1,1,1,1 so i had the luxury of picking which 1 i dropped as they were all the lowest dice. my skin and moans goes in and kills two gun mages and aiyana, eating a corpse and healing. my ghostly gorehound doggo just slips between the gun mages near him and kills taryn and backstrikes two gun mages to death. I had the little mouse phantasm appear and run to an awkward spot. the skin that passed its frenzy check puts up lurker and charges the last nomad, the gold one. he does an ungodly amount of damage for someone with just two ps17 initials leaving the nomad with crippled movement and down 16 boxes. Thank you manifest destiny. cage rager runs into the golden spot to contest two zones. crabbit gets up and leaves cover (a mistake) to try to project its shield guard just a little bit further. the death knell charges the last gun mage of the right unit whos standing right in the middle of the board and kills her. Due to my opponents kayazy just generally being hard to remove i didn't score, but left zone has two heavies and a phantasm, middle has three heavies, a phantasm and a battle engine, and right zone has a heavy and a phantasm and my opponent only has one gunmage left who can thunderbolt my stuff around. Score remains 3 to mercs, 0 grymkin, and i'm feeling very great about my chances. Bottom of Round 4 (Mercenaries)
my opponents resources are mostly tapped out. He decides its physically impossible to clear two points and his only play is killing the dreamer. his kayazy eliminator charges my crabbit to slice it up so i dont have a shield guard, leaving it on a couple boxes. Holt finishes it off as revenge for aiyana. My opponent activates that last gunmage and tries to shoot the dreamer twice with thunderbolt. it takes a 6,6 to hit, but thats also a crit that will ruin her def. Both shots fail. Magnus goes before Eiryss which i think was a mistake, because his boosted obliteration rolls the 13 he needs to hit and does 11 damage. i transfer it to my cage rager harmlessly. I let my opponent do eiryss "first" to see if i die but she misses. a hard 8 even with a back shot is not easy, and she would have needed to roll a 10 on 2 dice for damage to make it fatal when combined with obliterations damage roll. his nomad removes my gorehound as a matter of principle and my opponent concedes Victory to the Grymkin!
Thoughts on the game
So, this is one i actually feel like i could've been in much more danger to lose if my opponent had deployed his gun mages further right and further left and run them into positions where they threat 11" (walk 6, see stealth 5) into the rectangles to make sure that any cheeky gremlin swarms were just trivially removed. then his feat locks down an extra point in the right flank at bare minimum. Basically -- its really hard to out attrition this list, but one of its weaknesses is scenario as long as theres a decent gremlin swarm answer. This magnus2 list was basically built to scenario, all those thunderbolts my god was doing my head in. I think i needed to try a bit harder to "backstop" my heavies using the death knell who cant be pushed, eve if the knell dies to a nomad (not likely one nomad kills it at 12/20 with three PS18s one boosted?) i think i can absolutely win attrition anyway. Gorehounds with manifest destiny are both a lot of fun, and really great. I think they can even do annoying things like just running deep down flanks and threatening backline models because 28" manifest destiny is certainly a thing! i used them defensively as a Shadow trigger this game but they really pulled through for me. Potential Personal Improvements
back stop my models against thunder bolt for one. i think also better use of Ruin, and perhaps just being way more aggressive with gorehounds for the kills on gun mages rather than spawning the shadow. Taking out the renegade was great because it let me piece trade really well, but at the end... i had 4 full health heavies. did i really need to piece trade *better*? Scenario was my weakness and gorehounds skirmishing with sprint against the gun mages was probably the answer. Means less magic weapons, less thunderbolts, and makes the aiyana giving magic weapons out weaker to Ruin since they rely on it more. I also could have been more careful with my gremlin swarms. i lost not one but two, and almost three, to poor positioning over the course of the game so in summary, more of a focus on "what is my opponents important models and how are they going to win?" in this case it was ironically the models who can't even hurt my heavies just because of scenario. Had a lot of fun with this one. my opponent Shisenshi is a great guy. Hoping to get in more games against him. despite attrition going my way it felt like a very close game due to how close he was on scenario.
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Post by chevelle on Apr 24, 2018 6:33:38 GMT
Thanks for your reports.
Regarding your pairing. How well does it work into Cryx, especially Skarre1?
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Post by challenger on Apr 24, 2018 7:34:34 GMT
Hey there! oof, so busy few days and then a pretty bad sickness knocked me off my feet. so i was inspired recently by the Tactical Tips podcast where grymkin was discussed and one thing that interested me was The King. So i pulled out a dark menagerie force under the king who was making an incursion into Llael. Lieutenant Crosse of the resistance stepped into the King's path to stop him cutting a bloody path through. The Lists List Selection and Thoughts:
I didn't actually have a pair for this one, i just wanted to try out The King, but pulled a subterfuge of saying i actually had a pairing with The Heretic in Bump. Since its super typical to see a Bump/Menagerie pairing. My opponent had Magnus2 scenario bumrush list and this crosse2 one. he chose crosse2 and we were off. One interesting thing is that i'm 2 pts down, and within distance of making another gremlin free meaning i have actually about ~9 pts to play with there. So in theory replacing lady karianna gives me the options to: take another pair of crabbits, take any of the lights, max my dread rots, or replace her with a more expensive solo like Eilish. Its just a question of how valuable is lady karianna? shes definitely a good flag holder and the source of the lists "safe" 4 P+S swing, since applying master of ruin isn't always possible but enrage + scything touch is trivial. People are definitely hesitant to shoot a lady karianna sitting on a flag too, sorrowful rampage is a thing. Will have to try different versions. Versions with more crabbits might even be interesting since crabbits are great for triggering Kings effects Arcana Selection:
This game i selected Taste of Ashes, Sacrifice, and Pandemonium. his list has a lot of shooting, but theres definitely going to be chip damage all over the place when trenchers, crosse2 and the galleon are all involved. not to mention long range stormblade gunners with their pow 14 guns. Pandemonium is 100% intended to mess with stormblades. low speed, no speed bump, and ruining assault and their charge damage output all in one go? count me in. Taste of Ashes is my trump so its definitely coming. A Legend, For Making Sense of Vassal: Deployment & Strategising:
So i won the roll off and decided to go second. i did this because i had an extremely favourable piece of terrain to work around if i did so. There was a central forest but it was ever so slightly towards the bottom edge of the table rather than the top. I can use this as a natural defense against his models, and forests work extremely well against colossals as they can't see through them but can still be seen. I decided my strategy was to use this natural fortress to grind him down over 7 turns, the advantage of going second and getting to score first, and last, was huge. Basically my lights + King's spell slinging allow me to just blow out a zone and score on it repeatedly while my opponent continues to score nowhere and feed models into me is the strategy i intend to go with. If we make it to round 7 and i'm up even one point its a victory. This is in stark contrast to my usual playstyle of being very aggressive very early, i only intend to break formation if my opponent gives something to me. Heres a photo of the armies deployed. i weighted an attack on the right to avoid his stormblades and because i didnt fear the galleon contesting, and when he saw how heavy i was weighting the right he deployed his trenchers accordingly: Top of Round 1 (Mercenaries):My opponents turn 1 was quite simple. Dauntless resolve onto the stormblades, lifebound onto the trenchers. Then everything ran basically its max distance forwards. Gibbs remained in the Llael AOE you can see in the photos to remain safe. Notably, my opponent was extremely cavalier with his trenchers and he was well aware i could cast spells at them but he figured it was a worthwhile trade off to me using less clouds. Bottom of Round 1 (Grymkin):
First thing i do is run up a cage rager and arc ashes to ashes into his trenchers twice. i low roll the bounces both times but am compensated by him toughing never and losing 4 models out of the unit. Critically this only gives mr crosse 2 souls from the direct attacks as the bounces are not attacks. My opponent did not realise this and had thought he would be amply compensated with a death dealer activation. i put down a cloud bordering the forest to restrict his LOS. Everything else just ran forwards using the forest as shelter. i kept my heavies well away from King. i had a few positions i wanted to take and just plant my feet and let him feed into me (those glorious contest 2x zones spots) Top of Round 2 (Mercenaries):
Crosse upkeeps and fully allocates to the galleon. Stormblades make a slow advance and fire three shots into my skin and moans from the gunners. second one hits makes the third one auto hit and he ends up taking quite a bit of punishment. they pop Iron Zeal mini feat to become arm 21 tough no knockdown. Gorman blinds a skin and moans and its crabbit friend. very rude. Trenchers mostly pull back wit hthe exception of one brave grenadier who pokes his head around the cloud to see a menagerie of beasts and panic fires a grenade mostly just hurting a crabbit. Crosse activates and spends a soul for more defense and then feats his gun mages advance to contest the zone and fire wildly into my beasts setting the skin and frightmare on fire and trying to crit fish for a knockdown but fail. his galleon walks to where its out of 10" of my skin and moans and has a line to my cage rager and bombards the hell out of it. a blast kills the arm 10 crabbit so i play sacrifice to fully heal. i figured next turn would either be taste of ashes or pandemonium turn so i didnt want to be too precious with it. i forgot Kingdom of Silence existed so no free spell, but no biggie thanks to stealth from crosse's feat Bottom of Round 2 (Grymkin):
Fire hurts my frightmare pretty bad. I have a super simple gamplan which is "score 1 point every round on the right zone until my opponent is out of steam". Frightmare aims and uses its animii but misses the boosted 7 and deviates far off the gun mages in the zone my gorehound walks in and kills the trencher grenadier granting crosse a soul before sprinting back to safety of my forest. my cage rager walks up to that glorious double contesting spot which is within 5" of one of the gun mages. King activates and boosts an ashes to ashes and with a bit of luck rolls 3 bounces. i only needed 2, but 3 is welcome. This clears the zone and i slam down 2 clouds in front of the rager to block LOS to it completely. This shuts down the galleon unless it charges my objective. so i charge my gorehound on the right at it just to be a pest. i dont know how easy it will be for him to remove an armor 13 model. but i want him to have to sink a lot of resources into dealing with it. the rest of my turn is spent running my models up. i contest his left zone too but im not sure i needed to because he didn't have any scoring models over there. Score is 1 Grymkin, 0 MercsTop of Round 3 (Mercenaries):Crosse does the same thing he did last turn, full load the galleon and double upkeep. Gorman walks into the forest and blinds my rattler and gorehound which is super rude his trenchers advance into the forest and unleash a barrage of fire into my rattler doing a fairly significant chunk of damage out of it. the trenchers then repo around to get in my face. in short - crosse wants souls. Reinholdt strips stealth from my gremlin swarm in the zone and crosse2 nails it with soul reaver taking its soul. he then takes a shot at my gorehound which hits but he has no focus left for boosting and does basically no damage. he then spends a soul for more defense taking him back down to 2 his galleon walks into the zone to contest around the gorehound and tries to pummel it with its guns. It fails fairly spectacularily only putting minor damage onto it with blast damage and the one time it made a direct hit it whiffed damage pretty bad. Taryn at least walks around and executes it. i use kingdom of silence to drop a cloud to protect my skin and moans from stormblade assaults and it does block LOS to the rager to a couple but not many. his stormblade assaults manage to blow massive holes through my cage rager, ouch! If it had been my skin and moans it would have died No one scores, 1 grymkin, 0 Mercs Bottom of Round 3 (Grymkin):
Leeching everything in, i had no frenzy checks to make but had to shake blind on my lights. King puts up host of shadows and scything touch goes onto my cage rager on the right by arcing through him. i check Crosse's threat because i do not want to get mauled by him when i'm 14/14 with 14 boxes. Too many good games go down the drain by not checking assassination vectors. i drop an extra fury too to camp 3. i debate using karianna rose to enrage my cage rager before sending it in since over 5 attacks it'll contribute an extra 10 damage but opt against it since i have a skin and moans in range too. basically - that galleon is super dead no matter what i do with scything touch. my cage rager and skin and moans beat it to death very easily. I have left over attacks with my skin but avoid attacking the trenchers. Crosse left himself at 2 souls. i just wont attack any trenchers with my beasts this round! my cage rager places wraithbane onto my rattler and kills a stormblade. my rattler doesn't roll so well so i only kill a handful of stormblades. i send my gorehound up to kill gorman as revenge for all those blinds but.. whiff a boosted hit and then a buy+boosted hit on him. my orange skin and moans on the left goes and eats some more stormblades to gain 3 corpses. yum! my dread rots charge some trenchers and only manage to kill one. But it denies crosse the soul which is good for me! Once again - nobody scores, 1 grymkin, 0 mercs Top of Round 4 (mercenaries):
Crosse drops dauntless but keeps lifebound. Taryn and Ragman kill some dread rots together. Reinholdt strips stealth from a swarm, and crosse kills it, a dread rot, and then slings his zap into my rattler and spikes a boosted damage to finish it off. This lets me kingdom of silence an ashes to ashes into an unengaged stormblade killing one and matching the others arm 15. his stormblades achieve nothing. his trenchers advance and kill most of my dread rots and put a shot at the king. He misses but i wish he hit for fury management. Eilish strips scything touch off and i do transfer that 1 damage. Gorman charges my gorehound and misses. Bottom of Round 4 (Grymkin):
thanks to being super aggressive i had to take 2 frenzy checks. my full gorehound frenzies and eats gorman (can't complain!) and my cage rager which is full manages to show how calm it actually is and roll a 3 and not frenzy (?? so much for cage raging) theres no way to keep my opponent from having a death dealer activation so my skin and moans activates and eats every stormblade left and a trencher while hes at it. King puts up host, and protects himself with 2 clouds since crosse can't see through them. he camps 1 and keeps his trusty crabbit shield guard nearby. my right skin clears ragman and eilish, misses taryn who dodges away. My cage rager whos full on fury walks up behind her and bashes her brains in with a backstrike. my frightmare goes to melee and kills a trencher, and as does my last dread rot. my cage rager charges his obj and kills it. This lets me score twice, once on his left zone and once on his obj. Score goes to 3 Grymkin, 0 Mercs
Top of Round 5 (Mercenaries):
my opponent death dealers my cage rager off the table and wounds my skin and moans. then a trencher contests left and gibbs contests right. Middle is contested by a grand total of 4 trenchers. Bottom of Round 5 (Grymkin):
i take a few frenzies but my skin and moans clear left and right with no assistance and the game ends 5 to 0 Grymkin's favour Victory to the Grymkin!
Thoughts on the Game:
So, Basically i set out with a game plan in mind which was to contest the zones, to clear the right zone every turn and just grind for turn 7. since i was going second i had the advantage of scoring first and last. That plan went very well as it eventually made him massively over commit to hold the zones. i think he needed to not give me trenchers to ashes to ashes turn 1. Over committing the stormblades was a mistake too without iron zeal. Iron zeal would have made that play... more okay since then they are arm 18 steady tough to the wraithbaned rattler. Which is very survivable! he hates steady tough! i dont know how in particular but i also think he needed to keep the galleon earning value at distance rather than committing it early. This is a little bit hard when i had clouds, and grymkin are soooo goooooood into colossals. every time i see a colossal i'm happy as a grymkin player. so far at least. touch wood. Perhaps placing it far on the left flank and trying to flank my cloud wall and keep his own zone clear. of course, this still gives me some edges as i score first and last, and undoubtably have better contesting models. As for my own mistakes -- my cloud placement was a little weak at times considering he had LOS around it with his galleon. i could've tightened that up a bit. i also over exposed myself to the stormblades. he couldn't even score the left side he had no scoring models over there. i didn't need to fight there. i could've pushed up the middle and right and used the forest to create a natural fortress against the stormblades until they got in pandemonium range which basically removes a turn from them. Overall though, i'm quite confident with the match up. Trencher infantry don't really scare dark menagerie without some kind of damage buff that crosse lacks. that put a massive amount of burden onto the galleon and the stormblades to attrition well and... they just couldn't. On the King
will need more games with this super fun caster. He can play a lot of builds and its super open and hes just really weird, flexible, and a lot of opponents are not used to how much stuff he does on their turn with kingdom of silence + arcana. i was spell slinging quite aggressively in this game and that felt good! host of shadows is a super unique tool in the faction where you usually are swearing at terrain too. Really loved the combo of battlegroup wide pathfinder and free strike immunity, and it gets around some "no pathfinder allowed" feats by being "not-pathfinder"
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Post by challenger on Apr 24, 2018 7:52:39 GMT
Thanks for your reports. Regarding your pairing. How well does it work into Cryx, especially Skarre1? What kind of Skarre1 lists are you facing? is it the Stalker spam + Banes one that i usually see? i dont think stalkers are very scary into grymkin heavies at all even with +5 STR as dice-4 and 4x attacks (if jumping) is not very pretty. the worst part is wrecking sacrifice. Its just a matter of controlling the infantry -- which can be difficult but possible. its a matter of using terrain and arcana such as Pandemonium and Labyrinth as well as leading with models that aren't very valuable in the match up. Crabbits are excellent lane blockers when you dont need shield guards for example. Depending on how much magic weapons her list has gremlin swarms can block landing spots very well. stalkers very notably arent magic, only blessed. wraith engines arent magic either etc. one video i'd recommend as it taught me a lot about how to think about infantry match ups is this one here - Pat takes on this coven list and simply dismantles it. Solid charges almost never connect due to a combination of running Pandemonium and using rebuke + wall of fire. you can even run Heretic in dreamers place if you feel it improves the match up. Heretic certainly doesnt mind any of the spells on skarres card. positioning super critical! in grymkin if you position even a little bit wrong you can get hurt for it. Other than that -- i'd just recommend lots of practice games against her. but i do feel confident about Dreamer/Old witch 3 into basically just about anything in the game.
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Post by challenger on May 24, 2018 13:55:39 GMT
Hey there! i've been lax writing reports lately due to being a little bit busy, so this time i'm just dropping a rapid fire report with a bit less detail so i have something out . This will be followed by my normal reports, but i'm probably just going to stick to writing up one game a week even though i play more because i like to really dissect my best (learning) games in detail. Its really helped improve my play and pick up a lot of subtle things. Apologies as i cut out some of the detail i normally like to use This one is Old Witch3 vs Grissel1. Can the trolls stop the rampage of this crazy old lady?! The Lists!Grymkin Army - 75 / 75 points [Theme] Bump in the Night (Old Witch 3) Zevanna Agha, The Fate Keeper [+27] - Cage Rager [14] - Frightmare [9] - Rattler [8] Eilish Garrity, the Occultist [0(5)] Glimmer Imp [0(4)] Lord Longfellow [0(6)] Hollowmen (max) [13] - Hollow Holden [4] Hollowmen (max) [13] Mad Caps [4] Mad Caps [4] Murder Crows [9] Neigh Slayers (max) [12] Neigh Slayers (max) [12] Vs Trollbloods Army - 75 / 75 points [Theme] Band of Heroes (Grissel 1) Grissel Bloodsong, Fell Caller [+29] - Dire Troll Mauler [15] - Ice Troll [9] - Troll Axer [10] - Troll Basher [7] - Trollkin Runebearer [0(5)] Fell Caller Hero [0(5)] Stone Scribe Chronicler [0(4)] Swamp Gobber Chef [1] Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes (max) [9] - Stone Scribe Elder [3] Long Riders (min) [12] Trollkin Champions (max) [16] - Skaldi Bonehammer [5] - Trollkin Sorcerer (1) [3] Trollkin Fennblades (min) [9] - Fennblade Officer and Drummer [5] Deployment
I won the roll off and opted for First because of how fast he could move with hoof it, and with the no quarter fennblades etc. basically, if he jammed up super hard and just accepted some hollowmen shooting my life would become pretty hard! Getting first was a major win. I deployed in a fairly balanced manner favouring neither flank, as is a habit of mine. Prey goes onto the long riders from the ambushing crows Grymkin Top of Round 1
Very simple turn 1 for me. Respawn went on my cage rager and everything ran forwards. I was a bad player and only rolled 1 on both my mad caps. Good players roll 2+ every time Trollbloods bottom of Round 1 the trollblood response to my turn was to put guardian beast onto the basher, hoof it onto the long riders and just push up the board. The long riders carefully checked my ambush threat and stayed out of it and one of them jammed super aggressively engaging frightmare + longfellow. His fenns spread out a lot in the formation i like to call "please, trigger vengeance for me" Grymkin Top of Round 2
I ambush my murder crows into the right side. my opponent was very careful with his left flank, but not careful on the right. Murder crows are insanely good even without prey. After the longrider is cleared using my beasts i try to have my hollowmen + longfellow + curse of shadows (used long casting) clear out the other 2 longriders. they have the best threat, can slam cask imps and if they all die i can move prey. As it is, i fail and leave both alive. Earlier during her activation Witch blinded the fennblade near the basher. if i proc guardian on the basher i lose the game. As a pleasant coincidence the clouds in a great spot. The cask imp kills the other fenn within proc range, but its not an attack so doesnt trigger it. Murder crows quickly clean up the UA and two fenns. Trollbloods Bottom of Round 2
On my opponents turn almost nothing happens on the right at all. His basher goes into my cage rager and beatbacks it a little but the damage is unimpressive. The fennblades just derp around with infantry but cant cleave anymore Left side is better for him. Champs get some kills in, and the hoof it long riders do their best to target my neighs to kill as many as possible. before repoing around to try to be a pain His ice troll kills Longfellow which makes me sad. Nobody scores! Grymkin Top of Round 3My hollowmen apparition around like champs. Honestly, its such an underrated unit. Two of his champs take mortal damage from a cask imp, one toughs. old witch charges and kills his other long rider with feat and boundless, blinds two champs and curse of shadows them. Nice job old witch Hollowmen leave the champion unit in a very sad spot on the left. This was a bit of poor timing because my right hollowmen gunned down his stone at this point and it was forced to promote, turning the aura off. Rattler + frightmare team kill most of the remaining champs and put some damage into his mauler. Murder crows finish the fenns and prey is moved to his axer (started shuffling it once the long riders were done with) at this point i scored the right zone and took the lead on scenario Trollbloods Bottom of Round 3My opponent measures out an assassination run on the witch using his Ice Troll, which was just in range. After discussing his chances and running it through a calculator we came up with a 3% to kill her, and my opponent saw no hope otherwise and conceded. Moral of the Story
i continue to be in love with mad caps and old witch3 in general. Hollowmen keep really earning their keep. I know a lot of people who think they're bad, but i rate them quite highly. They're no trencher infantry, but i love em! Ive always found that mad caps just love preying on champions / bastions / what have you. A good game vs a solid opponent. We discussed it and agreed that Storm of the North is probably better place for him to be just because Hoof it + having some more access to guns seemed interesting to him. + it doesnt deny him much, Storm has a LOT of the models band of heroes has
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