Trolls at the NorCal Classic WMW Wildcard Qualifier
Aug 7, 2018 6:02:08 GMT
macdaddy, bundeez, and 1 more like this
Post by gdnerd on Aug 7, 2018 6:02:08 GMT
Hey all, I posted on the FB group that I was going to do a writeup of my experience at the NorCal Classic. The Classic has been running for 2 years now as a replacement for when Frontline Gaming excised all non-GW games from the Bay Area Open. Last year it was supposed to be a Wildcard event, this year it actually was and hopefully in future years it can be a full WMW Qualifier. I helped organize it, housed our wonderful TO Tyson Koch for the weekend and did all the setup / breakdown (with assistance of course). It was a VERY busy weekend but very rewarding, we got people from all of the NorCal local metas and even a couple from San Diego (shoutout to Juris )! Anyways, on to the event.
Here's the lists I ran:
Trollbloods Army - 75 / 75 points
[Theme] Kriel Company
[Grim 1] Grim Angus [+29]
- Sea King [36]
- Trollkin Runebearer [0(5)]
Fell Caller Hero [0(5)]
Feralgeist [2]
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes (min) [6]
- Stone Scribe Elder [3]
Pyg Lookouts (min) [7]
Thumper Crew [0(5)]
Hearthgut Hooch Hauler [18]
War Wagon [16]
War Wagon [16]
Trollbloods Army - 75 / 75 points
[Theme] Storm of the North
[Madrak 1] Madrak Ironhide, Thornwood Chieftain [+29]
- Glacier King [35]
- Trollkin Runebearer [0(5)]
Lanyssa Ryssyl, Nyss Sorceress [4]
Valka Curseborn, Chieftain of the North [0(6)]
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes (max) [9]
- Northkin Elder [3]
Northkin Bear Handlers & Battle Bears [10]
Northkin Bear Handlers & Battle Bears [10]
Northkin Raiders (max) [15]
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew [2]
Trollkin Champions (max) [16]
- Skaldi Bonehammer [0(5)]
The Madrak list should be no surprise at this point, I've been running this list with minor tweaks since the beginning of the year. The Grim1 list is new - I've been playing this since LnL as I was fascinated by LoS Jaden 's performance. I'm convinced this isn't the right list to play in a pair in a meta where everyone has seen it before but the novelty factor really gets some people pretty badly (and it screws with people's list selection occasionally). I think in the end I'll go back to Kolgrima or perhaps 2017 it up with some Gunnbjorn but for now it's Grim Angus.
Round 1 - Brett Ward (Cryx) - Recon II
Brett is one of my locals (and I5 teammates) so we talk a lot of shop. I knew he was going to drop his Gaspy3 list which looked like this:
Cryx Army - 75 / 75 points
[Theme] Black Industries
[Asphyxious 3] Asphyxious the Hellbringer [+24]
- Nightwretch [0(7)]
- Nightwretch [0(7)]
- Nightwretch [0(7)]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
Machine Wraith [2]
Necrotech [2]
Necrotech [2]
Necrotech [2]
Soul Trapper [1]
He had been really sold on Necrotech and Scrap Thrall tech leading into this. I won the roll-off and away we went. I ambushed only one set of bears to keep him central.
The defining moment of the game was when 4 slayers managed to kill 1 bear and do 7 damage to the other. I almost counter-threw by not properly allocating damage and repeatedly left slayers on a couple boxes which let him heal up and not immediately fold to pressure. In addition the only solo I allocated to my flag was Valka and I decided I needed to take him off the flag to hold my flank which put me behind on scenario.
Thankfully I ultimately tabled him and eventually scored out after he tried to engineer an assassination with a single slayer left (that couldn't get an angle on Madrak). GG and WP.
Afterwards we decided the Ironmongers were probably a LOT better into the Madrak matchup as a mat fixer.
Round 2 - Alex Kosma (PoM) - Spread the Net
Continuing the trend of dream-crushing people on my I5 team I get paired round 2 into my teammate and fellow Dominate For Two co-host Alex. He has Sevy1 Faithful Masses and Harbinger Exemplar Interdiction. I told him that Harbinger would hard lose to Grim but he didn't believe me so he dropped Harby anyways. His list looked like this:
[Harbinger 1] The Harbinger of Menoth [+27]
- Devout [9]
- Redeemer [11]
- Repenter [8]
Exemplar Bastion Seneschal [0(5)]
Exemplar Warder [0(5)]
High Exemplar Gravus [8]
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord [4]
Choir of Menoth (min) [4]
Exemplar Bastions (max) [15]
Exemplar Errants (max) [16]
- Exemplar Errant Officer & Standard [0(4)]
Knights Exemplar [9]
Knights Exemplar [9]
Visgoth Juviah Rhoven & Honor Guard [9]
He manages to win the roll-off. I make a mistake on side choice thinking a wall let me toe into my rectangular zone with a Battle Engine when instead it forced me to come further forwards.
He aggressively jams with his Errants while trying to set up with his wave two of Bastions and Knights Exemplar. I don't think he fully internalized how bad no charges from my feat was. I kill a LOT of stuff and almost martyr him to death while clearing a ton of models.
However, I make a mistake that gives him an out - I accidentally forget about Self Sacrifice on the Errants and make a charge that requires me to kill one with an impact attack. Meant I killed less Errants in melee and didn't fire my guns. This gave him extra Knight Exemplars that over the course of a couple turns killed both of my War Wagons.
By the end he had killed everything except the Sea King but had basically ran out of stuff that could kill it. He maybe had a scenario out (he was down on CPs but held more real estate) but then he clocks. Womp womp.
Round 3 - Eric Eikermann (Crucible Guard) - Mirage
Third round I played into the one person I didn't want to see the entire event. Eric was one of the 2 players who flew up from San Diego and he was playing a really nasty Locke Syvestro pair. I've played a LOT into Locke at this point and the #1 thing I've learned is that this Grim list is literally unplayable into it as long as the CG player has played into it at least once. The Vulcan with Redline runs 16" so threats 18" on jackhammer, precision strikes out the Sea King's spirit and it's over. 18" just so happens to be 4" longer than the Sea King's threat IF Grim's gun damages the Vulcan.
I could go on and on but the point is you cannot drop Grim. Knowing that I expected Syvestro which has a lot of poke which can be painful for Madrak but at least it's a game. Thankfully he hadn't seen much of trolls and dropped Locke instead.
[Locke 1] Aurum Lucanum Athanor Locke [+29]
- Toro [13]
- Toro [13]
- Vindicator [15]
- Vulcan [35]
- Aurum Ominus Alyce Marc [0(5)]
Crucible Guard Mechanik [2]
Crucible Guard Mechanik [2]
Prospero [0(5)]
- Suppressor [13]
Trancer [3]
Trancer [3]
Combat Alchemists [0(7)]
Dragon's Breath Rocket [5]
I won the roll-off which was a big advantage in my book. The goal of this game is use the Raiders to trade for any alchemists / trancers and trade either the GK or the Champs for the Vulcan and the game pretty quickly unravels in your favor. Everything went wrong when I went up to use Madrak to kill two Combat Alchemists and sit on 2 transfers and scroll under Even Ground and feat. Eric decides the best play is to assassinate me and pulls the trigger. 2 sprays from the suppressor drops me to def 12 so he needs 6s to hit.
With my effective 3 transfers he basically needs to hit all 6 times because on average damage rolls (9 per attack) I take 3 to die. He hits all of them and wins. After the game I did the math and it was an 15% run assuming both Suppressor shots hit - 30% if he did everything correctly an ran Prospero to give the Vulcan 5s to hit.
I am still unsure whether it was the right call to risk it - the combat Alchemists were going to easily clear out my remaining raiders and delete my screen, and if he failed the assassination there he would hard lose on the spot. There might have been some optimizations on positioning which would have made it harder to get on me but at the end of the day an 85% chance of just hard winning there (higher if we do the math on whether either of the Suppressor shots missed) seems like a good enough bet but alas it was not meant to be. At this point I'm just playing for a good top 8 finish for points.
Round 4 - Joren (Mercs) - Invasion
Joren is one of my locals who is a quite talented player. However he has some pretty strong PTSD from Madrak because he plays mainly battlegroup heavy lists and max Champs with Skaldi under northkin stone plus bears and a GK will beat basically any battlegroup spam list in the game. He has Magnus2 and Ossrum but it's pretty clear he's going to play Ossrum. I don't have a copy of his list but the gist of it was 2 drillers 4 bashers 3 blasters an artillery and some solos. He wins the roll-off.
He gets gun-shy early and feats top of 2 and gets real deep up in my game plan. I actually have really bad dice on the crack back and only kill a basher, a gunner, and half of a driller and I feat to prevent him from hitting me again. By the end of my next turn I kill 2 more bashers the fully healthy driller and another blaster and he concedes because he sees the writing on the wall (he has done literally 0 damage to the Glacier King and all my champs are alive).
At this point I'm waiting on Alex's game to see whether we have to play a 5th round and thankfully for all the people who drove 2+ hours to come he wins. I end up having as perfect SOS as I can possibly have without being the round 4 pair-up and get 2nd on tiebreaks but get booted to third due to us using Top Table to determine 1st/2nd (this seems to be becoming a theme when I attend Tyson events because the same thing happened at LVO). I earn a neat 6.25 points to tack on to my ~40 which will hopefully get me to WMW this year if I don't win Phoenix.
All in all I had a great time, I kinda wish I had more games with Grim to better evaluate him in a competitive setting but good games are good games. Not sure where I'm going to go from here but there's definitely more tinkering to do.
Here's the lists I ran:
Trollbloods Army - 75 / 75 points
[Theme] Kriel Company
[Grim 1] Grim Angus [+29]
- Sea King [36]
- Trollkin Runebearer [0(5)]
Fell Caller Hero [0(5)]
Feralgeist [2]
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes (min) [6]
- Stone Scribe Elder [3]
Pyg Lookouts (min) [7]
Thumper Crew [0(5)]
Hearthgut Hooch Hauler [18]
War Wagon [16]
War Wagon [16]
Trollbloods Army - 75 / 75 points
[Theme] Storm of the North
[Madrak 1] Madrak Ironhide, Thornwood Chieftain [+29]
- Glacier King [35]
- Trollkin Runebearer [0(5)]
Lanyssa Ryssyl, Nyss Sorceress [4]
Valka Curseborn, Chieftain of the North [0(6)]
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes (max) [9]
- Northkin Elder [3]
Northkin Bear Handlers & Battle Bears [10]
Northkin Bear Handlers & Battle Bears [10]
Northkin Raiders (max) [15]
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew [2]
Trollkin Champions (max) [16]
- Skaldi Bonehammer [0(5)]
The Madrak list should be no surprise at this point, I've been running this list with minor tweaks since the beginning of the year. The Grim1 list is new - I've been playing this since LnL as I was fascinated by LoS Jaden 's performance. I'm convinced this isn't the right list to play in a pair in a meta where everyone has seen it before but the novelty factor really gets some people pretty badly (and it screws with people's list selection occasionally). I think in the end I'll go back to Kolgrima or perhaps 2017 it up with some Gunnbjorn but for now it's Grim Angus.
Round 1 - Brett Ward (Cryx) - Recon II
Brett is one of my locals (and I5 teammates) so we talk a lot of shop. I knew he was going to drop his Gaspy3 list which looked like this:
Cryx Army - 75 / 75 points
[Theme] Black Industries
[Asphyxious 3] Asphyxious the Hellbringer [+24]
- Nightwretch [0(7)]
- Nightwretch [0(7)]
- Nightwretch [0(7)]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
- Slayer [10]
Machine Wraith [2]
Necrotech [2]
Necrotech [2]
Necrotech [2]
Soul Trapper [1]
He had been really sold on Necrotech and Scrap Thrall tech leading into this. I won the roll-off and away we went. I ambushed only one set of bears to keep him central.
The defining moment of the game was when 4 slayers managed to kill 1 bear and do 7 damage to the other. I almost counter-threw by not properly allocating damage and repeatedly left slayers on a couple boxes which let him heal up and not immediately fold to pressure. In addition the only solo I allocated to my flag was Valka and I decided I needed to take him off the flag to hold my flank which put me behind on scenario.
Thankfully I ultimately tabled him and eventually scored out after he tried to engineer an assassination with a single slayer left (that couldn't get an angle on Madrak). GG and WP.
Afterwards we decided the Ironmongers were probably a LOT better into the Madrak matchup as a mat fixer.
Round 2 - Alex Kosma (PoM) - Spread the Net
Continuing the trend of dream-crushing people on my I5 team I get paired round 2 into my teammate and fellow Dominate For Two co-host Alex. He has Sevy1 Faithful Masses and Harbinger Exemplar Interdiction. I told him that Harbinger would hard lose to Grim but he didn't believe me so he dropped Harby anyways. His list looked like this:
[Harbinger 1] The Harbinger of Menoth [+27]
- Devout [9]
- Redeemer [11]
- Repenter [8]
Exemplar Bastion Seneschal [0(5)]
Exemplar Warder [0(5)]
High Exemplar Gravus [8]
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord [4]
Choir of Menoth (min) [4]
Exemplar Bastions (max) [15]
Exemplar Errants (max) [16]
- Exemplar Errant Officer & Standard [0(4)]
Knights Exemplar [9]
Knights Exemplar [9]
Visgoth Juviah Rhoven & Honor Guard [9]
He manages to win the roll-off. I make a mistake on side choice thinking a wall let me toe into my rectangular zone with a Battle Engine when instead it forced me to come further forwards.
He aggressively jams with his Errants while trying to set up with his wave two of Bastions and Knights Exemplar. I don't think he fully internalized how bad no charges from my feat was. I kill a LOT of stuff and almost martyr him to death while clearing a ton of models.
However, I make a mistake that gives him an out - I accidentally forget about Self Sacrifice on the Errants and make a charge that requires me to kill one with an impact attack. Meant I killed less Errants in melee and didn't fire my guns. This gave him extra Knight Exemplars that over the course of a couple turns killed both of my War Wagons.
By the end he had killed everything except the Sea King but had basically ran out of stuff that could kill it. He maybe had a scenario out (he was down on CPs but held more real estate) but then he clocks. Womp womp.
Round 3 - Eric Eikermann (Crucible Guard) - Mirage
Third round I played into the one person I didn't want to see the entire event. Eric was one of the 2 players who flew up from San Diego and he was playing a really nasty Locke Syvestro pair. I've played a LOT into Locke at this point and the #1 thing I've learned is that this Grim list is literally unplayable into it as long as the CG player has played into it at least once. The Vulcan with Redline runs 16" so threats 18" on jackhammer, precision strikes out the Sea King's spirit and it's over. 18" just so happens to be 4" longer than the Sea King's threat IF Grim's gun damages the Vulcan.
I could go on and on but the point is you cannot drop Grim. Knowing that I expected Syvestro which has a lot of poke which can be painful for Madrak but at least it's a game. Thankfully he hadn't seen much of trolls and dropped Locke instead.
[Locke 1] Aurum Lucanum Athanor Locke [+29]
- Toro [13]
- Toro [13]
- Vindicator [15]
- Vulcan [35]
- Aurum Ominus Alyce Marc [0(5)]
Crucible Guard Mechanik [2]
Crucible Guard Mechanik [2]
Prospero [0(5)]
- Suppressor [13]
Trancer [3]
Trancer [3]
Combat Alchemists [0(7)]
Dragon's Breath Rocket [5]
I won the roll-off which was a big advantage in my book. The goal of this game is use the Raiders to trade for any alchemists / trancers and trade either the GK or the Champs for the Vulcan and the game pretty quickly unravels in your favor. Everything went wrong when I went up to use Madrak to kill two Combat Alchemists and sit on 2 transfers and scroll under Even Ground and feat. Eric decides the best play is to assassinate me and pulls the trigger. 2 sprays from the suppressor drops me to def 12 so he needs 6s to hit.
With my effective 3 transfers he basically needs to hit all 6 times because on average damage rolls (9 per attack) I take 3 to die. He hits all of them and wins. After the game I did the math and it was an 15% run assuming both Suppressor shots hit - 30% if he did everything correctly an ran Prospero to give the Vulcan 5s to hit.
I am still unsure whether it was the right call to risk it - the combat Alchemists were going to easily clear out my remaining raiders and delete my screen, and if he failed the assassination there he would hard lose on the spot. There might have been some optimizations on positioning which would have made it harder to get on me but at the end of the day an 85% chance of just hard winning there (higher if we do the math on whether either of the Suppressor shots missed) seems like a good enough bet but alas it was not meant to be. At this point I'm just playing for a good top 8 finish for points.
Round 4 - Joren (Mercs) - Invasion
Joren is one of my locals who is a quite talented player. However he has some pretty strong PTSD from Madrak because he plays mainly battlegroup heavy lists and max Champs with Skaldi under northkin stone plus bears and a GK will beat basically any battlegroup spam list in the game. He has Magnus2 and Ossrum but it's pretty clear he's going to play Ossrum. I don't have a copy of his list but the gist of it was 2 drillers 4 bashers 3 blasters an artillery and some solos. He wins the roll-off.
He gets gun-shy early and feats top of 2 and gets real deep up in my game plan. I actually have really bad dice on the crack back and only kill a basher, a gunner, and half of a driller and I feat to prevent him from hitting me again. By the end of my next turn I kill 2 more bashers the fully healthy driller and another blaster and he concedes because he sees the writing on the wall (he has done literally 0 damage to the Glacier King and all my champs are alive).
At this point I'm waiting on Alex's game to see whether we have to play a 5th round and thankfully for all the people who drove 2+ hours to come he wins. I end up having as perfect SOS as I can possibly have without being the round 4 pair-up and get 2nd on tiebreaks but get booted to third due to us using Top Table to determine 1st/2nd (this seems to be becoming a theme when I attend Tyson events because the same thing happened at LVO). I earn a neat 6.25 points to tack on to my ~40 which will hopefully get me to WMW this year if I don't win Phoenix.
All in all I had a great time, I kinda wish I had more games with Grim to better evaluate him in a competitive setting but good games are good games. Not sure where I'm going to go from here but there's definitely more tinkering to do.
