The Mountain King Chronicles! Part 1: Midas

Could old chain smoker Gunny pull it off?

I own a Mountain King. The feeling of guilt for not playing him when he looks at me with his big puppy eyes has just been too much to bear and it was time to take him out for a spin on my newly constructed foldable gaming table. I constructed a nice little list:

Gunnbjörn +5
Earthborn dire troll 10
Mountain King 20
Min stone bearers +elder 4
Scouts 5
Min kriel warriors + 2 cabers 6
Stone scribe chronicler 2

Close Quarters

My thought was to deliver the MK to kill stuff. Some cheap infantry to screen and contest. Having armor 23, I thought i was pretty safe with the MK. Both the evenings matches were played on the scenario Close Quarters, both randomly generated. The scenario was good for me, as the two flags are close and easy for the Mountain king to reach.

My first oponent of the evening was Midas, the pig butcher with a spine in one hand and a butcher knife in the other. With his non-healing spell, I knew that the MK was in trouble. The Midas tier 4 list came with the following:

Midas is a pig and plays with his food.

Midas
2xRoad Hog, Gun boar, Bone Swarm, Razor Boar, Dead War Hog
2x Slaughterhousers
2x Bone grinders
Targ

I got to go first and deployed my MK in the middle, with Gunny and the EBDT on his right to go for domination of my own scenario. The scouts and kriels were positioned to the left so that they could contest the pig flag. The pigs split up and put Midas, Bone Swar, a unit of Slaughterhausers and bonegrinders oposing my gunny with EBDT, one roadhog herded by tharg and supported by bonegrinders oposing my scouts and kriels and the rest (slaugherhausers, road hog and gun boar) in the middle to deal with the king.

My oponents comments with the set up:
The idea with the deployment was to be aggressive towards his flag with my caster and having targ herd the warbeasts near the center, in hindsight I should probably have positioned my caster more in the center with the bone swarm and having it engage the MK with swarm ASAP. With the bone swarms slightly higher def and swarm it would´ve made the MKs Mat effective 3, and even if the MK kills the bone swarm it can´t kill shot because of bone swarm being undead.

Trolls went first, as we are smarter than pigs. I ran everything up, the scouts into a forrest, EBDT put elemental Communition on the MK and walked forward. Gunny put snipe on himself and dropped the rest on the stone. The pigs followed my way and went forward with his stuff, trying to set up for the kill on the MK. His road hog oposing my scouts went in and killed one of them. Assaultblasted a kriel as well. Midas and the crew on my right advaced carefully with the bone swarm in front.

He turned it over to me, and I saw my oportunity to do some damage with the Mountain king! Gunny upkept snipe, put down guided fire and shot at midas. I missed and did nothing, instead of putting down a wall by the king i ended gunnbjörns activation. Mistake. My earthborn communitioned the king and positioned himself to guard gunny and contest my objective. MK charged the gun boar and ended him, killing nothing with his deathly roar that followed. Scouts surrounded the attacking road hog on the right and did nothing. Kriels ran and tried to cross the board so that they could meet Midas on the right.

Midas fails at killing my Earthborn and the king frenzied onto
a slaugherhauser. On the dark green forrest zone in the back, my
scouts finally managed to kill his road hog!

His turn, and the big turn to kill the king. Midas averted from his path toward my objective to go toward the middle and cast an extra damage die on the slaugherhausers. They charged the King and, getting, 5 dice on the charge, put him down to 5 HP left! He managed to jam the kriels with the other slaugherhausers and the boneswarm. The road hogs did nothing really, the scouts and one of them were locked in combat the entire game.

From that turn and on the game was heavily in my favor. With amuck and sweep, I killed a unit och hausers and two more, snacked myself to about 2/3 health left and killshotted midas for 13 damage, leaving one hp left on the Razorboar. Midas did go in for an assasination attempt with his feat, but at def 15 armor 20, Gunny was sitting safe behind a wall. In the end, Midas got tired of his troops failing him and went in for the Earthborn himself and took him down to half health but died the turn after.

My thoughs after the game is that it is so important to keep the mountainking alive. Its impossible almost to keep him safe, as having 20pts keept safe essentially makes him do nothing. Even though he lived and killed a bunch of stuff, he still didn't manage to get his points back. And to be fair, if Midas would have his spell that mitigates healing on the MK, I would have easily lost the game.

My oponents comments of the game: 
The two biggest mistakes of the game was not successfully killing the MK in one turn and not casting bad blood on instead of battle lust on my slaughter housers. I would have done less damage, but the MKs strength is its healing ability. Since it almost has to boost everything, all the fury it will generate will damage the warlock. Casting bad blood instead of battle lust would also have let me transfer a kill shot I took, which inflicted 10+ dmg.