WeightedDice #1

This was the first ever Weighted Dice (a store in Katrineholm) tournament and a chance to put my mark in history as the first ever winner or loser or something. The tournament was a SR 50 point death clock tournament limited to 24 players and 4 round, with a potential tie in the end.

I went with my pMadrak eMadrak pairing. This time though, the lists were a bit different, lets see if you can spot it:

pMadrak
-Runebearer, Mulg the Ancient, Earthborn Dire Troll, Pyre Troll
Janissa, Fell Caller, Fennblade Kithkar
Max Krielstone+Elder, Max Warders, Max Burrowers

eMadrak faces of against eMadrak. The forest on my side
was really in the way.

eMadrak
-Runebearer, Pyre troll, Impaler
Fell Caller, Viktor Pendrake
Max Krielstone+Ua, Max Warders, Max Warders, Max Fennblades+Ua, Max Burrowers, Swamp Gobbers.

Game 1
I am faced with a troll player. He brought Calandra EE and eMadrak. We both know we are going to drop eMadrak and that it is going to be terrible. We drop eMadrak and the game was just a grind. His eMadrak list differed from mine in that he had Mulg, an Axer and a feralgeist instead of a Pyre, Impaler, another warder unit. The scenario was Incoming.

Anyways. I get to go first and run with everything, there is a forest in the middle of the table, partly covering my zone which is a hassle the entire game, but I still try to go for my zone. He burrows and runs on his turn. So our pygs face of centrally, fenns face of on the left side, and warders face of on the right side.

On my next turn I go in with a few fennblades to bind him. He declogs and alphas with the burrowers. He also scores a first point in his zone. On my turn I place Warders and fenns for the feat, and manage to kill most of the things except for an important fennblade officer, my pygs also under perform on their first engage, I score a point on my turn. His feat turn is big, the fennblade officer I failed to kill kills six models and I get down on attrition and realise I have to play for time.

So I try to slow down the attrition pace of the game and gradually remove the fennblades on my side of the table forcing him to commit the axer, than mulg. Somehow, I manage to win on scenario, running in the fell caller, a stone scribe and a fennblade in his zone with him having 20 seconds left on the clock. I think that if he would have made quicker decisions with madrak in the last turns he would easily have won, but instead there was a lot of time lost on what to do with him even though it didn't matter.

Game 2

Mulg has just smashed Butcher3

Paired against Boxer, who played Butcher 2 and Butcher 3 on Rally Point. I am forced to drop pMadrak against the possibility of B3 and he drops B3 with Ruin, Devastator, IFP, Kossites, Nyss hunters and Doom reavers. He gets to go first and he positions his B3 across from my flag along with Ruin, the devastator on my right flank together with the reavers, nyss centrally and IFP on my left. I place my brick to go against B3 and my flag. Warders to my right and the kithkar on my left against the kossites coming.

Our first turns are uneventfull. He runs up, I move up and brick. On his second turn, he runs to jam me and places everything rather tightly. The positioning allows me to go for a rather easy assassination with Mulg on a butcher camping 3. I have to kill two IFP, one argus and a nyss to get there. So I go for it and Mulg delivers me the head of Butcher.

Game 3
After some pairing switching to not meet my brother I get to face Falkman and his new found legion horde. His pairing was pVayl/eVayl, the scenario was incursion. The table we played on had five pieces of terrain, two of which were linear obstacles which did not matter to the field, the other three were forests. So yeay. I have to drop eMadrak, he drops eVayl, a bit surprising to me, with a Scythean, Two ravagores, Two angelious, legionaires, the pot, spell martyr and a harrier.

Start of Falkmans first round on the three forest field.

He wins the roll to go first but decides to give me the start and take the side where he can threat beyond the side flags behind forests, because you do not need eyes to see, apparently. I position my fenns to my left, Madrak centrally, my warders on my right. He places the legionares on my right along with one angelious, the rest is positioned centrally to the left.

I run forward with everything and burrow on my first turn, empty madrak and place the pyre animus on him. On his turn he positions behind the forests and uses his spell martyr to put icy grip on my fennblades, which was really not good for me. He measures very delicately to place Vayl outside the burrower range and then moves the legionares into the middle along with a scythean.

On my turn I pop the burrowers to kill of his scythean and some legionaires. Thanks to his measurement of Vayl I know that he positioned the scythean in the burrower threat range. The fennblades walk forward and do nothing, the pyre troll removes an intervening legionare to get to the scythean and my burrowers with beast lore, blood fury and the fell caller war cry kills the scythean with two models, some legionares and a beast handeler. I move forward on my left flank to contest the flag with a warder an my gobbers.

On his turn, he moves in the angelious on the left to kill some fennblades, with admonition on him, he will be able to move out of the way. The ravagores shoot and kill  a warders, the legionares kill some pygs along with evayl and on the left side, the angelous kills a warder and refuges behind the forest.

I continue to move forward and try to do damage to the left angelious with my fenns with blood fury, but it doesn't succeed. On the right side, I run another warder in the forest, looking for something to kill. In the middle, I clear the flag and score with the pyre troll.

After this, the game goes rapidly in my favour, Falkman is not able to kill enough of my stuff and also make a mistake when he admonitions away from the left flag during my vengeance move. This lets me score up to three and after this, he goes for a self-assassination, but realises that the ravagore cannot attack vayl. So he flips the time over and lets me win with 5-1 in control points.

Game 4
With 3 players undefeated, I am paired with Olov, who also is undefeated, meaning that if Hugo, with his Pagani-Circle lists loses, this will be the final. Olov plays Butcher 3 and eSorcha. The scenario was outflank which was a real problem for me. I have to drop pMadrak, and he drops eSorcha with a Conquest, Deathstar, Nyss hunters, Great bears, Aiyana and Holt.

I get to go first, which is important. I place my brick centrally, my warders on my right and the kithkar on my left. Olov has placed his Conquest in the middle, he places the death star to my left and the nyss on my right.

On my first turn, I decide to run the burrowers and the rest, moving the brick up centrally and the burrowers against the left flank. Olov moves up, iron fleshed the death star, moves and zephyrs with the nyss to kill two burrowers and fishes for a crit with the conquest, he would have thrown three models but not too far, sure foot would also have helped me.

On my second turn, i burrow the pygs, move one warder into the right zone, and the kithlar into a forest on the right zone. He tries to remove the kithkar and the warder on his second turn, but doesn't succeed.

I just dominated the right zone.
The kithkar in the forest contests on the left.

My third turn offers an opportunity to potentially dominate the right zone. My pygs have to kill four nyss. There was one being iffy, needing nines with rerolls, but for the other i had two on each. I succeed to kill them, and charge the remaining one with warders. The brick moves to the right and i score 2 points. Olov on his turn goes for the attrition play and sorcha moves to freezing grip the warders, but fails. The conquest moves in and kills two warders. On the left side, the death star deals with the kitkhar and olov scores one point.

Here i was forced to make a decision. I saw an opportunity to surf to an emptied sorcha, or go for killing the conquest. After some minutes thinking, i went for the assassination. The warders did some damage to conquest, madrak moved to get sorcha in his control and feated. Mulg moved and started killing, no toughs from Olov on three dudes, i get in behind the conquest and I'm starting to realise i will not make it. I kill two great bears before aborting and getting the last five attacks on the conquest. With my ps 20 i leave it at 7 boxes, after only rolling 6.

From here, Olov starts getting up on attrition killing mulg and all but one warder. I kill the conquest with madrak and the pygs continue to battle the nyss. The earthborn and Janissa moves into the other zone to contest. Olov has a difficult time removing anything, the janissa wall and her force lock on a death star trooper makes them difficult to hit and damage. He plinks away the stone instead. I manage to dominate once more before olov managed to assassinate madrak.

The decision to go for an assassination instead of the conquest decided the game. It was the wrong decision in what turned out to be the final.

Summary
3-1 and second place. I am quite satisfied even though i misplayed the final. I really like my lists and the inclusion of burrowers in the brick is actually not bad. If stuff gets close, the burrowers go to mat 8 with carnage. It was a fun tournament.

WTC solo masters 2015 part 2

So three games left of the tournament and I was 2-1. As I had list a game, I decided I wanted to just play quick games and be as aggressive as possible (with the brick list I had). I'm sorry for the lack of photos in this post, I will be better in the next post, promix!

Round 4
Facing a circle player with Kromac 1 and eKreuger on a scenario that didn't matter, could have been fire support. He dropped kromac and I dropped pMadrak.

I got to start, ran everything up, having my warders flanking my brick. He ran everything up to threaten my brick and caster with Kromacs ability to jump. On my second round, I just moved my brick up as far as I could, being aggressive means ~5-6 inches per round.

On his turn he decided to go for an assassination with kromac, apparently not knowing about Mulg's ability to protective fit when he hits my caster. Without the ability to critical grievous wounds my caster, Mulg killed him when he was trying to kill Madrak.

I felt a bit bad that he didn't know or ask about the protective fit ability, but I was assuming that a 3-1 player in the solo masters knows about it. On the upside, I was free to enjoy the last game of the WTC as we finished this game so quickly that they had just gotten the pairings going.

Round 5
After a wet night and many beers I got up at 8 to have breakfast and be paired with a Haley/Haley2 player on outflank. I dropped pMadrak, he dropped pHaley, galleon and stormwall, and I decided to switch in an Axer and a Kithkar for a unit of warders.

He starts and moves one colossal into each zone. I decide to go for the zone with the galleon, while the stormwall and the murderponies where in my right zone. However, I make a mistake and opens a small hole for Janissa to be shot, forcing the tough roll, which she makes. This tilts my opponent a little, and he moves the stormwall into the centre of the field to get another shot at her with a pod, instead of clearing the warders moving to contest his zone and going for a quick scenario win. I can also say that Janissa toughed that hit too which was lucky but not pivotal in the game.

On my round, I had to move up more round, contesting his zone, and on his round three, he goes in to kill Mulg with the Galleon, but does not do much damage to him. The stormwall moves to kill a warder that is in the zone and the ponies start to attack my backlines, killing my fell caller.

As he had not moved Haley into his zone, I realise I can get up on scenario by dominating my own zone, all I have to do is kill the galleon and a storm caller. Mulg and my axer made quick work with the galleon, Madrak threw his axe in the face of the storm caller, after moving to the far end of the zone from Haley and the Stormwall. The warders moved to block the stormwall coming into my zone and killing mulg, and I go up 2-1 on scenario.

Mulg killing issyria, leaving a large hole in the army. 

After this, it became a race, I manage to win by blocking the storm wall from coming into my zone and throwing one model at a time into his, while he as to few models to contest my zone. This match up is not a good one for the pMadrak brick, especially on this scenario where it is obvious where the brick will move. The axer helps, but not really enough. Against pHaley on outflank, I will not drop pMadrak, or a brick, again.

Round 6
Facing Issyria and Rahn on close quarters, both with quite a few juice warrior models, I decide to drop pMadrak and surf to their caster as soon as possible as I was getting hungry and wanted to watch the WTC. He dropped Issyria with halbardiers, strike force, riflemen, some solos.

He gets to go first, and moves everything up. I move up with my standard positioning, brick centre, warders flanking. On his turn, he moves everything only slightly forward, packing everything together in a nice board wide wave of warrior models, the closest easily within 7" of Mulg, and without admonition on Issyria. Surfs up Mulg!

I think the photo really says it all. I ran forward with the warders, charged them in the back with madrak who threw down carnage and feated. Mulg, with the pyre troll animus being ps 21 and ps 22 within the stone would eat every model he hit, as the highest arm was arm 21. So he got to issyria and that was that, one-shotted I think.

Well, another quick game and I do not know why my oponent did not put down admonition onto Issyria. I think that I would have surfed even if he would have, What I would have done is to just eat all of the halbardiers and then position myself behind the wall. Mulg would probably have died, but the attrition swing would be heavily in my favour. Madrak would have been safe behind a wall, with sure foot and with the earthborn animus on him.

Summary
So first tournament in roughly half a year was a smooth surfing with pMadrak. Having ADR really solves a lot of the problems. I went 5-1, placed in 6th place, which was alright. The tournament as such was fun, but it seems like it is a bit forgotten by the WTC, which I can understand. The player level was also very uneven, a few good players and many players playing just for fun.

The weekend itself was very well organised and great fun, although it was quite a bit more expensive than last year. The biggest plus was the venue, which really suited our needs, the biggest negative was the location. Having the venue close to the big airports is a huge plus and it seems like it will be the case next year, outside of Amsterdam.

WTC Solo Masters 2015 part 1

The WTC in 2015 was held in Killarney, on the far side of Ireland from where I am looking. After a flight to Dublin a train ride took me to where I needed to go. The venue was really well adjusted for a tournament this size. One big convention hall held the entire event, with the team tournament on the ground floor and the solo masters on the first balcony floor. There was plenty of room to walk about and there was a bar in the room as well.

I attended the solo masters along with 57 other players in the six round tournament and managed to do pretty well. The lists I brought to the masters were:

The venue seen from the balcony

pMadrak, Objective: Fuel
- Runebearer
- Mulg
- Earthborn
- Pyre troll
Janissa
Fell caller
Max Warders
Max Warders
Max Stone + Elder

Specialists:
Thrullg, Min Scattergunners+Ua, Feralgeist, Axer, Kithkar

Calandra, Objective: Effigy of Valour
-Runebearer
-Bomber
-Impaler
-Pyre
Fell caller
Sorcerer (Warders adjunct)
Kithkar
Max Warders
Max Warders
Max Burrowers
Max Stone+Elder

Specialists:
Bomber, Whelps, Pendrake, Chronicler, Kithkar

Round 1
Against a Norwegian minon player, sporting Jaga Jaga with croak raiders, spitter, wrastler, horror and two units of gatormen and Bloody Barnabas on two fronts. She chose to drop Jaga jaga and I dropped Calandra, swapping out the kithkar for pendrake.

I won the roll to go first and decided to start, in turn I got the side with a forest in the middle in front of my deployment zone. I decided to deploy a warder unit to the right and one to the left, focusing with my battlegroup for dominating my zone. The pygs deployed in the center. My first round I just run everything up and burrow the pygs. My oponent runs her army up and and places her croaks around the spitter in a trench.

On my second turn I pop the burrowers so that I can get a few of them onto the swamp horror and a gatorman. But to get there I need to clear some croaks with the bomber, which was not a problem. The pyre also gets to walk up (not caring about the croaks) and shot at the spitter in the trench. The croaks next to him are all lit on fire. The burrowers don't do much about the horror, or the gatorman, but they are blocking the way forward for the minions.

With most of her croaks gone and nothing juicy reachable by the gatormen or beasts, my opponent decides to clear out the pygs and move forward slowly. On my third turn, The warders get into the fray, I feat, kill my opponent's objective, do a lot of damage to the wrastler, bull snapper and swamp horror, kill the remaining croaks, which now flee, and start picking of the gators. From here on out, the game just turned more and more into my favour. Her beasts could not clear the pygs fast enough between my stars crossed and toughs,

After my second round, burrowers swarming the horror.

In the end, I went for an assassination on Jaga Jaga with the bomber, killing her and scoring my 5th point as well. It was a good start to the tournament.

Round 2
Against a Cygnar player, playing Haley3 and maybe Siege on Incoming. I decided to drop Madrak without any changes, and he dropped Haley3 with two cyclones, tempest blazers, trenchers, aiyana and holt. I realise that I will have to have my brick in his zone if I do not want to lose this game on scenario.

So I get to go second and position myself so that a unit of warders can contest my zone while the rest of my army moves into his zone. He positioned himself just as I though, with haley going for her own scenario zone. After two rounds of moving up and doing nothing, she makes the first move on her third turn, pushing the two warders in her zone out, scoring her first point.

I then decided it was time to gamble a bit, with haley standing on def 19 arm 19 in the zone, she had left the trenchers and blazers in way for me to trample in with mulg and the earthborn during my feat and kill most of her army. With carnage up on madrak, he positions himself so that he could be protected by the warders, Janissas wall and the fact that Mulg would be standing just next to haley and most of the other things gone. So I go for it, going in with Madrak first to clear some trenchers and moving back, then I go with Mulg with the pyre troll animus on him. Mulg tramples into the fray behind the clouds, kills a few blazers, one slammed over Aiyana and Holt, killing Aiyana. He gets to Haley having used two fury, decides to take a swing at her, hitting her and slamming her into the cyclone behind, making her knocked down. The next two attacks hits, and she was dead.

After my round two, Mulg is actually
the proxybase next to the EBDT

I went for a very aggressive play in this game, partly because I think it would pay off even if I didn't manage to kill Haley3, but also that I had an OK shot to kill her. Quick games were also nice as I could go watch the WTC afterwards. So I'm 2-0 and heading to the last game of day 1.

Round 3
I was paired up against a troll player with eMadrak and pDoomy on Recon. I chose to go with pMadrak and he chose eMadrak with fennblades, two units of warders, stone, Mulg, pyre troll. I decided to swap one unit of warders for scattergunners and a feralgeist.

We both deployed rather centrally, I got to go second and deployed so that I could benefit from the water in the centre of the table. This was a really one sided match, he did very little damage to Mulg with the first fenn charges, and Mulg just snacked that back. I used the scattergunners to clear most of the fennblades, and my warders got to trade up against his.

There was no scenario play in this game, I positioned my brick in the zone, with Mulg at def 17 over the wall and the earthborn at 18. My opponent had to go for an assassination after he lost his fennblades, a kithkar, half of the stone unit, one unit of warders and I had lost one warder and taken two damage on Mulg. However, I had given him a shot to kill me, so eMadrak charged one of my warders, killed him and spent the fury to surf over one corner of the janissa wall, buying an attack on another warder, killing it and surfing to madrak. He got to me with 2 fury left, and the feat still. So three attacks, I was having my scroll and a fury, so I should be good. But, he crits his first attack, needing 7's to hit. and i was dead after his second attack, as Mulg did not crit on his attack against him.

I really should have been able to close out this game, but I was a bit to wound up in the "winning as hard as possible" to take a step back and just back up with my caster instead of risking him. Sure, It was not a good assassination run from him, one tough on the warders would have been enough, or him not to crit me, or my mulg to crit him, but it was his only option to win, so I should just have backed up instead.

So after the first three games, I'm 2-1, with a really bad feeling about the last game. But I decide to continue anyways and play really aggressive to get fast games.

The sleeping blog awakens

Dear blog,

I'm sorry for neglecting you, and also leaving with a cliff hanger about the Smogcon masters. Let's just say I didn't win and leave it at that.

The reason for the no updates has been that I got married in May, so the majority of the spring and summer has been preparations and celebrations.

But now I will start updating again. Next blog post will be about my adventures at the WTC solo masters and will be up within the week.

See you soon blog!

Smogcon Commanders crucible

So my smogcon 2015 experience started with the hardcore. But it not much to talk about, as I dropped after the first two games. The commanders crucible however, was one of the two tournament I finished this weekend. It is a rather wonky styled tournament, but quite fun. 

I used a 25 pts module of army and coupled it with four casters and battlegroup of 25 points. The army i played was:

Janissa, Fell caller, Max krielstone with ua, max burrowers, max warders. An awesome 25 point module.

The casters I paired it with were pMadrak, eMadrak, Calandra and Jarl.

My opponent carefully considering his game plan. 

Game 1...
...was legion. He dropped saeryn and i dropped eMadrak with double bombers, impaler and pyre. The scenario was rally point. He got to go first and moved far up the board. I moved up to hug a wall and await his alpha. To my surprise, he just moved up to position himself for a better next turn.

This was very good for me, the burrowers popped up and aimed at a scythean and a carnivean. The bombers could aim.with far strike. I feated that round and removed the scythean and half killed the two angels.

End state of the game. A Naga and Saeryn left.

He tried to flank and get into my backlines with one of his angels, half killing one of my bombers on the edge of his control. I used a little trick called tectonic shift to move the angel of my bomber and out of control for Saeryn, hehe. The attrition continued and in the end, I killed Saeryn and everything else. 1-0 for me!

Game 2

The guy from Sweden, or was it Switzerland?

Against a swede from Switzerland. He played skorne and I did not like the look of his pMakeda list with a Mammoth. Fortunately for me, he chose Makeda 2, which only had the Sentry as a reach beast besides 2 Bronzebacks and a gladiator. There were also Nihilators, Slingers and Paingivers. I dropped pMadrak for some nice Sure foot action. I had Mulg, an earthborn and a runebearer I think. 

I have to say I don't really remember much from this game anymore. It was probably not very eventful. I can recall that he gave me the sentry quite early and sort of recognized that it would be very difficult winning the game. After that, I think I picked apart his army piece by piece and won the game. 

Civil war with the trolls!

Game 3
Facing trolls, I was a bit sad I didnt bring eGrim. My choices left were Calandra and Jarl. As my oponent did not have a fell caller in his list, Calandra would be a good drop. He dropped Jarl against me on the scenario ourflank. His army was jarl with an earthborn, blitzer, impaler, pyre. Double warders janissa and stone. He set up his army, going for warders flanking his shooty centre. I depolyed to go for my right circle due to a good wall.

The game became a lot about what shooters were the best. I had a bomber, he had a blitzer. The bomber is better.  I won the game on scenario after having clogged him down with burrowers and stars crossed. That spell really won me the game. He had to go for some last resort assassination on calandra which did not pan out. It was a quite one sided game.

Small caster, large robot. Over compensating perhaps?

Game 4
I was looked into Jarl against Ossrum with some dwarf jacks, the earthbreaker, nyss hunters and a lot of solos. An assassination list, in retrospect. I had jarl, with bomber mauler impaler swamp troll.

The scenario was close quarters, and i placed my brick in the centre. He started with running everything forward. I in turn advanced and magic bulleted both Reinholt and Thor. I also feated to be safe.

He was a bit chocked over the loss of Thor. Magic bullet is a good spell. He moved up closer as he couldnt really see anything. On my turn i move up the brick to attack the earthbreaker the next turn. The burrowers block the jacks and kill a light. I feel quite safe, but i was not. The knockdown shot was what i forgot about. Jarl was knocked down and i died.

Summary
3-1 and quite disappointed with my last game. I have seen that before and should have been more careful, especially looking at the list, it is a pure assassination list. Anyways I placed third and qualified for the master, which was very fun!