To me, the news was rather good. I was feeling a little burnout on my pairing and the meta in itself as well. Knowing I would have very little time to play for the coming time, MK3 definitely could not have come at a better time. This way, it can give me some time to see where the meta is and plan accordingly.
However, with the balance erratas coming every year, this is more difficult than I first anticipated, so I decided to just chose my favourite caster to play, add another caster that could fill out his weaknesses, create two lists and then just play to become better and refine the lists. After having looked at a lot of tournaments online, such as the WTC, Warmachine Weekend and Clogcon, I think the meta has really not found its place yet and is still rather unstable. So I definitely think there is much merit to just play the game to get better and faster playing it, rather than waiting for something to change or get nerfed or buffed.
In my mind, the choice was very simple to choose the first caster. Jarl Skuld, devil of the Thornwood. He is my absolute favourite caster in trolls. He plays a very active roll in his armies, having the ability to either be aggressive and remove support from far away, or just clear the lanes for quickened beasts or infantry. He has some glaring weaknesses, such as no damage buff nor to hit buff. His feat is also rather lack luster compared to the cloud and forest walls in the meta now. That he is considered to be the worst caster in trolls by some also fuels my energy to make him work.
So I played Jarl quite a bit in MK2 as well and while he did not change much, the rest of the army did. I started to create my typical Jarlish infantry army that could strike from a mile away and quickly jam my opponent to create scenario pressure. The list is as follows:
Jarl Skuld
-Runebearer, Dire Troll Bomber, Dire Troll Mauler
Fell Caller Hero, Stone Scribe Chronicler, Braylen Wanderhart
Northkin Fire Eaters
Max. Fennblades + Officer and Drummer
Max Trollkin Champions
Min Trollkin Highwaymen
So the first thing to note here is that the list does not contain a Kriel Stone. The reasons for this being that a large part of the army will not really benefit from it, the fennblades, fire eaters and highwaymen, and the fact that Jarl has some difficulties running it at all. The core strategy of this army is rather straight forward. Flank with highwaymen+braylen and fire eaters on either flank, and use fennblades to gum up the center to allow the champions to move up and Jarl+Bomber to do work. This is meant as a very much 'all comers' lists, meaning I want it do be able to play in to most things. Jarl supplies a very good tool for this in his Magic bullet, but I am not sure Fennblades are up to any task currently. Charging pow 12 is a bit sad, even if it is coming from 15" away.
With this in mind, maybe I want a more heavy hitting and a list that can take a punch. So I created:
Jarl Skuld
-Runebearer, Dire Troll Bomber, Dire Troll Mauler, Dire Troll Blitzer, Dozer & Smigg, Earthborn Dire troll
Whelps
Lanyssa Ryssyl
Min Stone+Elder
Swamp gobber bellows crew.
So what is this? This is essentially a lot of beasts with support for those beasts. Bomber, Dozer and Blitzer provide ranged threat, the mauler and earthborn provide some threat in melee. Jarl also does his of clearing jamming infantry to allow for the shooting beasts to be effective. Here, there are no obvious targets for his upkeeps, I believe that it will be very situational depending on what is on the other side. I will have to try and see how the list functions, but there are lot of interesting things that can be done with reposition and swift hunter and this list has the umpf to beat down most of the heavy armour that is seen in the current meta.
What is left now, is to try these two lists to see which one I feel the most for. It will of course also depend on what the other caster will be! Either way, I am very stoked for the future and just want to play more and more.
