Alphastrike 8 part 1, first two games

First tournament in MK3 was here and I went with my Jarl/Horgle2 pairing two get a feel for how they would perform in a tournament and how the lists felt.

First game was against a veteran minion player who had brought Jaga Jaga and Rask. The scenario was the pit, and I think that he would drop Rask to combat the possible Horgle2 drop and I was right about him dropping Rask. His list:

After my second turn, bomber putting some heat on the snake.

Rask
-Wrastler
-Wrastler
-Battle boar
 Dalia & Skarath
Wrongeye & Snapjaw
Rorsh & Brine
Mist speaker
Orin
Swamp gobbers
Gremlin Swarm

I got to go first  and he chose the table edge where could be covered as there were walls on the side of the zone and a trench just outside of it. I placed my highwaymen to the left, beasts centrally, the sluggers and fire eaters to the right.

Round 1
I ran forward, putting inviolable resolve on the Mountain King and fire starter on the bomber. He ran forward and positioned himself to threaten into the scenario.

Round 2 

Rask is measuring for the assassination after my MK moved in.

Bomber moves up and throws into the clouds, first bomb drifting and setting a wrastler on fire, the second catching dalia and skarath dealing a lot of damage to both. On his round, things still burn and force dalia to transfer to skarath who now is at one hp. On his turn, he decides to move his admonitioned wrastler infront of the MK and the other wrastler behind him and feats.

Round 3
I see an opportunity to bulldoze the first wrastler away and kill the other, so I rage the MK and do just that. I try to hide Horgle as good as possible in the trench outside of my zone and block him with highwaymen and the bomber. The mk kills the wrastler and dalia & skarath with the spray. The rest of the army moves up to clean up what would kill the MK.

Rask wants to go for an assassination, a rather good one, with brine after killing the MK. Orin moves up to clear, but a tough stops the plans. Snapjaw gets his ps 23 and Rask shoots away the armbuff. Due to really bad dice, Snapjaw does not kill the MK himself and needs the second wrastler, who cannot throw rage on Brine and therefore he cannot kill the bomber as well. He decides to save rorsh and brine for next turn and instead moves the gremlin swarm to block snapjaw and the wrastler.

Rask is measuring for the last ditch assassination

Round 4
Horgle feats and wants to put consuming flames on the gremlin swarm, but orin negates it, he feats. The runeshaper does it instead, putting snapjaw on fire as well. The sluggers and fire eaters kills the swarm, wrastler and snapjaw easily. The bomber kills orin and the battle boar together with the highwaymen.

Rask goes for the last ditch assassination but doesn't get the dice rolling well enough.

Summary
I got rather lucky with the die rolls this game. It would have been much closer if brine would have killed my bomber after the MK went down. Rask really has no worries dismantling my army and I needed some bad dice from my opponent to win.

Game 2 - Nemo3 theme list
So after getting a initial win I get to face of against a Stryker2 Nemo3 pairing on Line breaker. I chose to go with Jarl as I think I need the long threat and shooting to remove his infantry and he goes for the Nemo3 theme list.

Nemo3
-Dynamo
-Firefly
-Lancer
Junior

After my turn 1. Just moving up!

-Firefly
Max Storm Lances
Stormblade Infantry+Ua+3 Gunners
Stormsmith Storm tower
Katherine Laddermore
Acosta
Arlan Strangeways

We roll of and I win, chose to go first. He chooses a side with two hills instead of two forests, which is fine by me. As it is line breaker, I have no rush.

Round 1. 
I run forward with most things, the highwaymen hang behind my left forest, fire eaters behind my right, I move my beasts up centrally behind a long wall and my fennblades in front of it.

He runs his stuff forward and positions on the hills. Arcane shield on the knights.

Round 2. 
Jarl starts killing 4 stormblades and feats, fennblades kills two more. The bomber tries to to something but cannot really reach anything interesting. the fire eaters and highwaymen hang back behind their forests, staying out of threat ranges.

My opponent thinks a while about what to do. He is rather stunted I play so defensively. He moves a firefly into one of the clouds to bounce some shots onto my fenns and kills four or five of them.

After my second round. Feating and hiding. Classic Jarl.

Round 3.
I continue to work on his stormblades and that flank. Move back further with the highwaymen and try to just ignore the knights.

He goes in with the knights to clear for laddermore who can score my left flag. He tries to remove the bomber but fails despite some hot dice from dynamo.

Round 4.
Jarl and the bomber moves to start killing knights. The bomber continues to under perform, killing nothing, Jarl gets one down. The highwaymen and braylen damage another one, and severely damages a third. On my right, the fire eaters kill acosta and the earthborn hides behind the wall. The mauler moves to charge knight on the following turn

The cygnar forces continue to press forward, the two remaining stormblades and the lancer going for the objective and not being able to kill it. Dynamo moves up and finishes of the bomber behind the wall. Knights again clear the flag for laddermore.

Round 5.
Clocks are getting low, and I play just to clock my opponent. The two remaining fire eaters move to defend the flag behind the rightmost forest, the earthborn just hangs still behind the wall. Jarl continues to shoot knights, The mauler kills two of them. The highwaymen remaining and braylen finishes the last one off.

After my fourth turn. Cheers love, the cavalry is here.

The clock is getting really low and my oponent starts speeding up. He charges dynamo to kill the earthborn but does not do it, arlan strangeways moves in to be able to capture the flag. Laddermore kills all but one highwaymen, he finishes of the objective, going up to 3 points.

Round 6. 
The earthborn tries to throw dynamo away so that the mauler could kill it. Misses the boosted sevens needed, but moves so  that he contests. I kill off laddermore on the side, put damage down on the lights centrally.

The cygnar forces clear of the right flag, dynamo killing the earthborn and arlan removing the last fire eater. He goes up to 4 points with 10 seconds left.

Round 7. 
I run in the runebearer to contest the flag but he uses his 10 seconds to kill it and I don't roll the tough.

Summary
Well, I think I played it right to the end. If I would have gotten the throw on dynamo, he would not have been able to kill my electroimmune earthborn contesting the flag, but it is a dice game and I need luck to win, that is the game. I really like Jarl into cygnar, especially with an earthborn.

Jarl1 vs Carver1 75 pts

Lots of games last week (well ok, 3 games, but it's a lot in a week for me at the moment), the last one was trying the thought out Jarl list for an upcoming tournament on the 4th of February, The list, which I have talked about in an earlier post, is:

Jarl1
-Runebearer
-Bomber
-Mauler
Braylen
Fell caller
Chronicler
Max Fennblades+Ua
Min highwaymen
Fire Eaters
Max Champions

My opponent, not knowing what to pair his Helga list with, was trying out a Carver1 beast list.

Carver1
-War hog
-War hog
-War hog
-Battle Boar
-Battle Boar
-Gun Boar
-Gun Boar
-Splatter Boar
-Splatter Boar
Lanyssa
Gremlin Swarm
Gremlin Swarm

This much bacon under batten down was not really what I want to see with my Jarl list, but I do not think it is a lost cause in any way. We rolled scenario and got Outlast, which should be a good scenario for an army of my size. We rolled off and I lost, Carver chose to go first.

Round 1 - running
Carver ran his stuff forward. Gun boars centrally, a splatter and battle boar onto each zone flanked by gremlin swarms. Carver and his personal bodyguard of three war hogs hanged back and slowly advanced centrally to see what zone to go for.

After my round 1

I had clogged myself in a magnificent way during deployment. Wanting to deploy as centrally as possible, I had placed my highwaymen and fennblades to close to the center, forcing back my bomber and my champs. Thankfully, since the pigs just ran forward, I would be able to get into position and feat. So this is what I did. Jarl went forward, shot a lot of damage into one of the gun boars and feated. Then I ran the fennblades, not taking my opponents AOEs into enough consideration. I moved up the highwaymen and fire eaters. The only thing that was too far back from what I would have wanted was the bomber.

Round 2 - shooting and jamming
With my feat up, Carver is just looking at a few rolling clouds without the possibility get into melee. His small shooting boars walk into the clouds and start shooting away at my too tightly packed fennblades, clearing a few of them. He decides that the left zone, to me that is, is the one to target and starts moving his war hog/carver center towards it.

After my round 2, notice the nice pack man circle
 for the battle boar on the left.

On my round 2,I try to go for some killing of the small boars. The fennblades charge in, the fire eaters attack the battle boar on the right flank. I was thinking of going for a scenario play by shooting one of my fire eaters in the back and magic bulleting to the gremlin swarm, but when the battle boar did not die it was better to kill lanyssa with and shoot more boars. Lanyssa died but the roll of snake eyes makes me kill my own fennblade in melee with two gunboars, I misplaced the highwaymen, they should just have run to flank more instead of doing nothing on two combined shots. I also forgot to reposition with my fennblades. So it was a very crappily played round from me. Still, I put down a lot of damage on many of carvers beasts without actually committing my beasts nor the champions.

Round 3 - scenario play and attrition
Carvers goes for a scenario play on the left side, clearing it out and scoring 2 points, placing his three war hogs so that he can clear out the stuff I throw into the zone.

I start to move as much I can toward the right flag and kill all the beasts on my right flank. The champions now can move can charge his war hogs the next turn. The last highwaymen and braylen contest the zone.

Round 4 - get into the zone!

Almost at the end of my round 3.
There are a lot less models left on the table now.

Carver moves back into a trench outside the zone and clears of my highwaymen with a warhog, gun boar and battleboar, scoring one more point.

On my turn I move my bomber to shoot one of the road hog, while the mauler gets quickened and raged and takes out the war hog who had removed my highwaymen on the left side of the left zone. Three of the champions charge the third war hog but only do a minimal amount of damage to him. The last fennblade and the fire eaters clear of the last gunboar and splatterboar centrally, leaving carver with two war hogs, one of which was heavily damaged, himself and the gremlin swarms.

Round 5 - chaos ensues
Carver has to clear out the zone, meaning killing one champion and my two beasts. Unfortunately, I positioned them to close together so that the free war hog could get to both of them. Popping his feat, carver charges the contesting champion and misses two or three attacks, barely killing it and only getting one or two swings at the bomber. The road hog also misses a few hits on the mauler and manage to kill it but not the bomber. What should have been a sure win now looks to be a loss for carver.

The game plan is clear, kill the non camping, non batten down carver. Two of the fire eaters spray him for a few points of damage, jarl shoots but rolls badly on the damage, only doing a few points. The bomber goes in, needing to boost and only gets three boosted attacks at pow15, not killing carver. I have one champion that can reach him, but does not finish him of, leaving him at one box on fire.

Round 6 - round 6? what is this, warhammer?
Fire roll, it doesn't go out. Six or more and then a tough roll can win me the game. Fire roll comes out a 5, and carvers easily clears out the zone and wins.

Summary
Despite the comical but exciting ending to an otherwise great game, I feel like the list has the tools to win a match up like this. The amount of damage the list puts out adds up, even against arm 19-20 beasts. However, I need to play way better. Better positioning against AOEs, better setting up so that I can unpack my army correctly, and also better utilise the flanking ability of the highwaymen. In all fairness, I did not really know what the battle boar and the splatter boars did, and playing with my son in a harness on my chest did not help.

But one thing is very clear, the champions are not pulling their weight at all. They got to charge heavies and not dent them at all, not even lights. Granted, batten down helps my opponent, but I still want to at least cripple an aspect, or be close to. They are so gonzo from the list. For the 17 points, firstly I will be trying out Sons of bragg and a min unit of sluggers, since I want to keep a high number of infantry. If that doesn't work I will put an earthborn and gobbers in the list. The earthborn has really performed in the games I have used it.

Horgle2 vs Helynna1 75 pts

Helynna

Practise makes perfect they say and I am a firm believer in knowing my lists and how it performs against different enemies. With the errata, my Horgle2 list I posted about earlier is not valid anymore (the sluggers have changed in cost). Since there is a one day tournament coming up soon I need to  practise the new list which is:

Horgle2
-Runebearer
-Mountain King
-Bomber
-Axer
-Max Sluggers
-Fire Eaters
-Min Stone+Elder
-Min Highwaymen

With the errata, I have gone from the bouncer to the Axer, as the need for a shield guard to the Mountain King is not as necessary anymore. Having a rather shooty list that also handles melee very well all ties into Horgle2 as a versatile caster which can use the feat both for shooting and for melee.

My opponent tried one of his tournament lists, Helynna1, a hard hitting list very survivable against shooting. Discordia, the artificer and helynnas feat and deceleration all hamper the output from my shooting.

Helynna1
-Sylys Wyshnalyrr
-Discordia
-Manticore
-Manticore
Max. Dawnguard Sentinels+Ua
Max. Dawnguard Sentinels+Ua
House Shyeel Artificer
Arcanist
Arcanist
Arcanist

The scenario we rolled to play was extraction, with kill box which mattered as Helynna wants to play rather far back. The terrain was set up so that one side had a wall, both sides had a hill and there was rubble and water in the centre of the table. We rolled of and lost the roll, but surprisingly, my opponent chose to switch sides to the one opposite the wall.

Round 1

After my first round, just running things.

I set up my Mountain king and fire eaters slightly to the right, to contest the right flag. Higwaymen and sluggers to the left for the left flag. Axer, bomber and Horgle2 deployed centrally to see how everything turned out. My first turn, everything ran forward. Inviolable resolve on the King, Fire starter on the Bomber, 3 fury in the stone.

The setup for my opponent was very symmetrical, Helynna in the centre with disco, the two units flanking her, and the two manticores flanking them. He ran his stuff forward and put up his defencive tech, walls and force barriers.

Round 2

After my round two, positioning

I moved my stuff forward, The bomber put some guys at fire without killing anything due to immunity to blast damage. The mountain king moved into the threat of three sentinels, the highwaymen flanked on the side. In other words, I positioned myself for a very aggressive turn 3 scenario play.

My opponent decided it was go time, he charged with what he could, putting down a lot of damage on my bomber with two sentinels and some damage on my Mountain king. He jammed with the rest of his army and disco sprayed horgle for brain damage, One crucial thing is that he forgot to feat.

Round 3.

After my round 3, much of the retribution army gone

Round three was easily the feat turn. With so much on fire and the bomber able to put out more, it was the way to go. Horgle feated and used his two attacks to clear of the bomber by combustion. However, the bomber then walked through the manticore wall, taking 4 damage to the spirit, knocking it out. He therefore only managed to throw out one bomb, setting some more stuff on fire. The mountain king then moved forward to kill Discordia, using only his initials, spraying some sentinels and killing a few more. The runebearer killed two sentinels with consuming flames and the fire eaters managed to kill of three. On the left flank the highwaymen managed to clear of most of the remaining sentinels, letting the sluggers only kill one guy. All in all, it was a very good feat turn.

My opponent figured assassination was the only way out. He went for it and failed even though it was close, since horgle had taken 8 damage from the Discordia spray earlier. Game over.

Parting thoughts
I need to set up the highwaymen and sluggers on opposite flanks. They get in each others way on the same flank. The fire eaters performed ok this game, but I think I need to spread them out more, they were hampered by the manticore wall this game. Me and my opponent discussed how much the feat during his turn would have helped. I probably would not have killed as much with the feat on. Probably still enough to get me the game though. Neither the axer nor the sluggers go to do any real work during the feat. I like the list as it is now a lot, it feels well rounded and will hopefully perform come the next tournament!

Calandra1 vs Fyanna2 75 pts

It seems I will be going to Smogcon, and therefore need a third list. Calandra has always been close to me and trying some of the lights in theme would be a good trial for them. I was playing:

Legion list and setup

Calandra1 - Power of Dhunia
Runebearer (free)
Earthborn
Mauler
Slag
Slag
Pyre
Storm
Axer
Night
Swamp
Min stone+elder
2x Whelps (free)

My opponent was playing a Fyanna2 combined arms list (i could be missing something):

Entrenched

Fyanna2

-Succubus

-Angelius

-Typhon

-Zuriel

Swordsmen

Strider Scouts

Deathstalker

Shepherd

Nyss sorceress & Hellion

2x Spell Martyrs

The scenario we rolled was Entrenched and the terrain was set up in such a way that one side was rather favoured as the zone was blocked by a large obstruction and there was access to the other zone via a forest. We rolled of and my opponent chose the favoured side.

Round 1

I fueled the stone and ran forward with everything. The plan was to hold my zone with the earthborn, calandra, the stone and maybe one light or more. On my left flank toward my opponents zone I placed both slags and the night troll. The rest were placed centrally. My opponent ran his army forward and feated, placing his three beasts centrally, his swordsmen running through his zone, and the archers moving into the forest toward my zone.

Round 2

After my round 1

Because of the feat, I held of my advance and played rather cautiously, +3 def is not to laugh at, especially since it is legion we are talking about. I just moved up, the earthborn into the zone without his animus, and shot some archer off the table with the pyre troll and storm troll. 

My opponent set up a strong scenario play by charging his angelious into my zone killing the objective with the armour piercing charge and repulsed my Earthborn out of the zone. Zuriel killed the storm troll and typhon sprayed my night troll to death. He was setting up for a 3 point scenario swing, but then fyanna went forward, hitting my pyre troll so that I could drop a whelp in my zone. 

Round 3

After my round 3

Feat turn for calandra. Rage up the pyre troll and earthborn. The Pyre troll threw the admonitioned zuriel at the angelius in the zone, knocking him down, the axer, receiving rage from the mauler kills zuriel and the earthborn kills the angelious. My lights kill some other small bases but the game is pretty much over after the mistake in scenario play.

Fyanna sees her only out is to go for an assassination and tries to kill calandra, but the second attack misses and she dodges away.

Last thoughts

I liked the list more than i thought I would. However, 9 beasts are too many for calandra and the min stone should be a max stone. What I will do for now is to exchange one of the slags and the swamp troll for a second Earthborn and a max stone. Additionally i have changed one of the free whelp units for a northkin shaman. With the changes I feel the list has better durability and also better output. As for the lights, I feel that under the feat and with rage, they can really pack a punch, but the small ranges on the guns are not doing them any favours. I do like the continuous fire on the pyre troll and fire immunity is something really useful at times. I think that they can perform in the right lists, but they do need help to have ok output. 

Christmas tournament game 2 vs Axis 75pts

After the quick scenario in round one the second, and last, game of the day would be against a Convergence player. He had brought Iron Mother and Axis. Seeing the double TEP list I knew I would be up against that from the get go and therefore I wanted to drop my Horgle2 list to have the survivability against it. He chose Axis, his list:

Axis
- Inverter
- Inverter
- Diffuser
- Corollary
Transfinite Emgerence Projector
Transfinite Emgerence Projector
Clockwork Angels
Optifex Directive
Optifex Directive
Reflex Servitors
Steelsoul protector
Steelsoul protector

The Pit

My list:
Horgle2
- Mountain King
- Bomber
- Bouncer
- Runebearer
Braylen Wanderhart
Min. Stone+Ua
Max Sluggers
Min Highwaymen
Fire eaters

We played the scenario The Pit, which is a scenario that fits very well with the list I have with Horgle2. He won the roll off and chose to go first. I chose table sides with a long wall to hide behind, and set up my list to skew onto his flag side with my mountain king thought as an anchor in the center. The highwaymen went to flank to the opposite side of the TEPs which he had place opposing my flag, so going for my flag was not a good idea. A mistake I made here was placing the bouncer centrally. He was not needed in the middle and would have been much better to make sure my flag was not taken.

Round 1 - Always this running

Round 1 CoC has started their advance

My opponent ran, placed Axis so that he could take his flag on his turn and dug in the servitors so that if I came to close he could counter charge. I ran everything forward and with the mountain king getting inviolable resolve and the bomber fire starter. My sluggers started moving to the left to fit behind the MK.

Round 2 - The feat off

After round 1

Axis moves up to the flag and feats. He places both inverters in the zone to threaten my Mountain King next turn, outside my threat, One TEP does 11 damage to the MK with one spray, the other does nothing. The other TEP runs.

On my turn, I contemplate whether I should go for a long shot assassination or not. I decide against it, since I see an opening to kill one of his inverters and then hope for the sprays not do deal enough damage on the MK. So I feat with horgle and throw a consuming flames on one of his inverters dealing a whopping 6 damage. I feel a little out in the open where I am standing, but have to be there to reach enough with the feat and consuming flames. The bouncer just runs out of the way and the MK moves up to spray the now burning inverter but rolls a triple one and misses. The sluggers save the day by killing it, although I forgot to move one close enough to my flag to contest. My fire eaters move up and put Axis on fire, dealing no damage, The highwaymen inch forward. My opponent scores one on his flag.

The MK still stands, CoC turn 3

Round 3 - Arm 23 Mountain King is tough AF
His game plan on his turn is obvious. Kill the Mountain king, place angels on my flag and double score. However, the 4 sprays do not do enough damage on the MK for the Inverter to finish him of and he lives with something like 13 HP, as the last hits were taken on the bouncer, to remove him from the equation. For the MK not to get free access to the TEPs, the Mechanics move up to jam him.
Axis scores two additional points on my his turn.

I am happy the MK survived and by spellslaving consuming flames, I manage to clear of two mechanics blocking my MK so that it reaches one TEP and the last Inverter. The MK easily kills both and a mechanic, the sluggers move in to contest the flag and manage to kill one of the angels. The fire eaters move to contest his flag and the highwaymen continue to flank. This was a crucial mistake. Since time was on my side now, I should have just contested his flag with all of the highwaymen.

After my turn 3, Not running the highwaymen to contest...

Round 4 - Game over
Axis just needs to clear two fire eaters and two sluggers. No problem and game over for me.

Afterthought
I was a bit sloppy with my round 3, thinking I had it in the bag when I managed to survive with the MK and kill the last inverter and a TEP. I should have moved my highwaymen much more aggressively. This combined with the disrespect of not contesting my own flag cost me the game. But my god how hard the MK is with arm 23. The sluggers also pulled their part, but I don't really think the fire eaters pulled their part. I should probably just have moved them in to contest. Not at all an unplayable match up, probably a rather good one for Horgle2. And he is rather fun to play!

Christmas tournament game 1 vs Kaelyssa 75pts

Kaekae is craycray

We had a small two round Christmas tournament at our local LGS where I participated. I brought my new Jarl/Horgle2 to the event to try them out. The first game I was paired up with one of the newer players in my meta and he had only brought one list.

Kaelyssa
-Discordia
-Banshee
Max. Nyss hunters + Soulless
Max. Sentinels + Ua + Soulless
Max. Halberdiers + Ua + Soulless
2x Arcanists
Lanyssa

Since he only had one list, I offered him to chose which list of mine he wanted to face, he chose Jarl. Kaelyssa is a rather bad match up for both of my lists. Upkeep hate, along with a strong denial feat is really not in my favour, so it would be a tough match up. My list:

Outlast

Jarl
-Runebearer
-Bomber
-Mauler
Fell caller hero
Stone scribe chronicler
Braylen Wanderhart
Max Fennblades +Ua
Min Highwaymen
Max Champions
Northkin fire eaters

The scenario was the old outflank, now named outlast. The scenario was very good for Jarl as he is more geared toward a wide scenario played as opposed to Horgle2 which rather plays a central one.
I got to start, don't remember who won the roll off, an my opponent chose the side with a wall in one of the zones and a building to hide behind.

After my first turn.

Round 1 - running is cool, feating is cooler
Placing quicken on the fennblades, running them up to threaten his lines. Highwaymen flank to the left zone with braylen, seeking the forest there. Bomber moves up centrally, champs run up behind the fennblades. My opponent moves his things up, triggers vengeance on my fenns without killing one of them. He feats with kaelyssa, keeping things in her reach. This means he does not really try to contest the left zone, which is good for me.

Round 2 - Counter feat, fennblades die

End of my turn 2

Kaelyssa feat really hampers my game plan of having the fennblades charge in and jarl shooting things. Fortunately for me, the fennblades are within vengeance and walk threat. They do just that, after getting buffs from the chronicler and the fell caller. The manage to kill two nyss, one sentinel and two halberdiers and reposition to really be in the way. The bomber manages to kill two nyss who are not in the Disco imprint. I feat with Jarl to hide my champs, bomber and mauler and toe in the rightmost zone. In the left zone I moved the highwaymen forward to kill one nyss and make it difficult to enter the zone. On my opponents turn, he kills most of the fennblades and a fire eater. The sentinels walk into the rightmost zone to contest. I score one point on his turn.

Round 3 - I clear the zone and game over

En of my turn 3 with me on 4 cp.

In my turn, the objective is to clear the right zone to  dominate it. The fire eaters do a great job of killing sentinels, I think two sprays killed 7 of them. The fennblades and champs kill the remaining ones. Jarl stands in place and really does nothing, in hindsight he should just have camped. I score three more points on my turn and stand at 4. My opponent tries to go for an assassination but when he misses the first shot with kaelyssa, Jarl dodges away and game over.

End game analysis
This list works quite well on wide scenario. The weak point of the list is Jarl himself. He is rather squishy and wants to use his fury, which is not the best of combinations. The fire eaters did a lot work this time around. The champions continue to not do so much. This game only made it to round 3, so they did not really get to the action, but they are a big point sink for not doing much work so far. We will see. I think that my opponent played his list a bit to passive and really was hampered by really wanting to get as much use of the feat as possible. The nyss hunters should be able to range out my highwaymen, so giving me that zone for free is not worth it. Even just putting one nyss in the zone to contest would have been a good option. I also need to think more about protecting my own caster.

The second list - who will be lucky match for Jarl?

Now that I have chosen to run Jarl as my first list in a two list pairing, I need his partner for the pairing. Since I see Jarl as much of a generalist who can deal with most things except high armor, I need the second list to deal with that.

Looking through the troll casters, Madrak2, Ragnor and Horgle2 stand out to me as casters for this job. However, Ragnor I do not own yet, despite ordering the battle box with PG-points this summer, and Madrak2 I am really tired of playing since mk2 already, plus the fact that another infantry heavy army would have the same weaknesses as the Jarl army.

That leaves Horgle2, the fire guy. He has the output needed to crack armor and also can place arm 23 gargantuans on the field. I like the idea to have one list consisting of lots of infantry and one which is more beast focused.

But how to focus on beasts? Do I want many beasts on the field or is it enough with a gargantuan? Which gargantuan in that case? Despite having just painted my glacier king, I think that the gargantuan I want to field is the Mountain King. He has the extra umpf in output that might be needed for some high armor techs out there such as Baldur2. 

Using a gargantuan will be a starting point for me with Horgle2 and this will of course have to be evaluated during games to see if it is better to switch to multiple beasts instead. So what would a starting point look like with Horgle2? For starters, I want a runebearer to assist in getting his upkeeps out and also to use the nuke Consuming Flames as much as possible. Of course I will need a stone with the elder, and I want a bomber to make use of Fire Starter. A Shield Guard is a must with a gargantuan, so it is not tagged by Alten, which means a Bouncer. Then I have 27 points left for other units and solos. I want the min. highwaymen + Braylen package as they get boosted shots during his feat, and the 13 remaining points slot will initially be filled with Sluggers. Yes Sluggers. I think that they will be able to do work during the feat and also outside of it. The list:

Horgle2

-Runebearer

-Mountain King

-Dire Troll Bomber

-Troll Bouncer

Braylen

min. Krielstone +Elder

Max Sluggers

Min Highwaymen

So how will the list work? Well, everything will probably be centered around the Mountain King with inviolable resolve and around the stone. The sluggers will hang back generally, so they are not picked of too easily. The only flankers I have are the highwaymen, so they will need to secure the most crucial flank. I think this will be a fun list to play that can also dish out a lot of damage during the feat turn and pose a significant assassination threat with quite a lot of shooting. Just horgle and his battle group can hand out three boosted pow 16s and two pow 12s during the feat. Adding the highwaymen they have anything between 12 boosted pow 10s or 2 boosted pow 16s, It should be fun to play!