Battle of Lund

It was a time since I last updated. I blame the hot summer!

The battle of Lund is one of the biggest tournaments every year, and also a qualifier for the Iron Moot. I went there with big dream, bringing the same pair as usual; pMadrak and eMadrak.

pMadrak
Earthborn, Mulg, Pyre troll, Runebearer
2xWarders, Krielstone with ua
Janissa and a fell caller hero

eMadrak
Impaler, Pyre
Fennblades+ua, full kriel boat, max burrowers, krielstone+ua, warders
Fell caller, Stone scribe chronicler

Game 1
Vs a troll player with Runes of War and pGrissel with Longriders on a non kill box scenario. He chose Runes and i dropped eMadrak. I couldn't really drop pMadrak on the wide scenario. I put up my fenns on one side, kriels on the other, and the rest up center. He goes first moves the brick up centrally, his flanking runeshapers ran up.

Runes of war on outflank

I felt pretty confident. My fens threats further than the runeshapers can throw, and my kriels are many and steady. The flanks felt good. The question was what do to about the center, try to break through or just jam and go for scenario. I went for both! On my second turn, everything charged, my urrowers with blood fury, and killed many of the runeshapers and the axer.

With the flanks dead, pDoomy went for killing the fury support in my list and let mulg trample over my burrowers to my beasts. One was just out of reach but my pyre died. Then the game went grindy. I did my best to kill his beasts and he killed some of my troops. In the end, I won by killing doomy and taking 5 scenario points. I was of to a great start in the tournament.

Legion on incursion. The left flag, behind the forest was
the one to remain

Game 2
A new acquaintance, Henrik, brought vayl2 and her happy dragonspawn. The scenario was incursion and he got to go first. This game was unfortunately over quite quickly. We both aimed for one flag each, the left flag was covered by a pretty large forest and an obstruction for me. The wrong flag disappeared and i could not the little bit of luck needed to get back into the game. In hindsight i should have offered a lot more fennblades to him so that that flag would have been more difficult to take, but the terrain really made it difficult for me.

Game 3
Last game of day one and a Retribution player with rahn and issyria. Again, the scenario was not a killbox one, so i really had to drop eMadrak. He dropped Issyria with hyperion and some units. He had many guys, but i had a lot more.

He wins the roll to go first but choses a side, letting me go first. I do not mind that at all. He deploys his Hyperion in the center first. I do the usual with fennblades and kriels flanking and the rest in the center. He puts his archers against my fens and his shieldwall guys against my kriels.

I start the game by running everything up, not burrowing my burrowers. On his turn, most thing run, but the hyperion takes a shot at something but misses. On my second turn i run a few guys into the zones to contest them, and burrow the pygs. My pyre also gets four guys with his blast. Issyria feats on her turn and shoots quite a number of my guys away.

So, time to retaliate, my warders charge the hyperion, fenns charges archers, kriels charge shield wall guys, Madrak throws his axe at hyperion for a lot of damage and feats. Blood furied pygs deals with the scrapping of hyperion and the game is looking good for me.

The last turns i go for a scenario win with dominating my own zone. When issyria tries to do the same, she got crit smited by my impaler and killed by my fell caller spray.

Game 4
Legion-Gurra, a nice guy from the capital whom I've played a couple of times now. However, every time with different match ups. Fourth game, and still no kill box. I have to drop eMadrak again, which i would have wanted to anyway. He drops pVayl which i had never faced before.

The game is very much one of threat distance assessment. We get to a position where my kriels cant charge his raek or deathstalkers, my fenns can charge, but probably not hit anything because my fell caller wants to buff my pyggs. What i did was to kriel bowl the raek and death stalkers, unfortunately not killing one of them. The fenns just jammed and put some damage on the beasts in my left zone and my center moved up to threat. I almost cleared the offensive zone and feel i have a good chance at the scenario this game.

However, pVayl feats and makes it harder for me, toeing with a carnivean in the zone i want to dominate. On my turn I think i will kill the carnivean, but drop it down to one hp after the turn after. Having placed madrak rather poorly, i get charged by two carniveans and die.

I could really have played this match better and won it on scenario. A little bit more luck against that bloody second carnivean or a crit smite to get the other carnivean knocked down would have won it too.

Game 5

I go up against cryx with horseshade and something else. it is finally a killbox scenario which is destruction, which makes me drop pMadrak, which is my drop against cryx mainly. He has satyxis raiders, tartarus, bane knights and witches. 

After my firstn

I get to go first and just run so that i can contest the zones even though the satyxis are crazy fast. They and the witches jam me up, and I barely get in the zone. The next turn, he clumps up to kill one objective while Goreshade hid behind a wall while Nighmare tried to hurt Mulg, although being at arm 23 and defence 15 over the wall made that problematic. I decided to feat and clear the most of his things using my warders, my earthborn and Madrak. That leave me Mulg, and what I think is a good chance of surfing to Goreshade3 with enough fury left to get it done. and Mulg did it!

Summary

Two losses against legion. Perhaps it is time to make place for Pendrake in my madrak list? It was a good tournament, although it seemed that some tables had problems with rather big terrain pieces, I guess it many times is a remnant from the warhammer times in Sweden, but hopefully it will be over in the future. 

Speed painting Circle

Last week, I tried to start painting my Circle that I bought over a year ago. As I still have a lot of Trolls on the painting table, I wanted to try some new techniques and paint much much faster than I usually do.
The circle i painted was a Feral, a Stalker, an Argus, a Winter argus, two units of stones and pKaya. In total, it took me about 5 hours. Drybrushing and inking was the main techniques, and it was fun to see it all come together so quickly.

The painted circle force.

Prize for the first Uppsala Summer Mangle!

This weekend I am running a 16 people tournament at Ungdomens Hus in Uppsala. I just completed the first prize. This summer sure will turn out a bit more swaggy for the lucky winner!

 

Lincon painting done!

For the big tournaments coming up this weekend at Lincon, my new forces are ready to be fielded.

Borka, the champion hero, the sorcerer, my second warder unit, and my second Kithkar!

Mr. Immoren 2014 part 2!

After the first two games I was 1-1 in the tournament but was a bit bummed out about the loss in the second game. It was close, and I felt that some of the mistakes I made cost me the game. But it was a good learning experience. So game three came up, and it is Menoth!

Game 3

Harby and her position when she won!

Harby or pKreos. I went with Jarl, because of the pyre troll and that his feat sort of counters Harbringers.
Sure enough, Harbringer was fielded against me. She brought a reckoner, the avatar, errants, a vassal, choir, gorman, piper and the knight lady that gives errants steady. The scenario was Balance of Power. I got to go first.

This was a very short game, unfortunately for me. I botched it on my first round, by not running into the scenario zone. I placed my fennblades some inches from the scenario zone and followed up with the rest of my army. The reasoning for this was that I did not want to be shot to pieces from the errants. But that was bad reasoning for two reasons: They still could walk and shoot and more importantly, if they shoot, they are not pushing the scenario. Anyways, Harby moves everything up, runs with the errants, and feats.

On my turn two, I realise that I will lose the game quickly. I have nothing that can threaten the zone, and try to clear out errants with shooting. I feated so that the errants cant see my army, giving me a turn of respite. Harby martyrs the most of them. I also try to get a pyre troll shot onto her by shooting a model by her, but I miss and the scatter goes of in the wrong direction. On harbys second turn, she moves into the zone and pushed everything forward and efficiently blocks my approach to the zone. She scores two points.

Turn three, I try to kill harby, as I realise i will not get into the zone. I get her down to 5 hp, with a pyre troll scatter just missing her, and on her turn, she wins.

Game 4
Legion, Kallus with dudes and eThagrosh with only beasts! Fun lists. I chose to go with Madrak and try to brick it out, thinking my feat turn could be a hoot against Kallus with a million dudes!
he chose to go with eThags bringing two Scytheans, an Angelious, a Raek, a Seraph, a shredder and a forsaken. The scenario was Supply and Demand, and I was looking forward to a real skirmish!

After my second turn

He let me go first, so I thanked him, ran everything up and fuelled the krielstone. He did the same on his turn. On my second turn, I walked into the zone fronting with Madrak and the beasts behind the wall. My opponent looked really confused and wondered how much I was camping. Two I said. Plus his scroll and the fact that your beasts can't charge him I also told him, and he understood. is still def 18 arm 20 over the wall, and can't be knocked down. So I felt rather safe. eThags opted to feat and get some damage to my stuff and walk back. He killed Janissa with the Raek, but only put a few damage points to my beasts and killed two of my warders, after this turn, the rampage began!

So much fury! So much fun!

On my turn, I feated back, killed the raek, the seraph, the angelious and almost one of the Scytheans. eThags retaliated by killing all of my beasts with his forsaken and the Scytheans. It was looking rather grim, but Madrak, the two warders left and the fell caller managed to kill both Scytheans. But I had left madrak on zero camp.

eThags flies in to get the best of Madrak. He needs nines to hit, and with 7 fury, he can get of 4 attacks. He hits the first, which I scroll. Then, I pray, he hits the second attack, and deals some damage, as he is straight dice. His third attack misses! He decides to gamble and go for two unboosted attacks, one which hits but does not do much damage.

My fell caller hero is yelling eThags ass off!

My last turn, and I really think I should be able to get Thagrosh, despite it only being Madrak, two warders, a fell caller and the krielstone left. Thags had taken some damage before, from a madrak axe. I get one kriel stone scribe onto him, and plink him for some damage. The fell caller activates and gives Madrak an easier time to hit before charging Thags. The charge attack from the fell caller was enough! Game to me after a really fun and brutal game.

Summary
42 points is kind of funky, but still was good to test some new lists. The pMadrak brick is really enjoyable actually. I think i will continue with it. The last 8 points is another warder unit, I think. I did not miss the axer as most things I want to kill come to me faster anyways. Both the games I lost this weekend was due to too passive play from my side. Against denny, I should have run my Warders further into the zone and against Harby, I should have run into the zone.

Mr. Immoren 2014 part1!

This year, Mr. Immoren was a 42pts non character restricted two list ordeal. In other words, a rather funky tournament setting. I decided to ignore that and play a SR pair of pMadrak and Jarl.

PMadrak
Mulg, Earthborn, Slag troll, runebearer
Max warders, min krielstone with elder, janissa, fell caller hero

Jarl
Pyre troll, slag troll, impaler, runebearer
Max fennblades with ua, max kriel warriors with ua and 3 cabers, min krielstone with ua, fell caller hero, stone scribe chronicler.

My turn 1, Blue horde approaching!

Game 1
My first opponent played Ret, with issyria or rahn. The scenario was destruction. I opted to go with Jarl to be a threat to the casters with magic bullet, but also be able to out threat the pesky elves!

He fielded Rahn against me, though i think Issyria would have had a better chance.
Rahn brought an arcnode jack, a banshee, dawn guards, stormfall archers, battle mages, eEiryss, and some battle solos.

I got to start and ran up my fenns to threat a large portion of the board. Everything else followed behind. With quicken and tales of mist, defence 16 against shooting is not something opponents expect.

On his turn, he ran his dawn guard full speed ahead, without me being able to charge them. The rest of his army started positioned behind his centre with eiryss, a mage hunter assassin and the light arcnode jack flanking to my left.

Jamage 2.0. Tactical supremacy on the fenns to Jam.

My turn two, i keep quicken, so that i.can walk into melee with the dawnguard and kill some of them. My pyre troll gets a good shot and gets four of them. Jarl also kills three and feats. I did not kill all of the dawnguards, but they are decimated to three or four left. On his turn, he cant really get.much done, battlemages kill some kriels and the flanking manoeuvre continues.

Turn three and I clear the objective in the zone with my kriels and keep clearing his troops. I give the fennblades tactical supremacy to jam rahn and his troops up. Jarl keeps shooting from a place in cover behind the objective. During the last turn, Rahn gets desperate and goes for an assassination. He runs his light jack so that he can arc spells without Jarl having cover, but unfortunately outside of Rahns controll. Being engaged by 4 fennblades, Rahn TKs himself out of melee and kills one or two with spells. But by doing that, he placed himself outside of the killbox, earning me 2 points. And as he didn't move to contest the zone, I win. 

Game 2

Im looking down on an eDenny and eGaspy match up. Both with banes and tartarus. The scenario is Two fronts, with two zones and two objectives. I chose to go with my pMadrak brick, mostly because I wanted to try it out. eDenny was placed by Olov. Epic Deneghra brought bane thralls with tartarus, satyxis witches with the hag, nyss hunters, the withershadow combine, two arcnodes and a siren. 

Position after my turn 2. The earthborn is toing onto the zone. 

I got to go first, which was good. I had placed my brick to move into the offensive zone and my warders to defend my zone. I put up Sure foot on madrak and filled my stone. Denny positioned herself centrally behind cover and between the two zones. The banes moved up to clash with my Mulg-Earthborn brick, and the satyxis and nyss ran at my zone to get my warders. On my turn two, I just move up again, but only put three warders in my zone, confident that they will not be removed. Denny's turn two, she gets of an arm debuff on my warders but does not manage to kill them with nyss shots and satyxis charging with their mini feat. Two banes run to engage earthborn and Mulg. 

Turn 3. I am thinking of feating to get mulg surfing to Denny. Most of the way would be covered, but I am not sure the last part of the way would work. I think a bit, but in the end decide to play it safe. My krielstone activates to remove the incorp from the closest satyxis and also charge a bane thrall in melee with mulg. The bane toughs, but is knocked down. I decide to try and kill of some banes, and get 4 or 5 including the officer with a Mulg crit smite. However, in doing this I have left a gap in the brick, big enough to get to Janissa. I also placed Madrak so that his sure foot bonus did not reach Mulg. This was not good. The warders kill their satyxis but I still left two of them behind the wall, another mistake. Denny sees her chance and moves up to feat and she gets all but two stone scribes and the runebearer. The blood hag moves so that Janissa is within the entropic field and some ghostly thralls get her killed. No more wall. I somehow manage to survive with my last warder, so that no points are scored.

Turn 4. I pretty much do nothing, as per the feat. Kill some of the banes that surround my beasts, the slag troll shoots the blood hag dead. I realise that Denny will score three points nex turn (if she remembers to kill the objective). Which of course, she does. The nyss and a satyxis get the job done with the objective. She kills the last warders, and moves into my zone to dominate. The last banethralls and tartarus moves in to damage mulg and the Earthborn, but do not really do much. 

The last turn, Deneghra is being moved to charge!

Turn 5. My battlegroup is on the wrong side of the battle and the slag troll frenzied. I decide to feat, put up carnage and charge madrak into the centre of the board, to allow the last two warders some play time with the nyss. On the way there, he kills some banes and tartarus but does not reach as far as I had hoped. Mulg and the earthborn have little problems clearing the rest of the banes. The fell caller gives the warders a warcry and charges a nearby enemy to have it dead. The krielstone activates and runs the elder and the stone into my zone to contest. The warders starts their packman through the nyss. Def 15 pfft, with their buffs they have an efficient mat of 11. The clear many of them, but only one gets into the zone. Switching over to Denny, i have only a warder, the kriel stone and the stone scribe elder in the zone. Despite toughing like crazy on the stone (two or three times) Denny manages to teleport the warder out of the zone (did not know she could do that) and kill the two other models. Game Deneghra. 

In hindsight, i should probably have chosen Jarl for this match up on this scenario. If the scenario would have been a one zone killbox deal, pMadrak would have been good, but the two fronts made me have to split up my army, and I didn't do it in a good way, my last turn, I should have rieved the fury from the slag troll, to use it to get into the zone, but i didn't think of that then. But the pMadrak brick definitely is all right in this matchup. I was also maybe to afraid of the bile thralls in the eGaspy list, as they really wreck large infantry groups. Congrats also to Olov, who went on to win the tournament. 

Prisfyndet tournament 30th of March

This Sunday was tournament day! My LGS was the place and a small 50 points three round tournament.
These small tournaments are a good opportunity to test out new lists and that is what I did.

Jarl Skulds Highwaymen tier 1
Jarl Skuld
Bomber, Mauler, Earthborn, Impaler, Pyre
Max Kriel warriors+Ua+3Cabers
Stone scribe chronicler
2xWhelps

Calandra
Bomber, Bomber, Impaler, Runebearer
War wagon
max Warders, max Bushwhackers
Janissa

So two special lists. The Jarl tier is interesting, tier 1 is +1 on starting rolls and advance move on kriel warriors. That is not too bad. The calandra list is a straight up assassination list. Knock down with Calandra or the wagon, bomb the caster, profit.

First game
Skorne was the first I was up against, a shooty Rasheth list and an epic Hexeris list. As I didn't have much infantry, I was pretty sure the Rasheth drop would happen, which it did. As my Calandra list is a shooty one, i decided to go with Jarl.

Rasheth fielded
Cannoneer, Shaman, Krea, Raider
Agonizer, 2xWillbreaker, 2xExtoller
Pain givers, Max Rievers with Ua, Max Gators.

I got the first turn and that is good as my kriel warriors can be 7"+5"+16"=28" from my table edge, with def 16 and no knockdown. That is awesome for early pressure. The scenario was incoming, with two zones and two obejctives. Dominate self is the solution to that scenario, and that is what I went for. Running whelps into my oponents zone and blocking him while just clearing my own zone with my beasts and jarl. Anyways, first two turns, I ran everything forward, positioned my kriels to block some of the gators and cannoneer, my bomber killed two of them (Straight dice on damage is good).

On Rasheths first turn, some kriels were killed, maybe 3 or 4. On his second turn, he moved his rievers to contest my zone with his reform move, and pop some damage on my mauler. When he did that, I spawned whelps to block his access. He also had problems with contesting his zone, so that my whelp did not score. A paingiver ended up running there. So on his turn two, I score 1 point.

For my third turn, the scenario was my clear target. My bomber went for the objective, putting down 6 damage only, and missing the other shot. Well well. Jarl cleared the opponents zone, so that I could control it with my whelp! My kriels ran in to block and be annoying and the rest of my beasts blocked the zone.  3 CP for me.

In the end of my third turn. My hero whelp is on the right side
of the right forest. Awesome. 

On his last turn, he went for an assassination. He missed me with his Shaman, making me evade backwards, but his krea still reached me. Paralyzed, with 5 rievers to go. I had only 2 transfers. He got me down to 1 hp and a transfer left, which is enough for me to win the game on scenario, the whelp still stood alone in the offensive zone.

MVP was the whelp. 2 Cp for 2/5 of a point. Way to go!

Second Game
Khador. Butcher3 and horse Vlad. With the Calandra list, I would be toast if he dropped 3Vlad as he had a conquest. But she would have more game against 3Butcher. Anyways, I dropped Jarl. And he dropped Butcher3.

This game was rather straight forward. The scenario was fire support, so kill box. Butcher brought Black dragon IFP with a kovnik, Kayazi assassins, eEiryss, Doomreavers, a Drakhun, Madelyn, a clam jack, a Bokur and some grey lord cloud makers.

He got to go first and moved up very fast. On my turn, i positioned myself to handle his charges and minimize what he could reach while still going into the kill box. On his second turn he moved Butcher up behind a very well placed wall so that he could reach me with vengance, madelyn, energize and charging. His doomreavers walked through a forrest to block me and kill a kriel and do some damage to my Earthborn. His kayazins ran to block my kriels. His clam jack also ran to jam.

My second turn, and everything is up in my grill. I start with the earthborn to trample through two doomreavers and kill another, snacking him back to full health. Jarl shoots two doomreavers and kills one of Butchers arguses. He also feats to block LOS to him from the Drakhun and Butcher. My Mauler charges the clam jack through my Kriel warriors with aid from the feat. The aim is to throw the clam jack on madelyn. But my mauler misses the double handed throw with a double 1, needing 4s to hit. Oh well. My kriels bowl two or three kayazi. And now to save Jarl from butcher. I try to position my bomber behind my objective so that he can't be pulled, he also dismounts the drakhun. I then use tactical supremacy to try and hide Jarl behind the bomber, to not get pulled.

On Butchers third turn, he goes for his thing. He gets into a position to pull both of my bomber and Jarl, puts silence of death on himself and only needs two hits to kill Jarl. He only had three shots to hit, missed the first one, due to the cloud and whelps, but as I couldn't transfer, that was that.

Third game

Blurry photo of the Butcher setup in the third game

Khador again. 2Butcher and 3Butcher. I dropped Calandra, not because I had to, but because I hoped to try the list against 3butcher. And i got to. But this time, butcher brought some eliminators, widowmakers, kjell bailoch, alexia and the risen, IFP and a Juggernaut. The scenario was outflank, not that anyone of us cared.

Butcher moved first and we both moved up rather carefully and waited for our time to strike. For me that was my turn two. Butcher had moved closer, only being blocked by one of his arguses in a cloud. So calandra moved up, feated and befuddled it away. And the cloud moves with him. My bushwhackers do a point of damage to the juggernaut and kill a risen solo, and move out of the way of my war wagon. The wagon charges the befuddled argus, killing it, spraying Gorman and the war dog (which was shield guarded by the bokur, a mistake from my opponent). The warwagon also just barely sees the Bokur and hits it with the pounder. Knocked down butcher, with two bombers in range. Perfect. The bombers move up and get the job done. Butcher camped five, but on dice-7 with three dice and rerolls on 1s and 2s, the odds were in my favour from the knock down.

Butcher eats double Bomber fire!

Summary
So year of the Butcher3 I guess. Kind of boring. From now on, I will not build two lists without Mulg. Slightly limiting, but what can I do. All in all it went well for me. However, I do not think I will go further with the two lists. The assassination list is to inflexible, and the Jarl list really wants a fell caller and a runebearer.
Great opponents and a fun day!