Okay, so I made a statement on the forums in a debate that I decided to uphold (it amounted to running an infantry swarm list into Madrak2). Here’s the battle report. The table had 12 pieces of terrain (most of it was small, see the picture). Scenario was Take and Hold. Troll player (my lovely wife) won the roll and chose to go first.
Vindictus
-Repenter
-Repenter
-Castigator
Errents (were actually Errents)
Idrians Skirmishers + UA (Temple Flameguard + Errent UA)
Flame Bringers (random collection of big bases as mine are still in a multitude of pieces).
Allegiant of the Order of the Fist (the lonely chior member).
Kell Bailoch
Rhupert Carvolo
Deliverer Sunburst Crew
Deliverer Sunburst Crew
Madrak2 (the yellow base)
-Bouncer (the painted gunbunny)
-Axer (the unfinished gunbunny)
-Dire Troll Mauler (the retribution heavy)
Krielstone + UA (the man o wars)
Trollkin Champions (Ogrun Warspears)
Warders (Convergence models)
Fell Caller Hero
Stone Scribe Chronicler
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew
Trollkin Champion
Northkin Fire Eaters
The water is obvious. The slatted thing is a trench. There’s a log and a wall which are both linear obstacles. The house is an obstruction, there’s a pair of forests (a strip and a roundish one with a green foam stump on it), a green foam block obstruction, a crate of TNT (Holden special terrain) and a pair of mine entrances (also Holden related). The bridge counts as a hill with only two ways up.
Madrak deployed across from my flag, tucked a little behind the lake (to be within reach of the Krielstone). The Fire Eaters skewed hard to the left side.
I deploy with the Idrians acrossacross from MadrakMadrak, the Sunburst in position to take the bridge on turn 1, the Flame Bringers skewed to the right edge, and Vindictus tucked behind his jacks.
Idrians declare prey target as the warders. My wife takes a double shot of rum to sip on, I chose a Yuengling Black and Tan myself. Here are our deployments. My wife forgot that the Fell Caller hero could pass pathfinder to the Kreilstone (hence why they’re skewed to the side and not directly behind the water).
Round 1, everybody runs. Things of note Madrak loads up the Krielstone, Fire Eaters snuggle up to the mine entrance. Vindictus puts Defender’s Ward on the Ponies. Punch Monk lands on the flag.
Round 2, Trolls: Trolls run up the board, Kreilstone does Kreilstone things (Combat Warding aura for the entire game). Fire Eaters take mine entrance to change sides of the board. Gobbers make a cloud. Madrak loads up the Krielstone to the max amount. Warders run towards the center of the table to start screening the Krielstone. The Champions run forward towards the Idrians.
Round 2, PoM: I feat and put a few boxes of damage out (one of the Sunbursts pops both gobbers with AoE). The Flame Bringers advance down the flank, trying to stay out of charge range. In hindsight, I could’ve feated turn one and aggressively positioned the Idrians to put a lot of shots onto Madrak (and thus, onto the warders). Being spread out and not under the Krielstone, I probably could’ve killed quite a few of them.
Round 3, Trolls: Trolls run to engage, Madrak scuttles near to warders, hovering between the flags. Fire Eaters spray themselves and miss the Punch Monk who scoots into their back arc. The Warders engage the Errants, the Champions engage the Idrians.
Round 3, PoM: Punch Monk kills a Fire Eater and damages the other (I come up with the wonderful idea of doing up a Punch Monk as a Doctor of Internal Medicine, specifically a Proctologist). Errents deal maybe 9 boxes of damage to the warders. Idrians clear out a couple champions (turns out that this wasn’t a good idea since it cleared the charge lane for Madrak). Flame Bringers clean up another two, leaving one alive. One of my big mistakes was this turn as well. I left a Repenter up near the strip forest to get a spray on the Champions and didn’t realize that this was completing the Madrak pacman chain. Oops.
Round 4, Trolls: Fell Caller buffs Madrak with +2 MAT, he buffs and feats and charges into the space left by the dead champions (OOPS!). Nom nom noms through the Idrians (he ends up taking ~6 points of damage from pentience, totally meaningless since I was unable to put any other damage onto him. Ends the chain at Vindictus and kills him (I thought I had the spacing slightly better). Even without killing Vindictus, losing the majority of the Idrians would’ve seriously hampered my ability to kill anything.
Results: Madrak2 wins!
Final Thoughts:
- The Sunbursts did very little work.
- The Errents did very little work.
- The Madrak2 list had no ranged presence.
- My spacing was crap.
- Ponies are good.
- Next time I need to bring better weapon masters (perhaps the Knights) or Daughters.
- Idrians having Prey on the Warders is still an okay choice since Madrak will probably be passing Idrian shots from him to the Warders. The problem is that the Idrians do not possess enough range to shoot Madrak and not get charged (I’m dubious about having them within “run to engage range of Madrak as well, since he can Grim Salvation off to the Warders if the distancing is correct).
- Vindictus may not be the right choice (but I think he could be the right choice still).
- I need to drink my beer faster so it doesn’t get warm.
- What I kill out of Madrak’s army literally doesn’t matter if I can’t watch my spacing.
- I want another
My wife also had some thoughts about the Trolls
- Combat Warding was worth its points several times over (as a large part of my PoM list was setting the trolls on fire).
- Slotting puppet master into the list (via the Knot), would be better then the Stone Scribe and Swamp Gobbers.
- Haha, tough is fun!
tl;dr Watch your spacing against Madrak and he won’t be able to wreck your army.
That’s pretty much it for this battle report.
4d6kobolds 