Round 4 - vs Chris Woodward (Trolls)
Scenario: Recon
I looked over Chris's two lists. He was running a Jarl Storm of the North list and a Madrak1 Band of Heroes list. I knew that Jarl would be a bad matchup for him into my Black Industries list, so I figured he would drop Madrak into me. My first instinct was to play Skarre again, with the thought that the sea of banes would overwhelm his troops. However, the more I thought about it, I thought Venethrax does a lot to counter what his list does and he didn't have so many troops that I needed to be worried about getting completely overrun by them. I ended up dropping Venethrax (finally). Credit goes to Mark Howard for getting photographic evidence of this game in progress. It is now a couple weeks since I played this game and the photos are helping me recall what happened. I am hoping that I recall everything that happened correctly.
I won the roll and chose to go second. The terrain was arranged with a trench placed near the midline of the board and a little left of center. A house is placed on an angle overlapping the inside edge of the right zone. A cloud just overlaps the inside back corner of the left zone. There was a forest overlapping the left edge of the left zone coming into the middle of the zone. An acid pool overlapped the far outside corner of the right zone. A forest just touched the right edge of the right zone.
Chris deployed with a unit of champs aligned with each of the two zones. The right zone champs had Skaldi as an attachment, and the left zone champs had a sorcerer. The bouncer is positioned in the middle, alongside Madrak. The mauler and axer were both on the left flank. His krielstone was centrally placed behind everything. The gremlin swarm was out on the far right flank. His unit of fennblades was spread out across the center of his formation, stretching from one zone to the other.
I placed Venethrax slightly to the left of center. The nyss were deployed just to the right of Venethrax. To the left of Venethrax was the slayer with malice to the left of that. One ripjaw was out on the left flank. To the right of the nyss was the harrower with the other ripjaw to its right. One warwitch siren was behind the harrower and the other was by the slayer. The withershadow combine was behind Venethrax.
Top 1
He ran most everything forward. A portion of his fenns managed to hide behind the house. Everything else ran forward at varying speeds. Madrak put up solid ground. See below for the state of the board at the bottom of turn 1.
Bottom 1
Venethrax allocated one extra focus to Death Jack, giving it three. He held onto the rest. The left ripjaw ran forward to where he would be behind the forest, but in range for arcing onto the fennblades. Venethrax actived and arced a boosted mortality onto the fennblades. This left me without enough focus to cast lamentation. Venethrax moved slightly forward. The nyss activated and took shots at the fennblades, killing a few. Death Jack activated and moved to be behind the left ripjaw. It then cast blood rain on a fennblade, killing it. The harrower and right ripjaw advanced along with the warwitch siren, who got base to base with the flag. Malice and the slayer moved forward and the withershadow combine spread out behind Venethrax. Board state at the top of 2:
Top 2
His positioning of the fenns kept me from killing more and the vengeance move allowed them to get into good position for charging the nyss. Madrak cast solid ground again, put guided hand on the fenns and feated. The fell caller moved up and gave the fenns the bonus to hit. The fennblades charged in and between their attacks and cleave they killed 7 nyss and the right warwitch siren. The units of champs each setup shop in their respective zones. The axer and mauler hung out on the opposite side of the forest and the bouncer moved forward to be in front of his objective. The stone put up its aura and moved up a little, but stayed safe behind the rest of the army.
Bottom 2
The withershadow combine put puppet master on Malevolous and he cast mortality on the fennblades. Venethrax actived and killed the three fennblades that were in front of him. The fennblades became clouds and Venethrax collected their souls. Venethrax cast lamentation and feated. After checking, I had all his beasts, Madrak and the stone bearer in my control. The remaining nyss killed the rest of the fennblades. The harrower collected a couple of their souls and backed up to be out of charge range of the champs. The ripjaw also backed up. Malice shot and pulled in a champ. Death Jack slightly repositioned along with the left ripjaw. The slayer moved forward and attacked one of the left champs, killing it with a boost combo strike.
Top 3
With everything in my feat, Madrak was unable to leach any fury. He was left without any fury for this turn. The axer and mauler both frenzied and exchanged punches. The right champs got the press forward order. They killed two of the remaining nyss and the rest ran into a bunch in front of the flag. The stone put up its aura and continued its slow move forward. The fell caller gave the left champs the bonus to hit. The left champs turned the slayer into scrap. Madrak threw his axe into the objective to put a few points of damage on it. The bouncer moved up a little.
Bottom 3
The withershadow combine put puppet master on Malevolous and he cast mortality on the right unit of champs. Venethrax activated and cast terminal velocity and moved behind the cloud. The harrower moved up into a position where it could catch 3 champs and Skaldi in its melee range and used thresher. Between the thresher and bought attacks, it killed all 4. It attempted to shoot the gremlin swarm with quick work, but missed the shot. The last nyss charged and killed another champ. The warwitch moved up to cast venom on the right unit of champs. Between Death Jack and Malice, only a single champ was left from the left unit. Malice was sitting on a few souls at this point.
Top 4
The axer put rush on the mauler and Madrak put rage on the mauler. In retrospect, this should have removed rush, but we did not catch it during the game. The mauler walked through the forest and destroyed Death Jack. The remaining champ on the right put a couple points of damage on the harrower. The bouncer killed the last nyss. Unfortunately, our photographer started slacking off in his duties and missed the picture at this point in the game.
Bottom 4
The harrower attempted to kill the last champ on its side of the board and failed. The ripjaw moved into the zone on the right. Venethrax charged the mauler and killed it. Malice repositioned to get between the bouncer and Venethrax. I honestly cannot remember what the withershadow combine or the warwitch siren did this turn, but I am pretty sure it was not majorly relevant to the overall board state.
Top 5
Madrak cast rush on the axer, who advanced through the forest to take a couple swings at Venethrax. The bouncer attacked Malice, but did little damage. The champ put a few more points on the harrower. Madrak moved over to be base to base with the flag and on the top of turn 5 we finally had our first control point scored.
Bottom 5
At this point, his clock only had 15 seconds left. I had to try and score some points, but I knew that whenever I switched the clock over to Chris, he would lose on deathclock. The harrower killed the last champ, but failed to kill the gremlin swarm. Venethrax killed the axer and Malice put some damage on the bouncer. At this point, I was unable to score any points, so I switched the clock over and won by death clock.
Post Game Thoughts
Well, I finally got a chance to drop Venethrax and he did everything I could have hoped for. I largely felt good about how I played this game, though there were a few things I could have done differently that might have led to me either scoring points, preventing him from scoring points, or putting a lot more attrition pressure on him. First, on the turn Venethrax feated, I should have had Death Jack move into the champs and start going wild against them. I held off on that because they were still DEF 16 under solid ground and I don't think I had a good way to mortality them, but Death Jack is MAT 8 and if I had allocated focus a little differently, I could have had terminal velocity up, which would have solved that problem. With the mauler having two fury on it, it was likely to frenzy and wouldn't have been able to scrap Death Jack even if it didn't. This could have positioned Death Jack so it got the charge on the mauler instead of the other way around. Second, the nyss potentially should have been deployed more to the left of center. Where I put them allowed the house to be used to maximum effect on the first turn. If they had been further over, they might have been able to get some angles to take out a couple extra fennblades. If more nyss had survived, I had hoped to start taking shots at the kriel stone to reduce that armor aura.
This was a good, hard fought game. I think Chris had an uphill battle, as Venethrax has a lot of counters to what Madrak wants to do. His biggest mistake was clumping the champs on the right where the harrower could thresher them. If he put one or two forward and held the rest back for a second wave, it would have presented quite the problem for me. He also commented that keeping the axer and mauler behind the forest kinda kept them out of the fight for much of the game. Good game against a great opponent.
Well, that's all I have for this post. Thanks for reading and I am always happy to get feedback, whether it's something I could do to improve the blog or some strategy I missed in my game. Next time I will have another detailed battle report, but that one will be without pictures. I still need to figure out how to take pictures without killing my clock in a tournament setting.
Scenario: Recon
I looked over Chris's two lists. He was running a Jarl Storm of the North list and a Madrak1 Band of Heroes list. I knew that Jarl would be a bad matchup for him into my Black Industries list, so I figured he would drop Madrak into me. My first instinct was to play Skarre again, with the thought that the sea of banes would overwhelm his troops. However, the more I thought about it, I thought Venethrax does a lot to counter what his list does and he didn't have so many troops that I needed to be worried about getting completely overrun by them. I ended up dropping Venethrax (finally). Credit goes to Mark Howard for getting photographic evidence of this game in progress. It is now a couple weeks since I played this game and the photos are helping me recall what happened. I am hoping that I recall everything that happened correctly.
I won the roll and chose to go second. The terrain was arranged with a trench placed near the midline of the board and a little left of center. A house is placed on an angle overlapping the inside edge of the right zone. A cloud just overlaps the inside back corner of the left zone. There was a forest overlapping the left edge of the left zone coming into the middle of the zone. An acid pool overlapped the far outside corner of the right zone. A forest just touched the right edge of the right zone.
Chris deployed with a unit of champs aligned with each of the two zones. The right zone champs had Skaldi as an attachment, and the left zone champs had a sorcerer. The bouncer is positioned in the middle, alongside Madrak. The mauler and axer were both on the left flank. His krielstone was centrally placed behind everything. The gremlin swarm was out on the far right flank. His unit of fennblades was spread out across the center of his formation, stretching from one zone to the other.
I placed Venethrax slightly to the left of center. The nyss were deployed just to the right of Venethrax. To the left of Venethrax was the slayer with malice to the left of that. One ripjaw was out on the left flank. To the right of the nyss was the harrower with the other ripjaw to its right. One warwitch siren was behind the harrower and the other was by the slayer. The withershadow combine was behind Venethrax.
Top 1
He ran most everything forward. A portion of his fenns managed to hide behind the house. Everything else ran forward at varying speeds. Madrak put up solid ground. See below for the state of the board at the bottom of turn 1.
Bottom 1
Venethrax allocated one extra focus to Death Jack, giving it three. He held onto the rest. The left ripjaw ran forward to where he would be behind the forest, but in range for arcing onto the fennblades. Venethrax actived and arced a boosted mortality onto the fennblades. This left me without enough focus to cast lamentation. Venethrax moved slightly forward. The nyss activated and took shots at the fennblades, killing a few. Death Jack activated and moved to be behind the left ripjaw. It then cast blood rain on a fennblade, killing it. The harrower and right ripjaw advanced along with the warwitch siren, who got base to base with the flag. Malice and the slayer moved forward and the withershadow combine spread out behind Venethrax. Board state at the top of 2:
Top 2
His positioning of the fenns kept me from killing more and the vengeance move allowed them to get into good position for charging the nyss. Madrak cast solid ground again, put guided hand on the fenns and feated. The fell caller moved up and gave the fenns the bonus to hit. The fennblades charged in and between their attacks and cleave they killed 7 nyss and the right warwitch siren. The units of champs each setup shop in their respective zones. The axer and mauler hung out on the opposite side of the forest and the bouncer moved forward to be in front of his objective. The stone put up its aura and moved up a little, but stayed safe behind the rest of the army.
Bottom 2
The withershadow combine put puppet master on Malevolous and he cast mortality on the fennblades. Venethrax actived and killed the three fennblades that were in front of him. The fennblades became clouds and Venethrax collected their souls. Venethrax cast lamentation and feated. After checking, I had all his beasts, Madrak and the stone bearer in my control. The remaining nyss killed the rest of the fennblades. The harrower collected a couple of their souls and backed up to be out of charge range of the champs. The ripjaw also backed up. Malice shot and pulled in a champ. Death Jack slightly repositioned along with the left ripjaw. The slayer moved forward and attacked one of the left champs, killing it with a boost combo strike.
Top 3
With everything in my feat, Madrak was unable to leach any fury. He was left without any fury for this turn. The axer and mauler both frenzied and exchanged punches. The right champs got the press forward order. They killed two of the remaining nyss and the rest ran into a bunch in front of the flag. The stone put up its aura and continued its slow move forward. The fell caller gave the left champs the bonus to hit. The left champs turned the slayer into scrap. Madrak threw his axe into the objective to put a few points of damage on it. The bouncer moved up a little.
Bottom 3
The withershadow combine put puppet master on Malevolous and he cast mortality on the right unit of champs. Venethrax activated and cast terminal velocity and moved behind the cloud. The harrower moved up into a position where it could catch 3 champs and Skaldi in its melee range and used thresher. Between the thresher and bought attacks, it killed all 4. It attempted to shoot the gremlin swarm with quick work, but missed the shot. The last nyss charged and killed another champ. The warwitch moved up to cast venom on the right unit of champs. Between Death Jack and Malice, only a single champ was left from the left unit. Malice was sitting on a few souls at this point.
Top 4
The axer put rush on the mauler and Madrak put rage on the mauler. In retrospect, this should have removed rush, but we did not catch it during the game. The mauler walked through the forest and destroyed Death Jack. The remaining champ on the right put a couple points of damage on the harrower. The bouncer killed the last nyss. Unfortunately, our photographer started slacking off in his duties and missed the picture at this point in the game.
Bottom 4
The harrower attempted to kill the last champ on its side of the board and failed. The ripjaw moved into the zone on the right. Venethrax charged the mauler and killed it. Malice repositioned to get between the bouncer and Venethrax. I honestly cannot remember what the withershadow combine or the warwitch siren did this turn, but I am pretty sure it was not majorly relevant to the overall board state.
Top 5
Madrak cast rush on the axer, who advanced through the forest to take a couple swings at Venethrax. The bouncer attacked Malice, but did little damage. The champ put a few more points on the harrower. Madrak moved over to be base to base with the flag and on the top of turn 5 we finally had our first control point scored.
Bottom 5
At this point, his clock only had 15 seconds left. I had to try and score some points, but I knew that whenever I switched the clock over to Chris, he would lose on deathclock. The harrower killed the last champ, but failed to kill the gremlin swarm. Venethrax killed the axer and Malice put some damage on the bouncer. At this point, I was unable to score any points, so I switched the clock over and won by death clock.
Post Game Thoughts
Well, I finally got a chance to drop Venethrax and he did everything I could have hoped for. I largely felt good about how I played this game, though there were a few things I could have done differently that might have led to me either scoring points, preventing him from scoring points, or putting a lot more attrition pressure on him. First, on the turn Venethrax feated, I should have had Death Jack move into the champs and start going wild against them. I held off on that because they were still DEF 16 under solid ground and I don't think I had a good way to mortality them, but Death Jack is MAT 8 and if I had allocated focus a little differently, I could have had terminal velocity up, which would have solved that problem. With the mauler having two fury on it, it was likely to frenzy and wouldn't have been able to scrap Death Jack even if it didn't. This could have positioned Death Jack so it got the charge on the mauler instead of the other way around. Second, the nyss potentially should have been deployed more to the left of center. Where I put them allowed the house to be used to maximum effect on the first turn. If they had been further over, they might have been able to get some angles to take out a couple extra fennblades. If more nyss had survived, I had hoped to start taking shots at the kriel stone to reduce that armor aura.
This was a good, hard fought game. I think Chris had an uphill battle, as Venethrax has a lot of counters to what Madrak wants to do. His biggest mistake was clumping the champs on the right where the harrower could thresher them. If he put one or two forward and held the rest back for a second wave, it would have presented quite the problem for me. He also commented that keeping the axer and mauler behind the forest kinda kept them out of the fight for much of the game. Good game against a great opponent.
Well, that's all I have for this post. Thanks for reading and I am always happy to get feedback, whether it's something I could do to improve the blog or some strategy I missed in my game. Next time I will have another detailed battle report, but that one will be without pictures. I still need to figure out how to take pictures without killing my clock in a tournament setting.
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