I had thought that we were going to play a 350pt game, so that's all I brought along. I must have misread his email though cause he thought we were playing 500pts! Doh! He pointed down quickly though, and we started our game soon after.
I'm thinking about writing this up in short story format, but then again maybe it's best that the world isn't subjected to my crappy writing (more than it already is anyway). Below is a map of what our battlefield looked like which my wife drew up quickly in paint (yes, I also have horrible paint skills):
Menoth ForcesSeverius (S)
Revenger (R)
Vanquisher (V)
Choir x6? (C)
Knights Exemplar x5 (KE)
Da Trollbloods
Doomshaper (D)
Dire Troll Mauler (M)
Axer (A)
Impaler (I)
Krielstone Bearer x4 (KSB) (SS)
I won the roll to deploy first or second and opted to deploy second. Why? I'm not sure really. I just wanted to hopefully get a first turn thrown spear shot in.
Menoth Deployment: From my left to right there was the Vanquisher, then the Revenger, with the choir and Severius behind. The Knights Exemplar were in a line facing me, on the right most flank.
Trollbloods Deployment: From my left to right I had Axer, Impaler, Mauler, and behind them and slightly more to the right I had the Krielstone Bearer and crew and also Doomshaper.
In front of me was a pretty huge hill (closer to me than Broken Zealot's side), and to the left of the hill there was a patch of rough ground. I was hoping to get up on the hill first and hopefully get one or two turns of shooting with the impaler. I'm worried about the masses of people he has compared to my relatively low model count army.
Turn 1 - Menoth
Pretty much everything runs forward with the exception of Kreoss. The Knights Exemplar run up the right side of the board toward the hill, but take cover along a low wall first, about in the middle of the board. Severius casts some buffs, I think Eye of Menoth and Holy Vigil and that's the end of his turn.
Turn 1 - Trollbloods
I walk my Impaler onto the hill, he casts his animus on himself, and then finds out that everything is still out of range by just a tad. So he throws his spear menacingly through the air. The Axer runs but stays below on the left side of the hill, in between the rough terrain and the hill. The Mauler runs onto the hill also, to the right of the Impaler.
Doomshaper moves forward some, casts fortune on the Impaler, and transfers 4 fury onto the Krielstone bearer. The Krielstone bearer and crew move up slightly and activate their protective aura.
Turn 2 - Menoth
The Menoth line advances, the Knights Exemplar move over and through the low wall and are getting dangerously close to my Mauler on the hill. The jacks both move up some, with the Revenger taking the lead. I'm please when I see the Revenger in range of the Impaler now and he's lined up nicely for a slam into the Vanquisher, but alas, the Choir chants the "No shooting" blessing on them. Rats.
Severius casts some damage spell at me through the Revenger's arc node, but fails to hit through horrible dice rolls and my Impaler also getting the +2 def bonus for being on the hill. He also buffs the Knights with +4 defense.
Turn 2 - Trollbloods
Krielstone bearer and crew move onto the hill and keep the aura going. Doomshaper moves onto the hill also and casts Fortune on the Axer. He also dispels the +4 defense on the Knights. They pass their command check. The Axer charges and slams the Revenger back into a Knight Exemplar and kills him, doing only minimal damage to the Revenger. The Mauler charges the Knights Exemplar, and gets into combat with two. He slaughters them and is now out of combat. The Impaler throws a spear at the Knights and skewers one.
Turn 3 - Menoth
Severius puts 2 focus on the Vanquisher, puts up Eye of Menoth, has the Choir chant +2 damage and to hit, and then unloads on the Mauler with the Vanquisher gun. He boost and rolls huge on the damage something like 31 or 32 total. Thank goodness for the 18 armor on the Mauler, else he'd have been fried to a crisp! Sadly, I find out that the Mauler was out of range of the Krielstone. Doh! As it was, the Mauler loses one aspect, Mind, and most of his Spirit.
Then the last 2 Knights Exemplar move in to finish off the Mauler. Lucky for me they just barely don't do enough to kill him, I think he had 4 hit points left! His Spirit and Mind are both gone now.
The Revenger gets up and moves next to the Vanquisher.
Turn 3 - Trollbloods
The Impaler throws a spear at the Revenger and hits for some slight damage. Still no slam! And I've boosted every shot so far. Ah well. The Axer charges in and Slams the Vanquisher away. Then he forces an extra attack on the Revenger, boosts the damage and destroys his shield arm, but the Revenger is still up and active.
Doomshaper casts Fortune on the Mauler, heals one point in each spirit and mind, and then lets the Mauler loose. The Mauler proceeds to tear up the two remaining Knights using only 1 more fury and eats them as a snack, regaining 6(!) health. He then forces himself to regenerate another 2 points. He's now back in action!
Krielstone bearer and crew move up some, sitting on top of the hill now.
Turn 4 - Menoth
I'm a bit hazy on this round, but I think this is what happened. Choir does the +2 damage/hit chant. Severius gives 3 focus to the Revenger and moves away from the Mauler and behind the Choir. The Revenger then goes Balistic on the Axer, doing tons of damage to it and kills the Axer in two hits. Ouch! Oh, and the Axer was just out of range of the Krielstone Bearer. Yup, I suck at moving these guys apparently. If he had been in range he might have lived.
The Vanquisher stands up, but is now out of range of the Mauler.
Turn 4 - Trollbloods
The Mauler charges the Revenger and scraps it easily with 2 hits. I then forget to regenerate him some more this turn. Doh! Krielstone bearer and crew move up behind the Mauler, near the low wall. Doomshaper follows them, casts Far Strike on the Impaler.
The Impaler hurls his spear at the Vanquisher with all his might and finally slams it back 2", right into a Choir member. No damage is done to the Vanquisher, but the Choir member gets crushed.
Turn 5 - Menoth
Severius puts 2 focus on the Vanquisher and fires off a salvo at the Dire Troll. He hits, but rolls horribly for the boosted damage, only doing 2 damage, helped out by the Krielstone. I think Severius may have also tried casting Ashes to Ashes on the Dire Troll, but failed to do much damage. Choir and Severius shuffle around some.
Turn 5 - Trollbloods
Mauler and Impaler move up. Impaler misses with his spear at the Vanquisher. That's about all that happened this turn. We're now fighting along the long way on the board...with the Menites on the left side, and the Trolls on the right. Doomshaper casts Dissolution again to get rid of Eye of Menoth, uses his Feat (I actually forgot to do this, though I had planned to, but at the beginning of Broken Zealot's turn he let me have it go off as planned. What a stand-up guy!).
Turn 6 - Menoth
Severius feats, casts Eye of Menoth, puts 3 focus on the Vanquisher, and charges in. It uses it's circular strike hitting both the Mauler and the Impaler. Mauler takes some damage, but stays up. He's down two aspects now again.
Severius then does the sneaky sneaky attack by casting ashes to ashes on a choir member close to the Krielstone Bearer, a stone scribe, the Mauler, the Impaler, and but is out of range to Doomshaper (whew!). Dire troll and Impaler take no damage, but the Krielstone bearer and the scribe both take enough damage to go down. But amazingly, both make their tough rolls! Shifty eyes and ponderings about my weighted dice abound. :)
Due to Doomshaper's feat, the Vanquisher takes 3d3 damage, Severius also takes 3-4 damage.
Turn 6 - Trollbloods
Doomshaper heals the Mauler's damaged aspects casts Rage on the Impaler, and the Mauler, the champ as always, unloads onto the Vanquisher, scrapping it in 3 hits. The Impaler then walks over to Severius, boosts the hit roll, hits, boosts damage, and runs him through. Severius shish-kebab tonight!
Conclusion:
Victory for the Kriels!
All in all, a very enjoyable game. Broken Zealot was a lot of fun to play, and was very accomodating of my several screw ups and allowed me to go back and fix some of them. I think that I got really lucky in this game, as he really did roll badly with a few key rolls, as well as being just out of range of Doomshaper with Ashes to Ashes. Plus, I think he had really planned his list for a 500pt battle, so I got off easily. In his 500pt list he had a good helping of zealots which scare me to no end.
Things that worked out really well for me was constantly slamming his jacks away from me. There were several turns where they weren't really doing much, which was great for me. The MVP definitely goes to the Dire Troll Mauler though. He's brutal! The ability to heal him back to almost full after munching through the Knights was amazing. Just goes to show that fortune favors the painted. :)
I also really liked the tip that someone gave on the Privateer forums where you activate the fortuned model first, then activate Doomshaper, cast fortune on a new model, then activate that, effectively giving you two fortunes per turn which really helped quite a bit.
Things that I really need to improve on though is the positioning of my guys relative to the Krielstone Bearer. There were several times I overextended my beasts, and was therefore out of range of the aura. This could have saved my Axer. I also need to remember to use my feat when I actually plan to!
Another thing I noticed is that I never had any excess fury on the board after Doomshaper Leached. This is pretty encouraging since I can definitely field more beasts without worry. The problem with Doomshaper though was that he couldn't use most of his spells because they have such short range, and I was worried that he'd get blasted if he got too close.
Anyway, hopefully next week we'll be able to get in another game, this time at 500pts. I'm really excited by this first game and definitely want to play more now :) As a side note, I found out that Ray, the store owner also has a Trollblood army and seemed interested in getting in some games too. Plus, there was one other Everblight player there (sorry didn't get your name!) that would be playing more regularly also.
Exciting times, I hope more people will pick up Hordes now that they've seen the a cross-game battle.
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