The Trollbloods get burned, but live to tell the tale!

My Trollbloods faced their second battle against Menoth tonight. Once again, I played against Broken Zealot, though this time at 500pts. It was a really close game, and could have gone either way many times through the game. No deployment map this time, but it was fairly basic...I set up most the same as my last game. I'm also fairly hazy on the Menoth details, especially with the spells, but I'll hit the highlights.

The army lists:

Menoth Forces
Feora
Castigator
Devout
Revenger
Knights Exemplar
Paladin of the Order of the Wall
Vilmon
Senechal
Wrack x2

Trollbloods
Doomshaper
Dire Troll Mauler
Dire Troll Blitzer
Troll Impaler
Troll Axer
Fell Caller
Kriel Stone Bearer (min.)

The Battlefield
The battlefield was pretty balanced, with each person having a hill on their side, and each person having a forest. There were also a few low walls, distributed around the battlefield, but those didn't really come into play during the game. Actually not much of the terrain saw much use today besides the hill closer to my side.

Turn 1 Trolls
I mostly moved forward with the Blitzer and Impaler leading the way onto the hill. Mauler and Axer on my left flank, and KSB, Fell Caller, and Doomshaper bringing up the rear.

Turn 1 Menoth
The Menoth army surges forward, everyone pretty much running. What scared me was Vilmon being able to go into the Impervious Wall form and then running forward with the Paladin behind him making him immune to knockdown and invulnerable to everything except magic. Yikes! This really freaked me out because I only had one magic attack that did any damage, but it was only a POW 12 attack. I have imaginings of this guy tearing through my army, an invincible wrecking ball.

Turn 2 Trolls
With only one spell that could hurt Vilmon, I took a deep breath, cast the spell Accursed.....and killed him with a boosted damage roll that was pretty big! Woo! Then the Axer charges the Paladin and kills him. The Impaler I think slams the Castigator back through the Senechal, knocking them both down, and the Blitzer's chain gun does a bit of damage to the Revenger.

Turn 2 Menoth
The Knights Exemplar charge my Axer, but fortunately only 2 make it into contact. Even so, they take him down to about 1/3 life left. One Knight charges the Fell Caller and chops him to pieces. I think I forgot to attempt a tough roll here. Another Knight Exemplar charges toward the Blitzer trying to tie him up, but doesn't quite make it.

Feora arcs a spell through the Revenger and hurts the Impaler. The Revenger charges the Impaler and Blitzer and does a good amount of damage to the Impaler, who is now about 2/3s dead.

Turn 3 Trolls
The Axer regenerates some health and then does his Thresher special attack on the two Knights in contact with him, killing them both. The Mauler charges another Knight and eats him as payback for killing the poor Fell Caller last turn. The Impaler attacks twice and does some damage to the Revenger but can't remove any systems off it. The Blitzer then grabs a hold of the Revenger with both hands, and chucks him over at the last Knight, killing him and damaging the Revenger more.

Turn 3 Menoth
The Castigator charges the Blitzer, and does a fair amount of damage to it, but doesn't kill it. He has some special attack though and kills the Impaler. The Seneschal run around the hill and tries to get a bead on Doomshaper. Feora Arcs a spell through the Revenger at the Axer and almost kills him, but thanks to the KSB, the Axer's extra armor saves him from death. Things are looking kind of grim now for the trolls.

Turn 4 Trolls
The Blitzer throws the Castigator off the hill, doing some damage to it, then opens up with his chain gun and hurts it some more while it's knocked down. Doomshaper blasts the Seneschal with troll power, killing him outright, and saving himself from certain death. The KSB and crew charge the Revenger to stop it from casting spells and also keep it from charging Doomshaper. They plink the Revenger for some minor damage. The Mauler moves up some, and the Axer regenerates.

Turn 4 Menoth
Feora moves up and feats, catching everyone in her flames. The Revenger tries to kill the two scribes in contact with it, but I make two tough rolls. Yes! Feora does some damage to the Axer with spells also I think.

Turn 5 Trolls
One scribe dies to fire. Doomshaper takes huge amount of damage from fire too...I think around 10 damage, which I have to transfer to the Mauler. ow! Ow! OW! Two more scribes take damage from fire but make their tough rolls, and the Axer almost burns to death too. He's hanging on by a thread at this point (2-4 hp left on him now). He Regenerates some of it back.

The Blitzer slams into the Devout, knocking it into Feora, doing a good amount of damage to the Devout, and I think two damage to Feora. The Axer charges the Devout and finishes it off with three attacks. The scribes get up and plink at the Revenger some more. Doomshaper moves away from the Castigator slightly and casts Accursed on it, doing some damage. He then pops his feat.

Turn 5 Menoth
Feora runs far away with her weird machine speed spell (?). The Castigator moves up onto the hill. The Revenger kills two more scribes. Feora sits on her focus since Doomshaper feated last turn.

Turn 6 Trolls
The fire goes out on Doomshaper and the Axer, but the Blitzer and Mauler take more fire damage, bringing them to about 1/2 and 1/3 health respectively. The last scribe burns to death, and I think the KSB burns to death at this time also.

The Axer walks into Melee and finishes off the Revenger in true Axe-wielding maniac fashion. Doomshaper moves back again away from the Castigator and casts a big Accursed spell on it, finally destroying it. Whew. That was a big sigh of relief because there was now nothing between the Castigator and the old man.

Now seeing only Feora on the board, I make a really dumb mistake. I try to go for the caster kill with my Blitzer and Mauler. The Mauler moves into charge range for next turn, and the Blitzer charges in. Unfortunately, the charge takes the Blitzer out of Doomshaper's control area. DOH! So now I can't force for extra attacks, or boost to hit. Which means I miss both my attacks. Ah well, how much damage could she do in melee anyway.

Turn 6 Menoth
Well to answer that, Feora does a little sidestep around the Blitzer to get out of range of the Mauler and proceeds to drop the Blitzer in two hits. DOH!

Turn 7 Trolls
We decide to play out the rest of the game. To the death! Watching the Blitzer get killed so quickly makes me bring back the Mauler closer to the Axer and Doomshaper. I take this time to heal up some. I think Doomshaper is safely screened behind the Axer and the Mauler. WRONG!

Turn 7 Menoth
Feora moves up and uses her flame throwers on Doomshaper. One hitting for 5 damage, which I take, and another hitting for 7 damage. I think about transfering this damage, but then decide to just take it and save my fury for a kill next turn. Doomshaper lives with 3 hitpoints!

Turn 8 Trolls
Doomshaper moves slightly to get line of sight on Feora and casts Accursed on her twice, but fails to hit with one (on three dice!) and does very little damage with the second which does hit. It's up to the beasts now. The Mauler charges in, hits her with his first meaty fist, and then picks her up and eats her with his second meaty fist! (Had to boost both attack rolls). Go Mauler!

Conclusion
That was a nail biter of a game, that really went the distance. It could have gone either way at several points, and while I jumped out to an early lead, Feora's feat really leveled the playing field as my Trolls just could not put out their fires. Stop, drop, and roll guys! The fire and spells accounted for more damage than anything else from the Menoth side I think.

I also totally underestimated how incredibly awesome a Warcaster is when fully loaded up on focus. Ouch. I guess I'm just used to thinking of my caster as a real pushover, but that's definitely not the case with warcasters. It was pretty scary seeing her drop the Blitzer in two hits after buffing herself up. So much so, that I pulled back the Mauler to regroup for a round.

My MVP this game is really hard to pick...it's either the Blitzer, the Axer, or Doomshaper.

The Blitzer was key in doing a couple key two handed throws at very critical times. Between him, the Impaler, and Doomshaper the Castigator only got in one round of combat. He also threw the Revenger into a Knight that had a charge lane to Doomshaper, which probably would have ended the game there if he didn't do that. Not to mention the slam on the Devout, which set up the Axer for the kill.

The Axer. What can I say about him. He just would not go down, and kept dishing out the pain. He accounted for two Knights, the Devout, the Revenger, and the Paladin. He was an awesome killing machine, and with armor of 20 with the KSB, he was really hard to hurt and kill. If he did get hurt, he could get some of that back with regeneration and healing from Doomshaper.

Lastly, old Doomshaper. The spell of the day was Accursed. He killed the Paladin, the Seneschal, and the Castigator, as well as helping to keep the Castigator locked down a lot of the time. Without him, those enemies would have made short work of my army.

In the end, while the Axer did a ton of damage, I think I'd have to go with the Blitzer as my MVP - those throws and slams were just so key, and saved me on two occasions from a loss. The least useful part of my army is a lot easier. The Fell Caller. This guy did nothing, and died before he really got to do anything. Though that's mostly my fault for moving him poorly and letting him get charged by a knight. 4 dice on damage is not good.

Things that didn't work well:
One is remembering to rile my beasts in the early phases...there were a couple of turns I forgot to generate enough fury, so I didn't have any to leach the following turn. That could have been disastrous. Luckily, I didn't need the fury as badly on those turns, but it certainly could have gone the other way too.

Another is using my Fell Caller more effectively...I'm just not sure how this guy fits into my army yet...I certainly didn't get to see what he could do since he died so early. Lastly, don't charge a warcaster that is out of your control radius. :)

Things that really worked well:
I'm starting to get the feel that my Trolls really play better as a punch/counter-punch type of army. Keeping the Mauler in reserve to help clean up really seems to help. For example, using the Axer to charge first, then take the hits on him from whatever charges it, then counter charging with the Mauler and cleaning them up. He's got the ability of "whatever you have me charge will die" which is really really good for counter charges.

Additionally, I found that by keeping my forces relatively close, and using throws and slams to space out the opposing forces, works really well together to concentrate most of my army against a small portion of the enemy. This is where I'm really loving the Blitzer...he's able to two hand throw big nasty things away, and he can hold down one flank by himself or with the help of an Impaler by throwing and slamming things away. Meanwhile the rest of my army can focus on killing on the other flank.

All in all, another fun battle, this one much more exciting than the last, which bodes well for the future :)