Grim Angus needs corrective lenses...

Grim Angus faced off against the Harbinger of Menoth tonight. It was a pretty grinding fight, and a lot slower paced than the other recent battles I've played. It was also my first game with Grim, and also my first game against the Harbinger, so there was a lot of learning on my part.

Basically I think this was possibly one of the wort matchups for Grim due to the fact that the army I took was very heavy shooting oriented, and the Harbinger army was pretty strong against ranged attacks. I had a really hard time cracking the Menoth knot today. I definitely credit Broken Zealot for an excellent use of his resources to totally neutralize my strengths.

Here are the lists:

Trolls
Grim Angus
Blitzer
Impaler x2
Champions
Alten Ashley
Swamp Gobbers

Menoth
Harbinger
Crusader
Castigator
Devout
Vilmon
Paladin
Seneschal
Choir
Wrack x2

Deployment
Basically, the Menoth deployed in a brick, with the two heavies completely blocking line of sight to the Harbinger, the Devout to her right, Choir following behind chanting no shooting, and the solos on the flanks.

My deployment was warbeasts on the left, Grim and the gobbers in the middle, and Champs to the right. Alten was only deployed slightly forward in a forest.

The Game

I'll skip most of the turn-by-turn commentary and just hit the highlights because there wasn't a lot of action going on for the first few turns. Basically the warjack wall with no shooting made all my guys mill about aimlessly as they advanced. I did try to hit Vilmon with Grim's Man trap, but kept missing horribly (on 3 dice even, needing only a 7 to hit!). He also missed a rifle shot at a choir member and a snare gun shot at Vilmon in the opening turns. I blame his non-painted goggles! (they are still primed black...he was obviously having trouble seeing through them)

Eventually, the Champions got stuck in with Vilmon and the Paladin, who promptly then got butchered by said Paladins. Also, the Harbinger's feat did a ton of damage to the Champions...finishing off any that the Paladins didn't down. The Blitzer took the Crusader down to just systems left (did damage evenly across all the columns, but unable to take anything out), but then the next turn the Blitzer was killed by a fully focus laden Crusader. Ouch, that guy can put out a ton of hurt against other heavies! The Castigator also downed one of my Impalers.

Alten got a couple shots at the Paladin, dropping him twice, but he was brought back by the Harbinger's resurection ability. Vilmon was also killed a few times during the game as well as the Seneschal, but that darn resurection spell kept bringing them back. Alten was also able to cap the Choir leader eventually which definitely helped. But it was a little too late since the warjacks were now in melee. Still it meant that they didn't get the bonus to hit and damage.

One bright point was when the swamp gobbers charged the Seneschal and killed him while he was knocked down (from the resurection ability). The swamp gobbers also helped quite a bit all game with the fog cloud effect. Sadly, I didn't realize I could use it to block line of sight from my own guys to the Harbinger during the feat turn. That would have saved a ton of damage on the first Impaler and also the Champions. Doh.

On the second to last turn, Grim and the remaining Imapler were able to finally take out the Castigator and Crusader, but by then they were the only things I had left. Meanwhile, the Harbinger, Devout, Vilmon, and Paladin were still left. I could have kept running backward and taking shots at the remaining Menoth, but I opted to just go for the kill.

The Harbinger was down to 9hp from all the resurections, but the Devout was still ready to jump in the way of a shot with his shielding stance. So Grim walked up, man trapped the Devout, knocking it down so it couldn't intercept the shot. He then shot at the Harbinger, doing 7 damage (another low roll here with an 8 on 3d6). The Impaler walks up to finish the job, needing a 9 to hit, sadly the spear just misses wide of the Harbinger (8 on 3d6, doh!). Next turn Vilmon and the Paladin finish off Grim.

Conclusion
I guess the theme of the night was a lot of missing on my side. I just could not hit the broad side of a barn/warjack/etc. Even when needing really low rolls (like 6 on 3d6) I just couldn't hit. It was pretty frustrating, but that's just the way of the dice. I guess this game balances out the horrible dice rolling game that Broken Zealot had a few weeks back where he just couldn't hit my guys.

The other thing was that the no-shooting Menoth special ability from the Choir coupled with the warjack wall really threw me for a loop. I just am not sure how to get past that since it's near impossible to kill the Choir since they're behind the wall too. I definitely credit Broken Zealot with totally neutralizing my army's strengths with his list and formation.

That and the fact that I didn't have a way to reliably boost my damage output either through a Mauler or some other spell. This really hurt me because I couldn't take out the heavy jacks with the Blitzer. He's just too weak at POW 15 vs. ARM 19. This makes me sad because I really want the Blitzer to be useful with Grim, but I'm just not seeing him being better than a Mauler which is sad. Instead of two Impalers, the Pyre might have been a better choice also. At least that way I could bump the Blitzer up to POW 17.

Actually one way I thought of to beat the warjack wall is to move the Blitzer up and two hand throw the warjack out of the way. Then I'd need to shoot and magic with everything I had at the Harbinger and then run in a second melee beast. Even then, I'm not sure if I could take her down, especially if she is camping focus to overboost her armor.

Also, the Champions really lose a lot of staying power without the Krielstone Bearer and Surefoot. At 14 DEF they were pretty easily hit by the Paladins. The Harbinger's feat did hurt them quite a bit though, maybe if I had shielded them with a fog cloud they would have been better off.

The best performers for me this game though were clearly the swamp gobbers. These guys blocked charges, lowered melee attack, and even took out the Seneschal. For 15 points, they were well worth the points.

Worst performer had to be Grim. Not being able to hit anything was horrible. Clearly I've overestimated his shooting ability. Thinking back on things though, I really can't see doing anything differently except for the fog cloud blocking LOS to the Harbinger. It was just a tough matchup. Hopefully he'll do better next game though! He definitely very different from either of my other warlocks, and I have a feeling he's going to be a lot harder to learn.