An Unlikely Alliance - The enemy of my enemy is...my friend?

Played a 2 vs. 2 game with Broken Zealot against a couple of other folks at the game store today. It was Menoth and Trolls vs. Circle of Orboros and Everblight. While the fighting with Menoth has been fierce these last few weeks, we decided to group up to eliminate the mutual enemies in the Dragonspawn and the betrayers of the Kriels, Krueger.

Broken Zealot used his Amon ad-Raza list from the previous week and I used my Madrak list, also used the last week. I'm going to try to recount all the parts I can remember, but after the first turn, the battle sort of split into two games, with Trolls vs. Circle, and Menoth vs. Everblight. Here are the Everblight and Circle lists to the best of my memory.

Everblight
Thagrosh
Carnivean x2
Seraph
Shredders x4

Circle (of Betrayers)
Krueger
Woldwarden
Warpwolf
Tharn Ravagers x6
Shifting Stones
Druids (the Circle player totally forgot to put these on the board, so he was down about 84 points this game)

The battle took place on a fairly forested area, four woods in each table corner, about 4 walls in the mid-field, and a medium sized hill right in the middle of the field. The terrain didn't really play much effect all game.

Deployment
The Trolls and Menoth deploy first in a cental position. I am holding the left flank, and Menoth has the right flank. Across from me is the Circle army, and the Everblight army is staring down the Menites.

Turn 1 - The Good Guys
Everything in the troll army runs forward. The Menites mostly run forward as well, some taking cover behind the walls in the midfield. Madrak puts up Surefoot on himself and the champs. Vilmon goes into his Impervious Wall.

Turn 1 - The Betrayers
The Tharn declare a charge on nothing for some odd reason, or maybe one that I don't understand, instead of just running. Weird. The Woldwarden moves up and takes a potshot at the Impaler with Forked Lightning but is just short. Krueger gives the Tharn Lightning Tendrils. On the Everblight side, the Carniveans move through the woods, and the Seraph flies over and I think takes some shots at Gorman. Krueger pops his feat and drops three storm templates, one on the Impaler and Axer, one in front of the Warpwolf who moved up, and the last one on Vilmon and the Paladins. Vilmon takes a couple points of damage, the Impaler takes a few points and that's the end of the first turn.

Turn 2 - The Good Guys
The beasts under the templates now have to test for frenzy due to the special effect of the storm clouds, and the Impaler fails with double sixes! The only thing in line of sight is Vilmon, unfortunately, and the Impaler, remembering the previous fights I suppose, lets loose a loud shout and runs Vilmon through with his spear, doing 27 damage on the attack. DOH! Sorry Broken Zealot!

The Revenger moves forward to line up a beautiful Sand Blast on a Carnivean and Thagrosh, fires and knocks the Carnivean into Thagrosh, knocking them both down, and doing some damage to Thagrosh. Other than that, not much else seems to happen on the Menoth side.

I decide to try and tie up the Warpwolf with my Champions, and so I run them into melee, but can't attack since I ran them. Madrak moves up and casts Surefoot on the champs and, thinking that he was safe, drops the rest of his fury on the Krielstone bearer. This would prove to be a big mistake in the next turn. The Axer, Mauler, and Krielstone bearer both move up near, but behind Madrak.

Turn 2 - The Betrayers
The Circle player start cackling madly, and I wonder what's going to happen. Well, he moves his Shifting Stones so that the Warpwolf's base is now within the three and then teleports the Warpwolf into melee with Madrak. DOH! (Question: Can shifting stones move and then still teleport something?)

The Wolf unleashes on Madrak, and through the flurry of attacks Madrak has to use his scroll and still take I think 8-10 damage. Thankfully, Madrak is tough as a rock and lives through it. There will be much pain for the Wolf next turn, oh yes.

The Woldwarden takes another shot at the Champions with Forked Lightning, but misses due to screening. Go troll brick. The Tharn charge into Melee with the Impaler, Champions, Axer, and Paladins. The kill one paladin, damage the Impaler, and take the Axer down to around half. Again, troll toughness impresses. Armor 20 on the Axer and 18 on the Impaler blunt most of the damage, and they miss or do little damage to a couple of the Champions. Krueger flies over to the middle of the field and casts forked lightning at the Champions. He hits, does some meager damage thanks to the Champion's 19 armor, and ends his activation.

On the Everblight side of the board. The Carnivean charges the Revenger and rips off the Revenger's shield arm, and does a fair amount of damage to it. The Seraph shoots and kills the Seneschal and Gormon. I think Shredders also charge into the Seneschal as well, but I don't think anything else of significance happened.

Turn 3 - The Good Guys
Broken Zealot and I both look at each other and both say, "It's Feat time!" First though, the Dire Troll Mauler needs to take care of business. He shows the Warpwolf what a real beatdown is, killing it in three hits. He also pops Rage up on the Kithkar Champion. Madrak casts Guided Hand on the Champions as well and then announces his CRUSHER feat. The Fell Caller walks into melee with a Tharn, easily kills it, takes his 1" crusher move, and easily kills another. Weapon Master + Crusher = total Tharn ownage. The Axer also moves up, regenerates his Spirit and Body some, and then easily drops another Tharn. Sadly, there is no one within crusher range of him anymore.

On the Menoth side, the Paladin kills a Tharn, which now frees up the Impaler to move. The Impaler charges the Tharn leader, but fails to kill him. However, he's now within melee range of Krueger. He takes a swing and does about 4 damage to him (horrible die rolls since the damage was boosted too...I think I rolled a 5 on 3 dice). The Champions then charge Krueger. Needing 10s to hit on three dice (guided hand) with 3 attacks, and 3 more attacks coming on two dice, I think that this is pretty much a done deal. Not to mention that each hit makes it easier by 1 to hit with the next guy.

The first Champion hits and does about 10 damage to him, but misses his second attack. I then forget to add the +1 to hit for the second guy. Ugh. He misses both attacks, I think one of which only by 1. Agh! The Kithkar, who only needs a 9 to hit, almost misses both attacks due to horrible die rolls. Krueger lives with 2 hp left. GRR!

Back to the Menoth side, I missed most of what happened this turn since I was busy dealing with Krueger, but vaguely, I think Amon casts some spells, and the Castigator slams a Carnivean away, and then beats down Thagrosh in melee, killing him. Here's a link to Broken Zealot's account of his caster kill.

Turn 3 - The Betrayers
Without much left to do, Krueger goes Skyborne and flies next to Madrak to try and finish him off. He takes several attacks, and after a couple of damage transfers, Madrak lives with 1 hp. We call the game there as Krueger is completely surrounded and only has the one Woldwarden left.

Victory for the Kriels! (and Menoth)

Conclusion
Well I have to say, that was a pretty interesting first game against Circle. Initially, I was pretty scared of the Tharn, but it turns out they are really squishy in melee, and they just don't hit hard enough to take down my light beasts, unless all of them are attacking the same one. Even then, with the Krielstone, 20 armor is tough for them to bust through. I'm definitely less scared of them now after seeing what they can do.

Trolls are just so durable and tough, it amazes me every game. I only lost 2 stone scribes the entire game.

One thing I did learn though is *don't forget about Standing Stones teleport ability*! That one mistake almost cost me the game. If I didn't have the scroll, Madrak would have bought the farm on that one turn. The other thing is to remember the Concert bonus for the Champs. That +1 for the second champion and kithkars would have been one more hit that they should have had, which would have finished off Krueger earlier.

The MVP had to be the Krielstone bearer. This guy blocked so much incoming damage, it unbelieveable. Probably upwards of 20-30 damage blocked over the course of the game. The worst performers were probably the Champions...not being able to hit Krueger, even though below average rolls were needed, was really annoying. Next time I might just try slamming one of my own guys into him to knock him down. Actually, I should have just slammed the Tharn into Krueger before charging in with my Champs. Ah well, something to remember for next time.

Lastly, while the Circle player was down one unit of druids, I honestly don't see how they could have really made a big impact. They would have had only one turn to shoot the Champions, and they wouldn't have killed any with average rolls. Maybe one or two with really good rolls. But then, only 3 champs were able to get into contact with Krueger anyway, so again, I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be a huge impact.

Oh something else weird I just thought of. So after I killed the Warpwolf, how was Krueger able to get full fury the next turn...doh. He should have only been at 3 max fury from the Woldwarden. So he would have only been able to take the one attack against Madrak the last turn.

While the game was pretty engaging, I felt like it wasn't quite as fun or friendly as the games I normally have playing against Broken Zealot. Our opponents were a lot more high strung during the game, and sometimes it seemed like they weren't having much fun either. I guess it felt more like a tournament game, where people were more concerned with getting the win rather than having a friendly game. One of the guys seriously lost his cool after his caster was killed, and that kinda put a downer on the whole thing. Maybe it was just me though. Hopefully next week people will be more relaxed now that the first game is out of the way. Then again maybe I'm just spoiled playing against Broken Zealot all the time, who is an ace opponent. :)

I still had a good time, and I definitely learned more about Circle, I mean, the betrayers.