Imperatus

In preparation for LVO this year I needed to paint up some more Retribution models. Last time I had added to this army was back in 2013 and they have got some amazing new models/releases added to the faction.

The first model I knew I wanted to add to my Retribution was Imperatus. The model plays like a mini colossal. A solid beater with staying power is a rare option for Retribution and it being a character means it can only be in one list. I can see him very commonly making it into one of my two list pairings.

While I maintained the paint scheme of my old Retribution I did a couple color swaps on locations and spots to hopefully make him stand out differently. Instead of glossy black gems, the pink of the faction are his gems. I did a darker grey though I did highlight it a few times to hopefully make it pop. I also green stuffed a rock on his base that came out really well. Overall I am happy with him. I might in at some future date go back and do a few more extreme details, but I have lots of stuff to get ready for LVO.

Las Vegas Open: The Revitalizing of My Hobby

This is a draft I never finished, but felt like finishing my edit pass and posting since my blog has been so void of content lately. I'm going to add comments as I read this in italics.

I had the lucky opportunity to participate in the Las Vegas Open 2015. My expectations were quickly meet; as I hadn't played enough recently to expect to be competitive. I wanted a fun weekend with a good friend and the privilege to roll some dice versus some quality opponents. I signed up for the Friday team tournament and Saturday's steamroller. I only brought two lists and stuck with them throughout the weekend.

List 1:

Borka Kegslayer

-Pyg Keg Carrier

-Dire Troll Mauler

Fell Caller Hero

Fennblade Kithkar

Trollkin Champion Hero

Viktor Pendrake

Krielstone (full)

-Stone Scribe Elder

Trollkin Fennblades (full)

-UA

Trollkin Warders (full)

Trollkin Champions

-Skaldi Bonehammer

I loved this list. When I go back to trolls I plan on trying to tweak and improve upon it. One of the more enjoyable casters in the game to play.

List 2: Evolutionary Elementalism Tier 3

Calandra

-Trollkin Runeshaper

-Pyre Troll

-Pyre Troll

-Slag Troll

-Storm Troll

-Winter Troll

Janissa Stonetide

Krielstone Bearer

-Elder

Trollkin Runeshapers

Trollkin Runeshapers

Trollkin Warders (full)

Trollkin Warders (full)

Interesting how this wasn't my super comfortable list for the weekend. But EE blew up right after this when Jay won a tournament with his heavy slag variant. Obviously much different then my version. Which now is pretty defunct based on the new errata. Not to argue either way on errata but the warders  were in the list for the heavy hitting.

I don't have a great memory of the Friday games unfortunately. I'll just go over the highlights I can remember. I went 4 and 1 for the day.

• Borka's feat suprises people that Trolls have a speed boost feat. Caught a few players by suprise with threat 11 warders and threat 10' 1/2" champions.
• Most people don't even try to go after Borka via assassination, allowing me to play very aggressive with him.
• I need to learn when there are good mosh pit opportunities. I usually use the fury to fill the stone and cast the rage animus.
• I need to be a lot more aggressive with Borka vs. Haley2. Throw Borka at her with Ironflesh and surrounded by infantry, not try and out scenario her. Big fail moment when I lost against Jay from Chain Attack.
• Calandra's list performed very well in the one match up I dropped it against. I wasn't positive what the list was a counter vs. just that I liked how it felt, very versatile. This is a constant theme into Saturday.

Saturday I was very happy with how my lists performed and had some great matches! I went 5-1 for the day.

• Game 1: Was against a Convergence player who decided to drop Syntherion vs. me. I dropped my Borka list. Caught him by surprise with my feat and smashed into most of his army having taken little damage. Champions destroyed his colossal with a few rages thrown on them. Game ended relatively quickly.
• Game 2: Bradigus tier list. I have never played vs. Bradigus and was caught off guard by a few tricks. Very interesting list. I dropped Borka again. In the future I should've dropped Calandra, I think it would've been a much better match up for me. I ended up getting out attritioned and lost. If I was forced into another Borka match up I would definitely make sure he can't feat and get to my Mauler, as the rage animus was key in the match up.
• Game 3: I don't remember this game. Though I remember it was one of my Calandra matches.
• Game 4: I went up vs. Rasheth tier list: Chain Gang. This was a real blood bath. I got alpha very hard by my opponent who executed it really well. Borka earned the MVP by taking 3 of the titans and 2 gators himself. Lessons learned:Stagger my infantry more so I can't lose too much to Bronzeback's beat back animus. The game ended in epic fashion as Rasheth fired off a nuke on my Keg Carrier who toughed allowing him to contest my opponent who ended with 4 control points instead of 5. The next turn Borka killed Rasheth with only the Keg Carrier and a Agonizer as the only other models on the table.
• Game 5: I went up against Mike Puryear. I dropped Calandra and had a real slug fest vs his Harbinger  list. Most of the game was a slow slug fest of Mike trying to chew threw my Warders and beasts with Errants and Bastions. Runeshapers and Pyre trolls were the main MVPs. A special note was a fully loaded Reckoner charging a Lighting Troll and getting disrupted.
• Game 6: I played vs. an Irusk. Borka absored - This looks like there I had stopped writing. I know I won this game due to his struggling vs. Troll armor.

While this title feels misleading it is true. I did paint and play a lot more trolls in the 2015 year. Very enjoyable time with the faction as opposed to last year. 2016 is going to be the year of Retribution for me. I usually pick a faction to focus on every year to prevent me from getting too distracted and actually get some painting done.

Kingdom Con Part: 1 Team Tournament

I just got back from Kingdom con and I figured I should write some of this down. I really enjoyed Kingdom con this year. I got a hotel this time around and wanted to make it more then a one day event and really had a lot more fun with it then last year.    This post is going to be about the team tournament I participated in with Greg.

The Format

• The tournament is 50 points for both players, so that gives us 25 points a piece.
• 10 minute rounds
• Steam roller 2012 scenarios

The Lists

I brought the Mercenaries. The main goal of this list is heavy support/shooting which is polar opposite of Greg's. Also the feat is heavy damage denial which doubles up on Thagrosh1's damage denial.

Fiona the Black (*6pts)

* Mariner (8pts)

* Mariner (8pts)

Long Gunner Infantry (Leader and 9 Grunts) (10pts)

Eiryss, Angel of Retribution (3pts)

Master Gunner Dougal MacNaile (2pts)

Greg brought Thagrosh1 with heavy beasts. Legion has very heavy hitting beasts and with Thagrosh1 they get very hard to kill very quickly.

Thagrosh, Prophet of Everblight (*5pts)

* Angelius (9pts)

* Carnivean (11pts)

* Scythean (9pts)

Blighted Nyss Shepherd (1pts)

The combination of -2 strength, +2 armor animus, a feat of complete denial (-1 dice on everything!), and if they actually kill a beast he just brings it back.

Overall one of our strongest benefits was our opponents have no clue how our army synergies.

Rounds

I'm way too tired to go into heavy details. So every round is just going to have it's major bullet points.

Round 1 vs. Denny2/Saeryn

• Long Gunners with Nonokrion Brand blasted Denny2 off the table on turn 2.
• Saeryn uses his feat + all the bane thralls/knights make the game go a lot longer then we expected.
• Scythean all stars all of the bane thralls tough
• Skarlock kills the shepherd! (didn't really matter but was amusing)
• Finally we assassinate Saeryn with Legion beasts.

Round 2 vs. Barnabas/Ossyan

• Long gunners blast 2 gators off the table with Iron flesh
• Scythean honey badgers into the retribution army tearing down Banshee on turn 2.
• Angelius flails against Phoenix failing miserably
• Barnabus feats + Ossyan feats and they almost kill Thagrosh putting him around 4 points. Only survives because Fiona had feated turn before.
• Greg forgets to heal his Scythean right next too Ossyan - fail turn, enough said.
• Fiona dies after 2 turtle shots + a spell from Barnabus. Luckily it puts Barnabus in charge range of the carnivean.
• Greg redeems himself. Angelius repulses stuff off the carnivean. Carnivean charges and destroys Barnabus.
• Thagrosh1 charges and eats Ossyan

Round 3 vs. Denny1/Sorscha2

• This was absolutely brutal.
• We hid in the corner forcing them to us while long gunners destroyed Nyss Hunters and Great Bears.
• War witch siren locks down Carnivean for 6 rounds with shadow bound. The game went 9 rounds.
• eEyriss shoots the angelius to strip off Denny's crippling grasp. Letting Angelius to charge and destroy nightmare.
• Beast 09 and widowmakers destroy the mariners/long gunners
• Fiona survives 2 turns of windowmakers/kayazy's then finally dies to Sorscha 2 melee assassination.
• Carnivean then eats Sorscha 2 (yes Fiona was bait.... again)
• Finally Thagrosh fights off Kayazy while Scythean and Carnivean chase around Denegra finally killing her.

Greg and I walk away victorious! We had 180 battle points with the next closest team around 120 battle points so they gave us the victory. Was a lot of very hard fought battles with nasty double feats. Great fun!

Later that night...

• We decided to play another game vs. the other team who was undefeated. 
• Mortenebra and Karchev. The tow of Deathjack and Beast 09 was brutal. They kill an angelius. 
• We then feat bring back the angelius and counter punch their face off. 
• Long gunners took care of winter guard.
• They surrender early.

Orccon - Road to Gen Con Tournament

This last Saturday I had the opportunity to play in the Road to gencon tournament at orccon. It was 50 point tournament that hit max size of 32 people. I'd like to start by saying thanks to Robyn and Anthony for running it. It ran very smoothly.

The Crew
 I went with three of my friends Chris, Greg and Steve. Chris showed up with Cryx using his Mortenebra and Goreshade 2 lists. Greg brought Protectorate of Menoth using Severius 2 and harbinger lists. Steve brought Legion of Everblight using Kallus and Lylith 1 lists. I brought my Circle Oboros with Baldur 1 and Morvhanna.

Chris went 1 -3 loss / win / loss / loss
Greg went 2 -2 loss / win / loss / win
Steve went 3 -1 loss / win / win / win
I went 2 -2  win / loss / win / loss

The Lists
Even though I brought two lists I stuck with my Morvhanna list the entire tournament, which I had never played before. I really thought the list was strong and it showed very well in my games. Even battles I had lost were close or was one good dice roll away from winning.

Baldur the Stonecleaver (*6pts)
* Megalith (10pts)
* Woldguardian (8pts)
* Woldguardian (8pts)
Druids of Orboros (Leader and 5 Grunts) (7pts)
* Druid of Orboros Overseer (2pts)
Sentry Stone (Leader and 3 Manikins) (3pts)
Sentry Stone (Leader and 3 Manikins) (3pts)
Shifting Stones (2pts)
* Stone keeper (1pts)
Shifting Stones (2pts)
Stoneward and 5 Woldstalkers (5pts)
Stoneward and 5 Woldstalkers (5pts)

Morvahna the Autumnblade (*6pts)
* Woldwatcher (5pts)
* Woldguardian (9pts)
* Woldguardian (9pts)
Shifting Stones (2pts)
* Stone keeper (1pts)
Shifting Stones (2pts)
Tharn Bloodtrackers (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
* Nuala the Huntress (2pts)
Wolves of Orboros (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
* Wolf of Orboros Officer & Standard (2pts)
Blackclad Wayfarer (2pts)
Gudrun the Wanderer (3pts)
Wolflord Morraig (5pts)

The Games

Game 1

Morvhanna vs. Borka

I had really anticipated him picking his other list, because Borka is very much a grind fest. That being said Morvhanna is a master at grinding. We had a great battle of attrition in the end though I was able to jam more points into the objective.

His major infantry unit that seemed to be the back bone of his army was a full unit of fennblades. On the turn they charged they didn't do enough damage and moved too far ahead to receive iron flesh again. I took this opportunity to destroy most of the unit that then broke for 2 turns.

With his major unit gone we did a beast trade of Wold Guardian for Mauler, leaving Mulg and another Wold Guardian to stare each other down. While my wold watcher played tar pit to a unit of burrowers. In the end only Borka was in the objective while I had a unit of WoO, Morraig, Shifting stones and Morvhanna.

Game 2

Morvhanna vs. Krueger 1

I had never played against Circle before being the only one in my local meta. Though I know the faction well enough to know Morvhanna was a terrible choice and I thought I'd be able to attrition through his feat and chain lightning. What I missed was the bloodweavers in his list that offer him dispel. Very foolish of me.

We played the scenario where you have 3 flags in the middle and 1 of them disappears.

It started out as I had anticipated with lots of heavy charges then followed by a dispel on my regrowth unit. I had hoped he would over extend and misplay the objectives as it was my only chance of winning this match up. I put my wold watcher in the middle to tar pit again and my wold guardians to the right flag. This all worked as plan.

My next step of the plan was to use my WoO and Morraig to counter punch the left objective. I only needed them to clear it for 1 turn to get me 1 objective point to win me the game. I used my mini feat of making my WoO weapon masters and charged a Feral with 3 plus Morraig. All 4 hit, but to my dismay I only did a paltry 4 damage.

The scenario ended with me up 2-0 on objective points and Morvhanna assassinated. I think that match up is winnable, I just need to be much more careful in the future.

Game 3

Morvhanna vs. Amon

This was a serious grind fest. My opponent was using 2 vanquishers, 2 reckoners, 2 repenters and a devout.  I was able to alpha strike him first and tore off 2 reckoner melee weapons and damaged their cortexes. He then punched back pretty hard but I threw restoration on my front most Wold Guardian putting him up to armor 22. He eventually killed it through synergy and his feat. But in the end armor 22 wold guardians and regrowthed Tharn Bloodtrackers were too much for him.

Game 4

Morvhanna vs. Irusk

This game I played very badly and my opponent played very well. That being said the scenario gave me zero chance. He jammed me with defense 16 iron fang and Kayazy assassins on his feat turn being immune to knock down and tough on a 4 up. Then proceeded to score 3 objective points to my 1. Just needing to contest your opponents zone and hold yours for control points is a jam lists dream.

Conclusion

I definitely had a great time at the tournament. I learned a lot about Circle and the new steam roller 2012 scenarios. The kind of lists I should expect at least in this local meta. But here I think it's best to do a simple bullet point of things I learned.

• You need 1 list that offers solid shooting
• Most scenarios are winnable (last year there were a lot of dead scenarios where you ended up just playing caster kill)
• Most people know to kill off 1 of your shifting stones
• Don't play Morvhanna vs. lists that have any dispel capabilities (already knew this 1, but decided to learn it the hard way anyway)
• Morvhanna is amazing vs. Trolls
• Practice the scenarios before the tournament. Even if it makes sense reading it you need to fight over it to understand it better.
• Bring two very different lists to force your opponent a touch decision. My lists were far too similar.
• Bring dispel capabilities and something to deal with high defense. If in only 1 list.

Day of the Pig!

With the new Journeyman League rules I have decided to start a new faction, Minions.  Even more specifically I will be targeting the Farrow pigs.  Truth be told my wife already owns a nice collection of gators I can use if I find necessary.

I picked up a nice assortment of piggies to try out.  I even took a list to a local steam roller rocking Dr. Arkadius and Barnabas (much simpler caster).  I did fairly well considering I had only played one of the lists once before the event and placed second over all.  Here is a quick write up of the event.  Normally battle reports will have pictures and more details.  Though this will be covering 4 games and is a few weeks old in my memory.

The lists were...

Dr. Arkadius
  -Gun Boar
  -War Hog
  -War Hog
  -War Hog
  -Targ
4 Farrow Bone Grinders
6 Farrow Brigands
6 Farrow Slaughterhousers

Bloody Barnabas
  -Blackhide Wrastler
  -Bull Snapper
  -Ironback Spitter
  -Ironback Spitter
Feralgeist
5 Gatorman Posse
Thrullg

First Game
Arkadius vs. an eIrusk and claimed the game with a tiebreaker when dice down was called.

Second Game
Bloody Barnabas vs. Vyros.  This game I won through scenario claiming 3 control points.  Barnabas's feat really helped this game letting me destroy 9 Invictors, a Phoenix, Hydra and 3 Sentinels in one turn.

Third Game
Bloody Barnabas vs. Siege.  This game was almost decided by the fact he had two shooty lists and no experience vs swamp pit.  This match up would be a game for me to lose, and I almost did!  I misread swamp pit and on the second turn misused it.  Allowing him a solid siege feat turn into my army.  Luckily for me I had sat on 2 transfers and had already killed the black thirteenth + some trenchers.  I was able to weather through that turn of shooting and assassinate Siege.

Fourth Game
Bloody Barnabas vs. Rhyas.  This game was really odd from the get go.  We fought for position a bit then the gatormen posse charged into warmongers.  Surprisingly only killing one warmonger.  The battle ebbed back and forth trading models.  It came down to the Ironback Spitter trying to two handed throw the Carnivean out of the circle to claim the last control point and win.  I rolled two 2's, and Legion player rolled a 4.  As a last desperate act Barnabas charged Rhyas needing 9's to hit and rolled 3 sets of 8's.  At this point I knew the game was lost and said I was done.  Legion player aptly removed the final models from the control point and ended the game 2 control points to 1.

Was a very fun event to be apart of and had some great games.