Baldur2 vs. Harbinger

I played a fun game this weekend vs. my buddy Greg. He brought Harbinger and I brought Baldur2. I am a pretty big fan of this style of match up for Circle since I run mainly construct style units with Baldur so I get to ignore awe and reckoner cloud making those amazing jacks Defense 14 vs. living targets.  Here is the list break downs of our 50 point battle.

The Lists

Baldur the Stonesoul (*5pts)
* Ghetorix (11pts)
* Megalith (11pts)
* Woldguardian (9pts)
Celestal Fulcrum (9pts)
Shifting Stones (2pts)
* Stone keeper (1pts)
Stoneward and 5 Woldstalkers (5pts)
Stoneward and 5 Woldstalkers (5pts)
Gallows Grove (1pts)
Gallows Grove (1pts)

Harbinger of Menoth (*5pts)
* Reckoner (8pts)
* Reckoner (8pts)
* Hierophant (2pts)
Avatar of Menoth (11pts)
Choir of Menoth (Leader and 5 Grunts) (3pts)
Exemplar Errants (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
* Exemplar Errant Officer & Standard Bearer (2pts)
High Paladin Dartan Vilmon (3pts)
Paladin of the Order of the Wall (2pts)
Paladin of the Order of the Wall (2pts)
Reclaimer (2pts)
Vassal of Menoth (2pts)
Vassal of Menoth (2pts)

This is his classic Harbinger list which is a little abnormal to the elists without the book and a few other normal choices. I am still trying to figure out Baldur2 and haven't really locked in a list that fits my play style yet. 

This one was an attempt to break out of my first list I had made with him which was a tier list. Going to spend a bit of time breaking down some of the elements of the list and why I thought they were a good idea. If you just want the battle report skip to the "Battle Report"section.

Megalith is an auto include for Baldur in my opinion. With his self damaging +strength ability the counter healing Megalith brings is amazing. On top of this Megalith is easily the best warbeast in the faction and I would include him in almost every list without character restrictions.

Ghetorix is very efficent killing machine. With mat 7 pow 19 reach attacks he can easily remove models from the table. That coupled with unyielding bringing him to armor 19 then adding roots of earth throwing him up to armor 22 in combat makes for a very hard to deal with warbeast. The biggest issue with having him in the list is that I'm committing both named warbeasts in the faction to 1 warlock.

Woldguardians are amazing scenario pieces with the ram rule. Letting me move things out of zones.

Celestial Fulcrum offers some amazing infantry clearing capabilities and with Baldur can get to armor 21 which allows it to live longer.

Gallows groves really help Baldur spread out the +3 armor buff he has and crevasse is a pretty effective infantry kill spell as well.

Battle Report

We randomed a scenario and got Supply and Demand. If you don't know the scenario here is where you can find it http://privateerpress.com/organized-play/steamroller-tournaments. I won the dice roll and decided to go first.

Baldur2 Turn 1

Ran the battle engine forward along with my beasts. Megalith and Woldguardian ran into my circle while Ghetorix and a unit of woldstalkers moved forward to threaten my opponents circle and objective. Gallow groves took flanking positions on both right and left side to help set up +armor buffs later in the game.

My first mistake was putting +3 armor on the battle engine instead of the Woldguardian who was up front. As the battle engine is immune to fire and wasn't going to take reckoner damage anyway.

Harbinger Turn 1

The paladins ran into his circle. Avatar run up the middle of the battlefield. Both reckoners ran forward and shot the woldguardian for about 8 damage. The errants ran toward my circle and threatened to contest it on turn 2 for a capture point. Harbinger moved forward and popped her feat.

Baldur2 Turn 2

The celestial fulcrum started this turn off with a bang killing 8 errants with his spray, 4 inch pow 15 aoe and the leap from the lightning bolt. The lightning bolt did some damage to the reckoner and disrupted it. A nice side bonus from a crit. The woldstalkers (lovingly nicknamed shrimps) on the right side took a few shots and killed another errant. Ghetorix scared of Harbinger's feat and avatar counter charge decided to run back behind the battle engine getting ready to counter punch anything that attacks it. Looking at you Mr. Avatar. Baldur moves up and feats giving everything +3 armor.

Harbinger Turn 2

Avatar rolls a 2 and generates 3 focus. Avatar then charges the battle engine killing it with the final blow, the avatar is enlivened at this point. One of the reckoners charges into the Wold Guardian failing to kill it at armor 23. The paladins move forward to the front the circle threatening to counter anything contesting the objective.  Reckoner is contesting the zone so control point for Menoth.

Baldur2 Turn 3

I need the Avatar dead and with enliven I need it to not run away after the first hit. I decide to teleport Megalith next to the Avatar and 2 hand throw him back toward my army where Ghetorix is waiting to crush him. The throw succeeds and Ghetorix then moves up to the knocked down avatar and proceeds to maul it. I move my left flank of shrimp into the control zone and contest his objective while taking shots at some of the vassals who are martyred. The right unit of shrimp put some damage on a reckoner. The rest of the errants are punched to death by the Wold Guardian. This was a mistake that I was forced too by recasting Roots of Earth on him without realizing he wasn't in melee range of the Reckoner who was in reach range.

Harbinger Turn 3

The paladins charge into Megalith who is currently armor 22 and rolls incredibly high putting him at 10 hit points. The reckoner who isn't engaged (doh!) charges Ghetorix but fails to do anything noticeable. The Harbinger then charges a shrimp and cataclysms to others clearing the objective. Menoth is now at 2 control points.

Baldur2 Turn 4

With pending objective win for Menoth I knew I had to get a little risky. I teleported gallows groves next to the paladins. I then attacked the reckoner with Ghetorix who fails to roll anything noticeable with lots of 3's and 4's for damage. This now threw me into a little bit of a pickle. Baldur then charges Vilmon crushing him with strength 18 due to wurm tokens. Harbinger can't martyr him due to Gallows Groves heal prevention. The last remaining shrimp on the left takes a shot at Harbinger and does 9 damage to her. Doh! Should have taken this shot before I activated Baldur, because now a spell assassination was viable. Megalith was still engaged with 2 paladins, so he tramples over both next tot he objective to prevent an easy Menoth victory. In the process he kills one.

Harbinger Turn 4

As this turn starts I notice the biggest mistake so far. I filled up Ghetorix and with Megalith at 13 due to some healing my 4 transfers that were meant to protect Baldur from dying as he's in the middle of the table is bad news. Harbinger activates and drops a boosted pow 18 cataclysm on Megalith killing him. Then a full focused choired Reckoner walks up and brains Baldur.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed this game. Overall I think Baldur2 isn't a bad match up vs. Harbinger but that scenario is tricky. I made some mistakes that hopefully I can learn from. Ghetorix is hard as nails with Baldur2 but I'm not sure if I'm willing to commit both character beasts 2 one list. Gallows groves worked perfectly and the battle engine did what I brought it for. Greg is getting pretty proficient with his Harbinger lists and can really capitalize on situations making him a great practice opponent. Thanks for the game! The shrimps bring some solid shooting, but I'm still not in love with them. I'm tempted to try Bloodtrackers, because even though on feat turn they'll still die to any normal hit they will be relatively safe from blast damage. I'll have to mess around with some more lists to figure it out.

Super Painting Weekend!

This weekend started off very slowly. I played a quick 35 point game of Trollbloods (look at last post for list) vs. a new Khador player. Then my wife and I had a mellow dinner Friday night and went to sleep at a decent time.

Our normal gaming day of Saturday was slowed to a crawl with one of our regulars being sick, his brother who usually comes with him didn't come by himself, we lost another gamer who was committed to finishing his Legion battle engine this weekend 

and then Mass Effect 3 claimed another. My wife and I found ourselves with a very slow relaxing Saturday with nobody over. What to do?

Paint! Nicole my wife had finished converting up her Archidon last weekend and decided to start painting it. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get some work done myself and grabbed my paint brush.

These pictures are of her beautifully painted and converted Archidon. She did an amazing job, you can't even tell that she's relatively new to the hobby with about 3 years of off and on painting. She used the new gallows grove branches to help convert her nest. I love how this came out.

With that model coming out so well she was inspired and quickly grabbed another model. She had her Razor worm since it first came out, and now finally threw some paint on it. Her paint scheme for the skorne has been blue's and purples with some great transition work. Since she had decide to commit to fully blue on the Archidon she decided to do the opposite on the Razor Worm.

I really enjoy how she uses Chinese lettering to mark the models facing.

 Next on the chopping block was the Ironback Spitter. We both love this model for it's goofy yet impressive battlefield presence.

I really enjoyed the natural color scheme she went with him. Works really well with the rest of the gators.

With him out of the way she decided to do some basing work on completed models. Gundrun is a model painted by a friend of ours as a gift. So we decided to base him real quick too.

The boneswarm proved to be the next target, and quickly grabbed a paint job. Simple bone job for the model before she moved onto the final model for her this weekend.

The final model Nicole finished this weekend was her Eyriss. This model had been started about half a year ago, but never found the inspiration to finish it. I requested her finish it though as I wanted to run the model for the new Krueger2 tier list from NQ.

 Before I talk about the models I painted this weekend I had finished up this troll during the week. Real quick job, but I like the scheme and matches the rest of the troll army.

The first model I decided to paint was a pair of gallows groves. I like how they play with Baldur2 and have been looking forward to them coming out. I painted up a 3rd, but during the pictures the last one was missing some dry brush work.

Then I grabbed my Gorax. Now I really don't like this model. I was going to buy the rescuplt but didn't like him either, though he was an improvement.

I decided to experiment on him with a painting transition. I did a simple grey base coat across the model then applied 3 different washes from the base being brown to black to blue. In the future I should really water down the washes. Then I applied another grey dry brush and picked out the details.

Didn't come out as well as I hoped, but the paint job was clean and out of the way.


Baldur2's list being almost completely painted now with the gallows done meant I needed to get to him done sooner rather then later.

I miss the epic bases they used to give models so I did a very simple conversion with his base to call out his rock manipulation abilities. The rock comes from the Earthborn model. I was happy with the quick conversion and still think he's a great model.

I had really hoped to get a solid list ready for strategicon but ended up with running Baldur1. I do feel confident in taking him to Kingdom con though.

At strategicon I played Morvhanna for 3 rounds of the tournament. I really enjoy her unique play style, and just need to avoid upkeep removal lists. Her list is getting close to painted and decided she has earned her paint job.

I wasn't sure how to paint her and decided to use her name as inspiration. I went with yellow and orange autumn colors to stay true to an Autumn theme. I really enjoyed how vibrant she came out.

I haven't painted this much so quickly in awhile. I really enjoy putting painted models on the table and can't wait to field my newly painted models.