Last weekend, I played two games in a small local tournament (9 people playing). Although I lost both games, I learned a few things about my Gunnbjorn list, and how to maybe make it better. My first battle was into Legion of Everblight.
Legion of Everblight
The Legion player showed me two lists, and I didn’t recognize either. Here is what they decided on:
- Primal Terrors – Adds Vengeance to Warmongers
- Anamag the Doomfeaster (+27)
- Ammok the Truthbearer (4)
- Golab (17)
- Scythean (16)
- Spell Martyr (1)
- Spell Martyr (1)
- Warmonger War Chief (5)
- Warmonger War Chief (5)
- Chosen of Everblight (20)
- Chosen of Everblight (20)
- Blighted Ogrun Warmongers (13)
- Gorag Rotteneye (6) – Free
- Hellmouth (6) – Free
- Hellmouth (6) – Free
Thoughts on Primal Terrors
Thanks, I hate Rapid Healing
The Chosen of Everblight seem on par with Trollblood Trollkin Longriders. However, they have innate Pathfinder, and this crazy Rapid Healing ability. Their pole cleaver also hits at 1 point higher than the troll axe. I don’t understand the difference between a pole cleaver and a war cleaver (the Warmongers’ weapon), but evidently it equates to 1 less pow on the pole cleaver. On the weapon, I feel like the P&S should just be 14. The Rapid Healing ability is bonkers. I hate it. It means that if I shoot with a POW 12 firearm, against the ARM 17 chosen, and I somehow manage to put 3 boxes of damage on it (at a 41% chance, according to Odds Machine), the chosen will heal at least 1 point, and has a 66% chance of healing 2 points, and a 33% chance of removing all damage.
If I plug in 8 boxes, ARM 17, and 6 attacks at POW 12, the trolls have almost a 90% chance of killing the model. However, if each attack heals at least 1 damage point, essentially giving them 14 boxes of damage, the chances of killing drop to 50%. At 9 attacks, Odds Machine kind of slows down, but my chances only rise to 64%. That’s a lot of bullets to kill one monster.
Conversely, the Long Rider, with 18 ARM has a 64% chance of dying (or triggering a tough check) after 6 POW 12 attacks, and at 9 attacks, will most undoubtedly fall, at an 84% chance.
If the Chosen of Everblight heals faster, rolling the occassional 2 or 3 points of damage, then the chances of killing it drop even more. If they score 2 points of healing, they only have a 12% chance of dying after 6 POW 12 attacks.
The problem here is that an army requires some sort of armor reducer (debuff), or high power attacks, or the Grievous Wounds ability to make the Chosen of Everblight vulnerable to attack. Between the Chosen of Everblight and the popularity of the Tharn Ravagers (who are actually easier to handle, since they only have 5 boxes and 15 ARM), and the wholesale distribution of the Tough ability, it’s easy to see why Grievous Wounds sees play, and why the Trollblood warriors’ only healing (Tough) gets so easily handled by other armies.
Additionally, with Anamag the Doom Feaster, the Chosen of Everblight become impossible to kill, unless you have both an ARM debuff and upkeep spell removal. Bond of Gristle and Bone gives the Chosen a +2 ARM buff, and prevents them from being shot when on the ground (like if they toughed out an attack, or were purposely knocked down by something like a War Wagon’s cannon).
Trolls aren’t allowed to troll
With all the “Let’s knock things down” in Trollbloods, it hurts when you can’t shoot at knocked down things, or if they just get up again on their turn with Rise. Ammok the Truthbearer has Rise within 10″ of him.
There are 225 entries in Warmachine University with Tough. There are 118 model entries with anti-tough, and 3 themes that also handle Tough. Grievous Wounds is on 42 of those. The Anamag list contains Grievous Wounds on the whole army for a turn, Entropic Force on Golab, and Slaughterhouse on Scythean.
In addition to the anti-healing, the Krielstone armor bonus is negated by both the high POW attacks (starting at 14, hitting 18 on charges with Anamag’s spell, Fury’s Strength) and Anamag’s feat granting Dark Shroud (-2 ARM).
Legion Army Final Impressions
Neither of my lists will go well. The Legion cavalry will either devour my units or kill my huge bases. Unless I can pull off boosted POW 14 and above, I probably won’t kill much of the Legion army.
My Lists
I paired Gunnbjorn with a Grissel1 Band of Heroes list. The intent wasn’t really to run Grissel, but to play a bunch of Gunnbjorn games. Due to an uneven number of players, I had to sit out one round, and only got two games in. After round 3, I had to leave due to a personal matter, so I don’t even know if there were four games played. I discussed the KC list in an earlier post, and I will explore Grissel later.
My opponent said that he decided to run Anamag because he wasn’t really sure what the Band of Heroes would do, and he knew his Chosen could take the King.
How the game goes badly
Let’s be clear…
This wasn’t a one-sided battle, nor was it a losing game from the start due to list selection or list building. I made some screwed up plays.
Turn 1
Legion chose sides, and trolls went first. My bushwhackers bottlenecked on the left, between an acid pit and house. That was totally a bad deployment on my part. They should have deployed to the right, with the wall and forest. What was I thinking?
The bushwhackers took some shots on the tentacles, but with only 1 die of damage, they didn’t do much. The king did take out one with a boosted spray. Of course, it popped up on Legion’s turn.
Legion moved up into striking range, but just out of my threat. They didn’t do much else. I was expecting the tentacles to do more, but I guess they have a rule about being out of command range of the maw.
Turn 2
I moved Dozer up, and forgot to use him. I don’t know why, but immediately after moving, I got distracted, and did other things. So there’s my second big whoops.
Braylen gets slightly behind a tentacle and does some damage to it. The king walks up and sprays into the maw, which eliminates the tentacles. I did not realize that killing the maw would kill the tentacles. Whoops number three. So, Braylen’s shot was wasted, but in reality, she wouldn’t do much into the nearby Chosen.
I’ve got to hand it to my opponent, who placed his guys mostly out of spray threat. I tried to knock down the Chosen on the right with a sniped War Wagon shot, but missed. Dozer’s animus should have been used to boost the wagon shot as well, and Braylen could have moved up further. If I had scored a hit, and knocked them down, they wouldn’t have been able to do anything next turn, because they were too far off for the Rise ability.
Take note of the wall template, hidden slightly by the Mountain King’s right arm. I thought I measured so that the dudes on the right wouldn’t be able to reach. I did not know they had pathfinder. Whoops number 4? It gets better. I placed the template so there was enough room for a large base. I may have been relying on the forest to slow things down, which is another mistake… because Legion just ignores most terrain. How could I forget that? So let’s call that Whoops number 5.
So the Mountain King dies to a feat turn and charges. The wagon takes a bunch of hits, but survives on like 5 boxes. Braylen dies, and so do a bunch of Bushwhackers.
Bottom of turn 2, and the Legion scores a flag, and a rectangle.
Turn 3
I try to position some krielstone dudes to screen from an assassination, and attempt to kill a guy with Dozer. The chosen toughs it out, and Smigg’s gun fails to kill the solo on the flag.
The wagon does nothing to anyone, and Bushwhackers run to contest the zone. Unboosted shots don’t seem to scare the Chosen.
Legion still scores the flag, bringing the total to 3:0, Legion.
Despite my best efforts, this game has run away. The wagon dies fairly trivially, as do the krielstone guys in the circle. The circle is theirs, and the solo stands on the flag, picking up the final two points to close at 5:0.
Conclusion
I really need to figure out a way to screen for the Mountain King. Maybe the War Wagon should be replaced with a unit for screening purposes. Something to serve as a roadblock, like Fennblades would have been great, but then I lose out on the Kriel Company theme. Before I make changes to the list, I think I need to play some more games.