Chewing Jerky

Interesting couple of games against Jim in our efforts to prepare for the UK Masters. A much better performance from both of us today than on Tuesday - I think sleeping at regular GMT hours may have helped my cause. Anyway, the first game I tried out eIrusk to help Jim test out his eSkarre list and it eventually turned into a bit of a grind.

Khador mechanics are stupid. I'm sure Cygnar mechanics are too, but honestly, 3 turns of the Deathjack wailing on my poor Behemoth. Fortunately for Jim he took out its Cortex every single time so I could never detonate the Deathjack in return. The list I put together really didn't work all that well with eIrusk, as Jim commented later, eIrusk probably works best with things like Man'o'War. There were a lot of shiny moving parts to the machine, but actual function was lacking.

The second game moved me back into familiar territory, I brought my Trollbloods with me. Using pDoomshaper against eDeneghra was something of an eye-opening experience. I've never been able to nullify her feat before and having stymied Jim's assault - though hitting the Deathjack with Stranglehold - her assault really petered out. Jim saw a very long and complicated opportunity to assassinate pDoomshaper but needed some help with the technical details. Eventually a Whelp was placed on the table that thwarted the entire effort but it felt like cheating and we just called it quits then.

I really don't know if I'd have put the Whelp there to deny Jim if I hadn't known what he wanted to do for the assassination run. Playing against someone like Jim you drop Whelps down wherever you can in *front* of your important things, rather than behind for the warbeasts to eat. This saves you a world of pain in the long run. Sure you can remove 12 damage next turn from Mulg, but that's no good if you just lost your 9 point Mauler that you could have saved by spawning 2 Whelps in front of it.

At the end I feel like I could have won simply by grinding Jim down with my superior troll toughness, though I was a few points down on the points left on the table when we stopped. It's a bit of a mystery however as one of us (me) could have made a mistake and ended it all in tears, or Jim's McThralls could have rolled a bajillion damage if they eventually got to attack Mulg... Or I could have wiped out Jim's McThralls and remaining Banes with my Nyss Hunters (HAH, Cylena stabbaged BLT!) and warbeasts... A little too much to work out without moving into the realm of pure TheoryMachine.

An interesting thing to find out was that pDoomshaper has more answers to the problems I encounter than eDoomshaper. Heavy {something} about to rampage into your army? Stranglehold it. Enemy about to attempt spell assassination? Feat or Banishing Ward. I'm going to see if I have enough Press Ganger points to get him before the UK Masters anyway. He definitely deserves more playtesting.

As for the Mercenaries? They just don't bring the hitting power with them, nor the answers I really needed. Today's game really clinched it so I'm going to see if I can get my entire Trollblood collection painted in 3 weeks. My goal is at least 5 miniatures a week. They'll have to be completed as well. Luckily my collection of light warbeasts is already done, so I've saved myself a little time.

Food for Thought

Despite aspirations of being placed highly in the UK Masters, between Jim and myself on Tuesday it's surprising we had a brain between us. I screwed myself by forgetting to move Eiryss away from BOTH my heavies, which Jim then corrected by killing Eiryss even after he'd realised my mistake. Despite this I made a /headdesk error by not moving my Nomad further across to obstruct his Harrower - which ironically I thought about beforehand but failed to put into action. I can see Patrick Stewart facepalming already.

My inability to make any sort of command check remains unabated. Thor and his spraybunny didn't quite bring out the wonders I was hoping - the power of the spray on the Blaster is a little too low for what I need. I don't need more POW 10 attacks, I need more POW 12+ ones. To that end Thor and his buddy are out. My list also has no answer to the likes of the Avatar, Mulg or the Deathjack, models that exert a gravitas of their own merely by being on the board. Mercenaries just don't have something like that (yet) so I need to bring something to neutralize them - Black Oil. Back in comes Gorman di Wulfe.

That leaves me with 3 points... I need some sort of mechanic to repair my warjacks, and the only other mechanic available is Dirty Meg. The only single point option for Mercenaries is good old Reinholdt. Dirty Meg comes with a lovely gun that causes Stall, which is an added benefit; and Reinholdt's Lucky Charm will certainly be useful with all the Calamity spells I'm throwing around.

I've been in an odd painting mood this week and I've now done the majority of Mulg. Why did I choose Mulg to paint when I have an entire Mercenaries army to do before Masters? I have no idea, I just picked him up out of the foam and got painting. He's actually looking pretty good at the moment, I've almost finished all his skin. Once that's done I'll get back to my Mercenaries... I *must* finish my all my solos.

Locomotive of Thought

Having now had a couple of games against Jim and his Cryx lists with my eMagnus Masters list, I think I'm going to tweak my list slightly. I've found in MKii that Gorman di Wulfe is not the wunderkind I was hoping him to be, he's useful but to be useful he's got to be very, very close to the action and that means he gets killed. A lot. While I do love Boomhowler & Co, and having played the Trollbloods for a while too, shuffling all those medium bases around just gives me a headache. They last forever and effectively freezes part of my opponent's army, but I don't think I need 10 of them to pull that off. Strangely, once Boomhowler is on his own, his personal effectiveness increases as you aren't constrained by the 4+ Tough anymore. Rage Howler will make your opponent ragequit if they have a warjack/warbeast heavy list.

So... Who gets to step up to the plate to replace these stalwarts of my army after so long? Well, I'm reducing Boomhowler & Co to a minimum unit. This will give the rest of my army room to manoeuvre around the bulky Trollkin. To replace Gorman and remove the constant problem of not having someone to repair my warjacks, I'm going to bring in Thor Steinhammer and with those extra points from the smaller Boomhowler & Co unit, he gets a Grundback Blaster for spray attack goodness.

So now my list looks like this:
Magnus the Warlord
+Mangler
+Nomad
+Renegade
+Renegade
Cylena Raefyll & Nyss Hunters (max)
Greygore Boomhowler & Co. (min)
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord
Thor Steinhammer
+Grundback Blaster

I'm going to test this out against one of Jim's lists tonight and will report back once the dust settles.