WarmaHordes: Final Thoughts Pt II

Continuing the wrap-up of the WarmaHordes Challenge, final thoughts from Paul and Jason…

This was a great experience for me as it made me follow a set schedule for painting my miniatures while it also scheduled some games with people that I don’t play very often! Many thanks to Chris for organizing this event and keeping everyone on schedule. He kept the event running like a well oiled machine and I couldn’t have done it any better myself. Now for some thoughts on the games I played…

Game 1: 350 VS Chris’ Lost Crusade of the PoM
I still remember this one very clearly in my head…it was the game where I realized just how squishy warlocks are! Playing against Chris’s Protectorate I saw across the board one glaring weakness in his list, all his offensive punch was invested in 2 models!

If I could just take care of both the BoV and Reckoner, his only model worth its salt on its own was Severius. I was able to take care of the Reckoner with my archers taking columns off it as they did huge POW 21 CRAs into its hull while Rhyas took care of the BoV. Unfortunately this left Rhyas with no fury for transfers (always a huge mistake with warlocks) and the reckoner wasn’t scrapped, just missing both its arm…this means it can still trample! I knew this but totally forgot about all the buffs he had available to the Reckoner! +3/+3 to its attacks from the choir and Sevvy’s EoM, and blessing of Menoth from Severius once again, letting him reroll an attack or damage roll. He accomplished the trampling assassination without a problem and that was that.

I’m glad I learned that lesson outside of tournament play. It was a good game which was made very interesting with the humongous hole opening up in the middle of the board!

Game 2: 500 VS Derrick’s Jungle Drums Legion
As Derrick mentioned, our games are always brutally close, going down to the wire and being a great match to play. Going into this game I knew I was in a lot of trouble since this scenario required a large based model to hold a centre line…my army was composed of the Carnivean being its only large based model where Derrick had a Carnivean (that could be revived with Derrick’s feat) and a minimum cavalry unit which were also on large bases.

I set up with my main force of archers in the middle with shredders protecting them and with Rhyas on the one flank with her Carnivean and Nephilim soldier. Since I had first turn I ran my archers up along with everything else to protect it. This is when Derrick and I realized that whoever had first turn in this game would have a huge advantage because of the nature of holding a line and the table dimension with regards to threat ranges of most models in this game. My archers were about 4 inches from the line and they could shoot up to 22 shots with poison in their arrows dealing extra damage to all living models.

Derrick did all he could giving all his models concealment and putting a cloud effect on the Carni to further defend him from ranged assault but the archers did enough damage to destroy the raptors and damage the Carni enough so that the Shredders could take it out. Unlike last game where the scenario did very little, this game was all about the scenario and it made it very difficult for Derrick to come back just from not getting first turn.

Game 3: 750 VS Scott’s Subjugation of Skorne
Scott and I have a tendency of playing him VS my LoE. I think I was his first, second and now third game against Everblight. It seems like nobody else plays Legion at the LGS so its hard for people to get used to their shenanigans. This was a match of the assassins of Hordes, Rhyas VS eMorghoul. I knew if I got within 14inches or so of him, my caster was toast, my caster has a smaller threat range, but at least I could extend that to my beasts as well.

Of his targets it was a pretty well rounded list. One thing that slipped my mind was the threat range of his beasts. With pain givers Skorne’s beasts can charge for free with a farther charge and more strength to boot! This totally thrashed my infantry core of archers, which I was hoping would take care of his beasts but that plan failed utterly. This was a good match, going back and forth, with a decent scenario. The moment I went for an assassination run and when it failed was when I knew it was over. Rhyas went for a critical decapitation of one of Scott’s warrior models and failed.

I realized just after the match that I should have gone for the crit decap against his cluster of warriors and not just the one. Three chances at a 40% crit chance is much better than one chance at it. Without the crit my Nephilim failed to even get to Morghoul and that was that. I realize that if I had been more patient with the flow of the game that I might have been able to pull out a win, but Scott definitely had me between a rock and Morghouls blade which made it tough to even think of any way to get out of it safely. My games with Scott always make me think more than I would like to and this one was no exception.

Game 4: 1000 VS Jason’s Keg Party for the Trollbloods
Wow 2000 points of painted models on the board…and I actually have my share painted! This was the moment I realized just how much I had painted. This was my first minis game and the painting aspect scared the heck out of me. First of all I’m a slow painter, one that has very little painting knowledge (as you can tell by my models) and one that is lazy, but I still managed to pull it off…nice!

What I saw across the board from me was a lot of beasts that would be really tough to kill. The scenario made all beasts destroyed come back to life which really made things interesting throughout the match. This match I finally succumbed to the winged goodness of Legion and added 2 Seraphs and 2 Angelii. This was because I already had them mostly painted up at the moment and my other project were just taking too long.

The Angels fared very well against Trolls since they are all medium based so their thrust special attack would not lose any efficiency against their warrior models. Playing 1k battles is always interesting and this was no exception, I was really worried when Jason had 2 beasts staring down Rhyas, but I remembered to camp almost full fury to ensure that Rhyas could survive to take down Borka.

Playing a ranged Legion army is definitely my playstyle but mixing that with Rhyas melee beatdown did not work out as well for me as I thought it would. I realized that I am definitely a board control ranged assault player as opposed to a melee army. I usually always play aggressively in either style so the aggressiveness that Rhyas requires did not turn me completely off her. I really liked her ability to get anywhere she wanted with SPD 7 and her acrobatics. She really shows off Legion’s faction wide style with speed, mobility and deadly concentrated power.

I think I will take a small break from Legion to focus on my main Protectorate force and see where the painting leads from there…
I plan to play a game against Kyle sometime just so I can round out the WarmaHordes challenge experience, then I look forward to the next challenge that Chris has setup for the players at the Hobby Kingdom. I hope everyone enjoyed following this series and will hopefully tune in for the next “big thing” at Lost Hemisphere!

Paul

Painting and Collecting

What a challenge this has truly been. Getting an army from 1 painted model to almost 40 in relatively short period of time was not easy. Now I have to go back and get all the models bases done to match, luckily that’s not as hard to do but is still as time consuming. It was also cool to see 5 other Armies coming together at the same time, with all of us racing to meet the deadlines set by our host G’daybloke or Chris, whichever you prefer.

Now I am assured of being able to field a fully painted Trollbloods Army at any future Day of Valour Tournaments.

Playing

My first game against Moonova/Derrick was the closest of all my games. Both of our Warlock’s were meant to be ferocious in combat, his a little more so in my opinion with 7 fury to Borka’s 5. A great game that came down to a failed dice roll for me and then having a really mean Thagrosh in Borka’s face.

Game 2 against X/Kyle went a little better with me taking a big risk at ending my own Warlock through Morvhana’s crazy sword’s ability to transfer damage to people she hurts with it, a great ability against Warlock’s and Beasts you weren’t able to kill on your turn.

Game 3 versus G’day/Chris was just epic in its scale not just in its points cost. With a scattered deployment the Trolls weren’t able to get into their favourite bricking patterns to advance under reasonable cover from the Krielstone and the Protectorate weren’t able to keep the Choir as close as they would want and not advance the Wracks as far out as would be desired. All in all it was a great Slugfest with Feora getting Borka from a distance.

Game 4 was the biggest challenge as I came up against our current reigning Warlord from the Call to Arms League that just passed. With the craftiness of Legion it was going to be very difficult for me to take down the Twins with a Flying Circus following them around and in the game it proved to be a nasty army by taking Borka and Grissell down in the same turn.

Overall

The Challenge was an amazing experience. It was great to play a brand new army that I had just painted and collected, with time and more experience I’ll actually be able to start winning some games with them too. I’m looking forward to the next challenge which we’ll be even more interesting. Hoorah Trolls!!