First up is a correction I would like to make to a huge error on my part when talking about the PAX Steamroller 2012 event. When I saw the amount of sign ups, I was clearly mistaken in that the number shown was the number of slots REMAINING, not the amount of people signed up. Well suffice to say, after noticing this I became extremely excited for Saturday to arrive and how fun the tournament was!
My two lists were:
1. Baldur the Stonesoul
Megalith
Ghetorix
Woldwatcher
Woldstalkers
Stones and UA
Totem Hunter
Blackclad Wayfarer
Reinforcements: min Blood trackers + Nuala
2. Grayle
Feral
Stalker
Gorax
Wilder
min Wolves of Orboros + UA
Swamp Gobbers
Morriag
Gallows Grove
Stones + UA
Reinforcements: Woldstalkers + blackclad wayfarer
Here are my models from both of my lists on my Fool's Model Tray
My first match up was against Cryx. The scenario was Close Quarters or the never gonna score a control point scenario. My opponent's caster's were eSkarre and Terminus. After having heard the Muse on Mini's podcast as well as Texas Renegades podcast, I figured this guy would follow the same thought process and pick Terminus because he was playing against hordes. I knew there was no way Grayle could take down Terminus and with the amount of souls I had in that list, I was truly going to be tabled by the end of the game. Thus I chose eBaldur for many reasons. One was that I figured Baldur could handle Terminus late game (say turn 5 or 6) with his POW 19-20 hits. Secondly, in my Baldur list I had 5 souls max to give Terminus and it would take extremely bad luck on my part for him to grab them all on 1 turn. Thirdly, I saw the table, and the big wall present on my side of the board. I decided to fortress up with Baldur's rock wall spell and attrition terminus until I could apply Baldur to his face.
Here is deployment from my perspective.
Totem Hunter preyed Corbeau. The plan was for my woldstalkers to take out some bile thralls on the flanks and the rest of my army castle up around in the area next to wall closest to me. The totem hunter was supposed to scalpel out that solo and remove the 3" additional advance and keep scalpeling his other support solo's. His list:
Terminus
Stalker
Bile thralls
Bane Thralls + UA
Tartarus
Withershadow Combine
Saxon orrik
Madelyn Corbeau
Darragh Wraithe
I would like to mention that this was my first tournament this year and also that it was my first tournament using Deathclock. I like it better than the timed turns because there is not a constant feeling of always out of time. You have the flexibility of when needing to think, or conduct a feat turn, to do so without really worrying about the clock. It also rewards efficiency, especially in the earlier and later turns (if you reach that far). The downside is of course, no tie breakers, no win my more control points or army points in the zone, just simply, either you win by scenario or assassination or you lose by running out of time.
I bring this up because, being the tournament noob I am, I deathclocked myself the first round against Terminus. Thankfully, my opponent allowed me to try a hail mary anyways with my last 20 seconds or so but I still failed, leaving Terminus with 7 boxes left.
Below you can see the end of the game where I tried to topple Terminus with some boosted Crevasses but failed to inflict any additional damage.
What I learned from this match:
Roll the dice faster, I was winning the attrition game thanks to my wall and the stones healing the models that were getting damaged by Bane thralls that could fit in the bottle neck I had created. Also, maybe include a Thrullg instead of the Totem Hunter.
My next game was versus Khador in the scenario Incursion. I have to say this is one of my favorite scenarios due to the random disappearing flag that forces both players to react accordingly. I also chose eBaldur for this round although Grayle would have also done fine. The reason I chose Baldur actually was the fact that with pSorcha's feat (my opponent had one list), he could rid me of my high defense, while with Baldur I could still tank thanks to Roots of the Earth. His list was:
pSorcha
Destroyer
Juggernaut
full Man-o-war Shock Troopers
Manhunter
Yuri the axe
Gorman
Doom reavers with UA
Below you can see the end of the game. What it came down to was that his Man-o-wars were advancing up the field slowly, too slow to stop me from grabbing some points of the left most flag. Both of his solos died to my Totem Hunter and Blackclad while they sat on the leftmost flag. I controlled the middle, also thanks to Ghetorix's superior speed vs the Khador heavies. Thus I was going to win on scenario so he tried for an assassination run on Baldur top of 3rd turn. He did his thing with wind rush and charge as well as pop his feat. Unfortunately, I had Baldur cast Roots of the Earth on himself the previous turn and camp 2 fury. Sorcha tried her best, but did miniscule damage (I do not remember how much). My turn, I brought Megalith out of combat, my opponent missed his free strike on him (he had been teleported next to Ghetorix to kill Gorman), and put up Undergrowth. Then I activated Baldur, boosted first hit and put weight of stone on Sorcha. That put her at DEF 13. I was at POW 17 and did some damage. Bought another attack and boosted to finish her off.
What I learned from this match:
Slow armies are definitely penalized in this scenario. I could have used Grayle here to mix it up.
My next round was against Legion of Everblight in the scenario: A Flag to far. He had either pVayl or Saeryn to choose from. Being Legion, I was like "Hell no! I am not picking Grayle so they can ignore my stealth" so I went with eBaldur once again. Plus He had no purification and pVayl could not move my beasts with Rampager thanks to Roots of the Earth. I was not too worried about Saeryn's feat turn because I had my wall which Eyeless sight does not ignore! My opponent ended up picking Saeryn but due to one of the Five Guys almost always playing Saeryn against me, I was pretty comfortable facing her. His list:
Saeryn
Scythean
Scythean
Angelius
Forsaken
Forsaken
Spell Martyr
Deathstalker
Deathstalker
Shredder
Shredder
Reinforcements: Raptors and Spell Martyr
I won the roll off and opted to go first. I can say that using eBaldur for this scenario, my only real option was to sit on his flags and prevent him from scoring, and hoping my reinforcement can secure me some points or I get the assassination. I unfortunately do not have any pictures of this game!
The game went according to plan. I ran first turn, and by second turn I was pretty much set up. On the far side of the table, there was a wall parallel to his board edge like 8" away from his primary flag. I decided to set up shop there and thus moved Ghetorix behind it and Rock walled up perpendicular to his incoming Scytheans. The point was for me to set up favorable trades in heavies. With the Scytheans lowish MAT of 6 and Ghetorix high DEF 14 and behind a wall he was having trouble hitting me. Further, I did not make this easy for my opponent one bit. My opponent always had to eat the reduction to hit with the wall due clever placement of my stones. My opponent tried to buy himself the game winning alpha strike by popping feat after having his heavies move into charge range of mine but I simply just moved mine back farther away, out of his threat range.
By the end of the game he was down to just his Angelius, Saeryn, a shredder and his raptors. I had lost only my blood trackers and woldstalkers. No points had been scored. The game ended with me deathclocking my self. I underestimated how long it would take me to kill his whole army and thus did not pay attention to the clock. His time was actually almost up too, with just under 20 seconds left. My last turn I should have simply activated Baldur and feated and waited for him to use his turn up. Otherwise, it was a good game, and one I was happy that I was able to control through use of Rock Wall. My opponent had to leave to attend a panel, so he gave me the win. He was a good guy!
What I learned from this match:
Roll faster once again! And when your time is just about up, just move everything fast and hope for your opponent to clock himself! Losing to deathclock while clearly winning kind of sucks! Also, since this was a reinforcements scenario, I must change how I used them. I used them to distract Saeryn and his Angelius, but I should have waited to use them later to win some easy control points. Wolf riders and a feralgheist might be a better addition.
My next round was against Cryx in the scenario: Sacrifice. His two lists were eDenny and eSkarre. Something I noted was that his eSkarre list did not have any way to deal with high armor (no bane thralls etc) and his other list had Bane thralls (no reach). So I chose eBaldur once again (yay). Rock wall kills the coverage of non reach models on my models behind it. Especially slow ones. He chose eDenny. His list:
eDeneghra
Seether
Deathripper
Bane thralls + UA
Tartarus
Withershadow Combine
Blackbane's Raiders
Skarlock
I won the roll off and decided to once again go first. I set up my Baldur and my Battlegroup in direction of the control zone along with my shifting stones. I set up the Totem Hunter, woldstalkers and Blackclad wayfarer towards the flag. My prey was his caster (did not know what else to prey). As can be surmised, his pirates were going to have a tough time versus me, due to the only non magic weapons in my list were Ghetorix and the Totem hunter. I figured he would send those to the flag up top and not risk his Bane thralls to not contest the zone.
This is exactly what happened. My first turn, I ran my battlegroup laterally towards the zone and my woldstalkers, etc towards the flag. He did the same. I figured that he was going to screwed by a forest he had to cross on his side to get to the control zone, but he used the Skarlock to cast Ghostly on his Bane thralls, and this worked really well. None the less, I arrived at the zone first and proceed to set up shop.
This picture depicts the end my turn. As expected my woldstalkers had a field day killing the Raiders with their ranged MAGIC weapons at RAT 8 thanks to zephyr. Unfortunately for him, there was a wall in between his unit and mine, but it was positioned perpindicular to my gunline and thus did not help one bit.
His turn, he ran his Raiders away from the flag and towards the back of this army. Deneghra went incorporeal and walked forward and popped feat and then camped 7 focus. She caught everything in it except for Baldur. He than ran the rest of his army towards my army to get ready to charge me on his next turn. He was aware of my stones being able to shift models, even on his feat turn, but this only factored in on how close he moved Deneghra. Consequently, she was outside range of me to port Megalith, but his Seether was not. I proceeded to port Megalith next to his Seether and the front of his Bane Thrall unit.
Before that, he had finished his turn, he had made a large mistake in trying to charge Megalith with Tartarus. When he made this decision, he had factored in the extra range given by the Curse but not fact that it has to be done first, before charging, and that this target needs to be in Curse range first, before you can benefit from the bonus. Thus, he failed his charge and right in my face, outside of melee range. He also forgot that my woldwatcher had a gun. My woldwatcher aims, boosts and hits Tartaturs. He of course also boosts the damage and manages to kill Tartarus, making him a forest. Baldur then activates and charges the Seether to put some damage on him and casts undergrowth. Since my other model's cannot move anyways I pop my feat and end his activation camping 2 fury after putting a wall diagonally along Ghetorix and Megalith. I finish my turn by activating Megalith and trashing the damaged Seether as well as killing a bane thrall.
My opponent sees a change to assassinate Baldur, who is in his face. He decides to try something that would have killed any of my other warlocks. He activates Denny first and charges Baldur. He boost to hit, hits and does 1 dmg to Baldur. He activates Dark Banishment. Unfortunately for him, Baldur and everyone in his control area has Roots of the Earth. This cancels any movement or placing on those models. This made him immune to Dark Banishment's placement effect. This put Denny in Baldur's kill range. My opponent had made a fatal mistake, but decided to keep on going by casting Curse of Shadows on Megalith and Ghostly on the Bane thralls. He activates them next and charges a bunch on Baldur. Only like 3 can get into melee range. The rest charge Megalith and Ghetorix. He begins with the attacks on Baldur. He misses 2 and the last one damage that is transfered to Ghetorix. Thats pretty much game over for him. The rest miss ghetorix and almost take Megalith (the killing blow missed him), leaving him with like 5 health. Turns out bane thralls suck at connecting their attacks when Tartarus isn't around cursing stuff!
My turn was as expected. I clear LOS to Denny, Megalith pops undergrowth and Baldur boosts his first hit on Denny. He hits dropping her to DEF 11 and swings at dice +4. Another swing and she crumples.
It was a good game. In this picture you can see the final round. People really underestimate the non knockdown and non placement effect of Roots of the Earth.
What I learned from this match:
I need to figure out what to do with Totem Hunter, he did almost nothing this game. I also need to find a more reliable way to remove models such as the Skarlock, so that Undergrowth is more effective.
This tournament was great fun. Although I did not place (I think I got 4th out of 16), it was a great experience and added more fire to my passion. I cannot wait to participate in more!
Tournament learnings:
I am most comfortable with eBaldur and will stick with him for tournaments, albeit with changes to the list such reinforcement changes and removing the totem hunter. What I do need to 1. A list to complement this one. If I had faced an opponent with purification or spell ignoring effects or both, I would have been in real trouble. And 2. I need more practice with deathclock. Deathclocking yourself, especially when you are clearly tabling your opponent is almost as bad as killboxing yourself. I need to think faster, move more efficiently, and roll faster.
Later, I will put up some battle reports of two very satisfying games I had yesterday against some of the Five Guys group. Thanks for reading!
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