Actually, I got in a 2nd game as well (Issyria vs. Morv2), but I won't be reporting it, as:
1)My phone for some reason only kept 3 of the pictures from the game
2)I had Issyria on the ropes - not much she could do, when I forgot a simple light cavalry move, which allowed Eiyriss3 to shoot Morv's 4 camped fury off, which let the mage hunter assassins shoot her to death, despite elevation.
Not really an exciting game, especially when you can't see the pictures for it. Just suffice it to say that Don did beat me fair and square, but you won't be getting a report for it :)
Moving on to this game though, let's set the stage just a little bit. After the break.
As many of my regular readers likely know, I've been gearing up for Feast of Blades in October. It's now 3 weekends away (i.e. two weekends will come and go, THEN Feast will happen), and I want to be ready for it. I've been playing my main three consistently for a long time now with very little variation.
However, my favorite caster to play besides Morv2, Krueger2, and Cassius is very likely Baldur1. I have a really fun knockdown list that I like playing with him, and I wanted to give him a spin. Not because I'm bored of the other casters, but because Baldur1 is really fun to play, and I am honestly trying to decide how to squeeze him into one of the Feast events.
So, I drove down to Laramie, WY, where my friend Don owns a nerd store, in order to get a game in. Don will also be going to Feast, and is incidentally going to be on my team for the team event and needed practice with his armies.
My List:
Baldur1
-Woldwrath
-Megalith
Tharn Bloodtrackers (max)
-Nuala (UA)
Druids of Orboros
Shifting Stones
-Stone Keeper (UA)
Blackclad Wayfarer
Blackclad Wayfarer
Gallows Grove
The whole idea behind this list is using the Wrath's animus to give the Druids, Blackclad, Stonekeeper, Baldur, and Megalith all 3 to 4 dice (Baldur and Megalith can boost Earth Spikes) on their attack rolls, which incidentally all have Crit: Knockdown. Then, the Bloodtrackers run up and throw Weaponmaster spears at POW 11 or 13 (depending on if it's vs. Prey or not) with Stone Skin, all the while immune to knockdown and blast damage due to Baldur's other awesome spell, Solid Ground.
Pretty fun. Not sure if it's super competitive or not, but it definitely has a lot of cool options :)
Don's List:
Vyros2
-Imperatus
-Aspis
-Griffon
-Griffon
-Griffon
Dawnguard Sentinels (max)
-UA
Destor Thane
Destor Thane
Fane Knight Skeryth Issyen
Arcanist
Arcanist
The Mission: Two flags and two objectives - control flags for 1 CP, dominate for 2 CP, kill opponent's objective for 1 CP. KILLBOX)
**I won the roll to go first, and took it.
Pre-game thoughts:
This isn't the most ball-busting Vyros2 list I've seen out there, but it's got plenty of threats. Sentinels are really strong, and the Destor Thanes are surprisingly good as well. I wasn't at all sure about the character Thane - Don said he wanted to try him out, which is why the list is like this.
My plan wasn't much of one - I just wanted to meander up and kill Don's stuff if I could, and pop my feat at a good time as well. We'll see how well I do at those goals :)
Deployment:
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| His deployment. Not really exciting/noteworthy. |
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| My Wrath is finally in the process of being painted! Fun to have so many armies fully painted :) |
Circle Turn 1:
I ran everything up, including the Wrath. I put Stone Skin on the Bloodtrackers.
Oh yeah, Bloodtrackers put Prey on the Sentinels.
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| Using the Stones + Wrath will take some getting used to. Different logistics required than with large bases. |
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| Here's another more complete picture I guess? |
Retribution Turn 1:
Don ran up as well. He was even able to kill a few Bloodtrackers on the left with his Thane, who could shoot and was faster than I anticipated. Whoops.
Vyros put up Synergy and Deflection. I'm sure a few of his guys got focus, either from an Arcanist or Vyros.
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| Sloppy of me to lose Bloodtrackers that way, though to be fair, I had no idea those guys could shoot. |
Circle Turn 2:
My goal this game was to kill as many of the Sentinels as possible, and to kill his character Thane on my right. After reading his card, I knew that he could really mess with my plans, and I wanted to make sure he died. Otherwise, I wanted to knock things down and just cause general mayhem.
I upkept Stone Form on the Bloodtrackers.
Bloodtrackers walked up and killed seven Dawnguard, then used their reform move to jam a couple others, along with the Destor Thane on my left (I didn't realize they had gunfighter and virtuoso as well, wow!).
Wrath walked up and popped his animus, but I misjudged distances, and almost nothing was in range of it. Heh. He took a boosted shot at the character Thane on the right, hit, and boosted his damage, causing 8 damage.
Druids tried to drag the Thane a little closer, but missed three shots (needing 7's I believe). The rest popped smoke.
Blackclad on the right walked up and targeted the character Thane, hit, and caused the final two damage, though since he was a Dragoon, he placed his small base.
Stones activated and shifted Megalith into B2B with the Thane. I tried to use Megalith's animus, but Don pointed out that Mega was out of my control. Whoops!
Instead, Megalith took two swings and killed the character.
Baldur meandered up and grew a forest to hide a couple druids who had failed to drag the character closer. He made sure to stay just inside the killbox.
I had intended this to be my feat turn, but forgot. So, good job to me. In fairness, Don also forgot his feat last turn.
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| Really, probably not my best turn. Playing a caster you aren't used to can be pretty awkward. |
Don started mumbling about how he would be able to kill my Wrath, which made me nervous.
Imperatus charged and killed two Bloodtrackers. Synergy Bonus = 1
Aspis advanced, but didn't do anything.
Vyros charged in and killed a Bloodtracker. Then he used his Light Cavalry move to move back to where he was initially. Synergy Bonus = 2
One Griffon charged a Bloodtracker, and killed it. Synergy Bonus = 3
One Griffon charged a Druid and killed it. Synergy Bonus = 4
Thane on my left, freed from the one Bloodtracker engaging it, walked up and took some shots on two Bloodtrackers, but missed.
Thane on my right aimed at Megalith and did a few points of damage.
Sentinels, who had not killed anything with their Vengeance swings (actually, one of them took a free strike and died), swung at and killed a Druid or two.
Arcanist walked up and power boosted the Griffon with three Focus on it.
The final Griffon charged my Wrath, and did about half his hitpoints. If he had been able to find a way to get two Griffons in, my Wrath would be close to dead, if not dead. Synergy is something I need to get used to.
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| Pretty good turn for Don. You can barely see the Griffon that charged the Wrath. |
Circle Turn 3:
Don had forgotten to pop his feat again, and I resolved not to forget my own feat.
I upkept Stone Skin on the Bloodtrackers.
Baldur went first and before I could forget, popped his feat. He then cast Druid's Wrath (Wrath's animus) and advanced to the back right corner of the Wrath's base.
Lefmost Blackclad went next and managed to catch two Sentinels and a Griffon with his spray, targeting the Griffon. The Griffon was within 10" of Baldur, so I got 3 dice to try to hit him. I got the knockdown and some light damage. Blackclad also killed the two Sentinels (not using 3 dice, since the Animus says you only get it against models "targeted" by the spell).
My remaining two Druids advanced and shot at the Griffon in B2B with the Wrath, knocking him down with the second shot.
Wrath went and pummeled the Griffon in B2B with him to death.
Blackclad on the right advanced and shot his spray at the final un-knockeddown Griffon, knocking him down.
Stones activated and healed the Wrath for 3. Stone Keeper did a little damage to the leftmost Griffon.
Megalith activated, advanced, cast Stone Skin on himself, and killed the rightmost Griffon.
Bloodtrackers activated and failed to do much.
I had been kind of hoping I could kill all three Griffons that turn, but that was obviously hoping for too much :)
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| Druids are kind of the odd men out in this list, though I do like their ability to KD stuff. Maybe Una should replace them? |
Don wanted to finish off my Wrath, but with my feat in effect, he would have a very difficult time in doing so. So, he settled for cleaning up my support elements.
First, his Thane on the right charged Megalith, but didn't do much damage. ARM 21 is fun, sometimes.
Aspis charged and killed my Blackclad. Synergy Bonus = 1
Imparatus charged and killed a Bloodtracker. Synergy Bonus = 2
Thane on the left killed a Bloodtracker engaging him, but not both of them.
Vyros charged and killed a Druid. He then FINALLY remembered to pop his feat. Synergy Bonus = 3
Arcanist put Power Booster on the remaining Griffon.
Griffon stood up and charged the Wrath, but only had a few attacks, which fell short.
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| I'm running out of stuff, and Don will almost certainly get Imperatus into my Wrath, which will almost certainly kill him. |
Circle Turn 4:
My feat had saved the Wrath, but things were looking a little sketchy. I wouldn't be able to get the Wrath into Imperatus, so unless this turn was conclusive, I would lose the Wrath next turn, and have a really tough-to-kill jack to deal with, along with Vyros, two horses, and the Aspis. Not exactly hopeless, but not the situation I wanted to be in.
However, I did have a good assassination vector, as it turned out. First though, because it was feat turn, I would need to knock Vyros down. Otherwise, when I killed the Griffon in the way of my Wrath, Vyros would just move away with the feat.
Baldur started things off by advancing to within 8" of Vyros. He put up Druid's Wrath, then cast Earth Spikes at Vyros and boosted to hit. These two cost all 6 of his stack. However, with Druid's Wrath up and a boost, I would have 4 dice to hit Vyros, who was standing behind a wall that didn't actually give him cover (Earth Spikes ignores cover bonus).
I rolled to hit, and hit, but didn't get the Crit: Knockdown, despite excellent odds of it working.
Blackclad on the right advanced and shot at Vyros with three dice, but again hit and failed to knockdown.
Megalith then had to go. He charged the remaining Griffon, then used Earth Spikes (boosted) to hit Vyros. He also hit, and this time knocked Vyros down. He then proceeded to pummel the Griffon to death. (Thane did a freestrike on Megalith, but didn't knock out any spirals, despite a really high damage roll).
Stones went next and the Keeper shot his shot at Vyros, doing a point of damage. Stones healed the Wrath's one knocked-out spiral.
Wrath had a clear path to Vyros, so he charged, and used his initial attacks to kill him to death.
Sorry, no picture.
Results: Win for Circle via assassination!!
Post-game thoughts:
It's funny that I needed to assassinate Vyros by knocking him down. Usually, you need to assassinate a caster by knocking them down because their DEF was too high. In this case though, the Wrath had plenty of Fury and attacks - he could have just boosted a hit roll against Vyros and knocked him down with his punch. Not as sure a thing, but not really unlikely - I only needed a couple hits on him to kill him.
Instead, I needed to ensure that Vyros couldn't just use his feat to run away, because the Griffon would need to die if I were to be able to kill Vyros.
I was happy enough with my final turn of play, though I think the game would have gone far smoother if I had popped my feat a turn sooner. My Druids would have then been in a position to drag at least one (if not more) Griffons to their death, wait for Don to run his models up again, then drag another one or two to their deaths.
On the other hand, it's hard to judge accurately what would have happened, since I'm sure Don would have remembered to counter-feat. Nobody would know what was going on!
I actually think that I should have tried a little harder to drag in some Griffons to kill on my 2nd turn, instead of fixating on the Dragoon. If I had been able to kill a Griffon or two that turn, I would have been in a far better situation. The Dragoon is solid, though if he got too close, my Wrath + Baldur would kill him easily enough.
Bloodtrackers underperformed this game, especially after their 2nd turn. They got bogged down, and were slowly eradicated to help Don build up Synergy. I think I could have used them better, though I'm not sure exactly how just yet.
Druids seem a little out of place. I have a lot of awesome knockdown ability with them, but in a lot of ways, their drags are wasted, since I've most likely already activated the Wrath for the extra dice, and the Wrath is by far my hardest hitter.
Instead, I'm thinking of trying out the Una + Rotterhorn "module". Una and Rotterhorn can really (really!) buff the Blackclads with Acceleration, and help the Bloodtrackers out of getting jammed, with her black penny shots. She also really benefits from ignoring blast damage.
Just not sure about this list. Maybe it's good. Maybe it's not. Maybe I should play Mohsar instead, I've been kicking around ideas for him as well. Ha!
Hope you enjoyed, let me know if you have any thoughts on the matter! See you next time!
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