Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I am running trolls, my buddy is running his second skorne list.

pMadrak - +6
-Axer - 6
-Mauler - 9

Max Kriel Warriors - 6

Max Champions - 10

Fell Caller - 3

Kriel Stone and stonescirbes - 4
-Elder stonescribe - 1

Chronicler - 2

Skorne list (I am not sure as to the point costs or model names):

Hexeris
-Bronzeback titan
-Tiberion

Max Swordsmen
-UA

Tyrant solo and standard

Mounted tyrant solo

I Think that is his list. My plan is just to stack as many buffs ontop of the warriors as possible, to make them as difficult to kill as possible. Sure foot + concealment from the chronicler + the aura from the kriel stone puts them at DEF16/ARM17 against ranged (DEF14 to melee). I have everything in a brick with the warriors out front, the champs on the sides behind them, the axer is right behind the warriors so that the warriors can get the +2 to atk and dmg from the chronicler as soon as some runs into them. The issue I am having is that it is extremely annoying to move all of this in order and still keep in good formation.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out, I have the same movement issues with the Troll brick. Sort of reminds me of the greek phalanx. They need to stay close to support each other.

He has no paingivers...

I will be updating this as we make our turns. We play during lunch break at work.

Also - He does have paingivers - the guys with the whips. He has six of them I believe. That is 2 squads I think?

Is the Mauler a good choice for this list? I was thinking about adding something with some range support as I am totally lacking in that department. I wanted to keep the axer as he is one of the few beasts with reach and I want to maximize the chronicler's charge of the trolls ability when I need it.

No I mean in his list...no beasthandlers. That's like a cardinal sin for all skorne players if they are using any of our melee heavies. Also six handlers is one max unit.

They are in his list. I just forgot about them. I have only played against skorne once before and didnt remember them. Also - I believe he is using eHexeris, not pHexeris.

We got a little time today to make some moves. The field is set up like so;

There are trenches to the left and right of the field in the forms of open graves. There are grave stones scattered about as well that are obstacles. The middle of the field has a large patch of rough terrain. There is a building center left and one top right, plus a forrest top left and bottom right.

Turn1:
I advance my brick forward towards the rough terrain. I make a massive mistake in thinking this is a forest that will block LOS and it will cost me later. Madrak is in the center of the brick with the krielstone. He casts sure footed on himself, effecting all but the trolls on the outter most edges. The Krielstone uses it's aura after gaining 2 fury from madrak. The chronicler uses tale of Mist(?) that grants concealment, and the fell caller grants pathfinder to some stuff. The entire brick advances with the axer just behind the front row of kriel warriors and the mauler off to the right flank.

Skorne turn1:
He basically does the same thing. All his stuff runs. The two titans move up the middle while the swordsmen go to the right and Tyrant Radheim flanks left towards the building.

Trollbloods turn2:
my front kriel warriors are about 14in or so from his front line. I continue with the same defensive spells and shift the brick left and forward, placing my men just behind the rough terrain (again I thought this was a forest for some reason) and trying to force him to try and charge through the terrain to get to my front line.

Skorne turn2:
He shifts his army to counter my shift. Tyrant Radheim goes way wide to the left behind the house. eHexeris channels an ashes to ashes through the bronzeback into my line of kriel warriors, killing the initial target with boosts and hitting another 4 around it. He kills 2 warriors total.

Trollbloods turn3:
I activate carnage on madrak, the fell caller grants +2 atk rolls and my kriel warriors charge the enemy. Only a few get into melee, two with the bronzeback and another two against some swordsmen. The bronzeback takes 6 damage and both swordsmen are easily dispatched (warriors have +4 atk and +2 damage rolls). More importantly, I stagger the warriors out to screen his up coming charge from the swordsmen and titans. The rest of my army sets up behind the warrior screen for counter charging next turn. The chronicler uses that ability that knocks down enemy warrior models who kill one of the kriel warriors.

We ended here. His force is completely blocked by the kriel warrior squad, who are all going to be tough to kill with his swordsmen. Even if he uses his mini feat, I think the warriors will effectively absorb the brunt of the charge, allowing my axer and champions and mauler to follow up next turn. His Tyrant is dangerously close to my flank. He could easily jump the building in front of him and get to my chronicler. Problem is, he would run a very high risk of losing the tyrant to madrak or a champion next turn.

Update: This was painful:

Skorne Turn3:
He moves eHexeris forward after leeching up to his max fury. He hurls an ashes to ashes into my kriel warriors again rolling a 4 on the extra enemies hit. He kills the initial target and two more with no boosting. All fail tough rolls. He then casts the ash cloud buff on the swordsmen unit. Finally, he uses his feat and drains the krielstone and the beasts of their fury and uses it to toss black spot at my warriors. The rest of his fury he transfers to the agonizer. His tyrant grants SPD to the swordsmen but hangs back away from the danger. The swordsmen officer feats and the squad charges into the remaining kriel warriors. All of the warriors are killed and they all fail tough. One swordsmen gets to advance into one of the stonescribes with side step but the stonescribe actually passes his tough check! Thats one out of 11...woo hoo. Four swordsmen crowd around my mauler and stick it with 8 damage spread across the grid. The agonizer uses it's ability that reduces the damage dealt by beasts by 2 and then runs over to envelope my mauler and axer. The beast handlers give the bronzeback and tibbers strength who both charge into my army. The bronzeback falls short of my mauler while tibbers can only reach a kriel stone who fails tough after being crushed by the giant titan. Finally, Tyrant Radheim walks and leaps into melee with my left most champion, failing to kill him with his armor piercing attack. His mount attacks the chronicler and easily kills it. The chronicler, like everything else in my army, fails tough. Thats 1 out of 13.

Trollbloods Turn 4:
That turn was absolutely horrible, although it could have been much much worse if the titans got into melee with more stuff. I can only get 2 fury on madrak and it goes into casting the mauler animus on the mauler, who has the bronzeback right in front of him. Madrak then charges tyrant radheim...and misses horribly with a 3. The fell caller advances right and sprays into all four swordsmen, but he only hits and kills 2 of the four. He also grants war cry to the champions. The mauler attacks the bronzeback and manages to nearly kill it using all of it's fury. What I should have done was boost the first two attacks and damage rolls to activate grab and smash, but, I forgot he had grab and smash. The bronzeback is left with about six movement boxes left. We had to stop here due to running out of time. We should be able to play again tomorrow and hopefully finish this game.

"No Sergeant. Your Mauler is already dead." -Agent Smith.

False Ronin!

I activate the krielstone who has no fury due to hexeris's feat. The squad just surrounds tibbers to box him in. Ironically one of them rolls extremely high on his charge damage roll (6,6,5) and lays some significant damage on tibbers. Another stone scribe hits a swordsmen off to the left of tibbers but misses. The Axer activates and thrashers into the bronzeback, two swordsmen and the agonizer. Boosting damage against the bronzeback yields a terrible roll and I only land 3 damage on it. My axer currently has -2dmg and -2 to hit from ash cloud and the agonizer. The agonizer takes 1 damage and the swordsmen go down. Axer buys an attack against the bronzeback and boosts damage. deals 2. I am spent on fury and the bronzeback has 1 box left. The champions go and charge things. One charges the bronzeback and finally FINALLY kills it with a huge damage roll. His second swing kills a swordsmen that was engaging the mauler. My other champions charge tyrant radheim and tibbers. I can only fit one champ on tibbers and one of the tyrant. These medium bases are congesting the battlefield horribly. Tibbers suffers 13 damage total from the champ, and tyrant radheim is dismounted. End my turn. This is an interesting question. When a dragoon like radheim gets dismounted, is the model placed into melee range of the model that hit it? Or is it placed in the center of the large base? We placed him in center of his large base, which puts him out of melee range of my champion's second swing. Also - With madrak's feat up, would the champion advance an inch after dismounting radheim due to overtake?

Skorne turn 4:
He activates the paingivers, who advance and grant strength to tibbers. They also kill on of the stonescribes. The swordsmen are spent, they inflict a few pionts of damage to the mauler and one damage to the fell caller and the champion. Radheim spears the champion that dismounted him and the champ fails tough. Hexeris tosses a fully boosted hellfire into the champion that charged tibbers and kills him. He also fails tough. Tibbers then charges out of melee with the remaining stonescribes and elder, suffering some mild damage from free strikes. He reaches madrak and boosts his first attack which I negate with the scroll. Here we run into an interesting issue again. Madrak has the talisman of subdual, which states that he cannot be charged of slammed by an enemy warbeast who begins in his front arc. Tibbers is under the effect of enrage, which states that he MUST charge next turn. Regardless, he buys attack after attack, but in the end, he only hits with one non boosted swing from the mace, bringing madrak down to 4 hit boxes. Finally, he walks the agonizer away from my beasts somewhat, and uses that ability that reduces warbeast's threshold, since he knows I will be left with 3 fury that I cannot leach. We forgot that the agonizer was in melee with my axer, who will make a free strike next time we play. Since the axer will be free of all those debuffs, I have high hopes that the agonizer will go down. We stopped here. This is what is left;

Tolls:
Madrak @ 4boxes.
3 troll champions mostly unharmed.
Fell caller w/ 6 boxes left.
Axer with no damage on it.
1 stonescribe, krielstone bearer and elder.
mauler with some damage spread out on it's grid.

Skorne:
eHexeris at full health but no fury.
tyrant and standard
3 sworsmen and standard bearer.
tibbers with about half health.
6 beast handlers.

My army is in significantly better shape than his. However, my mauler and axer and fell caller along with 2 champions are off to the right of the field while madrak is to the left. The mauler will not be able to get to tibbers or hexeris, neither will the fell caller. Somehow, I will have to save madrak with 2 champions, the stonescribes, and the axer. I will have full fury, and I should be able to knockout tibbers with madrak and some assistance from the champions/axer. However, Hexeris will be able to hellfire me to death pretty easily. I may just have to activate madrak last to see if the axer and champions can kill tibbers without madrak's help, then just camp the fury and transfer the hellfires that are sure to come my way.

Dismounted Dragoons can be placed anywhere completely within the area of the previous base. So it's entirely possible to kill the horse and place the rider outside of melee. Doesn't have to be centered or anything.

Amazing rep, look forward to the conclusion.... I'm rooting for skorne tho

Gee thanks zid! I like this as well. My buddy who is playing skorne used to play retribution, but he never seemed to get used to playing them. I felt bad because I kept beating him. Now, we both switched factions, and he seems much more comfortable with skorne. This is our third hordes game where he has played skorne and it looks like it will be his third win with them as well.

Unfortunately, his schedule just switched and we will be hard pressed to find time to finish this match, I think he has me though. I am hoping that we will end this on saturday or sunday.

Stay tuned!

Final update:

Trollbloods turn 5:
I start my turn in a tough spot. My mauler is slightly outside madrak's ctrl, and it has 5 fury on it. The axer has 3 and is inside my ctrl. I leach all the fury from the axer and the mauler somehow passes it's threshold check with an extremely low roll of a 3. Lucky me. I activate the fell caller first who walks away from a swordsmen taking a mere 3 damage from the free strike. The fell caller then grants overcome (pathfinder) to the champions and howls at some swordsmen and beast handlers that are covering hexeris, killing the swordsmen UA officer and a beast handler. My krielstone squad activates and clears the charge lane for my champions. They manage to miss a beast handler and tyrant radheim, unfortunately. I charge tibbers with two champions while the third one runs up behind them, suffering a weak free strike in the process. My first champion rolls high on the atk roll but low on the damage rolls, causing a mere 8 damage to tibbers. The second champion misses the charge attack and scores a couple more damage on tibbers. He has about 12 health left. I am forced to activate madrak to try and kill tibbers. He hits and boosts damage but again rolls low, causing a few points of damage. he buys an attack, hits, and boosts with his last fury...and I roll triple six on the damage, massively overkilling tibbers. The downside being that I am left with zero fury to transfer. The axer activates and charges the last few beast handlers that are screening hexeris. I can move into position to catch hexeris in the thresher. The axer really comes through here, killing all the beast handlers and dealing some solid damage to hexeris with boosted atk and damage - 12 damage in fact, great hit, but not enough to kill. The mauler finishes up by running.

Skorne Turn 5:
He had reaved the 4 fury off tibbers. He activates radheim and tries to get madrak with that AP spear of his, he hits and rolls very high, easily enough to down madrak, but, madrak makes his tough roll. Woo, thats 3 out of 21 I think. He activates the rest of his army, who mostly all run to catch up to my champions. Some swordsmen charge the mauler and inflict a few points of damage to it. His tyrant charges my axer and inflicts a mere 5 damage. My positioning of the axer is critical, hexeris is barely inside the axer's melee range, preventing him from charging madrak and getting 5 attacks against him. Now, he has to rely on a single hellfire to kill madrak and pray that he doesnt make another tough role. He hellfires and boosts atk. He rolls a 5 on damage, boxing madrak's last health box and madrak fails his tough roll. Game over.

That was an extremely close game, and it was extremely fun.

Great report, seems like a very close game.