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Played a Sunday afternoon game against Jen and her trolls, and managed to pull off a win! This was the first outing of my newly painted Stormclad, and my latest attempt to figure out how to make my Stormblades earn their points. Good news is that this time they earned their points and then some. Here is what the lists looked like:

My Cygnar Army (747 pts, 27VPs) Stryker (prime) Squire Lancer Centurion Stormclad Stormblades + UA Sword Knights (x10) + UA Black 13th Strike Team Journeyman Warcaster

Jen's Trolls (739 pts, 26 VPs) Hoarluk Doomshaper Dire Troll Mauler Dire Troll Mauler Trollkin Champions Trollkin Champions Trollkin Hero Krielston Bearer and 6 Scribes Stone Scribe Elder Stone Scribe Chronicler Fell Caller Gatormen Posse x4

This was my attempt at making a hard-hitting list that could deal with armor, while being fairly hard to kill itself. I really like running two heavies – with no weak side on your offense, your opponent is forced to either commit to one side and give you a flank or spread their resources across your entire line. For my ‘jack choices: The Centurion was easy – he is priced right, he can’t be charged, and his reach makes him a nice compliment to the Sword Knights, allowing him to easily set them up with Flank. The Stormclad was the anchor of the Stormblades. With the meat of the army in place, the Black 13th provides a mobile death squad and some assignation options, and Junior is obviously there to upkeep Arcane Shield for several turns before eventually dying spectacularly (which he did).

I deployed the Stormblades and the Stormclad on the right flank, and the Sword Knights and the Centurion on the left. The Black 13th deployed on the far left to provide ranged support on that side. Jen deployed her entire army to my extreme right, making me wonder if the Black 13th are really that scary?


I opened the game by pulling 1 focus of the Squire, and using it cast a +7 Snipe on the Stormblades. This would give all of them a 14 inch range (16 inches for the Sarge!) with a POW 14 ranged attack. They could us the Controlled fire order to turn that into a single POW 22 shot, and then add in the chain effect from the Stormclad, letting the lightning bounce around in my enemy’s backfield. Nice. The plan was to make those Maulers and her two units of Champs to come to me, and to make them pay for it.

The plan worked pretty well, the Stormblades hammering the Mauler at range and taking out his body on the first round. In the end, this was probably the turning point of the game… I think her Mauler was intended to be the spear tip of her Champion delivery system, but through a lucky shot I prevented him from charging, and he never quite recovered. The Black 13th cracked off their chain attack on the gatormen posse, taking out a pair of them, and wounding a third. The Arcane Shield protected Sword Knights rushed forward, and the Centurion ran into position to set up a charge against the other dire troll, which Stryker dropped an Earthquake template on, just to make sure.

The first round blunted the Mauler’s advance, but it did nothing to stop the Champions and the Trollkin Hero. Jen forgot about the Hero's furious charge (which saved my bacon), and ended up running him to get up the front lines. The gatormen ran to engage the Black 13th, one of them getting into melee with Watts. The rest of the trolls buffed and advanced.

The top of the 3rd round marked the charge of the Sword Knights! Four made it to the hero, and thanks to the flank provided by the Lancer they get to throw four dice on the damage roll. They kill off the hero, but not before he managed to take one of them out with his retaliatory strike. The rest run in and surround the Mauler on my left, while the Centurion takes a pot-shot at him. A focus-laden Stormclad charges one of the Champions, kills him off, and manages to take out a second Champion with a boosted damage roll. The Stormblades make another Controlled Fire attack at the second Mauler, and tear him up some more. He's in bad shape at this point. Stryker puts Arcane Shield on the Stormblades and then pops his feat, putting the Sword Knights at ARM 24 and the Stormblades at ARM 22.

So far, so good.

On Jen’s turn, the torn up Mauler gets some revenge and two-handed throws the Stormclad, hitting one of the Stormblades. Thanks to Stryker’s feat, no one is hurt, but they are both knocked down. The first unit of Champs advance and tie up the front line Sword Knights, but they have a hard time getting the job done with Invincibility up. The second unit of Champs charge the Sword Knights that have surrounded the other Mauler, killing off two of them (damn that Concert bonus). Doomshaper casts Dissolution, clearing my upkeep spells and making my units pass a command check (they do), and then he pops his feat, which makes my take a d3 every time I use focus inside in control area.

Knowing that using focus is going to hurt this turn, I put most of it on my ‘jacks, as they can soak up the d3 damage. I load up the Centurion with focus, and he joins with the remaining Sword Knights to kill one of the Maulers. The Stormblades do their CRA on the other Mauler, and kill it. The Stormclad stands up and advances into the oncoming Champions to shut down any potential charge lanes. Jr. casts Arcane Shield on the Sword Knights, and takes 5 damage from Doomshaper’s feat, killing himself. A calculated risk. Stryker, who is out of the feat range also casts Arcane Shield on the Stormblades. The Black 13th have wrapped all the way around the back side by now, and they kill off the Chronicler, although it takes a couple of tries thanks to tough rolls. The Sword Knights are plagued by bad rolls and fail to kill the front line of Champions. I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to this turn. Hoarluk started up on a hill, and I considered using Stryker to try and assassinate him, but the focus use might have killed me first thanks to his feat. The good news was I had the troll army fairly bottled up. The bad news was that there were still six Champions left on the field.

The Stormblades fire away from the safety of thier barricade.

Once Junior died and his Arcane Shield went away, the Champs proceeded to clean up the Sword Knights in short order. By the end of Jen’s turn, everyone except for the standard bearer was dead. The Fell Caller charged the Black 13th and killed Ryan, which is what she deserved for failing to kill Doomshaper when she had the chance. Even with this surge, the momentum was still in my favor – both of Jen’s warbeasts were dead, my two heavies were still alive and had the remaining champs tied up, and I had a full unit a Stormblades and two of the Black 13th, Doomshaper was on death’s door and Stryker was unscathed. It was at this point that Jen decided that if she was going to die, she would do so gloriously and take out as much as she could in the process. With a bloodthirsty roar, the remaining Stone Scribes charge down the hill, one of them managing to kill a Stormblade. Hoarluk charges the sergeant, hoping to bring an end to the Controlled Fire attacks that have plagued him all game long, and he utterly crushes him. Of course that leaves him right in the middle of the wrong side of town….

My turn. The Stormclad takes out a Stone Scribe, opening line of sight for Stryker. Stryker casts Arcane Blast and boosts the damage, hitting Hoarluk with enough to kill him, but the damnable old troll makes his tough roll. At least he's knocked down. The Stormblades advance and do their grim business. He fails the next tough roll, and that's the game.

Eat electric death, Doomshaper!

So, what did I take away from this one? First, Stormblades are not the melee hammers I so dearly want them to be – I think Sword Knights actually play that role better. They are, however, one hell of a ranged attack threat when they have snipe cast on them, and super versitile. Previously, I had tried to use them as my spear tip, but experience is showing that they make a much better second wave. While spendy, the Stormclad does wonders for them, increasing the punch of the ranged attacks and adding a “you can’t ignore me” element that makes it hard for an opponent to focus exclusively on the Stormblade unit in melee. I wish I could have found the points to fit the Piper into this list, but that would have meant dropping three Sword Knights, and that just wasn’t worth it. I didn’t get much out of the Lancer either – I included him in case I needed to get earthquake off at range, which only happened once. Still, his reach makes him another good alternative for granting Flank bonuses to Sword Knights. As a list goes, this one seems straightforward and solid, and I think I like it pretty well for dealing with hard armor. That being said, I got very lucky this game – had either of the Maulers been able to charge into my lines like Jen wanted them to, things would have gone very differently. She also made a last second substitution, trading out Madrak out for Doomshaper. I think Madrak would have been much worse.

Jen also filed a battle report, and she actually took notes and stuff, so it’s probably much more accurate than my account. She always does a nice job with those. You can check that out over at Ghettokore Studios.

Labels: miniatures, wargaming, Warmachine