Damn tough rolls

Since it's suppose to be a blog about Trolls I thought I'd report on my Troll games over the weekend. Something that should please the Troll players as I lost to both of them!

It's worth mentioning that for these games caster kills doesn't end the games (they give you a tournament point bonus), it's all about the scenario.

Having played Khador (Sorcha) in game one and gotten a draw and Cryx (Goreshade) and winning I was facing a friend in game three using Trolls. Having faced each other twice before I've once defeated him with Irusk and lost once to eMorghoul.

The scenario played was Contested Ground, so 4 12" zones, getting a control point for controlling a zone and winning if you got 5. If time ran out the tie breaker would be most control points.

His list consisted of:

Grissel
Dire Troll Mauler
Axe
Impaler
4 Long Riders
Champions
Hero
Fell Caller
KSB+UA
Feralgeist
Gudrun

The important terrain was a big rocky formation in the middle, a hill on my right flank that housed the Long Gunners, a Stormsmith, Black 13 and Eiryss and a forest in the Troll deployment zone on my left flank.

The game almost fell into 3 sections. On the left flank you had Gudrun, a Stormsmith and the Mechanics who kept themselves busy all game. The Stormsmith eventually died, but that was pretty much it. On the right flank my shooting took out two of the Long Riders, but slightly off positioning on my part saw the remaining two kill the Black 13 and Eiryss and eventually decimate the Long Gunners.

Everything else happened in the middle. I moved up my arc nodes a bit too far on either side of the rocky outcrop and the lancer got swiftly taken out. Although thinking back I think it only actually lost both arms but we both assumed it was disabled from then on. Given the available force that could have pounded it some more without being slowed (like the Mauler) I doubt it made a difference. Thorn played Tag with the Champions until he moved a bit too far and got charged by the Hero who proptly wrecked it. I did get a free shot at Grissel in turn one where she didn't had any fury on her, but when the initial Time Bomb only did a couple of points of damage I just didn't had enough power to kill her.

After Thorn was taken out the Swordknights, Junior (with her hand cannon), eHaley and Ol' Rowdy managed to take down all but one of the Champions and the Hero. Unfortuantly that had set up Rowdy nicely for a crit slam from the Impaler, 6" and right through 3 Swordknights and the Piper! To make matters worse the Axer charged the knocked down Rowdy but didn't disable him.
The Mauler crucially didn't do anything but move into position. It could have trambled some Swordknights but decided to wait.

That proved to be a bad decision as the Swordknights (all three remaining) charged the Mauler. Now both the Axe and Mauler had taken some damage earlier, but my opponent didn't expected both of them to die in a single turn. But Rowdy brained the Axer with his hammer and two Swordknights took down the Mauler!

At this point my opponent had gotten a single control point so was winning the game. I had to clear a zone and the only option I had was the second zone from the left. It only had a single champion, the Fell Caller and a Feral Geist in it. Unfortuantly I didn't had a whole lot to do it with either. And she had to do it in a single turn.

The only thing I had that could kill the Feral Geist was eHaley, but even with movement she was 1.5" out of range with her Arcane Bolt. Still, she could Telekinesis herself so it wasn't impossible. At least not until the Tough Rolls started. Up until this point the Trolls had only passed a single Tough roll. The Champion passed 5 consecutive Tough Rolls, the Fell Caller passed two and I didn't even got a chance to do anything about the Feral Geist. And that was it.

We did have another turn where I yet again failed to claim the zone, although the champion did die. To an Impaler spear trying to knock him into Haley...

Overall lots of fun, lots of killing, if only it wasn't for those damn Tough rolls...