Game 2: Helynna vs Borka1

Game 2 – Vs Tom Wiggins – Trollbloods – 25/02/17

My list:

Helynna (Forges of War)

-Sylys

-Helios

-Helios

-Hyperion

Arcanist

Arcanist

Artificer

His List:

Borka (Band of Heroes)

-Bouncer

-Axer

-Mountain King

Horgle

Stone-Scribe Chronicler

Max Fennblades + UA

Max Krielstone + UA

Min Long Riders

A local club where I have played a Steamroller event before was having an open gaming day, so I decided to go down and get a couple of practice games in with the Pacific Rim list. Most people were bringing two lists but as this was all I had even partially painted at this stage I just brought the one, slapped it down on a table, and made an open invite to the room. Up stepped Tom Wiggins, with a troll list that he thought would be a good match up. We randomly selected XXXXX as the scenario, he won first turn and I swapped sides, because doing so if far less of a pain when you only have 8 models in your list, and the wall on that side seems less problematically placed, though in hindsight I probably miscalculated this.

We deployed and he ran up, he put Arcane Ward up on the Mountain King to counter me using Hand of Destruction to remove it easily. Horthol ran up the left flank behind a wood, thinking he was safe from anything I could do to him, which brings me to my first “Helios Moment” of playing Retribution.

Helios trampled up and the proxy bases show the route he was pulled in. The first shot was unboosted needing a 7 as I’d had to use one focus for the trample and I wanted to be able to use the focus differently if I had to bail out of the plan. The 7 landed, the second and third were boosted, and he was dismounted in one punch and splattered with the second. It was intensely satisfying. Everything else basically ran up, keeping out of Rush+Feat+Charge range of the Mountain King. Again in hindsight this feels unnecessary and this is one of the areas I need to improve. Had I moved up into range that he needed to Rush and Charge in order to get to me he would have arrived with 6 attacks at only P+S19 as he wouldn’t have Rage up, and as a result would only do 46 damage on average (plus a bit extra if the assault spray lands). Giving him this would have possibly encouraged him to spend his feat and potentially put his Mountain King in a bad position, as well as allowing me to take a few extra inches of board space.

Tom continues to run up during his T2, and this is where my tentativeness in T1 shows, as the Mountain King is able to sit on the flag without being threatened by my right Helios. The Long Riders flank hard and the Fennblades take up board space.

Unable to get to the Mountain King I instead work on grinding through Troll models. Hand of Destruction goes on the Fennblades in order to make sure attacks aren’t missed and the Hyperion shoots a few dead, whilst Helios tramples into the wood and removes a couple more with bought attacks. The Helios near the Mountain King moves to contest the flag, prepares to take the charge and pulls in a Long Rider, but he toughs the attack. I feat, ready to face the wrath of the Mountain King.

Rage is cast by Borka on the Mountain King and he charges in, the position of the flag meaning that he couldn’t just advance and attack. My feat and Rage cancel each other out and huge chunks are taken out of Helios, leaving him on 10 boxes with the entire right hand side destroyed. This was slightly over average on the dice but not in a meaningful way, as the right side would realistically always have gone. A couple of Fennblades charged into the other Colossals but didn’t achieve anything, the Long Riders continued their flanking, with even the knocked down model breaking free from Helios due to that entire side being wrecked (I missed the 4+ to hit on one dice)

Another early mistake reared its head at this point. I had been very nervous to have Arcanist Mechanics anywhere near the Mountain King as I was worried to lost them to the Assault spray, but there was no reason that one should not have been 8 inches behind the Helios in order to put Concentrated power onto it. As I couldn’t do this I was worried about the amount of damage I would be able to do to the Mountain King, with it being able to heal back by eating the inevitable whelps. If I had been able to move the stone away to remove the armour buff I might have been ok but Tom had been clever to keep it under the Wind Wall bubble from Borka. As such I made the decision not to attack the Mountain King and instead concentrate on removing the rest of the Fennblades and Long Riders. The Artificer slammed one Long Rider into the other two, killing the first and knocking the other two for the damaged Helios to drag in and kill.

It rapidly becomes the case where nothing in Tom’s force is achieving anything except the Mountain King. In his next turn it finished off the Helios and starts to threaten further into my lines. Vitally at this point of the game, Tom starts to score Control points, with me having to throw away the Artificer on my next turn to stop him scoring on his own turn. I’ll skip forward to the point below, where I have removed almost all of the infantry, and the Mountain King has charge in on Hyperion, leaving it on around 24 boxes or so, and Tom is 3-1 up on Control Points. In the last turn I was looking for an assassination angle, but clever use of the Bouncer animus and switching Arcane Ward onto himself meant I just couldn’t find a decent angle.

In this turn I had to kill the Mountain King and get something over in order to contest the flag and this wasn’t an easy order of activation to work out. In the end Helynna shot the last remaining Fennblade and swapped Hand of Destruction onto the Mountain King, Hyperion ran to contest the flag, taking a free strike doing a chunk more damage, and Helios charged into the Mountain King. And my word did it hit hard! P+S23 was dice plus 4 on the Mountain King, and with Hand of Destruction further altering the dice the Mountain King fell over with attacks to spare. Awesome!

Less awesome was the fact that Borka walked up to Hyperion and smashed him to bits with his massive club, and the Axer finished off the objective for a scenario victory.

DEFEAT

Another great fun game with plenty to take from it. I need to be able to work out how much punishment the colossals can take and they play them almost as tempters sometimes, and it is slowly sinking in just how vital support positioning is. Trollbloods feel like fairly hard work for this list due to the Bouncer animus and nothing being able to be trampled over, but I still feel that I would have been up in this game if I’d played a few things differently.