Bringing Knives to a Gunfight

My weekly night of gaming ended with a rifle pressed against my temple. Nothing nice about it. They knew what I didn’t have, and took advantage of it. I was strapped in for the long, agonizing ride with an abrupt, wanton threat of immolation. Doing my best to keep cool, I fought through the fire and flames and went back to the classic methods of steady advance. In frustration, I was given liberal applications of all natural, homegrown, battery acid. Tonight wasn’t pretty. Nothing nice about it. Tonight, everybody brought guns to the party, and I wasn’t invite.

The reason I’m talking about guns today is because everyone I played Thursday, brought a lot of guns. As an ex-40k player, and used to playing close combat oriented forces, I was scared out of my mind every time I saw more than one model with a gun across from me. That lasted the entire evening. With guns and ranged attacks, this night was also a good lesson on positioning, and getting the most out of your models. Fortunately it was a night filled with Trollbloods and Khador, so I wasn’t getting outmaneuvered any time soon.

First Match:

15pts Trollbloods vs. Skorne

Trolls:

    Calandra

-                     Earthborn Dire Troll

-                     Pyre Troll

-                     Impaler

Skorne:

    pMorghoul

-                       Titan Gladiator

-                        Cyclops Savage

-                        Cyclops Savage

-                         Basilisk Krea

              Swamp Gobbers

-                         

The Trolls player got first turn.

First Turn:

The Trollblood player ran everything up and set up Bullet Dodger on the Earthborn.

Standard first turn, everyone ran up, and I put Admonition on my Gladiator.

Top of Second Turn:

Trolls:
Troll Impaler rolls a Crit. Smite on the Cyclops into Morghoul. Dealt some good damage due to POW 12’s on ARM 13. Knocked down both.

Earthborn triggered Admonition

Skorne:
Krea activates and walks up, misssing Calandra with Withering Gaze

Cyclops on the far left charges the Pyro Troll
the Second Cyclops walks around the Krea and tries to hit the Earthborn and fails

Morghoul walks toward the wall, and the Gobins walk next to him and pop smoke. 

Bottom of 2 - 3

Trolls: He let Bullet Dodger Drop. Cast Forceblow and killed Morghoul.

Got taken down by the Impaler, because I was just too far away 

Thoughts:

I forgot effects and modifiers, which might have saved Morghoul near the end.  

          I started off this game wanting to run up fast, and shut down the viability of his shooting attacks. My positioning wasn’t that well done causing the Krea’s 2” safety bubble animus to be functionally useless. The speedy and small based Goblins were jammed up by slower units, so they didn’t have a chance to actually have the cloud go anywhere useful. Morghoul was poorly positioned at the end, when He could have retreated behind something big, and out of conceivably threat ranges due to having screened Morghoul from impact. It was also a game where my rolls didn’t come to help me much either. Several key rolls failed by a sliver, and lead to my downfall by not allowing me to really redefine the boardstate much. Not to mention he was locked into a position he intended to be at first, so I couldn’t force a positioning based disadvantage. And oh yeah, I FORGOT TO FEAT. AGAIN.

          Beyond my plays, this was my first time against a gun heavy list, and I was acting frenetically. I needed to calm down and keep my answer pieces to where they can do the most work AND be well protected. Focusing on their own safety should go as far as a screening unit and clever positioning.  Unpacking my brick was also particularly awkward due to poor order of activation. It left the Krea able to do little, and I found myself in the odd position of trying to use the Krea to make Calandra an easier target, a high defense model, with a ranged attack. The krea missed this crucial roll on Boosted to Hit rolls. 

         Then the Slam happened. And I boosted to hit. Went below the statistical average by ONE PIP.  Always do your best to have a backup plan in case a key dice roll fails or the dice are against you, like they were for me. If you don’t have a good back up plan, make sure that you move and activate that prevents as much retaliation on failure as possible. It all fell apart once I ran Morghoul leftwards rather than right, and into the LoS of Calandra without any thought, due to clinging for that wall until I was just a millimeter too far away to gain the benefit. ­I was looking for raw numerical safety rather than the safety of a base blockade. This game was a mixture of paranoia, bad positioning, and bad luck that tallied up another notch of loss on my bedpost of learning.

          As a Skorne player, I could really start to see the utility of the Krea and how useful those low range guns can get, and this one didn’t even do damage!  Normally of skeptical of anything less than range 10 – 12 but this made me see their utility. Also, if you set everything up nicely, you can make her feat work really well for you. Unfortunately, I really felt the constraint of Morghoul’s lack of good field interactions by himself, as Calandra tossed down a good deal of Buffs AND Debuffs with a line of Solid beasts. However, my Fury management could have been better, so I won't be trading up to eHexeris just yet. Not to mention, I keep forgetting Morghoul's feat, due to his small control area and risk of being killed by moving into good places to use his feat.
       
        Regardless, my advice to a budding Skorne player is to learn how to unpack a clump of units, as we enjoy bricking in Skorne. The most subtle, devious trick we have is Admonition. We don’t have many tricksy advantages like Legion… or Cryx… or Menoth… or Circle… or Cyg- Oh you get the idea. We need to make every piece we have hold it’s own and do it’s job before it’s sent to the howling void, so if you’re ever in doubt of something working well, you can always try to maneuver things or drop a Cyclopses animus on it to make sure that the attacks are more likely to stick. However, sometimes the dice just screw you over and all the preparation in the world can't fix that. Roll with the punches, so your opponent can't roll with yours.

P.S. I typically try to post these on Friday but events came up this weekend that delayed it.
P.P.S. I planned on giving a report on my match with Khador, but didn't want to add too much to the article, so I'll see what I can do with it later.