CrashWest

Hello all, my name is Brian, or CrashWest, on the forums. As you’ve probably guessed I am a Trollbloods player. I have been playing for a year and 4 months, and frequent the Good Games CBD, and Good Games Burwood stores, in beautiful Sydney, Australia. The meta is normally pretty casual, but recently we’ve turned it up a notch and every second week, we play to tournament standards for practice. Currently a lot of my practice and dojo has gone into preparation for CanCon 2014, probably the biggest Warmachine/Hordes tournament in Australia held in the nation’s capital, Canberra, in January.

Last year I attended and participated in both a 2 list 50pt Steamroller, and 2 list 50pt Steamroller team tournament. My goal going in was, “Don’t suck”. I think I succeeded, as my team took third in the team tournament, but I also feel a lot of it was luck, and partly my opponents not knowing what eMadrak does.  This year I am participating in a 50pts 3 list Masters event that will have 64 people playing and in an Iron Gauntlet qualifier. I have four months of prep time left, and I can feel it flying by.

For the Masters event I have chosen two of my three warlocks, pGrissel and eMadrak. I’ve so far settled on a list for pGrissel

pGrissel………………………..+5

Storm Troll…………………..5

Pyre Troll…………………….5

Horthol………………………..5

Fellcaller……………………...3

Stone scribe…………………2

Sorcerer………………………1

Sorcerer………………………1

Max Warders……………….8

Max Warders……………….8

Max Longriders……………11

Max Krielstone w/ UA….5

Swamp Gobbers…………..1

          The list I believe is rather straight-forward. It presents a flexible list capable of contesting and holding zones, using high armour and damage output. The Longriders provide a fast unit capable of a strong alpha strike or hard to remove jam. With Horthol giving them line breaker, they are also very good at dealing with high defense tar pits. Add the Storm Troll’s animus and/or pGrissel’s fell call Heroic Ballad (an additional attack) and you can clear a whole lot of infantry on a good turn. Warders are anchors, capable of taking and holding a zone that the Longriders have opened up to them. At arm 21 these guys are ball busters, I rarely lose a whole unit, and if I do, it took a considerable effort and points investment from my opponent. Warders are often my MVP. The Pyre Troll is there for its normal reasons, it’s cheap, and its animus is super handy, +2 on melee damage rolls, crit fire, and immunity to fire is awesome. The Stone scribe is mostly there to help on the approach, but also adds a nice bit of deterrence mid game for my opponent when his models start getting knocked down after finally killing a warder or longrider. The Gobbers keep Grissel safe from shooting, and if Legion shows up, then pGrissel can use the Pyre Troll animus instead. The Sorcerers are there to get rid of any enemy upkeeps, which would otherwise remove one of my units from the game without needing to kill them.

          pGrissel herself provides a lot to the army, extra attacks, extra movement, spell and charge denial, and her feat lets her do all three. In this list these abilities really shine. Extra movement gets the slow warders up the table, or shoves longriders right up into the enemy’s face, denying them a powerful alpha strike. Extra attacks makes the low model count army do more work then they should, especially warders who go from 5-10 weapon master attacks. With proper set up and luck, they can remove an entire unit. The spell and charge denial makes cracking the high armour even harder and forces the opponent into a slower attrition pace.

          Like I said it is nothing special, but I feel it is very effective. The list matches well against control casters like the Haleys, or Rahn who have trouble cracking tons of high armour, and melee or spell oriented casters like Butcher3, who lose a lot of power when he can’t charge or cast spells in her command range. As I practice the list more, I will have more to say about it, but I feel it is a strong list choice and now I am left with the challenge of pairing it.

          As far as introductions go, a brief rundown of my experience and goals along with one of my preferred list choices is pretty good way of getting you guys to know me. I hope my rambling hasn’t been to mind numbing, but if you have any questions or comments about my lists or meta please let me know.

Thanks for reading,

Brian