Mark Two: Squee Post

So, the Mark Two revised post-field test rules things are out, and that means it's time for someone who hasn't played Trollbloods since before Metamorphosis to give his ill-formed opinions on the whole shebang. I'm not just going to talk about the changes between the end of the Field Test and now, because I wasn't really paying enough attention TO the Field Test owing to having a) no Hordes models during it and b) only one guaranteed opponent, who I'm still training.

Madrak - Snap Fire excellent. Feat wording is all arse-about-face and busyfied - Overtake could be an Advantage and text eliminated for more better clarity. Scroll still not as stupid good as I remember it being. Battering Ram looks like it could be fun (lots of effects like that, with pushes and places and moves you abouts, which I like even if it's not very good. It's just funny.).
eMadrak - Snap Fire excellent. Feat still a curious beast that I see much potential in, but also many ways to mess up. Killing Ground is very nice. I like the look of him but he's definitely more complex than the original.
Hoarluk - Banishing Ward change excellent, exactly what I was hoping for. Stranglehold looks interesting but necessitates playing him closer to the front than I'd like. Nothing I'm madly excited about but I'd play him.eHoarluk - Whoa there feat turn. Interesting arc-node-esque mechanic in Primal Shock and interesting capacity to withdraw himself from danger with Refuge (shame it's not on the other one, but I suppose that's the point). I like that his melee potential has been concentrated on the Epic version, makes more sense that way. Wild Aggression woo yay. Cunning little beast.
Grissel - Who needs a hand cannon? Critical Smite looks like fun (again, it doesn't have to be good, but look at the model - it fits!). Damn it, I tore up my Rift marker. Still my preference in warlock, I think, with both Madraks and Grim both making a very strong case.
Grim - Feat turn whoa. Return Fire on an Impaler looks like fun. Wish he worked better with Minions, would love to do a list with him and a bunch of Farrow and Gatormens based on his mercenary days. Do ze goggles do enough? I'll have to check the Legion rules.
Borka - Better, but I've always been indifferent towards Borka. Wind Wall and Iron Flesh give him an interesting dynamic, and I like that the Keg Bearer serves some worthwhile purpose again (though Top Off needs proofreading, it's rambly and there are bits missing, much like this post).
Calandra - Still good, don't care, never liked her. Sorry folks. She and Borka are the kind of Trolllblood model I can't bring myself to own.
Pyre - fun, no longer competing with the Mauler for animus effect, nice cheap AOE, like it a lot.
Slag - Word of God proof that Fire > Corrosion, would like +2 to damage rolls on all Cryx attacks with Corrosion to maintain parity. (I'M JOKING.) Seriously, this troll hates Cryx. That's fine, I hate it too. Fugly model. Needs resculpt before purchase. Potentially useful for 'jack battering though.
Axer - targeting limitation on Rush makes me sad. Rush still clearer than it used to be though (I played it wrong from Primal's release up until, ooh, late 2007?). Still solid. Wouldn't want two now.
Bouncer - WANT. Shield Guard nice. Bump nice. Chain weapon situational but nice.
Impaler - targeting freedom on Far Strike makes me happy. Still good. Take two all the time? Maybe not.
Winter - nice touch on the animus. Not sure I'd need it with all the Bumps and Smites and stuff about but it could be useful, 'specially since I fight Khador a lot (Immunity = good). Still like the non-elementals more.
Blitzer - GUNFIGHTER! Whee! Repulsion another one of those effects I really like, and is now actually effective. Virtuoso potentially hilarious. Someone remind me, do you forfeit all your initial attacks to make a power attack? You do, don't you? Pity. Throw + Strafe = good times. Curse you, balance.
Mauler - like Seether on steroids. Not as exciting, to me, as the Blitzer; much much better model though, and as good a utility beast as always.
Earthborn - tough as old boots but Elemental Communion a bit situational for my tastes. Would rather have either of the other Dires.
Mulg - expensive and slow. Would rather have lights. Colour me indifferent.
Kriel Warriors - not totally awful, but almost totally outclassed by Fennblades. CMA not as good as Reach in faction that throws +2 to melee attack rolls around like it's going out of fashion. Caber still nice but needs Fortune to qualify for 'awesome'. UA is counterintuitive, extending formation space for a unit that likes to clump (CMA, Take Up). Could help with engaging multiple targets, I suppose, but could Fennblades do the same thing better, and do I have the patience to work out that many formation issues? Steady not bad, admittedly, but not worth it on this unit and certainly not when Fell Callers are about.
Krielstone Bearer - still not an anchor. This alone makes me interested in Trollbloods again. Glad to see it's maintained its competitive costing niche, stops Elder being a must-take, but would love Elder in ranged lists.
Thumper - there, are the Khador players happy now? Still hitting reliably, still good, still competitively costed.
Champions - still not a must-take, but appealing with increased utility (three semi-solos? would work well with Borka, knocking down on the first hit and finishing off on the second), capacity to spread out and flexible sizes. Like them now, rather than feeling bound to them.
Fennblades - good, they're more expensive than Kriels. They are still better than Kriels - more aggressive and Vengeance + Reach = Good. Reach makes me happy about working more mileage out of Madrak and Grissel's extra attacks.
Long Riders - Three seem good, five seem too many. Might need Fortune to work those criticals and ensure knockdowns, otherwise need Horthol to really shine (Bull Rush risks slamming things too far to capitalise effectively), but I play Cryx, I'm used to cavalry coming with a patch solo to work with more than one 'caster. What would I do with them, without him? Not sure.
Runeshapers - why must they be stupid comedy hand models? I like them but I cannot purchase, for lo! they look shoddy. Tremor on the charge, followed up with a buffed hit from the axe? One Tremors, others bludgeon target? I like these guys. Curse their stupid hands.
Scattergunners - nice figures but colour me distinctly underwhelmed about their rules. Not bad, but in same bracket as Fennblades so outshone horribly. Needs more UA with Granted: Something Interesting.
Burrowers - BLARG. I understand that they can't have the Helldiver's invulnra-Burrow, but they're too fussy in their implementation for me to bother with. Trolls is for not complicated time.
Bushwhackers - proof that sometimes you can do something interesting without unit-specific rules, much as Scattergunners are proof that sometimes you can't. Fun and flexible ranged option. Would like.
Fell Caller Hero - well, that's one way of making the Champion Hero feel less inadequate. Opening up Hero as a designated type? Very good, potentially a bit too good for that all-important 3 point bracket?
Chronicler - henceforth to be known as the Fennblade UA. VERY good. Now works the way I thought he did all along.
Champion Hero - still not convinced he does as much good as the Fell Caller, might still be the dud of the bracket, but he's not bad. Did you buy ten Champions in Mark One? Rejoice, then, for an interesting list is still accessible to you.
Whelps - do more to enable alternative playstyles than anything but the changes to the Krielstone Bearer. Practically a must-take - it remains only to choose how many.
Horthol - if fielding Long Riders and not Hoarluk, must-take: makes Critical Knockdown and Bull Rush worth bothering with. Interesting denial capacity with Stagger and Line Breaker, but ultimately you take him for the Long Riders. He and Darragh should form a support solo support group.

Conclusion - Overall, happy. Long Riders still represent significant investment, especially given must-field patch solo. Disappointed in Scattergunners and Burrowers. Praying for Blitzer and Runeshaper resculpts - they are good but their models represent Trends I Do Not Like and cannot bring myself to encourage with purchases. Skorne will have much work to do to persuade me that getting into them's a better call; Trollbloods excite me and make me clap my hands and bounce like a schoolgirl in a way that Skorne simply haven't, to date.

Point Of Order

This post is more a request for discussion/clarification than a proper Thought.

When he was introducing me, our gracious host thegreatblah said:

"I have always thought Cryx to be the army that is most like Trolls, though many will say it is Menoth or Khador."

I'd be interested in knowing more about the thought process behind this idea. I can certainly see parallels - both factions have a definite close-range tilt and are somewhat light on the conventional ranged attacks, although I'd argue that Trollbloods have access to more 'standards' (that's 'standard' in the sense that 'House of the Rising Sun' is a 'standard' song, appearing in the repertoire of many performers) in this field than Cryx, or at least more pieces which are taken because they have a ranged attack. Both factions punish you for engaging them - Trollbloods by hitting you back, harder, and Cryx by getting back up or walking through whatever just engaged them to get at the squashy bits behind.

I'd still be interested to know where else this came from, though.

Troll Stories, by Von

No, I'm not talking about the Stone Scribe Chronicler. Not yet, anyway.

I still don't have my new Trollblood army sorted out (still waiting for December's pay, and waiting to see how much of that I get to keep - it might be closer to Easter before I can actually afford the army), but while we're waiting for all that nonsense, I'd like to talk for a bit about one of my favourite things about Trollbloods.

It's the IKRPG.

See, I have mixed feelings about much of the IKRPG content. Most of it is superbly well developed, in particular the four actual Iron Kingdoms and the Protectorate, and the religions. Some of it - the Iosans and the Rhulfolk in particular - lies closer to conventional fantasy territory, a redressing of archetypes rather than a reinvention of them in the strictest sense of the word.

The trollkin, however, are something genuinely clever. They occupy that slightly awkward nice of the half-orc; the noble savage who's never going to entirely fit, but they extend it so much beyond the rather limiting "somehow a human and an orc made a baby and that baby grew up big and green/small and pink and awkwardly caught between societies" of the stock species.

They're not developed as extensively as the humans are, but they're done in the same style. They have regional variations (between the Gnarls, Scarleforth, Thornwood, Wyrmwall, Bloodstone and Scharde kriels) like the humans' national-border-crossing ethnicities; they have religious tensions, between the angry, vengeful, red-in-tooth-and-claw aspect of the Ravaged Mother and the gentler earth-mother perspective on Dhunia; they have a distinctive architecture; a marvellous balance between integration with wild trolls and reluctant participation in industrial society, with urban trollkin and Boomhowler and co. and now Bull and the Cryxian Bloodgorgers all part of an advancing world not quite their own; and, my favourite part (I think) they have some customs like the Glimpse of the Mind and the fell callers and the various quitari and the trollshen that indicate a deep culture that's quite alien compared to much of the Iron Kingdoms. And they have that marvellous language, even if it does look a bit like cod-Klingon.

They're one of the most developed non-human species in the Iron Kingdoms, and one of the most interesting from an archetypal standpoint. That's what convinced me to give them a whirl when my gaming group of yore picked up Hordes and chose a faction apiece, and when we were designing our characters for an IKRPG game (I'm still sad that I never got to play my Fell Caller): that, and I thought the Blitzer looked comical.

Ave! duci novo, similis duci seneci...

Hello.

My name is Von, or at least I answer to that name on the Internet, and I'm a recovering Trollblood hater. I used to play Trollbloods (back when Primal first came out... ahh, the memories) and quite enjoyed throwing down with the battlebox, but I fell foul of the received wisdom that said you had to take the same boring, stodgy, slow-moving army in every game and fell out with the faction for a while, somewhere between Evolution and Metamorphosis.

What I've seen of Mark II has convinced me to come back. The Whelps, the Thumper and the Pyg Bushwhackers have convinced me that there's enough viability in running more warbeasts and ranged pieces around the mutually supportive melee core. I'm not going to pretend that the Trollbloods are a 'ranged faction', but I'm not going to bore myself by taking only melee pieces and spending the first three rounds of each game slogging forward and removing casualties and doing nothing else either.

I'm determined not to play the Trollbloods the same way I played them last time (Champions + Krielstone + Impaler + Axer + Mauler + Fell Caller + a warlock of my own choice, the only thing in the list that ever changed), and to actually learn how to paint tartan this time.

While I'm here I'm going to be writing about: my fonder memories of the Trollbloods from Mark I; my long-standing love of trolls and trollkin in the IKRPG; experiments in colourschemes and the like; eventual reports on actual games and the transition into Mark II; and other stuff. Stuff tangentially connected to Trollbloods in some way, shape or form.

Let's see how this works out.