Battle Report: Ossyan vs Grissel1

Two games in a row? What the what?

This time I played Dan and his Grissel1 list. I don't have much experience against Trollbloods except for one encounter with the Miserable Meat Mountain that I got thoroughly trashed in, so I was a bit nervous about this matchup. 

My Ossyan list is the same as before:

Lord Arcanist Ossyan, First of His Name, of House Vyre, Scourge of the Northland

-Banshee

Arcantrik Force Generator

Houseguard Thane

Arcanist

Lady Aiyanna and Master Holt

Houseguard Riflemen + UA

Houseguard Halberdiers + UA

Stormfall Archers

Stormfall Archers

My opponent brought the following assortment of filthy dirtfolk:

Grissel1

-Pyre Troll

-Storm Troll

-Impaler

Horthol

Fell caller

Janissa

Saxon Orrick

Longriders

Kriel Stone + UA

Kriel Warriors + UA

We set up Supply and Demand (12" diameter central zone with two Fuel objectives that allow free runs/charges to beasts/jacks within 4") and I won the roll and decided to go first. My opponent chose the side of the board with some shallow water, which I was glad for at the time. Thinking back on it that side provided a bit more open range that my Halberdiers would have liked, but going first probably more than made up for it.

I deployed (from right to left): Halberdiers , Blue SFAs, Ossyan, Thane, AFG, Banshee, Arcanist, Aiyanna and Holt, Purple SFAs, Riflemen.

He deployed Horthol + Longriders, Saxon Orrick, and then a bunch of 'orrible trolls on my right. Game on!

Retribution turn 1:

Ossyan handed out Quicken to the Halberdiers and (having learned my lesson last game) Admonition to the Banshee. The Quickened Halbs Paced Desperately thanks to the Thane and ran 18" up the board. Everything else also ran (except for the Arcanist that tossed a focus to the Banshee) and the AFG moved into B2B position behind the Banshee so, if I needed it, it could get an extra 2" on its shots.

Trollbloods turn 1:

Mostly things ran forwards. The Kriel Warriors in particular ran to jam up my Halberdiers while the Longriders moved cautiously (thanks to Saxon's guidance) across the shallow water. The Kriel stone put up its +2 armor and no continuous effects auras and Janissa made a rock wall for additional warlock protection.

Retribution turn 2:

My main goal this turn was to clear a path for my Halberdiers to charge the Longriders. I figured that with mini feat they should be able to take out at least three of them, and then they could jam up the others to prevent any Troll bowling from occuring. Standing in the way were a pair of Kriel Warriors that needed to go.

Aiyanna and Holt Kissed the Kriel Warriors and Holt failed to do much. The right SFAs then set the tone for this game by spending their entire activation to remove a single Kriel Warrior thanks to a miss and two successful Tough checks. Following suit it took my Riflemen and other SFA's activation to clear out a further three Warriors thanks to many successful Tough checks and that damn wall.

To clear out the Warriors that were blocking my Halberdiers I aimed my caster, Ossyan and the AFG, eventually killing them after killing two of my own Halbs. The Halbs then charged in, but thanks to somewhere around 4-5 successful Tough checks I only managed to kill one of the Longriders and knocked down two others. They reformed to jam them up, but I knew that they were as good as dead.

In hind sight it might have been more beneficial to backup with a couple of my Halberdiers to stay outside of Reach range of the knocked down Longriders, that way I could have continued to jam on subsequent turns.

Trollblood turn 2:

Taking advantage of the situation Dan wiped out my halberdiers with his Longriders and buffed Kriel Warriors. At least Quicken helped make sure that they weren't wiped out to a man from the Fell caller, penning them in place… that is until Grissell used Hoof it on them, allowing them to advance after all activations.

The Pyre troll got Sniped and set a couple of Riflemen on fire and Grissel cast a Rift that scattered off of the Riflemen. He then moved the rest of the Kriel Warriors into the zone along with Grissel and the Stone Scribe Elder, which put Hero's Tragedy on the Longriders.

Since I still had a pair of Riflemen in the zone at the end of the turn nobody scored, but I was now facing a beat down of epic proportions if I didn't do something soon.

Retribution turn 3:

Well, when the cards are down it's time to feat. I started off this turn by debating exactly how to do that and considered moving Ossyan (with Admonition, I'm not that crazy) to charge into the zone and dominate, but we then remembered that I would need to kill the objective to do that as it would be inside his control area. Looking back this might actually still have been the correct play, as I coule probably have killed the objective with my Riflemen plus Snipe shots from the Stormfalls under feat… but then again I also needed to clear the zone, which as we see was painful enough.

After verifying that I couldn't even dominate if I wanted to I advanced Ossyan to catch the Longriders and the rest of the zone in his feat, then shot a Warrior who was hiding behind a wall to pieces. Aiyanna and Holt put Kiss of Lyliss on the Longriders and the left Stormfalls killed two of them while aiming (damn concealment!) but thankfully didn't cause any to pass a Tough check, as thanks to Hero's Tragedy I wouldn't have been able to shoot them. The Thane, suprisingly, has a gun that it used to finish off another Longrider.

The rest of my turn was spent desperately trying to clear the zone. Riflemen under mini feat and performing CRAs managed to clear out most of the folks in the zone, with an aiming Banshee, AFG and scattering Stormfalls mopping up the rest through a withering array of Tough checks. A+H in the zone meant that I scored a control point to end my turn.

Trollblood turn 3:

I hadn't dealt the kind of damage that I really needed to on my feat turn, so Dan decided to flood the board. His remaining foot sloggers all jammed into the zone and killed off all of the Riflemen in there except for 1 thanks to a couple of whiffs from the remaining Longrider. Grissel used her feat, so after jamming in everything jammed even more, locking down my shooting on the left and central part of the table with Horthol and the lone Longrider.

Of particular note was putting the Storm troll's animus on  a couple of his Krielstone bearers and the Longrider. Electroleaps kinda hurt, and they finished off Aiyanna and Holt easily.

While he didn't score this turn, I was quickly running out of options for what to do.

Retribution turn 4:

What do you do when your back's against the wall? Assasinate.

This was going to be a tall order as Grissel was currently a 19/17 caster with two transfers, but figured it was my only shot.

Objective number one was clearing up my left SFAs, the AFG and the Banshee from the lone Longrider so I could actually do some shooting. To do this I activated Ossyan first, fired a double boosted Arcantrik Bolt to kill the Longrider (no tough!) and advance to bring Janissa into range. I wanted to hit and not kill her with Ossyan's gun so that slamming Grissel might have a chance of succeeding… but sadly rolled terribly and missed.

The Arcanist moved up and gave a focus to the Banshee which also attempted to shoot Janissa, but missed with an aimed and boosted shot. Finally the AFG aimed and shot Janissa, finally slamming her into Grissel and knocking the warlock down.

My left AFGs advanced cautiously and rolled fire for damage with Brutal shots, eating through one of her transfers and leaving her on 6. The two remaining Riflemen failed to do anything, so it was down to my last squad of SFAs to seal the deal.

The first hit and got transferred. The second missed and failed to do anything. The third hit and only did three damage.

The fourth barely measured in at 12" for a Brutal shot, hit, and did the requisite damage to kill her. I extended my hand, but saw my opponent picking up his dice. Dammit, she has tough.

He rolled… and for once it didn't pass! Victory to the Retribution!

After thoughts:

This quickly became a nail biter for me. My shooting was hot and heavy, but a combination of that damn wall in the middle plus my opponent's early Tough checks put a big stopper in my plans of game domination.

That being said, I'm not sure that my bid for assassination was necessary. His remaining trolls were all single wound, so I might have been able to remove them with slams and AOEs from the Stormfalls and then use the Banshee to hold the zone. After killing the remaining Longriders he only had Light warbeasts left that were sorely out of range, and going after it with Grissel would have been dangerous to say the least.

I also shouldn't have put A+H as my zone controllers, as I probably could have moved the Banshee up to score and not aim. I completely forgot about the Storm Troll's animus, which is also something that I need to remember.

This matchup also got me thinking about facing down the Miserable Meat Mountain and whether this list can handle it. Even dealing with single wound ARM 17 models was tortuous thanks to Tough and the wall, I shudder to think of how much more difficult 15 ARM 21 8 wounders would be to deal with. Mathhammering it my Stormfalls can take out one unit on feat turn if they hit, which definitely isn't guaranteed with their miserable RAT 5. Slamming or Temporal Vortexing units might be needed to guarantee a kill. Halberdiers can also clear out a unit on the charge, leaving the Riflemen to pick off any stragglers. So I guess I'm not entirely screwed, but it's still not a match up that I'm looking forward to.

Anyway, it was a good, hard fought game and I thank Dan for playing, especially since I haven't had much experience with Trolls so far.

Until next time, shank a round ear for me!