Madness 6/30

Today's list was:

Hunters Grim (*4pts)
* Troll Impaler (5pts)
* Dire Troll Blitzer (9pts)
* Dire Troll Bomber (10pts)
* Trollkin Runebearer (2pts)
Kriel Warriors (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
* 3 Kriel Warrior Caber Thrower (3pts)
* Kriel Warrior Standard Bearer & Piper (2pts)
Krielstone Bearer and 3 Stone Scribes (3pts)
* Krielstone Stone Scribe Elder (1pts)
Pyg Burrowers (Leader and 9 Grunts) (6pts)
Fell Caller Hero (3pts)
Stone Scribe Chronicler (2pts)
Troll Whelps (2pts)

and I played vs Kyle who brought:

Dawnlord Vyros (*6pts)
* Aspis (4pts)
* Griffon (4pts)
* Banshee (10pts)
* Phoenix (10pts)
* Sylys Wyshnalyrr, the Seeker (2pts)
Dawnguard Invictors (Leader and 5 Grunts) (6pts)
* Dawnguard Invictor Officer & Standard (2pts)
Houseguard Halberdiers (Leader and 9 Grunts) (7pts)
* Houseguard Halberdiers Officer & Standard (2pts)
Stormfall Archers (Leader and 3 Grunts) (5pts)
Arcanist (1pts)
Arcanist (1pts)
House Shyeel Magister (2pts)

Don abandoned us for the motherland so we went straight up caster kill. (spoiler alert, not a great idea)

Turn 1:

I win the roll and blaze up the field with my beasts on one side heading towards his halbadiers and his phoenix and my burrowers run into a central location. The kriels get mirage and run like hell towards the center and everything else saunters up.

He moves up everything attempting a few long range shots, but doesn't hit anything.

Turn 2:

I burrow the burrowers to prepare for secret spy stuff. The kriels run and jam up his lies and give me some mark the target options I end up popping feat and between the blitzer and the bomber most of the phoenix is dead. A few other model get out of the way, but it wasn't a massive attrition push.

He pops feat. The majority of his actions are focused at clearing out most of the kriels and makes a run at the repaired phoenix at my bomber but fails to kill it. Muggs dies to an arrow to the knee.

Turn 3:

as foretold in the prophecy, the burrowers arrived to get behind the phoenix, the Halberdiers and try to jam in the griffin. Troll moses sticks mortality to the Halberdiers and the burrowers go and fail to kill the phoenix at 1 boxer left, the rest of the blasted into the infantry dropped a more than half the unit. The impaler decided to unleash the fury and put the phoenix out of it's misery. The blitzer and bomber are relegated to infantry clear up duty and 4 more of the invictors are gone.

He moves up and tries to kill the burrowers, and gets about 2, with 4 making tough checks, he tries to apply some pressure to the blitzer, but fails to kill it. He drops me down to 2 kriel warriors left and engaged grim and my fellcaller with an aspis, but fails to kill the caller. vyros moves up camping full focus.

Turn 4:

The bomber and impaler lose their shit and try to kill burrowers, but fail, leaving me only the blitzer to do work. The burrowers go fucking nuts and basically kill off the rest of his infantry. Krump drops a trap to give the survivors a reason to hold off engaging. The grim and the fell caller fail to kill the aspis and the blitzer clears out the back field of some support pieces.

He tries to kill some stuff tough says no, he decides to camp focus and run at grim through the trap, which did 0 damage, and engaged krump. 

Turn 5:

armor 23 is a bitch, even with a mortality it's rough. I cast mirage on grim after the fell caller drops the aspis and move grim back, killing a stormfall archer on the way. I bring back my beasts to closer in on grim and krump keeps his trap up and gains hero's tragedy. 

He says ok and  runs vyros through a bunch of free strikes and makes it there with 2 damage on him, just in reach of grim. his banshee runs up so he has a flank buddy for the end game. 

Turn 6:

I'm really at a loss how to handle arm 23, even arm 21 with mortality is hard for my list to punch through easy enough. I can jam him with beasts, but he'll either kill the beasts or just keep running away with crazy high armor. So it's decided it's time to do this. To get the rube goldberg machine running I needed to knock him down. I move the impaler into position and headbutt, missing by 1. So this is pretty much fucked from the get go, but if trolls are known for one thing it's blind conviction and hope for many successful tough checks. Grim gets charge of the trolls and charges in putting up mortality before the hit resolves and connecting for a few points of damage at dice minus 7. I buy and boost and put 2 more into him. Because he ran through my wall of dudes, he was now behind my beasts, only leaving trampling as a viable option to get him. I trample up the bomber who puts 8 into him, but misses   his last attack. The fellcaller steps up and tries his luck and the end of it vyros is left at 4. 

Vyros brings up the banshee and flanks on grim and it takes him all 6 focus to bring grim down after a failed tough check.

Conclusion:

Due to a lack of scenario, I don't really have an answer for an arm 23 caster who just does what he wants. In a two list format, I'm probably going to be running borka's family reunion which can handle infantry and normal jacks just fine. So i'm thinking about re-looking at what my second list is. I'm not sure if grim with mulg is a better choice vs just going beast wild with E doomy, but in this current incarnation I think this list still needs work. The kriel stone was a welcome addition back to the list and the whelps made somethings easier.