Olgunholt League Week 1

The second seasonal league of the year, Olgunholt, got started this week.  It is at least partially to blame for the lack of posts around here recently.  I managed to get my three games for the week in, though they were spread across three days.  Combine with playoff hockey and things get interesting, so interesting that I don't have many pictures.  Let's not dwell on unpleasantness though, there's some texting to do.



My first game was against Danny, who has switched from Cryx...to Legion.  I guess at least Legion doesn't have Bile Thralls.  We were pressed for time and decided a 15 pointer was the way to go.  Since one of the badges is for playing games at 15, 25, 35, and 50 points, I'd already taken a stab at a 15 point list since they're small enough to give me some issues while list building.  I went with pVlad, two jacks, and the Great Bears.  Danny took Saeryn, a Scythean, Anyssa, a pair of Forsaken, and a Shredder or two.  We rolled up King of the Hill, Danny won the roll to go first, and after some close reading I figured out that I would have one turn to kill Saeryn in before I lost the scenario.  (King of the Hill awards you one point when your caster is on the hill at the end of your turn, starting on turn two.  First the three wins.  No contesting or margin of victory required.)  I made a go at it, but (unsurprisingly) was unable to cut my way through the Legion lines to get at Saeryn, let alone kill her.

Battle group foreground, bottle neck background.

Game number two was against Charlie who is playing Mercs for this league.  I found it amusing that we had to twist one guy's arm into playing Mercs for the last league and this time around we have three, with no arm twisting required.  One of the badges is for playing with a fully painted battle group (of at least three jacks/beasts).  Since I have that on hand, I decided to get it out of the way up front.  This was no real hardship since my pButcher tier 4 list has three jacks, so that's what I ran.  Lots of MoWs, a handful of jacks, solos to taste.  Charlie countered with a Damiano list that also featured plenty of beef: Precursor Knights, Forge Guard, Gallant, Rocinante, Gun Mages.  We got the scenario where you try to control a zone on your opponent's half of the table.  Combined with a pair of walls forming a bottle neck in the center, this one had all the hallmarks of a meat grinder from the beginning, and it did not disappoint.  My desire to maintain Shield Wall on my Shock Troopers probably kept them alive, but also created a huge traffic jam as I didn't get them on the other side of the wall to establish a beachhead quick enough.  Instead we chewed through each others' armies until Damiano came in for an assassination run on Orsus.  Charlie focused on the War Dog, like so many do, and my pup ate a couple swings before going down, which left Damiano too Focus-poor to get the job done.  Orsus had no such problems.

The last game of the week was against Gary, who I had never played before, and pKrueger, who I had also never faced before.  I was using eVlad with lots of infantry, big shocker there, which was a very poor match-up for me since Krueger has a number of tools to scythe through infantry.  Gary ran Megalith, a Gorax, two Feral Warpwolfs, min Wolf Riders, Gatormen, and a couple solos.  My eVlad list was effectively the same as my tournament list.  This game went on forever, five hours all told, and had all the whirling, wheeling, realigning, and reforming you'd imagine.  I thought I'd dealt a heavy blow when I took out the Warpwolfs on my feat turn, but turns out the Gorax is a Fury 4 light beast, so Krueger had no Fury issues.  This was another grinder that ended when Krueger got too close to Vlad.  I took out a piece or two to open a lane, then Vlad charged in to chop down the tree hugger. 

Thus the first week ended.  I'm 2-1 at this point, though I wasn't particularly satisfied with any of my games.  My play in general has been sub-par over the last few weeks, but I hope to get it back on track with the Olgunholt league.  It probably doesn't help that I've added a few new pieces to my lists (Harlan Versh in particular has been great, while the Drakhun is still a bit of an enigma), but beyond that I've had fundamental problems with basics like allocating Focus and order of activation.

On a somewhat happier front, my forces have swelled over the past few weeks.  Between a pre-tournament Miniatures Market order and a rare sale at the FLGS, I've added Beast 09, Drago, a MoW Drakhun, Harlan Versh, Uhlan Kovnik Markov, four Uhlans (still need that fifth), and the High Reclaimer.  The Drakhun and Versh are assembled, if not yet primed, and I've been chipping away at Beast 09 and Drago.  Both of them have some troubling arms, which will require unique pinning strategies, but shouldn't be too bad.  I've also been working away at an Uhlan in anticipation of running plenty of cavalry with double-epic Vlad.  I have a couple months before he releases, but I would like to get a handle on cavalry in general and the Uhlans in particular before then.