You know, I had all sorts of mean grumpy things to say about this game, but I won't. A lot of it was me/us not being prepared as much as we should have. I just take it for granted that my opponent knows all their rules from their army book and relevant rules for their modelset. Sometimes your wrong and you pay the price. Welcome to game 2. :)
When I originally saw this army I loved it! Not necessarily the way it looked, not that is was bad, but the fact that he brought a giant unit of trolls. Was very unique and I commended him for it.
He had Throgg, a unit of 17 Trolls for his core, a unit of dogs and 2 warshrines. Throgg allowed rerolls on all panic and break tests for his entire army, but not stupidity like it was being played. Throgg is NOT a BSB.
His partner was a dark elf army. He had a Dark Magic caster general, 2 crossbow units, 2 units of harpies, 2 units of shades and a BSB Cauldron. Tough shooty base with lots of mobility to go with the Throggstar.
We were playing on the White Wolf table. In the middle of the table was a giant tower with 4 stories. It could actually fit 30 trolls according to the packet. Our secret mission was to dispel two of their spells. Done with ease.
Right early on I put my 28 gors into the tower and took the charges from the trolls. Here is where my lack of knowledge/trust in others bit me in the ass. We fought 10 on 10, like I thought it would be (not remembering monstrous infantry counted as 3 EACH). Regardless, 10 trolls, even buffed shouldn't have actually killed 28 gor to the man... and more. They had 40ish attacks total and did over 30 wounds. You figure out the math! All we needed was for 1 gor to survive and the trolls were getting flank and rear charged by a chariot, bestigors and other gor unit. That would have been the end of them. Alas, the trolls went in and never saw combat again.
The dog statue is supposed to be impassable terrain. We unfortunately noticed this deployment/movement too late. The crossbows hid away in a corner, hiding and denying points. Good tactic really.
Late in the game these shades were finally charged... by double Wyssan Wildform harpies! And killed!
Really though, I am TRYING to keep my bitching to a minimum since they gave us one here. I moved my level four from the unit and six diced Pit of Shades on the Cauldron. Why? Because I was told it didn't have an Initiative value, therefore died instantly. Lo and behold, it has an Initiative 8 Death Hag on it. C'est la vie. I'll take that one.
Sometimes the dice just go against you. Here he used the Cauldron, before it died, to give Killing Blow to his harpies. They charged in and killed Dave's General, super killer 4+ ward general. Dead. The harpies obviously died the next round, but they MORE then made up their points.
A weird rule conundrum came along in the game. The troll horde was in the building when they failed a stupidity test (and not supposed to happen reroll). Normally they shamble directly ahead d6 inches but in a building they have no facing! After a few minutes of discussion (which I bet hurt our sports scores) and talking to other judges, we decided to go with a scatter dice. They stuck in but later came out. We just made sure to avoid them, trying to set up a good combo charge that never came before the game ended.
A single chariot holding up a Slaanesh marked warshrine all game.
The big mistake, and probably their plan, was getting distracted by the trolls. We should have let them stay in the building and mopped up everything else. Just, with the indecision, terrain and trolls able to pop out any time, we just couldn't get over and in the end they pulled out a minor win against us. They were nice enough guys as seemed to be the even trend buuuuuut... the rules miscues, IMO, really cost us. They actually cost us the game as far as I am concerned. We held in the building? We kill the troll horde and have easy mop up after that.
What did I learn? Deathstars in buildings mean jack. Yeah, head on we can't beat it, so why bother trying? I should probably be more prepared and know the other armies a big better. Thankfully my partner has Dark Elves so knew their rules. And it's not that I even believed that Throgg acted like a BSB allowing all ld checks to be rerolled. I was just too nice to even bother asking them to pull out a book. As myself and my partner talked about later, what is the fine line between being in a tourney and asking them to show me the rules and being worried you'll lose sportsmanship scores? We just seemed to always go for the latter and it cost us here.
Still, enjoyable enough as fantasy always is. A bit disheartening that we lost two in a row we frankly should NOT have. Dice in one game, rules in his one. Again, tis the way the cookie crumbles, so we just move on and hope to end the day on a high note!
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