Battle Report #20 - Butcher1 vs Sloan1

February 19, 2017
Scenario: Incursion
Opponent: Geoff M
Initiative: Me

Butcher1
Ruin
4x Marauders
3x min rifles w/9 total rockets
Joe
Mortar (free)
Field Gun (free)

Sloan1
Reinholdt
Grenedier
Defender
2x Hunter
Minuteman
Max Trenchers w/CA & 3 rifle grenades
Arlan
GMCA
Finn

This time I do remember to advance move the jacks.  Marauders on the left turtle up to protect ruin.  Sloan feats and damages a marauder on the left and leaves one on the right on 3 boxes.  Some bad dice and not getting sloan into shoot means he doesn't kill a jack. 

Marauder on the left moves onto the flag to force him to contest.  Marauder on the right contests right flag.  Middle left marauder runs up to engage 3 trenchers, removing dig in from them.  My mortar shoots it in the back misses but scatters forwards killing the 3 trenchers (or toughs them and rifle corp finish them off.)  Rifle corp and rockets focus on the grenedier and take him down.  Ruin charges to get into the rubble.

(MISSING PICTURE)

Hunters, defender and sloan kill ruin (I always underestimate her out put, even against khador jacks).  The 2 remaining trencher grenades kill 5 rifles and a rocket (stupid bunching up).  Other trenchers kill some rifles and put some damage on a marauder.  Minuteman moves up and slugs the left marauder, spiking hard to take out his cortex and right arm. 


Left middle marauder gets full focus and kills 4 trenchers.  I need to kill the minute man contesting my left flag so I could start scoring.  Decide to burn my feat to make sure it happens.  Couple rockets and rifles made sure it happens.  Other rifles kill some trenchers, but damn, def 17 is hard to hit. 

(Missing Picture)

Trenchers kill some more rifles, and the defender and hunters keep hammering away at my jacks, they are all getting really beat up, losing most systems.  Arlan charges my left marauder, and the GMCA also contest (he should have held him back to contest the following turn).


Middle marauders and rifles kill most of the remaining trenchers, leaving 2 alive and fin on 1 box.  Marauder on left takes a free strike and remains touching the flag.  Rifles and rockets kill arlan and GMCA.  Left maurader continues to trundle towards hunters. 2-0

Game is pretty well over at this point.  He can't kill butcher because of sac pawn and high armour, and his ability to contest my left flag is dwindling.  We play 2 more turns but there was no question of the outcome.




I played this matchup pretty bad I feel, I lost too many rifles to bad positioning, and rifle positioning is key to this list.  I haven't really talked about what its supposed to do, but its pretty straight forward and self explanatory.  Butchers feat is for extreme damage at range.  Maruaders and field gun Knock heavies down for rockets to focus fire on.  Rifles CRA to take out infantry to cav (on feat turn).  Very straight forward, but very strong. 

I chose butcher1 over vlad1 for a few reasons, tho I'm not sure its the stronger option.  Vlad brings the turn to turn accuracy and damage.  But Butcher brings the single turn of crushing damage output and he brings Ruin.  Ruin and Butcher are my only magic weapons in my pairing (Irusk2) so that's why I chose him.  Maybe I'll try vlad after the next convention.  His feat for 12" threat jacks is really strong over Butchers very static threat range jacks (tho ruin is good with his 11" threat).

Battle Report #19 - Butcher1 vs Goreshade2

February 19, 2017
Scenario: Outlast
Opponent: Bryce J
Initiative: Me

Butcher1
Ruin
4x Marauders
3x min rifles w/9 total rockets
Joe
Mortar (free)
Field Gun (free)

Gorshade2
Deathjack
Ripjaw
Max Blackbanes
Max Raiders + CA
Max Bane Thralls
2x Necro Surgeon
6 scrapthralls
Machine Wraith
Soul Trapper


Well its been quite awhile since my last post.  Went to the LVO, made it to the top 16, but came 10th after that, so not great.  Awesome convention tho.  I didn't take any pictures so not going to do any write ups about them, but got to play a lot of lists I've never played against before, as well as some big names like Trevor Christianson and Chuck Elsworth (who got revenge for me knocking him out of masters last year!).  Realized my pairing had some weaknesses, the butcher list in particular was somewhat subpar and with the change to the theme list, the hark list has to be reworked (likely to what I was playing before). 

Tho after about 25 games with Hark in a month, it was time for a new pairing.  Trying out this Butcher1 list paired with an Irusk2 list.  I have played games since the LVO but kept forgetting pictures so wasn't writing about them.  Also spent a week in mexico, but am now back to it! Anyways, onto the bat rep.


Bryce is one of our local cryx players and although he tends to play unorthodox lists, he's very skilled and very calculating and is one of the best players in the local Victoria meta.  I have played very little Cryx in mk3 and wasn't really sure how to go about the matchup, but knowing he had a fair amount of incorporeal in his one list, I figured I should drop butcher as his list has my only magic weapons in my pairing (as well as armory with Irusk2)

I run up, he runs up.  IF goes on Butcher.  Occultation goes on the bane thralls and mirage on the raiders.  It isn't until after the game that I realize I forget to advance move my jacks.  Damn vacation making me rusty.



(Picture taken after he mirages his raiders and blackbanes).  Joe yells at the left rifle corp and they all aim.  8/9 of them hit and kill a raider.  Leaving 2 alive in the rubble and 1 alive way in the back to be safe for gorshades feat.  My jacks move into the zones, ruin positions outside banethrall threat and more importantly, machine wraith threat.  Damn I hate that thing.

Blackbanes charge and kill some rifles on the right.  Remaining raiders do the same on the left.  Deathjack gets mirage.  Machine Wraith covers the right zone so I can't get ruin in the zone to start killing blackbanes.

I continue attritioning him down, know that once he feats, I'm gonna be jammed to all hell.  Black banes are also going to become a problem since for every winter guard they kill, one more ghost pirate joins the fight, butcher charges a blackbane then arcs a boosted oblit into blackbane himself, since he cannot be feated back....but I miss the boosted 7.



Doesn't really matter anyways cause this turn I die.  Once again its a slam that gets me.  Death jack mirages from outside the building.  The machine wraith charges a marauder and moves it into perfect minimum slam distance.  Death jack slams the marauder into butcher, blocking him down and pushing butcher towards his army.  Deathjack hex blasts off IF.  Goreshade feats and with butcher now closer to the cryx army, a feated bane thrall is able to walk to engage butcher.  Goreshade puts curse of shadows on butcher and then 5 blackbanes kill him with little issue.

Should have found a safer way to get rid of black bane, maybe even ignored him for another turn.  Hard to say how the game would have gone if i kept butcher safe, but between all the mech thralls and scrap thralls bryce brought 19 models back on feat turn, it was rough.  Not sure if I would have been able to chew through that.  Hard to say.  Need more cryx experience, particularly against players like Bryce.

Battle Report #18 - Butcher3 vs Haley2

January 29, 2017
Scenario: Recon
Opponent: Greg S
Initiative: Greg

Butcher3
Wardog

Ruin

Marauder

Min Uhlans

Min Uhlans

Eliminators

Eliminators

Drakhun

Drakhun

Orin

Kell

Bokur (c:Butcher)

Haley2
Stormclad
Stormclad
Thorn
Squire (Free)
Max Lances
Min Lances
Laddermore
Junior (Free)
Firefly
Min Field Mechanics
THEME: STORM DIVISION


This was the final table of a local 11 man steamroller.  Greg and I are both prepping for the LVO and we have relatively even record against each other so we knew it was going to be a tight game.  Greg felt his Haley3 didn't quite have enough arm cracking to deal with Harkevich as he is my normal Cygnar drop.  However entrenched is a scenario that Butcher loves, and with Orin and Ruin in the list he has some solid tools in the Haleys.  Giddyup.



End of Round 1.  Haley TK's 4 models and everything runs up.  I run up everything as well, trying to keep my forces spread out so Haley can't feat on everything.  While trying to keep Butcher out of feat range and still threatening the zone, I make a stupid mistake and place Ruin outta control.  Kell aims and kills a stormlance.  Not sure why Greg put them so close.



Thorn moves up, dominates the marauder forward which gets killed by Laddermore and a stormclad.  His max lance unit shifts over to cover his zone, knowing Butcher can easily clear and dominate, he doesn't want to put anything with 12" of Butcher in fear of losing too much.  He kills my jamming Uhlan, and the one behind the forest gets killed by eleaps.  Haley doesn't feat.



Ruin was out of control.  Stupid stupid mistake.  Kell aims and shoots the stormclad for 6pts.  Only need to do 5pts of damage to column 4 or 5 to take out the cortex now.  I move Butcher into the zone and position with entourage around him.  The drakhun covers most of the zone while staying outside of charge threat range of the lance that can see him.  I send Ruin into the damaged stormclad, but dont hit the right column.  If only I could have allocated to him.  My Uhlans charge his objective, bad dice require 3 of them to kill it, I jam with them and position the drakhun in the corner of the zone.  2-0.

(Missing Picture)

He clears out all my uhlans, puts 7 pts on my left drahun, and TK's him outt the zone.  Haley feats and moves far forward and barely clips the eliminator that I had positioned to run into the zone to contest.  Nothing on my right side is under feat.  He boxes out the zone so after my drakhun kills a lance he can't repo in.  Ruin dies but it takes a stormclad, 2 lances and a firefly charge to bring him down.  Go Ruin.  Everything is just outside of butchers 12" threat.  He runs the mechanic officer in to contest just outside of counter charge range.  2-1.



Kell aims and kills a lance.  With the mechanic in the zone, Butcher has his charge target.  He charges the mechanic pulls in the firefly and stormclad, killing them both.  He feats and energizes behind the wall.  Left flank doesn't do too much and unfortunately I can't contest.  3-2.

(Missing Picture)

Greg mops up the left side but has difficulty contesting.  He runs arcane shields laddermore and runs her into the zone.  She takes a free strike from an argus and a countercharge from my wardog, but she conests. 3-3.



Drakhun charges a lances, hills him and repo's into mechanics and Jr.  Bokur dismounts laddermore, bucher flashing blades her then backs up into the rubble.  I position my guys as so. 4-3

(Missing Picture)

To contest Greg runs Thorn to TK a dog, then TK the stormclad so the stormclad can run into my zone.  With a TK and a charge from haley, the lances and Jr are able to kill my Drakhun.  Greg clocks to me with 1 second left on his clock. 4-4.




All I have to do is kill the stormclad and clock over to him since we would both score to 5 and then he would time out.  Butcher easily kills the stormclad, and my dog is able to run to contest just for good measure.  5-4.  

Oh man this was a great game!  Couple mistakes on both sides, but when is there not?  Butcher is really strong in entrenched and going second (even against H2) probably won me the game, not that it was my choice tho.  The terrain also helped as he didn't have access to pathfinder, which is a problem with the Storm Division.  Although it does allow more beef in the list. 

The double drakhun is great in this list.  The double Uhlans.....I'm not sure about, I've thought about dropping a unit for a Juggernaut, but being able to act outside of 12" from butcher is really good, especially in scenario's like this one or recon.  Anyways, I'm not gonna make any changes this close to the LVO.

Battle Report #17 - Butcher3 vs Xerxis2

January 20, 2017
Scenario: Recon
Opponent: Matt R
Initiative: Me

Butcher3
Wardog

Ruin

Marauder

Min Uhlans

Min Uhlans

Eliminators

Eliminators

Drakhun

Drakhun

Orin

Kell

Bokur (c:Butcher)

Xerxis2

Molik Karn

Desert Hydra

Gladiator

Krea

Max Swordsment + UA

Max paingivers 

Our Skorne player is back, and its great to see Skorne on the table.  Hardly ever saw them in mk2 and never played against them in mk3.  Matt hasn't played many games recently and is a little rusty.

End of Round 1.  Camera must not have flashed.  Matt chooses sides but probably chose the wrong side as it made maneuvering 2 huge bases difficult.  He does not have much experience doing this.  I forget to move my left drakhun up.  Damn 2D proxy.

I don't commit much this turn.  Kell aims and kills 2 swordsmen, orin kills 2 and elminators kill two.  Eliminators move up to provide a difficult target for his swordsmen and prevent jamming of my uhlans.  One Uhlan with SoD on it charges molik to get some early damage on him and with any luck, knock him down.  But I fail to roll a 6 for my impact hit. and stop just outside of melee.  Butcher (who is the yellow proxy between the bokur and the 2d Drakhun, stays just outside of the Hydra's massive 14" range.  Ruin and the marauder hide behind the forest just outside of 11" from the hydra. 

With Ruin threatening the Hydra, Matt feels that he should send it in and try to do some good damage at pow 22.  Xerxis feats and clears the uhlan from infront of molik.  The hydra tramples then procedes to buy 3 attacks on ruin.  Ruin survives with 3 boxes, with his right arm and cortex functional.  Uh oh.  Molik charges 15" into my marauder (I should have moved ruin a bit to the left and stayed out of Moliks range).  Matt doesn't jam my drakhun with swordsmen and I get a counter charge on molik, doing 13pts of damage taking out his mind.  Maurader goes down and a huge spike on the objective leaves it on 1.  Swordsmen kill one eliminator.

A fully loaded ruin, 2 drakhuns and a bokur kill the hyrda and the guys on the right side mostly clean up the swordsmen.  Butcher moves onto the flag to score.

 Matt's pretty well boned at this point.  He decides for X2 to shift towards the right and perhaps clear and score that flag, but he comes up short.  Paingivers contest.

Another dark picture.  Middle Uhlans kill objective, flag is cleared and both drakhuns tie up the paingivers.  I go to 3 at the end of this turn and with no way to contest, Matt concedes.

X2 is terrifying with the amount of speed he can bring.  My Butcher list is supposed to be fast but Xerxis puts it to shame!  And its skorne so the amount of damage it can inflict is crazy!  Plus with fate walker Molik is hard to pin down!  So many threats!  So many exclamation points!  I think effectively piece trading with skorne is going to be very important in the matchup.  I feel that with access to the extoller and with how hard skorne hits, Harkevich is probably not great.  Tho perhaps the sheer volume of jacks maybe enough that skorne chokes since their strong beaters tend to be more expensive than khador jacks.  Anyways, for know its Butcher's game.  I'll need to get more practice in vs them because Skorne seem to have a ton of legit casters now.

Battle Report #16 - Butcher3 vs Amon1

January 20, 2017
Scenario: Extraction
Opponent: Bryan T
Initiative: Bryan

Butcher3
Wardog

Ruin

Marauder

Min Uhlans

Min Uhlans

Eliminators

Eliminators

Drakhun

Drakhun

Orin

Kell

Bokur (c:Butcher)

Amon1
Templar
Templar
Crusader
Crusader
Dervish
Dervish
Dervish
Dervish
Dervish
Devout
min Choir
min Choir
Wrack
Vassal Mechanic
Free Vassal
Free Vassal
Free Covenant of Menoth
THEME: CREATORS MIGHT

I think Hark is generally going to be my Menoth drop, but I wanted to get practice with Butcher and see how he can play into Amon WITH the book.  Luckily Kell and eliminators can threat the book decently so I feel its at least a game.





He runs up in such a way that if I move up and shoot nearly any jack with Kell he can string it through shield guards onto the left templar that has enliven on it.  Templar on the left has fortify.  I move up as shown.  Staying out of threat range of everything except for one of butchers dogs.



Bryan decides to be conservative and tank up.  He contests the left flag with the fortified templar but does not contest the right flag.  Bryan admits after that that was a mistake.  I drop SoD from the middle Uhlans and put it on Ruin.  I send a fully loaded Ruin into the fortified templar and with some good dice he kills it outright.  One uhlan from the middle unit charges a the dervish behind the now dead templar but misses the boosted 8 and reforms into the flag. Right drakhun goes B2B with the flag to score.  Kell shoots some jacks and everything else moves up.   2-0 for me.



 (I took the picture before I moved the wardog within 3" of Butcher).  Bryan see's a chance to assassinate butcher who is only camping 2 focus.  I forgot about the side steps. but I still feel like butcher is pretty safe, baring some spiking.  So Bryan doesn't allocate anything, feats and casts all his spells, allocates all 7 focus.  He kills the uhlans on the left as well as Ruin and left eliminators getting his synergy chain up to 3.  I accidently leave my marauder within 10" of the crusader and it gets killed as well.

He charges a dervish at my drakhun, hits him twice (doesn't dismount) and the 2 side steps gets him into butcher.  However, he has to disengage the drakhun to make room for the second dervish, so the drakhun counter charges, does some damage and more importantly, gets out of charge range of the second dervish.  So he buys 2 attacks on butcher missing the first and doing 8pts of damage (3pts) to Butcher.   Templar goes into drakhun and dismounts him.



He has the book doing anti-magic so butcher has a limited area he can stand in and do his stuff.  Drakhun charges the fortified Templar and takes out his shield.  My eliminators also charge and combo strike but I do hardly any damage at all.  Butcher flashing blades the dervish in front of him and charges the front crusader.  He pulls in 2 dervishes and kills all 3.  Sitting on 5 focus after feat.  All my charge various things and do quite a bit of damage and gum things up to protect butcher.  But some crappy positioning on my part stops me from getting any uhlans on the damaged Templar.



Bryan kills 4 uhlans and 2 eliminators.  He moves the templar onto the left flag to bring the game to 2-1.  Fortunately for me all 3 of his lights are heavily damanged as is his templar.  Unfortunately Bryan had to go pick up his game so we have to cut the game short.  It seems like we're in a reletively even position so it would depend on how my next turn went.  Bryan said he felt that the game was mine.


Anyways, this seems like a pretty good matchup, with a bit of favour towards Amon assuming he has the book.  The three shield guards helps keep the book alive since Amon doesn't have a good way at removing Kell, perhaps with a WMM in the list as well it would do better.  Trying to position the eliminators so they can threaten the book is probably pretty important. 

His jacks hit like trucks with synergy and battle, and hit really high defense so whatever he gets to he can kill.  Need to use my speed and send my stuff in in waves.  Putting my marauder at 9.9" away from the crusader was a silly mistake.  I think Hark is still my Menoth drop, but it's good to know that Butcher is decent into Amon if need be (and he has RFP to have some game into High Reclaimer)

Battle Report #15 - Harkevich1 vs Haley2

January 19, 2017
Scenario: Recon
Opponent: Greg S
Initiative: Greg

Harkevich1 (Irusk proxy)
Kodiak
Kodiak
Kodiak
Juggernaut
Juggernaut
Marauder
Marauder
Joe
Max Winter Guard Infantry w/3 rockets
UA (Free)
THEME: WINTER GUARD KOMMAND

Haley2
Stormwall
Thorn
Squire (Free)
Max Lances
Min Lances
Laddermore
Junior (Free)
Firefly
THEME: STORM DIVISION


Another battle of the themes.  Greg is trying out the theme as a means to get more beef into his lists.  He loses out on Ragman, Anastasia and Rhupert, but gets way more brawn.  Lack of non-colossal pathfinder maybe an issue in the future tho.  We're both prepping for the LVO.



He TK's some models, TA's the stormwall and runs stuff up.  Shifting haley towards the right flag. Everything runs up and I trample the kodiaks up and make my cloud wall.  Hark 101.

(MISSING PICTURE)

Its to bad I forgot to take this picture.  Anyways.  Greg allocates 2 to the stormwall and TK's thorn and with the reaction drive it gets thorn into my cloud wall.  Stupid me should have built the wall over 5" away from Thorn, I knew he could do that and he was barely in.  Haley then TK's a kodiak into the clouds and TA's the stormwall and FEATS.  Stormwall charges and kills the kodiak, getting one swing into the other kodiak.  Thorn moves up disrupts the left most jack and gets some damage on him.  Lances all run into annoying positions staying outside of 1" on all my stuff.

 




His feat catches Hark, all my jacks and about half my WGI.  My marauder and juggernaut who were engaged by 2 lances both take free strikes at dice-10, the Eleap killing a winter guard they were also engaging.  Lances on the left are now unengaged.  my WGI remove both lances on the left and an aiming rocket rolls the hard 8 and kills the lance that was also in the middle trench.  Right most Kodiak takes a free strike from a lance and vents steam on another 2 lances on the right.  Boosts on both, kills one, leave the other on 1 box.  Hark moves up and is sitting on 5 focus.   Four storm lances killed on Haley's feat turn....not bad.



Haley loads up thorn and the stormwall.  Thorn TK's the remaining kodiak and tries to TK the right most juggernaut, but misses twice even with the reroll (couldn't boost). Haley moves to dominate the right flag.  Thorn pokes the left juggernaut disrupting him and bonks the marauder 3 times with his shield to knock out his cortex.  Lances move around and shoot/smack some stuff, killing more WGI.  Laddermore threads the needle between my 2 jacks on the left, and kills something like 6 WGI.  Stowmwall moves to protect haley and kills my kodiak on the right.

Joe gives attacks to WGI and shoots the pod to free up Hark.  Right marauder hits the 7 to combo slam Thorn into my objective.  Hark casts mobility and walks over to laddermore, and bonks her on the head, doing 5 pts and staggering her.  Middle juggernat moves around objective and finishes off thorn, repo'ing towards the trench.  Left maruader moves up and combo slams the firefly outta the zone and kills a lance.  WGI mini feat and spray down the middle lance to allow my juggernaut to walk towards his stormwall (taking 2 free strikes on the way).  I put some pts on his stormwall and repo into contest range.



Haley charges Juggernaut contesting, does some damage and TK's him away.  Stormwall moves out of range of my jacks, and finishes off the jugg.  One lance charges my middle juggernaut and the other kills 2 WGI.  Firefly moves in to contest and Jr runs out of the zone.  Haley goes to 2.



Hark casts mobility and takes a free strike from laddermore, luckily she misses.  Left Marauder slams the firefly and kills him and puts 8pts on the objective.  Right marauder kills contesting lance and repo's into contest range.  Kodiak walks into b2b with laddermore, dismounts and kills her.  This is where I make my game losing mistake (spoilers!).  Instead of moving the kodiak so he could punch laddermore and then reposition to touch the object and block LOS to Hark.....I don't even repo into b2b with hark?! Plus I dont even move the remaining WGI to block the lances charge on hark.  What the heck was I thinking!  Anyways, I go to 3pts.



As expected, greg has to kill or lose.  Lance charges hark doing a lot of damage.  Haley TA's stormwall and charges juggernaut and throws an arcane bolt into hark for more damage.  Stormwall moves and shoots hark with his big guns....in the back.  Dead Harkevich.


Man this was a really good game!  The shooting presence and advance move that the theme brings seems worth the loss of orin and ragman, its at least a very interesting choice.  By the end the game, it was mine to lose as I had every tool to keep Hark safe.  But better now than in a tournament!  Might have also been a good idea to instead of get the 3pts, get 2 and move hark towards my left flag as greg had hardly any pieces left to contest.  I need to somehow do better at protecting my WGI from electro leaps, he hardly put any attacks on them directly and still managed to wipe them all out.  This matchup (when Haley doesn't bring ragman) seems pretty even but will likely favour the player going first.

I will need to continue to test it, but it feels like even without orin, the benefits of the theme and the strength of the list give it solid game into cygnar.  Haley3 will still likely be problematic since Hark is the only source of magical attacks in the list, but perhaps I should change my objective from fuel cache to armory for the scenario dependent magic attacks.  Luckily my butcher3 list can also play into non-sloan cygnar if I find a matchup that I don't feel Hark can really play into.

Battle Report #14: Harkevich vs Doomshaper2

January 18, 2017
Scenario: Recon
Opponent: Dan W
Initiative: Me

Harkevich1
Kodiak
Kodiak
Kodiak
Juggernaut
Juggernaut
Marauder
Marauder
Joe
Max Winter Guard Infantry w/3 rockets
Free UA
THEME: WINTER GUARD KOMMAND


Doomshaper2 ADR
Mulg
Mountain King
Mauler
Earthborn
Axer
Runebearer
Janissa
Whelps
min stone 
THEME:POWER OF DHUNIA


No pictures this time so I'll just give a brief overview of the game.  Once again, Dan's list is so fast and threats so far!   I wanted to see if Hark in theme could play into it.  Unfortunately I think doomy is advantaged a bit too much for comfort. 

I go first and blaze up the table, staying just out of his threat ranges (15" MK melee threat!)  He responds by running up just outta my threat.  I try to make a cloud wall that stays just outside of his feat walk and punch range, forcing him to either cast rush and feat to walk into my kodiaks, or feat and trample with rage.  He opts for the latter and kills a marauder, 2 kodiaks, cripples a third.   Ouch.


My first priority is killing the mountain king.  I try to move up and kill a couple stone guys to get the MK out of stone protection, but the 3 shots I take on the stone bearer, I don't even force a tough.  The rest of the winterguard fire at his mauler and a rocket goes into the MK.  The mountain king has probably taken 8pts so far.  I feat and get a fully loaded juggernaut and loaded marauder into him.  My dice are terrible with the marauder and leave the MK on 1 box!  I feel the MK HAS TO DIE, so I take 2 free strikes and get my final juggernaut into him, killing him on the charge, wasting 3 focus.  Perhaps I should have just killed the mauler like I planned, but I felt the MK was too big of a threat to leave fully functional, surrounded by whelps. 

That was the turning point, with the mauler still alive and my juggernaut banged up from taking a bunch of free strikes, he is able to get to much work done on his turn (even tho his earthborn and axer were full fury (but didn't frenzy!).  He grinds me out and my last ditch assassination attempt fails.




Thoughts.  I'm not sure what the best way to play into this game with Hark is.  Especially if he goes first.  Do I be really aggressive, cloud up and feat hoping he doesn't do enough?  Do I cloud up and stay much farther back?  The amount of damage he can do even from just trampling under Doomys feat is staggering.  I think Butcher3 is generally what I want to drop into trolls, and this convinces me further.  Even though with butcher the matchup isn't that great either.  Retalitory strike with wild aggression on mulg is terrifying and mulgs animus is rough on Butcher. 

Any thoughts would be appreciated.