Congratulations. A great result.
How do you deal with Malekith using a strollaz army?
Hey cypher, I was there as well and placed 15th with my TAC dwarfs. My only loss to Malekith. Would love to know how you handled that one as I had major issues dealing with him.
I have played the strollaz list before and I know monsters are a problem. No heroes to kill the monsters nor war machines to shoot them and flying monsters are in particularly hard because they can't be redirected easily with my gyros. Malekith being the the king of all monsters I knew would be a problem.
But I had three things going for me: 1. malekith was his only close combat threat (the sisters can fight but are more finesse) and i didn't believe makelith could kill 80+ dwarves; 2. His remaining "troops" were tailor made for my gyros, two units of 12 elven bowmen with poison arrows and one unit of 5 silverhelms. All with full command. 3. There was a swamp on his side of the board which we rolled as "abyssal swamp" which requires anyone sitting in it during the movement phase to take an initiative test or have d6 models dragged to the bottom by Fimir.
So, when I got first turn I had both my longbeards and my shieldbeards in column and jammed then all of the way up into malekith's face, my shieldbearers on my left and the hammerers on my right threatening Malekiths flank if he charged the Longbeards. I was concerned he would bypass the shieldbeards and charge the hammerers, so I fiiddled with the hammerers ( I had plenty of movement) and put them at an angle that if he charged them me he would be in the swamp.
First turn Malekith charged the hammerers. He immediately began taking initiative tests. Essentially he had to kill 80 dwarves (on my turn my longbeards charged into his flank and beat him by 2) before he rolled a 6.
My gyros set about mauling his troops. I killed all of them without the loss of only one gyro which left me up 420 points. In the movement phase of turn three Malekith rolled a six, bye bye Eternity king.
My opponent did not give up, slammed into my longbeards with the sisters to a prolonged combat. In the end I lost all of my gyros and he only had the sisters left. I didn't commit my hammerers against him to table him because I really felt bad that he lost Malekith the way he did (but if you put all of your eggs in one basket then put that basket in an abyssal swamp you get what you get) and he beat up the longbeards pretty good and killed my gyros when I charged them in against his flanks and rear.
My plan with the swamp worked, but I think I had malekith anyways. He killed both of my champions in challenges on turns one and two, but I was gong to continue to challenge with my runesmiths, and bsb which meant he would certainly lose at least three more rounds of combat and without a bsb I was hoping he would flee (we were close to his board edge). After my bsb challenge, which would definitely have been the last , he had only four rounds of combat to either kill all of the hammerers or kill all of the longbeards, With good rolls he could do the former, no way he does the latter.
I knew the match was against me. So I took a risk and my opponent committed 1000 points of his army against all but 460 points of mine. I will take those odds any day. On another note, it probably would have been smarter for him to ignore my slowfoots and go and kill the gyros. He could have breathed on me, magicked me and shot me and there was little i could have done to stop him. BUT when I jammed my two dwarf squads right at him he really didn't know what to think and made the wrong decision.
I must say my opponent was a very nice guy and took the loss of Malekith quite well and he didn't give up.
JG
Edited by cypher623, 26 March 2015 - 04:42 PM.