Continuing on with my
Tour of Trolls I'm going with our post-CID zero to hero star: Madrak1.
Fair warning, this is a long article because there's just so much to cover with this caster!
Pre-CID, Madrak1 was one of the worst casters in the faction. Post CID he's so amazingly good that it seems hard to think of a time when he won't be featured in most Trollblood Steamroller pairings.
He's not quite the (pre-nerf) Haley2 of Trollbloods, but he may well be our Rask.
Strengths
What makes him so good is pretty obvious:
Even Ground gives everything in his control area straight up +2 DEF and no knockdown, and it can be cast by his Blood Boon ability, which can proc off of his ranged attack.
His other two spells are also good:
Guided Hand: An additional dice to hit on a model/unit's next melee attack
Jackhammer: Target warbeast can make an additional melee attack.
Both of these spells are strong, though Guided Hand is really going to shine. Additionally both of these spells can be cast by Madrak1's all-but-officially-mandatory caster attachment: the Runebearer.
If this was all Madrak1 had, he'd still be in contention for a lot of lists, but he's got one of the most amazing feats for Trollbloods: You can't charge models in his control area and all Trollblood models heal D3+3 damage.
I'll be honest, 99% of the time I've feated purely for the "no-charge" portion of the feat simply to deliver my army to have the alpha strike and it's gloriously powerful. The healing setup can be a big deal, especially since things like Champions are obvious auto-includes with Madrak, where the feat near guarantees they will be fully healed if they take damage and spread it around via their Sanguine Bond ability.
Madrak1 also has Tactician for friendly warrior models in his CMD range, allowing for an amazing amount of flexibility in order of activations as well as clearing out your own models or unpacking what will inevitably be a troop heavy list. Tactician in Trolls is simply amazing because of all the space the medium or larger sized based army takes up on the table.
On top of all this, Madrak1 still retains his old MK1 ability to use a scroll once per game that allows him to just ignore a damage roll. With Even Ground up and under the Stone's Aura Madrak's defensive stats are insane: DEF 16, ARM 19, with 18 Damage boxes, tough with no-knockdown, and he can camp for transfers.
Key Pieces for Madrak1
More than other casters, a Madrak1 list seems to want specific pieces to really function. Before I go into List Theory I want to lay out the pieces that I feel are must take options for Madrak which will influence what we can do in theory.
The Runebearer – Extending Madrak's control area from 10" to 12" with Arcane Repeater is absolutely necessary to get the most out of Even Ground and Madrak's feat. Harmonious exaltation is clutch for those turns where you can't reliably proc Blood Boon to cast Even Ground, which allows Madrak to cast it himself for 2, possibly throwing out a Guided Hand if necessary, or just camping Fury. The Runebearer can also be used to cast Guided Hand on a unit himself every turn if you wished, which helps with Fury management and getting things going before Madrak has to activate. Suffice it to say you will always be taking the Runebearer with Madrak, but luckily he will be free due to theme benefits.
Bomber or Impailer – Madrak really wants the Far Strike animus to be able to shoot 12" with his axe to proc Blood Boon to cast Even Ground. I've played a fair number of games with Madrak without the Far Strike animus and my conclusions after the fact are that we should always have it.
Eilish Garrity – Madrak1 can make life an utter nightmare for your opponent in a variety of ways: Lots of single wound infantry that suddenly have very hard to deal with defensive stats, Champion bricks that are DEF16 in melee, the fact that you can run into position and deny charges onto your stuff. The way a lot of opponents will deal with this is via control, most of which is delivered via spells: Repudiate to deny a unit orders, Crippling Grasp to reduce their effectiveness, etc. Eilish solves this problems by removing offensive upkeeps from your models, freeing them up to be able to run or charge in. If he isn't doing that, then he's busy giving Puppet Master to Madrak who can much more reliably kill a model with his thrown axe to proc Blood Boon. It's hard to dedicate 5 points to this model, especially since he can't be free as a Minion Solo, but he's worth it to guarantee Madrak can play into a lot of matches he'd otherwise struggle in due to control elements.
Fell Caller – This is more of an honorable mention than a pure necessity, but for most lists I've played with Madrak, you need a Fell Caller. Most of the time at least one or more of your units will need Pathfinder before they have it (ie. Champs + Skaldi only get it on the charge, Fennblades via mini-feat), or +2 MAT to tackle opposing high DEF models. I can see a Skaldi+Champs and Double Fennblade list that can play without the Fell Caller, but other builds with a second unit of Champs, or Longriders, or Kriel Warriors are going to want the Fell Caller to at least maneuver around terrain on the approach.
Band of Heroes – This is where Madrak1 wants to be played. It's arguable that Madrak could be in Storm of the North, but the main benefit from that is getting to upkeep your spells for free on Northkin units, immunity to cold on all your Warrior models, and two snow drifts. The problem is that Madrak1 has no upkeeps, immunity to cold doesn't really matter, and you lose access to the strongest benefits in Band of Heroes: Remove from Play on all melee attacks, ignoring Tough on all melee attacks by Warrior models, and the extra 2" of deployment for what will inevitably be a Troop based army. Fennblades seem very strong with Madrak which are only in BoH, but I can possibly see trying to go for a hard DEF skew with Northkin Raiders, Champions, and Fire Eaters in Storm in the North – but it just seems like it's easier to counter.
List Theory
There are so very many ways to build Madrak1 that the mind boggles, and there are some key decisions you need to make which will influence your list:
Double or Single Champion Units? This will strongly dictate which way the list will go. Double Champion units gives you two problem units for your opponent to deal with, but it's obviously weaker against lists that can easily deal with DEF16 Champion units in melee. This will dictate what else you can take in the list, since it's mutually exclusive with double Fennblade units, at least if you want to take the important solo's needed to run the list.
Bomber/Mauler or Min Beast Points? If you're going to use minimum points, the light package with Impailer and 2x 9 Point Beasts of your choice is the safest bet. In this case I think I'd go with an Impailer, Bouncer, and a Pyre Troll so that Madrak can get up to PS18 under the Strength Aura of the Kriel Stone if he needs to do some heavy lifting. I'm personally much more of a fan of using a Bomber and a Mauler to round out the beast package, even though it cuts into your unit budget to spend the extra 5 points over Madrak1's beast points.
My List:
I'm going to go through the list I've used for our last Scrum (a Steamroller tournament run 1 game a
week over a month) where I paired Madrak1 with Kolgrima. This is a list where I tried to squeeze in as much value as possible, but in doing so I went without the Far Strike Animus. I've come to realize that this is a mistake and so am going to list variants I want to play going forward in another section below.
Trollblood - More is More
Theme: Band of Heroes
3 / 3 Free Cards 75 / 75 Army
Madrak Ironhide, Thornwood Chieftain - WB: +29
- Trollkin Runebearer - PC: 0
- Dire Troll Mauler - PC: 15 (Battlegroup Points Used: 15)
- Earthborn Dire Troll - PC: 14 (Battlegroup Points Used: 14)
Eilish Garrity, the Occultist - PC: 5
Fell Caller Hero - PC: 0
Stone Scribe Chronicler - PC: 4
Kriel Warriors - Leader & 9 Grunts: 11
Kriel Warriors - Leader & 9 Grunts: 11
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9
- Stone Scribe Elder - PC: 3
Trollkin Champions - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16
- Skaldi Bonehammer - PC: 0
Trollkin Champions - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16
THEME: Band of Heroes
The big change I found in this list was exactly how good Kriel Warriors are with Madrak1. Taking two units of Champions and two units of Kriel Warriors is just too much for most opponents to deal with reliably. Against many opponents, you can just run in and jam your way to a scenario victory, keeping them out of zones while you rack up points.
Kriel Warriors main problem is having low MAT and POW. While Madrak doesn't fix their POW problem, he does make them hit very reliably with Guided Hand, which lets them chew through opposing enemy infantry nicely. The Stone Scribe Chronicler can be very good here, with Heroes Tragedy to knockdown anything that kills one, though most of the time it didn't really matter much.
In the end, what seemed to matter the most with this list was exactly how hard it was for opponents to actually just kill Kriel Warriors. At DEF 14, ARM17 vs. guns and ARM19 vs. melee, I was comfortably able to just run them into opposing infantry or even put them in walk+attack range while under Madrak's feat and without getting boosted damage rolls, the small amount of attacks that hit just bounced off the armor.
Literally every tough check a Kriel Warrior makes is utterly demoralizing for your opponent, especially if they're trying to just clear them out to score scenario VP's.
The best part was that they're literally there just to jam, anything they kill is a bonus. They deliver the Champions and beasts extremely well, and stop a lot of armies just dead in their tracks.
My ResultsThe only list pairs I had to avoid dropping Madrak into during our Scrum was Vlad1 Rockets which has enough volume of attacks to chew through all of my guys. In fact out of all the games I've played with Madrak1 post-CID (with many more lists than the one above), I've only lost literally one of them - it was a case where I made a mistake and left Madrak in range of a teleporting Warpwolf where I could have just moved to the back of a zone, not even cast Even Ground, and won on Scenario.
Madrak is a scenario and attrition monster in this list. You can jam opponents out on scenario AND back it all up with hard hitting stuff that is very tough to deal with for a lot of opponents. Like all Troll lists, it really likes to go first, but it can handle things pretty well going second. The extra turn to just dump Fury on the Krielstone and run as far forward as possible with the Kriel Warriors is a big deal: this version of Madrak is much slower than the alternative builds with Fennblades or Long Riders. Basically I'm trading speed for bodies and having two heavies and two units of Champions.
Future ChangesIn hindsight, I've had some games where I got lucky to avoid assassinations, and a lot of this was related to the fact that the list has almost zero ways to reach out and touch people, or deal with any kind of sniping out of problem models.
This is why I intend to switch to the following list now that our tournament is over:
Trollblood - Bombs 'n Kriels
Theme: Band of Heroes
3 / 3 Free Cards 75 / 75 Army
Madrak Ironhide, Thornwood Chieftain - WB: +29
- Trollkin Runebearer - PC: 0
- Dire Troll Bomber - PC: 19 (Battlegroup Points Used: 19)
- Dire Troll Mauler - PC: 15 (Battlegroup Points Used: 10)
Fell Caller Hero - PC: 0
Eilish Garrity, the Occultist - PC: 5
Kriel Warriors - Leader & 9 Grunts: 11
Kriel Warriors - Leader & 5 Grunts: 7
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9
- Stone Scribe Elder - PC: 3
Trollkin Champions - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16
- Skaldi Bonehammer - PC: 0
Trollkin Champions - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16
- Trollkin Sorcerer - PC: 3
THEME: Band of Heroes
I'm not sure about the Sorcerer on the second unit of Champions, but its 3 points left over and fills out the list. It could easily just swap to being a unit of Swamp Gobbers to help protect line of sight to Madrak since the main way he seems to lose in the matches he's targeted for is getting assassinated.
The main losses are 4 Kriel Warriors and the Chronicler to pick up a Bomber and to me it definitely seems worth it. You still have two screens for the Champs and beasts, and the loss of 4 Kriel Warriors should be made up for by the Bomber and Madrak's improved ranged output.
This all said, I have to admit I may want to swing around and start trying a faster list, akin to what I played when I started Madrak1, before I got a deal from a friend selling his old Trolls to double up on a few of my units where you run one of everything: Longriders, Fennblades, and Champs. You can squeeze all of that plus Eilish, a Bomber, and a Mauler into 75 points and it worked well enough before I started experimenting in other ways. I may go back to that if I find being too slow with the Kriel Warriors isn't as good against a wide variety of the field. In fact, if you're coming back to Trolls from MK2 when you possibly didn't own 2 units of Champs, Fenns, or Kriels, this kind of list would be a great place to start.
Conclusions
There are just so many ways to play Madrak1 and he is so incredibly powerful for Trolls as a faction that it's hard to see him coming out of list pairs for both power and fun reasons. While I think Band of Heroes is his best place, there is definitely a way to run him in Storm in the North or Power of Dhunia, though probably not Kriel Company (which is more a fault of the theme than of Madrak). The only worry I have is that he may be too good, and may stagnate our pairings a bit. That said, it is nice to always have as a kind of question/answer that can be slotted back into Troll list pairs as we go forward into MK3.
