March to the middle, and punch each other in the face

Last night I played in an epic battle against Lance. This was, once again, a ridiculously fun game. Here's the line up:

Lance: eMorghoul (freshly acquired from Comic-con), Gladiator, Cannoneer, Rhinodon, Cyclops Savage, Drake, Krea, Paingivers (6), Bonegrinders (6), Gobbers, Feralgeist Me: Madrak, Champs, Krielstone Bearers (6), Stone Scribe, Blitzer, 2 Imaplers, Axer, Totem Hunter, Fell Caller, Gobbers, Alten Ashley

Basically, in the words of Podthrall Shane recently, we met in the middle, and punched each other in the face until it was done. It was a serious scrum in the middle of the table. I have to admit that I very much enjoyed the brutality of it. Here are some highlights:

• The Totem Hunter charges the Drake, kills it (gaining a totem), the Feralgeist jumps into the Drake, and the Totem Hunter uses his remaining buckler attack to kill the undead Drake (gaining a second totem).
  
• Impalers once again bend the rules of probability and score 2 out of 2 crit slam hits, keeping the Gladiator out of action the whole game.
  
• The Rhinodon pasted the Blitzer in a single activation, with fury to spare, creating an unfortunate vessel for the Feralgeist.
  
• eMorghoul charges the front line of champs, teleports behind them, feats (catching half my army), and manages to survive the counter-attack after that. His feat is nasty nasty nasty!
  
• A solid NQ Challenge plan was foiled by a sub-par initial dice roll on the Axer's attempt to slam eMorghoul. In hindsight, I should have slammed one of my own guys into eMorghoul rather than slamming him directly. If the slam had succeeded (needed 13 on 4 dice to hit), the Totem Hunter would have been gaining a 3rd (and very impressive) totem.
  

In the end, eMorghoul made a valiant assassination run on Madrak, but he needed just a tiny bit more oomph to make it. After using 1 fury to shutdown transfers and tough, he had 2 remaining fury to make 3 attacks with, needing 6's to hit and doing an average of 12 damage per hit. True to statistics, he hit 2 out of 3, did 12 damage on the first hit, and Madrak had the scroll to ignore the second hit. We called the game at that point as it had become academic.

Playing Trolls again after so long was a lot of fun. Remembering the fury mechanic was not as hard as I expected, probably from playing against Skorne so much. Madrak with Champs and Krielstones is always entertaining too, watching my opponent try to sort out how to actually hit and kill them.