Let's Chat: Mollog's Mob

[PJetski]

I'll be testing this Mollog deck right off the bat.

I have Spoils for Battle listed, but I'm going to swap in Ghoulish Pact - I think GP has better synergy with My Turn and it can help get you inspired.

Card synergies:

• Acrobatic, Change of Tactics, Cautious Commander, Cursed Artifact, Trusted Defender
• Centre of Attention, Horrific Stench
• Plant a Standard, Zealous Defender
• Ghoulish Pact, My Turn, Ready for Action
• Ready for Action + Faneway Crystal
• Longstrider and Get Thee Hence are just free scores in this deck. Extreme Flank should be an easy score with the Stalagsquig.

What do you think?

[Skyeline]

I personally prefer Master of War over Ploymaster if I'm not going to include both in a deck, but that's a personal choice nitpick. Overall I think your Objectives and Gambits are on point. Longstrider and Get Thee Hence are great for this warband.

I'm not as sold on Acrobatic however. Out of all your upgrades this feels like the one which is going to be the toughest to get  enough mileage out of. Knowing that Mollog has the potential to be a double charge machine who won't be 1 shotted and wants to stay in his opponents face, I find it unlikely that you'll often want to spend an activation going on guard and sitting with it, particularly since you'll be aiming to score Change of Tactics.

It feels like having Great Speed in there somewhere would be very beneficial to help take some of the sting out of Sudden Growth or to just give Mollog more freedom to pick the best position possible when going for the dunk on someone with that tasty 2 range.  

Blooming Spores might also be worth thinking about. You'll be increasing the odds of pushing Mollog into the terrifying 5 damage range by having two +1 damage cards in the deck and get a little extra flexibility to put that Great Strength onto another fighter if the situation calls for it. It might also increase your odds of closing out a turn 1 Massive Assault if you can bump him up to 4 damage before he inspires.

Edited January 24, 2019 by Skyeline

[PJetski]

Acrobatic seems like it would be useful on Mollog since I'm including Cautious Commander anyway, and it can also be put on the Batsquig to bring him up to 4 defense.

I'm going to test it with Acrobatic, but I'll definitely try swapping in Blooming Spores.

[Goblin-King]

So I had three games yesterday, all against Magore's.

Game 1 - Was charged by Magore and hit for 2 wounds. I used Shardgale to inspire. Missed Magore with Mollog's attack. Inspiration struck on doggo, while Spoils of Battle gave him Light Armor. He successfully charged my Mollog and pushed him into spikes. DEAD! F*** me! I concede!

Game 2 - This time I didn't use a hazard board! Mollog managed to get inspired and with very easy and controlled objectives, Mollog were quickly decked out with a whole lot of upgrades. He annihilated Magore and his buddies unopposed. Exact opposite game from the first one.

Game 3 - My opponent was able to learn from Game 2, and Mollog was largely ignored to prevent triggering his inspiration. Instead Magore Hidden Path'ed down to my squigs and proceeded to slaughter them for easy glory. Only Magore and Mollog were standing at the end of the game. I barely won with a single glory point. Important lesson: Don't lump your squigs together, even if it's in the furthest corner.  Also, NOT getting inspired is a very real problem.

I will never build this deck without Shardgale - the ability to make 4 wound enemies 1-shot'able in Mollogs uninspired form is extremely valuable. The squigs usually won't suffer much since most enemies do at least 2 damage anyways.

My strategy of packing a whole lot of defense and healing items payed of (except in that first game, but what the heck are you gonna do against such a series of unfortunate events?). Game 2 and 3 Mollog was immortal.

It seems to me the squigs aren't there for my own sake, but more as a balance thing so my opponent actually have something easy to kill. Personally I'd wish I could refrain from fielding them 😂

[PJetski]

Mirror of Spite on the 'shroom is pretty hilarious. Chainghast, most of the gitz, and Skeletons simply cant attack him.

[Anthony225]

11 hours ago, PJetski said:

Mirror of Spite on the 'shroom is pretty hilarious. Chainghast, most of the gitz, and Skeletons simply cant attack him.

Pretty sure both reactions are during the same "reaction window". so you'd have to choose one or the other reaction, not both.

[PJetski]

7 hours ago, Anthony225 said:

Pretty sure both reactions are during the same "reaction window". so you'd have to choose one or the other reaction, not both.

It seems like you are correct. I thought one of them said "After", but they are both "During". Very unfortunate

[NemoVonUtopia]

I bought Mollog to use in Age of Sigmar games and am wondering if it is possible to make a possible deck with only the cards that come with him. I am not looking compete in tournaments or anything just want to try out Shadespire whithout buying all the other sets or if I would be better off giving the neutral cards to someone who actually plays.

[themiro]

7 hours ago, NemoVonUtopia said:

I bought Mollog to use in Age of Sigmar games and am wondering if it is possible to make a possible deck with only the cards that come with him. I am not looking compete in tournaments or anything just want to try out Shadespire whithout buying all the other sets or if I would be better off giving the neutral cards to someone who actually plays.

Yes. I think they are one of the most self contained warbands ever released. They can be quite competitive even just on their own deck.

[paul7926]

11 hours ago, NemoVonUtopia said:

I bought Mollog to use in Age of Sigmar games and am wondering if it is possible to make a possible deck with only the cards that come with him. I am not looking compete in tournaments or anything just want to try out Shadespire whithout buying all the other sets or if I would be better off giving the neutral cards to someone who actually plays.

I've had a quick look and whilst there are other cards that you would want to include to be as competitive as possible I think you could easily construct a deck with what comes with the warband that would be fun to play.  I'd just run whatever you fancy and see how it plays out.

[Skyeline]

So having gotten three games in against Mollog's Mob as aggro Chosen Axes, I have to say it was the most decisive set of games I've ever played (For both players). In all three games they were effectively over by the first activation of turn 2.

The Takeaways:

• Chosen Axes vs. Mollog's Mob feels an awful lot more like a duel between two titans and some spectators who happened to be on the board (Okay that's a little rude to Tefk). The amount of focus both of us had on our leaders was a little nerve wracking.
   
• If your plan is to go full-bore aggro with Mollog, you might as well spend a turn or two drawing cards or simply moving around your other fighters (Start working on setting up that Extreme Flank). Sending him into range of multiple charges by your second activation is asking for him to get piled on and killed.
   
• My staple score immediately objectives that rely on killing something felt like frustrating draws when normally I'd be thrilled to see them. I have a feeling this is going to be a consistent annoyance for aggro decks who would otherwise be hoping for the chance to kill something turn 1.
   
• I hate you so much stalagsquig.

Game 1:
Won the board roll off and decided to test out deploying long boards against Mollog to try and limit the number of targets he can reach (really didn't want Tefk or Fjul to take a 1-shot). Stalagsquig was dropped on my front objective to hinder my attempts to get inspirations.

Going second, my opponent dropped an inspiration strikes on Mollog immediately and came flying into my side of the board to kill Maegrim on a charge by his second activation. I held Inspiration Strikes in hand until my last activation to inspire Fjul and charge Mollog, who up until this point had been on the receiving end of ineffectual whiffing from Vol. With 4 damage put into Mollog, he didn't draw into any defensive gambits or gears and I won the roll off for turn priority. Going first, Fjul was able to put down the troll which rendered the game a done deal as my opponent conceded.

Game 2:
Won the board roll off again and decided to deploy long yet again. This time around however when Mollog's first move finished my opponent opted to play Commanding Stride and get him within charge range of my entire team. Realizing that I had no answer to a charge in hand, the panic set in about now. I made some exceedingly poor decisions in attempting to protect Fjul due to completely forgetting about Mollog's 2 range.

By the end of turn 1 I was down Maegrim and Fjul, the latter of which ate a 4 damage swing due to Wind Up. Going into turn 2 with my opponent up 6 to 1 and Vol + Tefk uninspired the game was essentially over, but I decided to play it out anyways. With the help of Hidden Paths Tefk got into the backfield of my opponents board on an objective and killed Bat Squig. Regal Vision (where were you earlier!?) then got him inspired. He even took a Mollog club to the chin and kept standing due to Deathly Fortitude.

Going into turn 3 Tefk managed to make a play with a combination of a lethal hex, My Turn, and Ready For Action to kill Mollog thanks to Gloryseeker boosted damage. Unfortunately Tefk came off the ultimate high of killing the Nightvault's most terrifying fighter by dying to Spiteshroom packing Fueled by Fury + Potion of Rage to ensure that last 1 life was chipped off my last chosen axe.

Game 3:
Lost the board roll off this time, which coming off of last game put the fear in me. The 1-shot threat on Fjul was looming again given my opponent wouldn't need a 3-hex push to reach me. The game however ended up going much like game 1 despite the anxiety of wondering if a 1-shot was coming at any moment. With Regal Vision and The Earth Shakes in hand, an eventual countercharge from inspired Fjul combined with Ready For Action was enough to put Mollog down before Turn 1 was even over.

[PJetski]

7 wounds seems like a lot, but it's doable in 2 activations for most warbands, or sometimes just 1 with the right Ploy cards. Against warbands with big hitters (Magores, Steelhearts, Cursebreakers, inspired Chosen Axes) you generally want to be going 2nd in each round to ensure you don't get chumped by your opponent getting 2 activations back-to-back. Against warbands with weaker but more numerous fighters it could be the right call to go first and smash some gitz/skeletons for an early glory snowball.

The ideal Mollog round is something like:

Activation 1: Draw or Guard
Activation 2: Use ploys to push yourself into range with Commanding Stride/Centre of Attention/etc. then use an Attack action
Activation 3: Charge (scoring Change of Tactics!), brace for enemy riposte
Activation 4: Charge

This is why I think Acrobatic is very good in this deck since I find myself spending the early activations in each round on Guard, and using ploys like Cautious Commander.

 

Edited January 30, 2019 by PJetski

[Grotruk]

Hey guys !

What do you think of this ? There are so many other cards i would like to play (potion of rage, rebound, soultrap, duel of wits, determined effort....)

 

[PJetski]

I would cut Bag of Tricks for Potion of Rage. You can also swap Fired Up for Shining Example and give yourself another Restricted slot.

[Malakree]

On 1/24/2019 at 11:47 PM, Skyeline said:

Longstrider and Get Thee Hence are great for this warband.

On 1/24/2019 at 1:54 PM, PJetski said:

Longstrider and Get Thee Hence are just free scores in this deck.

Actually if you read through the rules Knockback only applies on successful attacks, so you have to actually hit and deal damage to get the knockback. Since Mollog has a huge damage on his club this means a lot of the time you're able to score it you just kill your opponent instead and don't. So yeah it's actually terrible for Mollog....

Personal takeaways.

• Mollogs attack dice are terrible. 
• Inspiring Mollog is a nightmare, if you do manage to get him inspired he's now in one shot range for every agro warband.
• Not being able to get cleave on him is horrible, he really needs it.
• His defence dice are rubbish which means against the strong agro warbands he's often dying in 2 attacks.
• Mollogs objectives are bad, Is It Asleep? is the only strong one and he 3 other "ok" ones.
• He has 2 upgrades which matter. The rest are terrible.
• Only 3 ploys which are ok, even then they aren't mindblowing.

Trying to build a deck with him I found that it's essentially 30+ neutral cards, you are crippled by having terrible attack dice on Mollog himself and a bad inspire condition. Honestly at this point I'm struggling to see why you would run him instead of Stormsire's, Magore's or Farstrider's depending on what you're doing.

[Anthony225]

1 hour ago, Malakree said:

Actually if you read through the rules Knockback only applies on successful attacks, so you have to actually hit and deal damage to get the knockback. Since Mollog has a huge damage on his club this means a lot of the time you're able to score it you just kill your opponent instead and don't. So yeah it's actually terrible for Mollog....

Personal takeaways.

• Mollogs attack dice are terrible. 
• Inspiring Mollog is a nightmare, if you do manage to get him inspired he's now in one shot range for every agro warband.
• Not being able to get cleave on him is horrible, he really needs it.
• His defence dice are rubbish which means against the strong agro warbands he's often dying in 2 attacks.
• Mollogs objectives are bad, Is It Asleep? is the only strong one and he 3 other "ok" ones.
• He has 2 upgrades which matter. The rest are terrible.
• Only 3 ploys which are ok, even then they aren't mindblowing.

Trying to build a deck with him I found that it's essentially 30+ neutral cards, you are crippled by having terrible attack dice on Mollog himself and a bad inspire condition. Honestly at this point I'm struggling to see why you would run him instead of Stormsire's, Magore's or Farstrider's depending on what you're doing.

I plan to pay him and I agree his inspire condition is dangerous for him. And you don't "really" care all that much about the other 3 members inspiring. That's why I'll be taking furious inspiration and maybe regal vision. Being able to inspire right away will be a huge boon for Mollog.

I also agree that Get The Hence isn't as good as I initially thought. 

My plan is to, hopefully inspired, charge in, Kill something, and then either stick around if it's safe or bounce out of range by ploys such as illusory fighter and commanding stride.

upgrades such as deathly fortitude and great fortitude will help keep him alive. And my secret weapon will be cursed artifact as he has enough wounds that the benefit of +1 defends outways the -1 wound. Vampiric weapon can also help you stick around even if you kill 1-2 fighters. Healing potion can help also by getting back avj at least 1 health, maybe 2. 

Luis attack dice are not fantastic, but you do have foul temper which is a copy of awakened weapon and AW is restricted for a reason. I also plan to take potion of rage to make at least one attack "almost" a guarantee. The upgrade that negates 1 support from your opponent also helps with attacking and defending if there are multiple enemies.

I feel like he will be a fun and competitive warband. 

[Skyeline]

14 hours ago, Malakree said:

Actually if you read through the rules Knockback only applies on successful attacks, so you have to actually hit and deal damage to get the knockback. Since Mollog has a huge damage on his club this means a lot of the time you're able to score it you just kill your opponent instead and don't. So yeah it's actually terrible for Mollog....

Good catch and thank you for pointing that out. That's an unfortunate revelation.

As far as your takeaways go, I'm not in much disagreement. It does feel like the team needs to lean on a combination of Inspiration Strikes + Regal Vision + As many accuracy boosting cards as you can reasonably get in a post-BAR world (Fueled by Fury, Potion of Rage, Foul Temper, Brutal Savagery, etc.).

I'm beginning to wonder if a deck can be built for this warband that revolves around a more hit and run play style to capitalize on Mollog's unique movement options. Fitting in cards like Illusory Fighter, Invisible Walls, etc. to try and shut down counter charge opportunities. The objective deck is going to be the real chore to build with a playstyle like this in mind, since the Mollog specific objectives are really lacking. I'll have to mess around with it to see if this is more than a nonstarter.

[Malakree]

36 minutes ago, Skyeline said:

Good catch and thank you for pointing that out. That's an unfortunate revelation.

As far as your takeaways go, I'm not in much disagreement. It does feel like the team needs to lean on a combination of Inspiration Strikes + Regal Vision + As many accuracy boosting cards as you can reasonably get in a post-BAR world (Fueled by Fury, Potion of Rage, Foul Temper, Brutal Savagery, etc.).

I'm beginning to wonder if a deck can be built for this warband that revolves around a more hit and run play style to capitalize on Mollog's unique movement options. Fitting in cards like Illusory Fighter, Invisible Walls, etc. to try and shut down counter charge opportunities. The objective deck is going to be the real chore to build with a playstyle like this in mind, since the Mollog specific objectives are really lacking. I'll have to mess around with it to see if this is more than a nonstarter.

I played him on sat at a very casual tournament which gave some useful game experience, especially just how bad Mollog is at hitting things. I've managed to come up with a possible deck but it's really janky and I'm going to see if I can't find another tournament near me next weekend to test whether it works or not. 

The only other deck I can think of with him would be a pure agro deck which can make any of the fighters lethal. Not sure it would be better than Magore's though.

 

Edited February 3, 2019 by Malakree

[Anthony225]

7 hours ago, Malakree said:

I played him on sat at a very casual tournament which gave some useful game experience, especially just how bad Mollog is at hitting things. I've managed to come up with a possible deck but it's really janky and I'm going to see if I can't find another tournament near me next weekend to test whether it works or not. 

The only other deck I can think of with him would be a pure agro deck which can make any of the fighters lethal. Not sure it would be better than Magore's though.

 

Looking over the deck, why so many damage upgrades? I count 4 damage upgrades?

And 4-5 accuracy buff in ploys and upgrades? And even another extra damage ploy?

seems excessive .

i think Mollog needs defensive cards as much or moreso than damage buffs.

Before the BAR list aggro Skaven were doing very well and I'm pretty sure all they had was awakened weapon as an accuracy upgrade. And Skritch was usedas the sole fighter in those deck builds and he wrecked house. 

[Malakree]

1 hour ago, Anthony225 said:

Looking over the deck, why so many damage upgrades? I count 4 damage upgrades?

And 4-5 accuracy buff in ploys and upgrades? And even another extra damage ploy?

seems excessive .

i think Mollog needs defensive cards as much or moreso than damage buffs.

Before the BAR list aggro Skaven were doing very well and I'm pretty sure all they had was awakened weapon as an accuracy upgrade. And Skritch was usedas the sole fighter in those deck builds and he wrecked house. 

The idea of the deck is to make ALL of the fighters lethal, rather than just trying to keep mollog alive. If you compare his attack profiles to the 3 squigs they are actually all really similar.

Stalagsquig has 2 hammers when inspired, spiteshroom is two swords against all adjacent fighters. 

The damage and dice upgrades then make you less reliant on mollog to trigger your things like demolished. Skritch get cleave on a crit and has better base stats than mollog.

Additionally skritch wasn't playing against sudden growth/deathly fortitude. With that in mind against cursebreakers you need to be able to blow them up and potentially hit 8 damage in a single swing. Also if you look at the objectives I've chosen you should be able to see why I've gone for such a huge amount of dice/damage upgrades.

It doesn't matter how survivable you make mollog if he's not enough of a threat to stop your opponent ignoring him while they farm your squigs for easy glory so they can upgrade beyond mollog ability to put kills through.

Throw him forward and threaten to blow even gurzag up in a single shot while uninspired. If they kill him use those same upgrades/ploys make the rest of your now inspired warband do the same.

[Anthony225]

59 minutes ago, Malakree said:

The idea of the deck is to make ALL of the fighters lethal, rather than just trying to keep mollog alive. If you compare his attack profiles to the 3 squigs they are actually all really similar.

Stalagsquig has 2 hammers when inspired, spiteshroom is two swords against all adjacent fighters. 

The damage and dice upgrades then make you less reliant on mollog to trigger your things like demolished. Skritch get cleave on a crit and has better base stats than mollog.

Additionally skritch wasn't playing against sudden growth/deathly fortitude. With that in mind against cursebreakers you need to be able to blow them up and potentially hit 8 damage in a single swing. Also if you look at the objectives I've chosen you should be able to see why I've gone for such a huge amount of dice/damage upgrades.

It doesn't matter how survivable you make mollog if he's not enough of a threat to stop your opponent ignoring him while they farm your squigs for easy glory so they can upgrade beyond mollog ability to put kills through.

Throw him forward and threaten to blow even gurzag up in a single shot while uninspired. If they kill him use those same upgrades/ploys make the rest of your now inspired warband do the same.

I suppose all that does make sense. Please write up something if it does work out. Or even if it doesn't. 

I saw a 1/2 placed Fyreslayers build on Underworldsdb (pre BAR list) which revolved around making Fjul an unkillable beast. The cards I really liked were Inspiration Strikes, Duel of Wits and Spoils of Battle. And Ploy Master along with Escalation because the deck cycled through cards quickly enough to score those objectives easily. I plan to build a similar deck which tries to explode out of the gate and then bounce Mollog back out of danger. 

I will try Foul Temper and maybe Helpful Whispers as accuracy buffs. Great Strength and maybe another +1 damage ploy or upgrade. Cursed Artefact, Deathly Fortitude, Great Fortitude, Horrific Stench and Vampiric Weapon will help with defense. 

The rest of the cards will be for movement/push options. 

I have to admit though, the very idea of Mollog dying and then dumping upgrades onto say the batsquig with the "potential" to one shot even Gurzag seems incredibly entertaining. 

[PJetski]

After a weekend full of lengthy play sessions and a 16 player tournament, I think that Aggro Mollog is too unreliable to be viable.

I'm going to start experimenting with a Control/Defensive Mollog playstyle instead.

Edited February 4, 2019 by PJetski

[Intrinsic]

I played a bunch of games with this warband this afternoon, trying 3 decks I built centered around Mollog and they're all garbage. Mollog is a beatstick vs the uninitiated but against a savvy opponent, you're basically a free win. Will keep plugging away but right now pretty disheartened. And I had a lot of fun painting Mollog, makes it even worse. 

[Grotruk]

https://steelcityunderworlds.com/2019/02/04/a-snapshot-of-the-meta-post-warhammer-world-grand-clash/

There is still hope according this article...pretty interesting...

[Malakree]

17 minutes ago, Grotruk said:

https://steelcityunderworlds.com/2019/02/04/a-snapshot-of-the-meta-post-warhammer-world-grand-clash/

There is still hope according this article...pretty interesting...

His guess on the farstriders at least is wrong. I smashed the thorns player I faced despite it being the first time I'd ever played them and I dropped my round to the finalist magores. Although I suspect that's more because I'm so far outside of his list expectations.

Personally I see cursebreakers as easily the strongest warband at the moment. The problem for mollog is they ****** him so hard.

The best example of this is that ammis is basically just a better version of mollog at the moment due to sudden growth and deathly fortitude. Mollogs 4 damage while inspired is no better than 3 damage when everyone is running at 7/8 health. Additionally they both eclipse the impact of his own high starting health total.

Worst of all is that mollog himself can't really use them because having 0 move cripples his trait.

Honestly I expect that he will be largely unplayable until the bar list is updated and the S2 extra box is released. Like the leader box it can be used to buff up the weaker factions while essentially bypassing thorns/cursebreakers.