Buds, Blooms, And Thorns Review Of Robotech: Force Of Arms By SolarFlare Games

Buds, Blooms, and Thorns Review of Robotech: Force of Arms by SolarFlare Games
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Vitals:
Title: Robotech: Force of Arms
Designed by: Dave Killingsworth
Publisher: SolarFlare Games
MSRP: $20
2p | 20-40 min | 8+

Introduction:

Take on the role of either the brave Robotech Defense Forces (RDF) or the warrior Zentraedi.

You and your opponent maneuver your warships and deploy your forces endeavoring to gain supremacy. With fearless heroes and commands, you can turn the tide of the battle in your favor.

Will you defend the Earth as the valiant RDF? Or will you attempt to destroy the Earth, capture the SDF-1, and recover the secrets of Protoculture as the giant Zentraedi?

Objective:
Players are trying to destroy their opponent's ships while also successfully defending their own ships in this sector of space. Players take turns tactically moving ships around. Strategically placing their attack and defense fighter cards to defend their own ships and destroy those of their enemy and using their hero and command cards to win the day. The player with the most combined points in defended and successfully destroyed ships wins.

Winning:
Once the players have finished the Tactical, Token, and Command/Hero phases they tally up the victory points for their Fleet Ships they were able to successfully defend. They then add the victory points for the enemy ships they were able to successfully destroy. The player with the most points wins!

—description from the publisher

Blooms:
Blooms are the game's highlights and features.  Elements that are exceptional.

• Interesting use of a mechanic that I first encountered in Archmage: Origins, by the same designer.  This game does it better.
• If you like bluffing and deduction, this game has it in spades, all without any actual luck.
• Interesting style of area control where units placed around the edges of the grid affect the power over multiple spaces in the grid.

Buds:
Buds are interesting parts of the game I would like to explore more. 

• I've found that the more you play this, especially against the same player, the more you start to notice patterns.  
• There's a very strong aspect of deduction and bluffing, so you really have to pay attention if you want to feel any sense of control.
• If you like the Robotech theme, you'll enjoy the characters and ships.

Thorns:
Thorns are a game's shortcomings and any issues I feel are noteworthy.

• There are two main phases to the game with some intermediate steps, too.  This can be a bit fiddly.
• Your first few plays will feel like you're just placing cards without having any strategy.  It takes several plays, preferably against the same player(s) before you start to develop a sense of strategy.
• The component quality and artwork is acceptable, but nothing exceptional.
• A few rules are confusing when you read through them, but start to make sense after you play.

Final Thoughts:

I have no experience with Robotech, so the theme wasn't a draw for me, but I still found the theme of the game understandable.  In the past I played Archmage: Origins, by the same designer and publisher, which used similar mechanics.  Robotech: Force of Arms uses those mechanics in a much more refined way.  Archmage: Origins felt chaotic and random, but Robotech: Force of Arms feels more deliberate and secretive.  There's just enough information for you to make deductive decisions and manipulate the board to (hopefully) your benefit.  It feels very much like a battle of wits.  There is a bit of a steep learning curve though, not because the game itself is very difficult, but because the effects of your choices and how to use the available information to deduce what your opponent is trying to do only becomes apparent as you gain more experience with the game.  This game won't appeal to everyone, especially if you don't like deduction and bluffing in such a confrontational way.  However, if you do like that type of head-to-head jockeying for position and mental manipulation, this may be a game you enjoy.  It plays fast and is fairly easy once you have a few plays to gain experience with the flow.  And if you're a fan of Robotech, this is a game you'll be happy to add to your collection.

Buds, Blooms, and Thorns Rating:

Bud!  This game definitely has some
great moments.  It's good for several plays
and should appeal to most gamers, especially
if you enjoy other games like this.

Pictures:

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GJJ Games Reviews are independent, unpaid reviews of games I, George Jaros, have played with my family and friends.  Some of these games I own, some are owned by friends, some are borrowed, and some were provided by a publisher or designer for my honest feedback and evaluation.  I make every attempt to be both honest and constructively critical in my reviews, and they are all my opinions.  There are four types of reviews on GJJ Games: Full Reviews feature critical reviews based on a rubric and games receive a rating from 0 to 100.  Quick Reviews and Kickstarter Previews are either shorter reviews of published games or detailed preview reviews of crowdfunding games that will receive a rating from 0 to 10 based on my impressions of the game.  Buds, Blooms,and Thorns reviews are shorter reviews of either published or upcoming games that highlight three aspects of a game: Buds are parts of a game I look forward to exploring more, Blooms are outstanding features of a game, and Thorns are shortcomings of a game.  Each BBT review game will receive an overall rating of Thorn, Bud, or Bloom.

CX 2692, Moon Patrol!

This episode is all about the Irem arcade game Moon Patrol, ported by Atari via GCC. Thanks for your patience regarding the release of this episode. I had a bit of an emotional setback in January and I'm trying to fight my way out of it. M.A.D. by US Games will be the next game I'm covering, so if you have any feedback for the game please send it to me at 2600gamebygame@gmail.com by end of day 23 February. Thank you for listening!

Moon Patrol on Random Terrain
Moon Patrol on KLOV
Moon Patrol on Atari Protos
The Zorfon Mystery by Rob Wanenchak
Mark Ackerman's web site
Atari Age Moon Patrol title screen glitch
Get Matt's Repro Freeway patch on eBay

Testing Esoteric Lists: Gunny & Madrak2

Last night I was able to get an astounding two games in and as I was heading to my FLGS I decided I didn't want to just run the popular pairing of Madrak1 and Borka2, mainly because I've played a ton of Madrak1 already and while Borka2 is fairly new for me I have had a few rounds with him already.  I just wanted to try some lists that were of my own design that I thought were interesting and possibly strong.

So in I went with a "pairing" to put down into whoever I was playing against: Gunnbjorn and Madrak2.

I'll tackle each list and the match up in turn.

Gunny 

Trollblood - Gunny Goes North

Theme: Storm of the North
2 / 2 Free Cards     75 / 75 Army

Captain Gunnbjorn - WB: +28
-    Trollkin Runebearer - PC: 0
-    Dozer & Smigg - PC: 18 (Battlegroup Points Used: 18)
-    Dire Troll Bomber - PC: 19 (Battlegroup Points Used: 10)
-    Dire Troll Mauler - PC: 15

Hearthgut Hooch Hauler - PC: 18

Bog Trog Mist Speaker - PC: 4
Valka Curseborn, Chieftain of the North - PC: 0

Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9
-    Stone Scribe Elder - PC: 3
Northkin Raiders - Leader & 9 Grunts: 15
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew - Leader & 1 Grunt: 2

I was really excited about this list since it seems like it can clear a lot of infantry off the board or shoot a heavy off the table.  I've been dying to find a way to make the module of Hauler + Raiders work, and I feel giving them Snipe via Gunny or Grim2 is the way to really make them shine.

I put this pair up vs. my friend Brian who was coming back to playing Khador after 8 months of playing Circle and a lot of other games.  He had Butcher3 with Jacks Galore and a Zerkova 2 list with lots of Greylords and a smattering of Doom Reavers.  I really wanted to try Gunny and on discussion of the matchup it was clear that Zerkova 2 would get shot down pretty hard on the approach before she could really do any damage, plus most of my army is going to be Cold Immune, meaning he had to drop Butcher.  Madrak is probably the better Butcher3 drop, but I wanted to see how Gunny would match up.

Brian's list from memory was roughly:

Butcher 3
-Wardog
-Berserker
-Berserker
-Ruin
-Grolar

Forgeseer
-Behemoth

Forgeseer

Eliminators
Eliminators
Mechanics 

Brian won the roll off and elected to go first.  Scenario was Outlast.

After running his army into position up the field on turn 1, I replied by feating early to avoid the Behemoth clearing out swathes of my Raiders and running to be just out of Brian's threat ranges.

Thanks to Dozer's animus I was able to get lucky drifts/boosts onto one member of each unit of Eliminators and take their gang bonus off the table.  Still I was being a bit too timid by staying out of his threat ranges and I had blocked up my Hooch Hauler behind my Raiders making the order of activation awkward on this and the following turns.

On Brian's second turn he simply positions to threaten the entire zone and moves Butcher on to the central flag on his side. He moves Ruin into some rough ground for cover and positions both Argus centrally to threaten as well. 

On my second turn I decide that Ruin and both of the Argus must die to take away relentless charge from Butcher so I can use Rockwall to try and control him plus the drags.

 

I'm able to kill both Ruin and the Argus, but it takes literally everything my army has to do it with. I made a mistake and failed to contest Brian's flag and we both go up a point.  I use a Rockwall to prevent Butcher from being able to charge/move+impending doom any of my heavies in, so Brian elects to keep him on the flag for the turn and merely runs or sends in what Jacks he can to jam me up.  He does clear one zone and manages to score it however. Still, far too much of his force is out of threat ranges and his ranged attacks don't do too much work on the Raiders. 

At this point we start doing trades, and I'm able to tie the score on CP's, but I make a mistake with Gunny and move him too far forward to where he is in danger of the Butcher and I forgot to cast my Rockwall. I do end up decently ahead on Attrition, though Butcher can swing things back around had Brian not gone for an assassination. 

Sadly for Brian his dice manage to fail him completely and Butcher is left engaged with a Bomber and Gunny in melee and concedes based on the fact that Butcher has zero camp and will likely get splattered. 

In hindsight I should have lost this game on two fronts: First the assassination should have worked as a punish for my mistake, and second if Brian was simply more aggressive just running literally every Jack at my list, I don't think I'm able to effectively trade pieces and take what is necessary before the Butcher can come in and remove all threats to himself and then just seal the game from there. I'm sure if this wasn't his first game with Khador in 8 months I'd have been splattered pretty handily.

While I think the list seemed great on paper, it doesn't bring a lot of bodies to the game. Perhaps my feelings are colored by the matchup being bad overall and with better placement of the Raiders and Hauler I would have more game against other lists on the same scenario, but this will require testing and a skeptical eye to see how things are.

Madrak2
 
Trollblood - Madrak2 Toughallo

Theme: Band of Heroes
3 / 3 Free Cards     74 / 75 Army

Madrak Ironhide, World Ender - WB: +28
-    Trollkin Runebearer - PC: 0
-    Dire Troll Mauler - PC: 15 (Battlegroup Points Used: 15)
-    Dire Troll Bomber - PC: 19 (Battlegroup Points Used: 13)

Fell Caller Hero - PC: 0
Fell Caller Hero - PC: 0
Eilish Garrity, the Occultist - PC: 5

Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9
-    Stone Scribe Elder - PC: 3
Trollkin Long Riders - Leader & 4 Grunts: 20
Trollkin Long Riders - Leader & 4 Grunts: 20
Kriel Warriors - Leader & 9 Grunts: 11

I was/am really excited about this Madrak2 list. My initial thoughts with the caster is to pretend I'm a MK2 Cryx player and jam in 2x Fennblades + 2x Kriel Warriors + solos and run screaming at my opponent.

Then I got to thinking about how while other warlocks can deliver units like the Long Riders, a unit I absolutely adore, no one really makes them hit any harder and while they're very strong, they're not going to just blow up a heavy without any buffs.  Plus the problem with a 40+ dude infantry swarm with Madrak2 is it lacks basically any relevant guns and it's not very hard for enemy shooting to continually clear off my infantry. Once the Fennblades have been hit, the Kriel Warriors will get out paced and likely shot up pretty hard.  This would turn things into a game of "Who won to go first".

With the Long Riders I should still be able to chew through enemy models and also withstand enough shooting to do serious damage once the lines meet.  Initially the list had two units of Kriel Warriors to back up the Long Riders, but I decided the list was susceptible to control and I threw Ellish in. With the extra points I upgraded my Earthborn to a Bomber to get some ranged presence which I really found to be helpful. 

I played this list into Sean, someone who I've met but haven't played against.  He dropped Skarre1 Dark Host into me:

Skarre1
-Scarlock
-Inflictor
-Stalker
-Stalker

Wraith Engine

Bane Riders
Bane Knights
Min Bane Warriors + CA

Darragh
Necrotech
Tartarus

Scenario was Standoff and Sean won the roll to go first.

This game ended up being a bit of a back and forth with some key positioning elements due to equivalent threat ranges on our Cav and my spacing models out properly to avoid a Stalker being able to kill multiple Long Riders without issue.

I won the game in the end, but part of that could have been due to the fact that Sean had deployed Darragh with the infantry units on the flank opposite the Bane Riders, so we shared a threat range rather than him having an advantage.  He also apparently didn't know that Long Riders could slam models, and so I was able to eliminate all of his Bane Riders in exchange for sacrificing only one of my Long Riders.  It should be noted that Blood Fury'd Bull Rush slams, when knocking the slam target into another model or terrain is very strong.   Still Sean was very careful to only feed me feated on Bane Knights for my feat turn, and spaced appropriately with his other units in reserve to prevent me from getting too far ahead on attrition. I suspect if we played again this game would be much tougher and far more favored to the player who wins the roll to go first based on how each of our lists were designed.

I know I could play this list in Storm of the North to get extra speed on my units, but I think having Band of Heroes for the extra 2" and Takedown/RFP is absolutely crucial in the meta ATM.  Right now Trolls are balanced in that we can either speed up our Long Riders or we can buff their damage, but we can't do both. I do think the unit has a lot of untapped potential, and since I own two units of them now, I want to experiment a lot with them.

Conclusions

After both games I am more optimistic about Madrak2's list than I am about Gunny.  I am not sure how I feel about leading with my Cav up front, but I do know that making Long Riders weapon masters makes it so that they can easily kill any heavy on the charge with the usual amount that can get into one via positioning rather than not.  They also are fairly well positioned to be able to handle infantry due to Bull Rush.

As for Gunny, I think he just needs more testing. It may well be that what I have is sufficient, but man does it ever feel like having just more units to be able to throw into zones is the way to go.  Melee also just feels much stronger than guns at being able to do what is necessary: Jam up and piece trade, so as to allow Trolls the ability to play the Attrition game we're supposed to be very good at.  Guns still have a lot of value, but it's more about being able to snipe out a key model in a zone or scalpel out an important support solo or CA/WA/etc.

Still, I really want to find a way to make the Hauler + Raider package work well, it just seems like it should be so good on paper. I believe Grim2 is the next place to look with them, but I'm having trouble rounding out a SotN list that I like that includes that module.

Stars, Ships And Bases!

What's going on everyone!?

Today for the #2019gameaday challenge my lovely wife and I played a game of Star Realms before bed.

It was a nice change up to all the digital versions I've been playing. There's nothing like actually interacting with the person across from you.

Unfortunately for me, Sam kicked my butt as usual, lol. But it's still fun and always will be. It seems every time I get that PERFECT hand that would give me the win she kills me!

As always, thank you for reading and don't forget to stop and smell the meeples! :)

-Tim

A10 Cruiser Tanks For The Desert

I have been really slack this year when it comes to fresh gaming output. I had the big burst of Italian Wars at the start of the year which burnt me out a little, so with this year's Analogue Hobbies Winter Paint Challenge about to start I needed to get back in the saddle, warm up the Pro Arte Sable and start to splash the Vallejo again.

This year I have decided to have a tank theme and try and crack through the huge backlog of 28mm Early War desert vehicles I have lying around in the to do box (I say box I mean small garage). First thing was to get a bit of pre season training in with a couple of A10 Tanks I needed for our next Op Compass Campaign Game.

The vehicles are from Warlord Games and will join another 3 A10s that I already own. The vehicles are painted in the early war Caunter Scheme as most of my vehicles are, I've gone for a very pale blue grey for my third colour on these. I have given up debating Caunter Colours and stick to my own interpretation, I have vehicles in the official colours (the earliest) and then others with various shades representing my interpretation of the colour change / fade for the third colour.

There is also a (shock, horror !) conversion on one of the vehicles, it sounds big and clever but all I have done is taken a 3" CS barrel from a Rubicon Models Crusader it (cheers Steve 👍) and replaced the two pounder barrel on the original model to get a Close Support version, which is required for the game mentioned above.

It's nice to get a couple of new vehicles finished and hopefully this will get me in the mood for the challenge. After all looking at the pic below I have 11 Honeys, 4 A13s, 7 Crusaders, a Matilda, 5 Panzer III, 2 Panzer IV, an 8 rad, 3 Sdkfz 222, a Panzer II, 3 Mark VI Light Tanks, 3 Italian M13/40 tanks and 6 M11/39 tanks to be going on with.

The plan past year during the Challenge was to complete a small unit of 6 Cavalry each week to keep me driving forward, it worked a treat. This year I plan a minimum of 3 vehicles each week, so there are more than enough in these boxes to keep me going.

I only started playing around with weathering of vehicles a year or so ago so I'm quite new to it, there are some washes, some chipping and a bit of streaking on these, I don't want to go too far with it (some models are all weathering and no paint) but I'm happy with my progress.

The vehicles are due in action straight away so will have the opportunity to perform dreadfully (as all new units must) pretty soon.

So the wing table will be mostly empty for the next couple of weeks whilst I get this lot cleaned up, washed, dried, built and primed ready for the start of the challenge on the 21st December. See you at the start line.

Bimonthly Progress Report For My Twitch Channel, FuzzyJCats, Dec 25 Through March 1

Twitch Channel FuzzyJCats

This is a much overdue monthly report! I've also decided to make it easier to remember by writing the report on the first day of the month, so progress will be discussed up through today, March 1.

Also, as I'm only streaming 2 times/week, I've decided to make these bimonthly progress reports as not much change occurs in only 8 streams.

Since Christmas, I have improved in terms of being able to multi-task without any preparation almost as smoothly as when I'm fully prepared, that is being in good health and having exercised before streaming! I recall when I first started streaming, I was flustered and struggled whenever anything goes awry, and my resilience in streaming has improved over the months of practice.

Therefore, I can stream more spontaneously, and as a result, I streamed after work yesterday, when I tend to be completely brain dead, and it wasn't a bad performance!

I felt that by streaming after work and having my days off to do whatever I need or want to do, it will improve my lifestyle. The issue with work is that I dread having to get up and being tied to a schedule as well as paperwork. But if I have streaming to look forward to, it would make me look just a little bit forward to work, rather than having that sinking feeling.

It's more ideal to be able to live in the moment and enjoy the day off before work, but that's easier said than done. Instead, I think about how I have to get up and be rushed to go to work, which gives me a sense of dread. I'm the type of person who likes to do chores and responsibilities in a relaxed manner (again, something that I have to work on).

While getting to the ideal state of being able to live in the moment, and not being so non-plussed about being rushed to a schedule, I think streaming after work can help with not feeling as much dread, since again, it will be something that I look forward to.

I believe I have gotten over my issues with viewer numbers. Tired of having the post-it blocking my viewer numbers on screen, as it blocks the game, I decided to take off the post-it. The fact that I don't even notice the red viewer numbers flashing means that I'm immune to feeling one way or the other by these numbers!

However, there are times when I feel a little demoralized when I see that my Wed viewer counts aren't as high as my Sun numbers, and noticing that my average concurrent viewers over the months haven't really increased, but remained stable at around 10.

Even so, I believe that not caring about the viewer numbers while live shows progress and also helps with gameplay as I can see the more of the game.

The other thing that came up as an improvement is that in the past, I streamed because it forced me to exercise - but now I no longer need to exercise before streaming. Furthermore, before I came down with current bronchitis, there were quite a few days when I exercised when I didn't have to stream! Now that I no longer need streaming to force me to exercise, the only reason for me to stream is if and only if I find it fun!

I believe I was burned out at one point and decided to stop Twitch completely since I got deeply involved in a niche Japanese RPG game, Atelier Sophie. During that time, I was thinking, wouldn't it be nice if I can spend more time playing video games with complete focus and immersion on my days off than having to stream!

However, I then felt guilt that if I stopped streaming altogether, it'll be unfair to my viewers who subscribed to me - they're paying monthly fees to watch me - and I feel that I need to give them their money's worth.

Whenever I have to do something out of duty and responsibility, it tends to be a wet blanket. I don't know what changed and made me find streaming a joy again - perhaps it was taking off a week due to getting chest cold - because streaming the past 2 days in a row was a joy!

In other words, anytime I feel that streaming is a burden and an obligation, that will be a sign to me to take some time off - hopefully I can stream a couple of more times just to give the community a heads up that I'm going to take a break. 

When I was caring about viewer numbers, however, I joined stream teams and found out that they tend to have extreme favoritism, where members who may not support but are friends reap all the viewer numbers. I've noticed quite a few members who support the leaders of these stream teams through buying and gifting subs, bits, and donations, yet had low concurrent viewers. On the flip side, those who are friends (despite not supporting at all) had very large numbers, despite the quality of streams between the two groups being more or less the same.

As a result, I stopped making these stream teams my main team. Fortunately, I'm not going to fall for these stream teams anymore since I'm more or less able to not care about my viewer numbers as evidenced by no longer needing post-it to block these numbers during broadcast.

I still need to work on habits such as making a cluck sound at times when I complete a thought, and again decreasing filler words. Making sure my eyes go back and forth from game to chat has not come naturally by any means. There're still quite a few times when I get so enthralled in the game that I forget to look at chat, or I get too involved in chat, that gameplay comes to a grinding halt.

Progress made:

• Being able to change my schedule after work to improve quality of life - I can multi-task almost as well even if I'm not in perfect condition thanks to months of streaming practice.
• Streaming is no longer a "crutch" to force myself to exercise as I no longer need to exercise before streaming, AND I was exercising on days when I wasn't streaming.
• Therefore, only reasons for streaming are for fun and obligation to paid subscribers.
• Recognizing if I feel burnout, taking time off is a must!
• No longer caring about seeing viewer numbers while streaming, no longer needing to block off screen with post-its, so gaming is easier and more pleasant with greater visiblity.
• Recognizing stream teams to gain followers don't work - no longer buying into stream teams that promise increased viewer numbers, but end up showing extreme favoritism.

Improvements to be made:

• The usual being able to chat and gameplay at same time (this is not habit yet).
• Decreasing filler words and vocal "tics".
• Continuing to not care at all about numbers.

The How of Happiness Review

Coming Back To Warmachine

Things have been quiet on here due to life in general and also because I had been playing a lot of Guild Ball instead of Warmachine.  What's going on right now is that I've started to really miss playing Warmachine and am going to start up again – though I'm going to try and keep playing both games fairly regularly.

It's only been a few months since I last posted about playing Guild Ball, so what happened?  

Besides feeling the Guild Ball itch there were a few developments that changed things up for me that made Guild Ball my primary game: 

• ·         Our Warmachine community has shifted to play mostly in a Scrum League, and ironically I can't afford to play in that with my work and family situation. 
• ·         One of my best friends picked up the Guild Ball Kick Off set, and would come over to play when my wife would have a girl's night out.  It was very easy to play him while also taking care of the kids, also only having 12 models max on the table made it easy to get a game in under 1.5 hours.
•  ·         My wife started playing some Guild Ball herself, and we got a bunch of games in as well.

I should point out that the Scrum league isn't really a problem, it's not hard at all to get matches for Warmachine, it's just a little different to setup when I'm not in the league.  

Other things are changing now as well: my youngest daughter is now big enough where I can't just strap her to my chest to play wargames. She wants to be out and about, which requires a lot of supervision on my part. So gaming with friends while my wife is out isn't as much of an option.   

Also while my wife did enjoy playing Guild Ball, my youngest being more active means that we are more tired at the end of the night once both girls are in bed.  Plus if she does get time to relax, she'd rather do her actual hobbies.

What has been odd this whole time I've been playing basically Guild Ball is that I've never stopped liking Warmachine. I've still followed what PP has been doing via CID and I think they're doing an amazing job.  

It's weird because while our Guild Ball group has grown it's cannibalizing some of our Warmachine players or at least some of them are down on WM but up on GB. I'm certainly not in that category, I see both games as a bit distinct with advantages and disadvantages to both.  I can certainly say that after probably 3 months of near exclusive Guild Ball play I'm really missing WMHD.

So now I want to get back on the WM train and though I've had a bit of faction ADD (I also own/play Legion and Khador, who also just got CID's) I've decided to get back on the Troll Train and continue my Tour of Trolls. 

I've got my eyes on Borka2 to give a try, though the last game I played with him using a Hooch Hauler in Storm of the North didn't work as well as I'd have hoped.  In fact both times I've tried a Storm of the North list with the Raider+Hauler package (Full Northkin Raiders, Hooch Hauler, Full Stone + UA) it hasn't worked out well – the Raiders were too short ranged and were able to be shot down before I could really get work out of them.

Part of the problem in those cases could have been the list not being a good drop vs. my misplay into a list that had more shooting than I did.  My gut tells me that the place to really make the Raiders + Hauler shine is with Snipe, aka Gunny or Grim2.

That said, I have to admit that I'm very tempted to steal Tim Banky's tournament winning lists for Madrak1 and Borka2, especially his Borka2 list. It strikes me as very weird to play, but as a beast brick it's highly intriguing:

Borka2

-Runebearer [0]

-Rok [19]

-Mulg [22]

-Earthborn [14]

-Earthborn[14]

-Axer [10]

-Storm Troll [9]

Whelps [0]

Whelps [0]

Stone + UA [12]

Swamp Gobbers [2]

It feels strange to be playing without Rage, but Primal should be able to do most of the work while also giving a nice hit buff.  I believe I'll give it a go, even though I'm tempted to run a Pyre instead of the Storm troll to give Borka a damage buff to put his personal output into "I definitely kill a heavy" range without having to get damaged first.  As I understand it, the Storm Troll is there for lightning immunity vs. Cygnar.

I will be getting my first game in some time in tonight and I'll be looking to pair a different Band of Heroes list with this and see how things play out.