Free Folk vs Lannisters, 04.03.2025

I changed up my giants list by sneaking in Jarl's raiders and another giant, at the cost of an NCU. The Lannisters try out a Clegane-lead monster killer list. I enjoy being mentally challenged! We played a clash of kings, and I was worried about what to let the already strong Clegane unit get. So I disregarded that Mag doesn't care about any of it. I should have just let the Lannisters pick first, and have Jarl come in turn 2. Oh well.

My opponent adopted his favorite refuse flank, while I put everything in the middle and refused both flanks.

Panic and a great roll from the Spearthrower already killed some Clegane Brigands. Otherwise everything closing in.

Beginning of turn 2 and I already had weakened tokens across my units. So I decided on a gamble: have a giant charge the crossbowmen at 4+ rerollable, and deny them their shots. Nope, fail.

Obviously, that giant ate it.

With one of my giants out of position and already activated, Gregor Clegane decided to charge in and take a kill. On activation, he suffered a panic at -3 and lost several dudes. He went through with the charge, did not kill my giant, only brought him down to 2 wounds. That meant attack action, killing the Lannister Honor Guard down to a man. The crossbowmen then shot again, killing my front giant. Fair trade.

Beginning of round 3, random panics had already killed off most of the Raiders. Brigands approached, menacing to take the point, so I pushed some giants that way, and had Mag threaten the Lannister flank. Where, by the way, Abel the Bard did so much damage to the Mountain's Men.

The Brigands retreated, and we maneuvered around the objectives. We were about equal in points.

The turning point was panicking the Raiders off the board. I had to sit a giant on the objective, transforming the conflict into a 2v1 and me definitely losing the activation war. However, I still managed to kill the Brigands.

Mag was shot and my tactics card, which could have seen the surviving giant charge the crossbows, was counterplot'd. So I just retreated out of range, and tried a charge in the final turn.

My charge failed and the game was lost.

At 11-7, it was still a good game and a valiant effort. Any one of the critical rolls could have gone in my favor, including: rerollable 4+ charge during the beginning, 3+ charge near the end, hurl boulder killing more than 1 Mountain's Men, so that Abel could kill off  the last few.

The giants are definitely viable, but I haven't found a combo that actually works against a strong list. I'll keep playing around with them, see what comes up.