Northblade's Unloved Model Challenge

Those of you that listen to Lost Hemisphere Radio may have heard Northblade mention his unloved model challenge he is running out of his home store Heroes World. This challenge has also been picked up on the Lost Hemisphere forums. Well for those of you that have not heard the podcast here is the gist: there are three basic levels to the challenge and they are as follows:

1. Select a model from your faction that sees little table time and is generally believed to be subpar. Then paint that mini up and play it on a regular basis and see if you can make it work.
2. Let Northblade or 'Gdaybloke select the mini
3. Let the guys select a theme force (since it is LH what would you expect?) and play that at tier 2 or higher. Try to play it to >.500 win percentage

Despite not being part of Mr Bell's meta I shot him a text message and said count me. I need to keep painting and this will be some motivation. I figured I'd get something like Gunnbjorn which would be good since he has been partially painted for nearly a year now. Mr Bell surprised me by selecting Borka's family reunion theme force from NQ #38. Those of you that follow along with the cave know I love the family so this isn't too out there for me. I still need to finish painting parts of it so sounds like a win/win for me. It also can be a reason to get the newly painted war wagon on the table more often. Trying to keep with the spirit of the challenge I have decided to throw in an unloved unit in my first list. The unit in question would be sluggers. I didn't own them at the time of the challenge and I have never seen them played (I did just see them on a tray at Templecon masters).

I picked up a box of sluggers Tuesday at my FLGS since I knew they would be in stock. I am pretty sure they have been on the shelf at the FLGS since the release date. Right off the bat the unit is already fighting me as the box was miss packed. Here is a photo of the unit.

You may be saying there are five minis there what is the issue? Well maybe it is not a big deal but I got two unit leaders and three grunts versus the one leader four grunts it is suppose to be. I am missing one of the lady sluggers. Like I said maybe not that big of a deal but it always bugs me when things aren't what they are suppose to be. On top of that the card was mangled in the box and will need to be replaced.

I have been brainstorming on some lists and while I feel it plays better (trolls in general) at the 50pt level I am toying with a few 35pt list:

Borka Kegslayer (*5pts)
* Pyre Troll (5pts)
* Winter Troll (5pts)
Greygore Boomhowler & Co. (Boomhowler and 9 Grunts) (9pts)
Krielstone Bearer and 5 Stone Scribes (4pts)
* Krielstone Stone Scribe Elder (1pts)
Trollkin Sluggers (Leader and 4 Grunts) (8pts)
Stone Scribe Chronicler (2pts)
Trollkin Champion Hero (3pts)
Trollkin Champion Hero (3pts)

This list ends up having two unloved models/units. the winter troll and the sluggers. After taking care of my tier requirements I only had room for 10pts worth of 'beasts. The pyre was an easy choice the winter was included because I don't own a second pyre or storm troll. I suppose I could go slag/swamp....swarm on an iron fleshed/stumbling drunk Borka could be fun (for me). I will have to play around with it some. I will probably have some issues cracking serious armor but this is a start. If I can win the roll for initiative I think I maybe able to get some solid use out of the sluggers. Use the advance deploy from the tier to move them and Boomhowlers then run the sluggers into a good firing position and hopefully aim and take advantage of full auto for a few turns. Once again all good in theory but we will have to see how it plays out on the table.