Ironhead Station

I kicked off my weekend with a friendly 750 game. This time around my Cygnar faced Jen's (Bobaferret) Retribution. This is my third game against the Retribution, and I have to admit, I'm really liking that faction. As a Cygnar player, there is an awful lot to find attractive about them, probably because they do most of what my army does, and often more efficiently. Here is what this weeks match-up looked like:

My Cygnar Army (744 pts, 27 VPs) Epic Haley Thorn (bonded) Thunderhead Squire Journeyman Warcaster Gun Mage Captain Adept Sword Knights (9) Sword Knight UA Rupert Carvolo Stormlances (x3) Stormsmiths (x3) Black 13th Strike Team

Retribution Army (750 pts, 17 VPs) Kaelyssa, Night's Whisper Hydra Hydra Phoenix Narn Dawnguard Invictors (10) Dawnguard Invictor UA Souless Escort (x3) Mage Hunter Strike Force Mage Hunter UA House Shyeel Magister

This army is a variant of the army I used in the Breast Cancer Brawl last weekend. By the end of that event I had started to get a pretty good handle on eHaley, and I wanted to keep playing with her to see if I could really wrap my brain around her. For this game, I traded out the unit of Precursor Knights for a minimum unit of Stormlances. The precursors make a great screen for the ranged elements of the army, but I they tended to get in the way of the Sword Knights. Plus, I thought it would be fun to put a fast striking threat into the list to try and cause issues in my opponents backfield.

Deployment. Notice the cav fear.

Deployment was by the book. Jen won the roll, and made me go first, allowing her to set up army heavily on my right flank, avoiding my cav, and getting her the Thunderhead vs. mage hunter (with their extra damage die vs. jacks) match-up she was looking for. This ended up meaning that my first round was all about re-positioning. I may have given the mage hunters too much respect, but their Phantom Seeker rounds and their advantage in that forest really freaked me out. So, the Black 13th headed to the left while the Stormlances went to the right, and Haley cast Deceleration to help mitigate any early game ranged attacks.

Turn 2: Chinese Fire Drill!

Turn 2 gets ignorant fast. My GMCA hit the Phoenix with a critical thunderbolt round, knocking it three inches back (into Kaelyssa) and onto its ass. I ran Thorn forward and hit Kaelyssa with Timebomb, boosting the damage but rolling weak. At least I had her debuffed for what comes next: I used Domination to grab the Hydra standing next to her, walk it around behind her, and punch her. Thorn yo-yos back and the Sword Knights move up around him. At this point I've got her about half way down, but there is no way to finish it this round. I reposition my ponies, setting up for a next-turn charge through the forest (using the piper's March). Every single one of my Stormsmiths roll 10+, failing their stormcall skill checks. This is the turn I should feat and take away her retaliation options, but I forget.

A little pissed off about the whole getting punched by her own 'jack thing, Kaelyssa moves up and hits Thorn with backlash and then feats, giving her entire army stealth and denying me the charge next turn. Her army proceeds to scrap Thorn with a combination of Hydra ranged attacks, Invictors shots and Mage Hunters, doing 5 damage to Haley in the process. It could have been worst, but they actually killed him too quickly. The remainder of the Mage Hunters move up and put some hits on the T-Head, filling out a few more boxes. The Phoenix gets up and advances, sheltering Narn, Kaelyssa and the Magister, while the pair of Hydras bring up the rear.


Turn 3: I absolutely need to take some pressure off of that right flank. I move Haley up and cast Telekinesis to move the Thunderhead most of the way across that little pond. Unfortunately, I forgot to cast Deadeye first, at at the end of the movement he is now out of range. Note to self: If you intended to use pulse with eHaley, ALWAYS make sure you cast Deadeye first to get that extra die on every single attack roll. Still, I roll crazy high, and manage to kill off seven of the Invictors, but I can't hit the Mage Hunter with their high defense (I bet I would have with Deadeye!) The piper plays march for the ponies, and I charge them through the forest to tie up the Mage Hunters and hopefully protect the T-Head. Sword Knights charge the Phoenix and get through his forcefield, but fail to bring him down. The Stormsmiths fail two out of three stormcalls, which is starting to piss me off.

On Jen's turn, Narn murders my GMCA, and then moves up next to Haley. Kaelyssa moves into the ruined building and uses Phantom Seeker to shoot at Haley. The game might have been over here if she hadn't activated Narn first, but by putting him next to Haley, she now has the "in melee" bonus, and Kaelyssa can't hit her. The embattled Phoenix combusts, but fails to kill off any of the Sword Knights that surround it. Not to waste the oppotunity a giant, flaming jack presents, one of the Hydras grabs it from behind and throws it at my back row of Sword Knights (where the unit leaders are), and manages to kill the unit leader and one of the troopers. The remaining Invictors CRA on the T-Head, while the Mage Hunters battle the cav, doing some damage, but not taking any out.

Labels: Hordes, miniatures, wargaming, Warmachine

We had our Breast Cancer Brawl up here in Boise yesterday, and it was an amazing success by almost any standard. We had somewhere between 30-35 players, and were able to raise thousands of dollars for our local hospital's mobile mammogram service, which is just awesome. The spirit of giving at the event was just amazing, and it was fun to watch a bunch of gamers come together and do something so cool.

The event itself was a blast: 750 points, two lists, and kill the caster was the only scenario. On top of that, you could use tickets (at our store they were a dollar each or 12 for $10) to re-roll or kick in other special abilities from a special rule sheet. For example, at the start of the game, you could pay 8 tickets for the "Women are Strong" ability, which makes all of the female models in your army tough. You can also play an equal amount of tickets to cancel anything your opponent does, although they can immediately re-spend and try again. Basically, the more money you donate, the more you can "cheat." I was a big dirty cheater. :-)

Bobaferret, our press ganger, did an amazing job putting this even together and getting some really cool prize support. We had steamroller trophies for the tournament winners, and for the biggest donors she was able to get prints of Deneghra and Ashlynn signed by Matt Wilson, and three original pieces of concept art from Chris Walton (the main artist responsible for the retribution), right out of his sketchbook. We had three pink painted armies up for silent auction, each of which sold for between $250-600. To top it off, everyone who played in the tourney got a really nice BCB: Boise t-shirt featuring more Chris Walton art (the picture at the top of this post.)

Personally, I had a pretty good showing. I ended up taking third place, and taking home one of the Chris Walton originals (sweet!). My pink Epic Haley took second place in the painting contest, and I won an auction for a really beautifully painted, pink-highlighted Eiryss.

I brought two lists, but I only ended up playing one all day. I once again broke my cardinal rule of playing in tournaments with warcasters I don't know very well, but in this case the need for a pretty pink model overruled all else. Here is what I took:

Breast Cancer Brawler 748 pts/26 VP Pink Epic Haley Squire Thunderhead Thorn Journeyman Warcaster Gun Mage Captain Adept Stormsmiths (x2) The Piper of Ord Precursor Knights (x8) + UA Sword Knights (x8) + UA

The idea was to have a fairly balanced list full of stuff I know well. Between Thorn, the GMCA, the Black 13th and the Stormsmiths you have a lot of options for dealing with stealth, invisibility, etc. The precursors provide a great screen for the ranged elements, they don't give up souls, and they are hell on the undead. Sword Knights are... well, Sword Knights. As for 'jacks, the Thunderhead is hard to ignore, and Thorn makes Haley super-scary. In practice, the list worked pretty well. My games looked like this:

Game 1, Cryx (Win): This was a really tough game vs. Epic Asphyxious, with bane knights and bile thralls and everything else you would expect. I probably would have lost this game, but in the end I used one of the "tournament specials" to allow my T-Head to ignore intervening models when making ranged attacks. My opponent didn't have the tickets to counter me, so he took three lightning coil shots to the face-hole.

Game 2, Retribution (Win): In this game, both my opponent and I had big rolls of tickets, which meant that almost none were spent (we just countered anything the other person tried.) This was a fun game, and I'm still impressed my the flexibility of the retribution. My opponent got a little mis-positioned, and my T-Head was able to tie up the Mage Hunters while the Sword Knights and Precursors rampaged through the lines. Time Bomb and Arcane Bolts took down Kaelyssa in the top of turn three.

Game 3, Trolls (Win): A brutal game against the store owner and his beautiful troll army. Like all games with trolls, it really feels like you are losing up until the point where you start winning. This game went all the way to time, and I won on VPs (by this point the Sword Knights had killed off a Mauler, and by forcing him to transfer damage off Callandra, I killed a Blitzer and an Axer). I will say that Starcrossed may just be the single most frustrating spell in the game for me right now.

Game 4, Cygnar (Loss): It was Cygnar vs. Cygnar this time, with my opponent running a Darius list with 4 (FOUR!) centurions in a block. He played the list very well, and I played mine very poorly. I got some advice from one of our local Cygnar gurus afterward - I should have used to Telekinesis at the top of turn two to turn the centurions backs toward my Sword Knights, and pulled them into charge range. Then I could have hit them with a march-fueled, three attack, five-damage-dice Sword Knight charge. I probably could have scrapped two or three of them right there. I didn't, and he ended up winning by a single VP when time was called (to his credit, he was just starting a trample that would lead him directly to my warcaster - five more minutes and he would have had the kill.)

Game 5, Legion (Win): I have only played vs. Legion one other time, and that was a long time ago, so I had no idea what most of my opponent's army did - which is a bad thing against a dirty tricks army. He was playing an Epic Lylyth list with a ton of archers. On turn 1, he moves Lylyth up, pops feat, and starts shooting an insane amount of arrows. Luckily, Haley had cast Deceleration at the end of turn one, so my Sword Knights are effectively DEF 15, ARM 21 vs. ranged attacks. That forces him to CRA instead of taking individual shots, and he only takes five Sword Knights off the board in what could have been an otherwise devastating turn. At the top of turn two, I run Thorn up close, use Telekinesis to turn Lylyth's back to my army, hit her with Time Bomb to get that defense down, and then hit her with an Arcane bolt. She's about half way there. GMCA moves up, and hits her with a long shot (once I measure, I find out I'm at about 11 inches - wishing I had declared a Blaze round). Finally, from 17 1/2 inches away, Ryan of the Black 13th hits her twice and takes her down.

So, it was a great day. I really started to get my head around Epic Haley, thanks mostly to some great advice I was given along the way. I'm reminded what a fun hobby this is, and what great people enjoy it alongside me. Oh, and if you haven't hugged your press ganger lately, you need to. Yesterday really made me realize how much work they put into making sure we have a good time.

Labels: Hordes, miniatures, wargaming, Warmachine

Our local Breast Cancer Brawl event is this weekend, so I thought I would be in the spirit and have at least one model painted pink. Given that Cygnar doesn't have just a whole lot of ladies in lineup, it didn't take me long to settle on Epic Haley. I hadn't got around to playing with her yet, and she is absolutely one of my favorite models in the range, so I figured it was about time to give her a try.

To get warmed up, I played my first game with her over the weekend, and it went pretty well. I was able to use Time Bomb at the top of turn 2 to prevent a Mulg charge, and then I opened turn 3 by using Telekenisis to pick up Epic Hoarluk and turn his back to my long gunners so they could shoot him with three POW 19 CRAs (thanks Temporal Acceleration!) So, I guess I kind of get her schtick.

I'm not sure who I'm going to take for a second list caster... With only two days to go, I need to make up my mind pretty soon. Probably worth taking something I'm really comfortable with... Maybe Striker or Siege - Although I'm starting to feel kind of guilty about my slowly worsening Siege addiction. If it works out like normal, I'll be building my list an hour beforehand over a cup of coffee...

Labels: Hordes, miniatures, wargaming, Warmachine

Well, despite my best hopes for getting back into a more regular gaming routine, it seems that fate has been conspiring against me. Between a massive new project at work and week of business travel, I haven't had a game since my FLGS ran its Call to Arms kick-off event back in the end of September. (An event I did fairly poorly in, BTW).

Labels: miniatures, wargaming, Warmachine