Sunday, March 21, 2010 

Big Guns!

Lately I've had a case of the Trencher Fever, probably caused by the release of the new Trencher Commandos.  I've been playing them in a highlander list, and they are awesome.  Long ago, I bought most of the trencher special weapon attachments, but never really got around to putting them on the table.  Now, with MK II  and the new stuff coming out I've finally had the urge to paint them.  I figured if I was going to paint more trenchers, I'd get them all done at once, so I'm working on Maxwell Finn, two chain gun crews, a cannon crew, the Unit Attachment as well as two more grenadiers.

As I started thinking about an all-trencher army, I decided to look through the new Cygnar book and see what theme forces I could build that centered on the trencher...  There are basically two - Epic Haley and the Gravediggers, and Siege's "The Big Guns" list.  Of the two, I decided to go with Siege, as I liked the requirements and bonuses from his tiers better.  Here's the list I'm now working toward:

 Siege's Big Guns
(50 pt Tier 4 Theme Force)
  • Siege Brisbane
  • Defender
  • Defender
  • Journeyman Warcaster
  • Capt. Maxwell Finn
  • Rangers
  • Trencher Cannon Crew
  • Trencher Chain Gun Crew
  • Trencher Chain Gun Crew
  • Trencher Commandos (Min.)
  • Trencher Scattergunners (x2)
  • Trenchers (Min.)
  • Trencher Officer & Sharpshooter
  • Trencher Rifle Grenadiers (x2)
  • Trencher Master Gunner
  • Trencher Master Gunner

This list seems like a blast (no pun intended!). The rangers can use their speed 7 to move out ahead and mark targets for the trenchers and Siege's battlegroup. Siege can put explosivo on his two Defenders while the Master Gunner's can use artillerist to help keep the deviations under control. Or, as the two sides collide they can use close fire to call in the artillery directly on top of friendlies without fear of collateral damage! Chain guns can lay down a nice surpressing fire to hold down the enemy advance and hopefully give the trencher lines time to get off an Assault order. The commandos can make a tremendous fast flanking force, gutting most single wound infantry with ease.


That's not to say the list doesn't have issues...  There isn't a lot of melee punch here for taking out multi-wound models, and I've got pretty low armor all the way around - even with Arcane Shield, trenchers are still only ARM 16 in melee.  Getting tied up in hand-to-hand will be the death of this force.  Undead models neutralize the commando's anatomical precision, and stealthy models will cause fits (although Siege's Mage Sight can help to some degree).  It's definately not the most competitive list, but it would be fun, challenging and fluffy-as-hell to play.  I can't wait for next month when the scattergunners come out so I can get my commandos painted.  Hopefully within the next few months I'll be able to field this as a fully painted list.

"Come get some!"

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8:33 PM | |

Sunday, March 14, 2010 

Big Red One

A few months back I started picking up some Khador models (pronounced KAH-door in this house). I've always been a fan of their massive 'jacks and severe look, and I decided to finally take the plunge. I'm starting with a Butcher/Doom Reaver Berserker army, and I’ve been slowly working on getting my small force assembled. I like to start a new faction with a warjack, and I got first model painted this last week:


It's not a big secret, but red is a really hard color to paint.  For such a deep color, it is surprisingly transparent, and requires quite a few coats to get good coverage.  I started with GW foundation paints and worked up to the P3 Khador reds from there.  Shading was also a new experience - I was glad for the advice in Prime MKII.  Without it I never would have got the color right, as the more I tried to shade the model, the more I just made it look muddy and dirty.  I finally looked up pro's advice, but making a shade for red out of brown and dark blue feels really weird - that is until you try it and it works perfectly.  Time to break out the color wheel and study up on my color theory again!

Outside of painting trenchers, I've been doing a cover-to-cover read of the Cygnar MKII book this weekend, and enjoying it quite a bit.  I'm finding little things all over the place that I hope are hints of things to come.  We've all seen units that don't exist yet mentioned in the Theme Forces section - things like light cavalry and Storm Knight solos.  What really caught my attention were some of the things mentioned in the "Church of Morrow" sidebar on page 20:  Warjacks designed to the specifications or the Precursor Knights?  The Order of Illumination?  Count me in.

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8:40 PM | |

Friday, March 12, 2010 

Let's Get Small

I finally made it back to my FLGS for Thursday night Warmachine.  This week was all about getting ready for our upcoming 15-point Highlander tournament.  If you don't know what Highlander is, it works like this: You can take 1 warcaster, 1 warjack/warbeast, 1 unit (plus UA and attachments) and 1 solo. 

While the games are small, it is actually a pretty interesting little format that introduces some fun meta considerations. You only have one 'jack, so there is normally plenty of focus to go around. Assassination casters have an advantage as there doesn't tend to be much crowding. Really powerful warjacks are tough to crack at low points, while expensive elite infantry tend to be fragile due to small unit sizes.

I'm playing with a few different lists at this point, but the Trencher Commandos just hit last night, so I wanted to play a list that would let me try them out.  Here is what I came up with:
Commando Highlander (15+6 pts)
  • Lord Commander Stryker
  • Ol' Rowdy
  • Trencher Commandos (max)
  • Gun Mage Captain Adept
The commandos have advanced deploy and stealth, which helps them get up field fast in relative safety.  POW 12 rifles are plenty impressive, although without any CRA ability they are fairly worthless against high armor.  Anatomical precision makes them dangerous, especially on eStryker's feat turn.  Against knocked down models they are truly frightening: They can kill a one-wound, knocked-down model without even rolling a die!  The GMCA gives you a possible assassination threat, as well as a way to take out inbound stealthy or incorporeal assassins.  Ol' Rowdy is great with Stryker, and counter-charge discourages enemies from getting within five inches of the stealthy commandos.  Finally, eStryker is the cruise missile - everything else is just a delivery system, although Deflection is a valuable tool to keep your army alive.

I played three games with this list.  Here are what my opponent's armies looked like:

Retribution
Kaelyssa
Hydra
Invictors (max)+UA
Arcanist
Menoth
Harbinger
Avatar
Choir (max)
Vassal
Legion
Rhyas
Typhon
Legionnaires (max)
Forsaken

I beat the elves, but only after Bobaferret basically told me how I could do it, so I'm not sure that one counts. (I'm still getting used to eStryker, and definitely appreciate the mentoring!)  It basically ended with Ol' Rowdy moving into the center of her infantry and using his Quake Hammer to knock everyone down.  Then the commandos rushed in and killed off all the knocked down models with anatomical precision.  Finally, Stryker used velocity to get the angle, charged, overpowered with two dice to one-shot Kaelyssa.

My second game was against a nasty Protectorate list.  The challenge here became dealing with high armor and the ability to put a ton of focus on the table.  The commandos managed to clear the choir out while Rowdy tanked the Avatar, allowing me to deliver eStryker.  A weak overload roll took me to POW 20, and then I managed to miss on three swings in a row.   The Harbinger then used her stack of 10 focus to wipe me out next turn.  Fail.

Swing and a wiff...

The Legion player was a newer guy and he hadn't really seen eStryker before, so he didn't understand the knockout punch that could be delivered via overload.  He tried to take out the commandos with Typhon sprays, but I had them spaced out so he could only attack one at a time.  He missed twice and killed one.  The legionnaires were no match for the commandos, who wiped them out to a man, opening a huge lane for eStryker.  I almost lost with a three dice overload (trading 15 damage for +9 POW), and I missed on the charge, but the second swing boxed Rhyas for the win.

After three games, I really enjoy using the commandos.  I don't know if I would take this list for a tournament, but I'm considering it.  Advanced deployment lets them get up field very quickly, and stealth generally keeps them safe.  The POW 12s are enough to reliably deal with infantry up to ARM18, and anatomical precision makes them deadly against single wound models.  Play them smart and they will treat you well, but you always have to remember that they are only DEF 13/ARM 13.  I think this list could work well against many opponents, but they will get into trouble against heavy armor/multi-wound infantry or armies that can shoot stealth.  That being said, they will be an absolute blast in larger armies and could make a brilliant flanking force.  Good stuff!

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8:13 PM | |

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 

Welcome to Ironhead Station

What the...!? What happened to gamehole.com?

Well, it's actually pretty straightforward. Blogger decided that they are going to discontinue their FTP publishing service, and rather than go through all the work of pointing my domain at a google hosted site I decided to just make the leap over to a generic blogspot.com account. I was also ready to choose a new name for the blog - whatever my original ambitions were, there is pretty much no doubt at this point that this is a Warmachine blog, and I though a more appropriate title might be nice. I broke out my Iron Kingdoms world guide and did some research until I found something that I liked...

So, let me be the first to welcome you to Ironhead Station. Enjoy your stay - just don't piss off the Ogrun.

9:31 PM | |

Sunday, March 07, 2010 

Buongiorno!

Well, I've been radio silent for over a month now, so I thought I probably should check in. It seems that real life has caught up with me, and I find myself busy like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. My company just purchased another company, and I was put on the integration team that has to go figure out how we are going to pull them into the mothership, which basically means a lot of travel and a lot of work. At least the company we bought is based in Italy, which turns out to be a pretty cool place to spend time in if you have to be on the road.

Italy has no shortage of Churches, Wine and Italian Food.

All the travel has shifted my gaming to more mobile pastimes. I've spent some time working on my 4E Eberron campaign, and I'm really excited to get back to playing. I was one of the great holdouts on moving to fourth edition, but now that I've made the switch, I'm absolutely hooked. They have put so much thought into making the game easy to run while making it your own. In 3.5, it was almost impossible to come up with custom creatures or items without worrying that you were going to break the balance of the game. 4E has made all of that so much easier that it's actually a lot of fun to come up with your own custom stuff (not to mention that digital tools like the Adventure Tools help a ton).

Speaking of digital tools - if you run a D&D game, you have to check out Masterplan. It is an amazing free application that lets you map out your entire campaign. You can build it out in flowchart mode, map out all of your encounters and experience (so you can see at any point how much XP your party will have earned, making planning level progression a breeze), and keep track of all those little details with the encyclopedia function. It also integrates with WotC's D&D Compendium, so you have all of that information at your fingertips from within the application, making encounter building fast. You can even export handouts or even entire modules at the click of a button. It is by far the best roleplaying tool I have found.

Other than that, I've been playing a ton of Tomb Raider: Anniversary on the PSP. I picked it up to play on the long plane rides, and I've found it completely addicting. Normally, I have a hard time getting into portable games, but I can't seem to put this one down. In fact I've spent the last few nights at home playing that instead of Mass Effect 2. Weird, I know.

Instead of playing Mass Effect 2 on a 42' HD LCD, I'm playing this.

I think I'm back in town for a while now, so I hoping to get back to at least a little more of a routine. I dug out my Warmachine stuff last night and started working on a Khador Decimator. I know this isn't a secret to anyone, but red is really hard to paint well. It just looks so obnoxiously bright while you are working on it, and those Khador 'jacks have such big flat spaces. If I get him done tonight, I'll post some pics. My FLGS is having a 15 point highlander (1-1-1-1) format event in a few weeks, and I'm thinking about playing the Reds in that... I like the occasional small point event - it makes trying out new factions very feasible. I'll keep you posted.

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9:29 AM | |