Ironhead Station

Getting to Know You…

2011-11-20T22:21:00.007-07:00

I was excited for Master Ascetic Naaresh from the first time I saw him, and over the last few weeks I’ve finally been able to put him on the table for a test drive. Nihilators have been at the core of most of my lists since I started playing Skorne - I just love the idea of pain-loving berserker warmongers. What could be better than a pain-loving, berserker warmonger warlock? Unfortunately I haven’t been having much luck with him. The worst part is that I really, really want to like him. I need to rethink my approach with him…

Naaresh is kind of a tricky dude, and it’s taking me a little while to figure out how to really use him. When you read his card, the first thing that stands out is the interaction between Pain Monger and Life Drinker: Every time Naaresh takes damage he gains a blood token that grants him +1 ARM and +1 STR (he can have up to 5). Then, every time he kills a living enemy model, he heals d3 damage. Taking the two together, it seems like he should be wading into enemy troopers and cutting them down, taking damage and then healing right back up.

The only problem with this is that he’s lacking the tools to be an effective troop killer. While his cyclone spell lets him get into combat and make an attack against every enemy in his melee range, his lack reach weapons means that, at best, he may get a shot at three enemies. Add to that the lack of a reach weapon, or any kind of ability like Side Step or Overtake, and his ability to chain attacks together becomes extremely limited. Compare that to a caster like Morghoul, who is a troop killing monster: Anatomical Precision lets him avoid high armor, Overtake lets him chain kills together, Perfect Balance allows him to avoid free strikes, Double Strike gives him two attacks for each fury spent, and Sprint lets him get out of trouble when it’s all over. Making that comparison, it’s pretty clear that Naaresh is a situational troop-killer at best.

Instead, I think Naaresh is meant to be the Skorne’s version of Lord Commander Stryker: A cruise missile built to deliver a game ending kill from halfway across the board. Pair Naaresh with the battle plans of a Tyrant Commander, and he can deliver the pain from 17 ½ inches away, with half of that movement immune to free strikes. The way I see it, it goes something like this:

First, you have 5 pain giver beast handlers last Naaresh. Thanks to his Flagellant rule, they automatically hit. Remember, in MKII you still have to roll damage for anatomical precision – you can’t just choose to apply one damage point. Much like eStryker, it is possible to severely damage Naaresh in the process of powering him up. You want to be sitting at POW 15 and ARM 20 before you go in.
Next, you have the Tyrant Commander use him Press Forward battle plan on Naaresh to give him +2 SPD when making a full advance this turn.
The best scenario would be to then find a gap opponent’s line and either cyclone through (up to eight inches thanks to Press Forward) avoiding free strikes, or kill couple of models and heal up a bit if need be.
From there, charge in on the enemy caster and get it done. If they are camping focus, you may want to open with a Combo Strike, which will deliver a POW 19 boosted damage roll. For lower armor casters, the two POW 15 options may be the better solution –either way, you will have 6 focus left to get the job done after the initial attack. Unfortunately, much like Epic Stryker, if you don’t get the job done, you are probably toast.

Now I’m starting to play around with what else needs to be in a Naaresh army… He needs a decent number of warbeasts to get the most out of his feat, so that needs to be considered. The aformentioned Tyrant Commander is manditory for the +2 SPD boost, and he can also offer Patherfinder if the enemy caster has something like Inhospitable Ground in play. On the turns he's not buffing Naaresh, he can be helping knocked down Nihilators stand back up. As far as other models: The Cyclops Savage’s Prescience animus would allow Naaresh to boost after the fact, which would be really valuable on the assassination turn. Marketh would be useful for casting Iron Flesh at the end of every turn so your units don’t take the speed penalty on their activation.

So, with a new appreciation, I think I’ll rebuild my lists and give him a try again this week. I'll keep you posted on how it all works out. Hopefully this romance was meant to be…

BCB Boise - 2011

2011-11-05T10:55:00.002-06:00

I'm back. It's been over four months since I posted last, mostly because right before PAX Prime I blew out my back - bad. The good news is that four months (and a string of Cortisone injections) later, I seem to be getting back on my feet. More importantly, I'm able to sit long enough to paint a model or play a game of Warmachine. I must have a little trollblood running in my veins - if nothing else, I'm hard to kill. But enough of my hardships - let's get on with things you might actually want to read about - this is, after all, still a blog about steam, iron, and little metal men.

Fiona the Pink

We just wrapped up our local Breast Cancer Brawl event, and it was a great time as usual. We did a little different format this year, as many of our locals have a strong dislike for the "pay-to-cheat" format. We wanted to still raise money, but we wanted to find a way to keep the actual game (mostly) pure. Our PG Dicewraith came up with a completely different format - it was basically an Iron Arena-style open play event, where you earned points for each game played, each new player played, each new faction played, each caster you used, etc. It was a great format, as it let people set their own schedule, it encouraged experimentation, and kept things social and fun, which really fits that mood of event.

To raise money, there were certain scenario tables you could pay to play on, you could buy the use of league models from any of the previous leagues, you could buy special rules (like lady models are tough, or advanced deploy for certain models, etc). We definitely mixed it up, but the one thing we stayed away from was paying to force re-rolls, as that is the one mechanic that everyone seems to hate.

The amazing Storm Strider with an actual
pink lightning generator

Also, because less money was being spent trying to win games, more money was available to go the the auction of some really beautiful models that some of locals (and non-locals) volunteered to paint. We had many models go for $50, some as high as $150, and an amazing Storm Strider modification by Faultie that had an actual pink plamsa ball in place of the normal lighting generator. I ended up walking away with that one, for a sum landed me both the largest donor award and long conversation with my wife on how much money is okay to spend on toy soldiers. I'd do it again - that thing is awesome!

One of our scenario tables was a scratch-built Grind board built by Brotherscott that ended up sucking me in for the last half of the day. I ended up starting my own little grind league on that table in the afternoon, and we had an complete blast. The way it was scored, each Grind goal scored gave you tournament points, but killing the caster gave you none, so you had no motivation to end the game early. My grind team was made up of Xerxis, a Bronzeback, a Gladiator, a Rhinodon and Savage, and they ended up being pretty effective with all those open fists, slams and chain attacks. (Although in hindsight, I would drop the Rhino and the Savage, and take another Gladiator and a Krea to use it's paralytic aura on defense.) It ended up being a ridiculous amount of fun, and with a little tuning on the rules, I can see running a Grindball league as a great diversion.

My Grindball Gladitors press the offense against Baldur and his constructs!

I ended up taking the tournament title, which had less to do with any skill and more to do with 12 hours of straight gaming and all of the tournament points I racked up playing Grind. I scored a couple of coins as well as a special pink Morghoul card from PP. The Fiona I painted for the auction sold for $50, and I came home with a killer Storm Strider and a beautiful Runewood painted by my good friend Schmitty. Best of all, we raised a few thousand dollars to help support our local "mobile mammography" truck, which is a critical service in a rural state like Idaho. At least when my wife asked me how I could spend so much in one day, I could look her in the eyes and say with a straight face, "I did it for the boobies."

Painting Update

2011-06-27T23:41:00.000-06:00

I have hardly had any time to sit down since I've got back from Lock and Load, so I was happy to finally get some time to sit down at my painting table tonight. I used it to finish up a couple of units that I had mostly done right before I left for Seattle. They are the last of the units I need to fill out my (slightly unconventional) Tier 4 Rasheth list, and I wanted to get them out of the way.

The Ventators found their way into my collection because I can use them in Tier lists for all of the warlocks I'm most interested in: Makeda, Xerxis and Rasheth. Without the UA, their RAT 5 makes them pretty lackluster, although CRA and damage that goes up with the base size is nice. With the UA, however, they get a lot more interesting, gaining Reform and a mini-feat that gives them +4 RNG for one turn. I've used them in a couple of games now, and while not that impressive, they make a decent harassment/flanking force. I'll have to get a few more games in to figure how to get the most out of them.

For the Rasheth list, I decided to go against the grain and use Slaughterhousers instead of the Gatormen Posse to fill out the minion unit requirement. I like the idea of effectively boosted damage against injured models and the ability to ignore tough, and at 6 points the price is right. Plus, the fact that they are wearing armor makes it easy for me to paint them up to fit right into my Skorne list. Yeah, I make decision for my armies based on what looks cool. Sue me.

So, I continue to make good progress, but unfortunately now I'm feeling the pull of the pre-release models I brought back from Lock and Load... I'm considering taking a break to paint up Blaize, Gallant and the Storm Strider. What good is standing in line for a pre-release if you don't do anything with them until they are already out at retail, right?

Lock and Load Recap

2011-06-22T22:13:00.014-06:00

Well, I made it back from Privateer’s inaugural Lock and Load Gamefest event in one piece, but exhausted. Two days of solid Warmachine and Hordes goodness has left me physically worn out, and psychologically charged for what privateer has coming next.

Lots of people rolling dice and pushing pewter. Happiness.

I don’t spend a lot of time hanging out on the forums, so I don’t really get an opportunity to meet a lot of the other folks in the community outside of my local area. Lock and Load was a great way to put faces with some of the names of folks I know from other blogs and the twitter. L&L was my first time to a large event dedicated to playing a single game (I go to PAX every year, but that is much less a gaming convention an more a huge geek culture festival), and it was really cool to meet other players and get a feel for how the game has evolved outside my local meta.

My Skorne looking right at home on a sweet desert table.

I didn’t really want to deal with the time commitment of the tournaments, so I spent my time playing in the Iron Arena, which is Privateer’s casual play convention format. One of the highlights was playing on some of the amazing terrain that we have seen in the likes of No Quarter magazine. It really made me realize how terrain-light we play locally, and how people tend to use really generic terrain so no one can complain about one side having an unfair advantage. At Lock and Load we dealt with all kinds of terrain – water, forests, chokepoints, platforms with narrow ramps, fields of trenches, and a graveyard full of obstructions that blocked almost any charge lane. I really enjoyed having to come up with new strategies on the fly based on what the terrain threw at me, and it was a blast to put down a fully painted Skorne army on a perfectly themed desert table.

The scenario tables were particularly fun – one of my favorites involved an attacking force trying to rob a moving train. Each turn the train moved 1+d3 inches forward, and the attacker tries to rob the train by getting a heavy warjack or warbeast within 2” while his opponent has no defenders within 2”. (Of course the ever-present caster kill is still there, and I managed to win that scenario by throwing a Hydra at Kaelyssa with my Bronzeback, and knocking her down onto the tracks where the train ran her over on the top of the next turn!)

Hey, Kaelyssa - watch out for that... Oh shit. Nevermind.

The Privateer crew took some time on Saturday night to give us all a sneak peak at what is yet to come. We got a look at the concept art for the Skorne and Trollblood battle engines, both of which look awesome and did a great job capturing the feel of their faction. They announced a re-booted Iron Kingdoms RPG would be released at GenCon 2012, likely using a core mechanic system closer to the Warmachine combat mechanics. They announced that Privateer would be branching out into a Sci-Fi with a new property call “Level 7” – but it wasn’t clear if that was a game, or a setting meant to be home to multiple games… I guess we wait and see on that one. Finally, we got a look at the latest trailer for the Warmachine video game – which looks cool, but not mind-blowing cool. I understand it still has a ways to go, but at this point it looks more like a premium XBOX Live Arcade title than a full on retail release.

This is my battle engine. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.

I attended a couple of different seminars: “History of the Iron Kingdoms” by lead setting writer Doug Seacat and "Army Painting" by Studio Director Ron Kruzie. They were both really fun, although surprisingly lightly attended. I could listen to Seacat talk about the IK for days – he’s got a really fun way of talking about it. He comes across more like a professor than an author… It made the history feel almost real. Kruzie is always pleasant and had some good tips. One thing that I really like is how Privateer plays down the need for high quality painting and encourages people just to paint. I really appreciate the fact that they teach technique for speed painting as well as studio painting. With very few exceptions, even a poorly painted miniature looks better than bare metal, and the only way to become an incredible painter is to start as a mediocre one.

And of course, half the fun of a con is snatching up pre-release goodies to make all your frends back home jealous. I came home with a Storm Strider, Constance Blaize and Gallant, so I’ll probably be taking a break from my Skorne to crank out those.

My second game with the illustrious Jen Ikuta. I had to get revenge after
losing to a wicked Tier 4 Thyra list. Xerxis smash facehole.

I even got to get in a couple of games with Bobaferret, who I haven't played in a couple of years. I'll say this, working at the mothership has made her cruel. I will also say it is hard to do math at 2:30 in the morning. All in all, it was a good weekend. The people were awesome, and I was amazed an how good the entire press gang is. Every PG I met was just super outgoing and really cool – I suddenly realized what a potent force they are in PP's growth. My opponents were great and all really enjoyable to play against, and Seattle was (as always) a great host. I only wish there was more time – Hey PP, how about we start registration on Friday next year…? Hell, how about we start the show on Friday next year? Either way, I’ll probably be back.

Thagrosh liked Lock and Load. He did not, however, like Blue.

Blue says "See you next year!"

Edit: Bobaferret pointed out that I failed to mention that I even got the opportunity to pitch my own model idea to Lead Designer Jason Soles on Friday night. It was a concept for a Skorne battle engine called "The Beast with Two Backs" and it involved two titans... Maybe it's best if I don't completely explain. It did have a few special abilities - first, whenever it advances it can sing "ecstasies" (think the Agonizer's agonies but on a much grander scale). Also, much like a train wreck, once it enters your line of sight, you just can't look away. Finally, It may also spawn little agonizers as it trundles across the battlefield. Brilliant, huh? I'm guessing that is what they spent the last few days working on... You can thank me later.

I'm Bi-Winning!

2011-05-29T15:00:00.013-06:00

I'm back after a long hiatus from blogging, and hoping I can get back into the swing of the things. Life got kind of wild there for a little while: On top of raising three kids and having the attention span of sparrow, I took on a new job at my company and decided to remodel my home. Something had to give, and it turned out it this blog.

Thankfully, things are settling down again. I've got my new job under control (as much as it will likely ever be), and the work on the house is all finished (Try living a few months without a kitchen or running water on the first floor. We definitely reached the limit of things that can be creatively cooked in a Crockpot!). The good news is that last few months have been particularly good for gaming.

Winning, Rhino-style

The Skorne army that I started for the Slow Grow league at my FLGS has continue to expand, and I'm finding a good deal of success with it. I'm sticking with the core nucleus of hard-hitting units supported by titans, and I'm really enjoying the "I punch you in the face" nature of the army. Last weekend we wrapped up the latest league season with a tournament, and I ended up winning the league an tying for first place in a tournament (Yes, tying. By popular vote, no one wanted to go on to another round, so we agreed to split first place.) Both were pretty exciting for me, as I don't typically perform that well in the competitive stuff. The tournament was a 35-point Steamroller. Here is a quick look at the two lists I brought:

Tyrant Xerxis
- Bronzeback Titan
- Titan Gladiator
Aptimus Marketh
4 Cataphract Cetrati
10 Nihilators
6 Paingiver Beast Handlers

Archdomia Makeda
- Bronzeback Titan
- Titan Gladiator
Agonizer
4 Cataphract Cetrati
10 Nihilators
4 Paingiver Beast Handlers
Saxon Orrik

As you can see, with the exception of different warlocks and a few models traded out, they are almost identical lists. There are a couple of different factors behind that: First, I wanted to play fully painted, and I'm limited by what I have painted up right now. Secondly, I wanted to play models I was really experienced with - you can Theory Machine all you want, but nothing replaces experience when it comes to really understanding what a model is good for.

The whole gang - A good three months of slow-grow league pays off.

The Makeda list ended up being my primary list. I perfer this list for all of the dual-zone scenarios we are seeing in Steamroller 2011. Thanks to Savagery, Makeda can get the Cataphract moving 10 inches a turn in shield wall, and with Defender's Ward on the Nihilators, they are suddenly DEF 15/ARM 15 with Tough, which means I have two rock-solid units to hold down different scoring zones while my Titans go play offense. Makeda's feat is also money for "hold the zone" scenarios - nothing is more frustrating that killing off most of a unit just to have it come back and fill up the scoring zone on the next turn. I will typically stick the agonizer up into one of those zones to put a damper on focus, and Saxon Orrik is there in case one of the units needs pathfinder to get somewhere.

I use the Xerxis list if I find myself facing a high armor 'jack wall or a pile of heavy beasts in a killbox scenario. Saxon gets dropped because Xerxis can give pathfinder all by himself with a battle plan. Marketh comes in to help Xerxis manage his precious 5 fury - Inhospitable Ground usually gets cast a lot with this list, so having someone else around who can cast and upkeep Defender's Ward and Fury is worth the three points. This list isn't nearly as fast as the Makeda list, but Inhospitable Ground helps to level the playing field. This list really earns its keep on Xerxis feat turn, with Total Annihilation giving everyone in his control area an extra damage die. With Fury on the Nihilators, they can charge at POW 15 with 4 damage dice - definately enough to damage heavies. Charging Cataphract have 5 damage dice. An enraged Bronzeback can generate seven POW 19 attacks with three dice in addition to his initial charge attack. I have scrapped four undamaged Khador heavies in a single turn with this list on a well executed feat turn!

I'm definitely enjoying the play style that the Skorne brings to the table, especially compared to what I was used to from Cygnar. At one point in the last tournament, my opponent said in exasperation, "Goddamnit, you are playing aggressively!" That might just be the highest complement one can be paid in this game.

Weekend Painting

2011-03-01T12:51:00.001-07:00

I continue to make decent progress on painting my Skorne, and managed to finish up Hakaar, a Bronzeback and the Tyrant Commander over the weekend. I’m pretty happy with where I’m at considering I just started the army back in December. I've thrown in pics of what I've been up to below...

My goal was to "slow-grow" to a 50-point list (with a few swap-out options) and paint my way through it without picking up a ton of new models in the mean time. I’ve done a pretty decent job being disciplined about that, but (as usual) I’ve picked up a few things along the way as I’ve played some games and seen how they could be useful. I’ve got 29 models painted and about 7 or 8 models to go to fill out my 50 point list with a few options, so I’m getting close to the finish line, and I should be finished about a month ahead of my FLGS’s slow-grow league.

I managed to sneak in another 50-point game this week, this time Xerxis vs. Darius. It was a good chance to see if the army had the beat stick potential that I thought it did. Unfortunately, I forgot to move Xerxis up and cast Inhospitable Ground on turn 2, which meant my opponent got off a Stormblade assault, killing my Bronzeback and tearing up my Gladiator pretty badly. I managed to hit back pretty hard the following turn using Xerxis feat turn to get the extra die on damage rolls. I wanted to see if Xerxis could scrap a heavy, but I missed on my charge attack, and then didn’t realize that the Stormclad had both Fortify and Arcane Shield on it… That’s an awful lot of armor to overcome! Xerxis did good damage, but not enough. My Cetrati rolled terrible on damage and couldn’t finish the job, and the crazy jacked-up armor on the Stormclad proved too much - it killed Xerxis at the top of the next turn. Even with the loss, it was encouraging: I think all of the elements are there – I just need to do a better job pulling them all together into a cohesive game plan.

I spent most of my Sunday at a painting clinic at our local store hosted by James “Dicewraith” Kater (who you may recognize from his occasional Lost Hemisphere contributions). Kater is an all-around great guy, and a really amazing painter. He’s been at it for over 9 years, and shared a lot of good tips and tricks to share on painting faces and speed painting. It was interesting to watch him work, and I realized that I basically have two painting speeds: Normal, and really slow (which I use for “showcase” painting). Kater, on the other hand, is amazingly versatile, and he’s got a variable speed dial that goes from 1 to 11. In the time I painted one tyrant commander, he painted a half-a-dozen trencher commandos to a very nice standard of quality. During the speed painting session, he painted three models in a half an hour. They weren’t as nice as the others, but they would compete with most “pre-paint” in quality, and would definitely look nicer than raw pewter on the tabletop.

Dicewraith teaches us how to paint pretty like him.

In addition to getting some good tips, it was fun to just hang out and paint with a half a dozen people and visit. A lot of people paint down at the store, but it was fun to do it as part of an organized activity, and something I hadn’t done before – normally I paint alone back at the mancave. We had a lot of discussion about quality, and how much we wanted to balance between “table-top” quality (what looks good at 3 feet away) vs. presentation quality (what looks good at 6-12 inches away). I used to think that tabletop painting was just lower quality, but I’m starting to realize that there is a whole mindset to it: more distinct color blocks, more highlight-to-shadow contrast, and bold color schemes that stand out at a distance. Lately I’m finding myself really attracted to models that are cleanly painted and very bold, and I think I’m going to start steering my style that way. Maybe next army…

An example of Dicewraith's work. Oh yeah - he painted these ONE ARMED, as his other was in a sling!

Workshop: Xerxis

2011-02-23T20:10:00.003-07:00

I’m very much a fluff gamer, so when I decided to start Skorne, I wanted to focus on taking the models that originally attracted me to the faction from a story and aesthetic standpoint: Cataphract and Titans. After years of playing Cygnar, I wanted to play a true beat-stick army, full of big heavies, multi-wound infantry and a caster that could go toe-to-toe with the enemy. I found myself drawn to Tyrant Xerxis, and I’ve slowly building up a new army since Christmas. I’ve noodled a bit on the “This is Sparta!” list I had in the beginning, and this is what I’ve come up with:

Tyrant Xerxis (+5)
Titan Bronzeback (10)
Titan Gladiator (8)
Cyclops Savage (5)
Max. Nihilators (8)
Min. Cataphract Cetrati (8)
Min. Cataphract Cetrati (8)
Tyrant Vorkesh (3)
Tyrant Commander & Standard (3)
Paingiver Beast Handlers (2)

I played this list for the first time last weekend, and was able to get a feel for Xerxis and Team Cataphract. The basic idea is to use the Nihilators as a screen, moving them up field quickly to give the enemy something to worry about while the slower Cataphract advance. I really like Nihilators with Defender’s Ward, as they become DEF 15, ARM 15, making them plenty difficult for rank-and-file MAT 6 infantry to deal with. Between tough, berserk and POW 12 damage, they typically should have the staying power to hang around and the killing power to take out more than their fair share of points. I wish there was a better way to put a soul-gathering solo like Hakaar with them, but I just haven’t found a good way to deal with the speed differential that makes it worthwhile.

The two minimum units of Cataphract are the meaty center of the army. I went with two to give myself a little more tactical flexibility if I should need to split them up to hold a flank or something. Plus, with both Xerxis and a Tyrant Commander, I can issue battle plans to both units. I attached Vorkesh to the unit being run by the Tyrant Commander, as he grants Spell Ward, figuring that this way I can still have one unit (the one Xerxis is running) buffed by a spell like Fury or Defender’s Ward if I need to. I’ll need to get a few games in with Vorkesh to know if he’s worth it – Spell Ward can definitely be a double-edged sword. As far as supporting them, Xerxis Inhospitable Ground should help ensure the Cataphract get the charge off, and battle plans can get them up to SPD 7 or grant pathfinder. Defender’s Ward can make them ARM 22 with Shield Wall and Fury can make them POW 15 weapon masters. Without a doubt, Xerxis was made for these guys.

My beasts are about as straight-forward as they come – the two Titans are both heavy hitters, and this list can buff them up even further. On Xerxis feat turn, they can get up to a POW 19 + 4d6 + 3 on a charge with Fury and Enrage. That’s a maximum of 46 damage on a single attack! Each titan’s animus is equally useful on the other beast. There is also a nice trick of having Xerxis cast the Gladiator’s Rush animus onto the Bronzeback to give him extra range to get to a target, and then have Bronzeback cast Train Wreck on himself after the charge attack (but before he makes his remaining initial attacks), allowing him to benefit from both in the same activation!

I tend to buff up the Cyclops as an early game deep strike to take out a heavy. If I can, I like to have him charge a non-reach heavy while keeping the Bronzeback nearby. Then, when the non-reach heavy moves into ½ melee range with the Savage, it triggers Counter Charge from the Bronzeback, which is usually enough to kill whatever triggered it and give my titan some free movement in the process. I tend to lose the Cyclops early this way, and wonder if I should keep him around longer for his animus (which allows you to boost after the roll). It seems like the right idea for an assassination run if you don’t need the extra range of Rush or movement from Train Wreck to get into position.

My first outing with the list was in interesting one. I played against a Morvahna-led circle list, and we were surprisingly effective at cancelling out each other’s dirty tricks. Almost every unit in her army had pathfinder, so Inhospitable Ground never got cast once. My battle plans could grant pathfinder, so forests weren’t that useful to her. I wiped out more than half of her Blood Trackers in their first contact, but Regrowth brought them back (which has been the bane of my Nihilators – the first time I played them was against a High Reclaimer list that kept bringing back the TFG!). This army is fairly low model count to begin with, and depends on attrition to win – with regrowth in play, the tables start to turn quickly.

The Circle infantry looked lightweight, but there were enough weapon masters with prey in there to do some serious damage to even my high-armor infantry. I made the mistake of feeding a unit of Cataphract to the Wolf Rider’s that had declared them prey. I had some bad rolls on their charge and didn’t take enough of them out, leaving three of them to assault back, killing 2 Cetrati and Vorkesh. A whitemane helped clean up a third Cetrati. Not sure it was as much tactically faulty as just unlucky, but I was unimpressed.

The beasts, on the other hand, were superstars, and I probably needed to push them into the fight much sooner. With only one heavy in the opposing army (a Warpwolf), she really had no good answer to my elephants rampaging in her backfield. In fact, next time I play I need to move the entire army much more aggressively. I feel like I let her concentrate on dealing with one unit at a time rather than pushing my whole army in her face, and I’m probably a little too focused on delivering the Cataphract.

With one game under my belt, I am already considering some changes… I may consolidate down to one full unit of Cetrati and drop Vorkesh – he is more liability than value with a good troop supporting warlock. That would free up four points, which I could use to include Hakaar. If I keep the Tyrant Commander I still have two battle plans to keeps the army moving quickly, although I lose the flexibility of being able to split up the brick. Another fun option might be to drop the Savage and Vorkesh and put in a Rhinodon, which gives me a third heavy, some troop killing options thanks to his Thresher attack, and the Amuck animus that plays well with other Skorne heavies (especially should I want to trample something!) I’ll probably get a few more games in with the list as is before I make any changes, but so far it’s a lot of fun, and I’m definitely digging the feel of this army.

Thoughts or feedback? I want to hear it - Leave a comment below!

I'm A Dirty Cheater

2011-02-21T21:41:00.003-07:00

My new Skorne army is slowly growing, and I’m having a lot of fun painting it and getting to know the Hordes faction fluff. It’s been a great change after a couple of years of playing Cygnar, and picking up a new faction has started to ease some of the restlessness I from the shift into MKII. I get that upgrading the game is a necessary thing, but it made for a couple of years where it felt like very little new was happening. I’m definitely ready to get on with some new material, and expect that I’ll be ready to revisit my Cygnar about the time the Wrath hits the streets.

But back to the Skorne: I played my third game with them this week, finally stepping up to the 50-point level and trying out Xerxis for the first time. My intention had been to do the full battle report write-up, but after the game ended, it just didn’t feel right anymore. I won, you see, but I cheated.

This wasn’t a malicious, I want to win so bad I’ll do anything kind of cheat mind you, but rather the kind of cheating that comes out of being new to Hordes and the whole Fury thing. Here’s the set-up: It is late in the game and Morvahna is kicking the crap out of my army with a unit of Tharn Bloodtrackers who have preyed my Nihilators and wiped them out in a battle of attrition. On my other flank, a unit of Wolf Riders assaulted my Cataphract and killed all but one of them. My army is starting to look a little thin, and I figure that I better get this done. I activate Xerxis and have him put Fury and Rush on the Bronzeback, and then have my Beast Handlers Enrage it. The Bronzeback charges and hits a Warpwolf, taking it down to 1 wound. It then casts Train Wreck on itself, and starts using the 1” advance granted by beat back to work its way from model-to-model until it gets to Morvahna. I use my last fury to attack her, and one shot her with my effective POW22 fist. Suck it, tree hugger!

Big Stompy Angry! (And completely out of his 'lock's Control Area)

Unfortunately (and I didn’t realize it until about an hour later), the last two beat back moves would have taken the Bronzeback about an inch and a half outside of Xerxis control areas, meaning he couldn’t have been forced to take those last few attacks (including the one that ended the game.) I felt like shit. I’ve done that same move at least a half a dozen times with a Hammersmith, and once I started rolling dice habit just took over – but with a warjack, as long as you start in control it’s all good, and it’s not unusual to launch a ‘jack like cruise missiles out of your control area in a game-ending maneuver.

So, yeah, I’m a dirty cheater. It happens. My opponent was cool about it, demanding only a rematch. I hate it when stuff like that happens, because I never want to be that guy. I don’t get many games in as it is, and so I want the ones that I do play to be fun for me and my opponent. At the same time, it’s a big, complicated game, and I bet you that there is a lot more “accidental” cheating going on in any given game than you think. I just hate to win games that way…

Gamer Karma: My XBOX died the very same night, proving that God hates cheaters.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about my Skorne lately. Maybe next time I’ll talk about what I’ve learned so far (when I'm not cheating my ass off) and what I’m having luck with…

Convention Envy

2011-02-06T15:09:00.003-07:00

I'm finding myself pretty envious of all the folks at TempleCon right now, and I'm thinking I might have to figure out how to get it on the agenda for next year. I spent most of the weekend following the news coming in over twitter and Lost Hemisphere, and it sounds like I've missed a really good time... Instead, I spent the weekend at home with a cold. The only good news - I managed to get quite a bit of painting done. I finally finished up my Nihilators, and then I painted Morghoul and the my remaining Cyclops Savage. Here is the latest from my painting desk:

With Morghoul and the other cyclops done,
I have a fully painted Skorne Warkpack!

The finished Nihilator models. These were actually really fun to paint.
Very simple, and they went fast. (Sorry for the poor focus... Camera was struggling!)

And here is my entire painted Skorne force - the warpack, two min Cetrati, a unit
of paingivers and a full unit of Nihilators. Next up, Hakaar and a Bronzeback!

All the excitement from TempleCon has pretty much convinced me that Lock and Load is going to be a "must-attend" event - and unlike Rhode Island, Seattle is only a quick 45 minute flight away. I'm really exicted to see where the game is going with Wrath and the Battle Engines, and everything else the next year holds in store. It's going to be awesome to be out of "MK II Release Mode" and back into the normal swing of things!

Skorne Update

2011-01-10T19:27:00.046-07:00

Christmas is over, and life is finally getting back to normal as I head back to work and the kids are back in school, which means I’m getting back to my much neglected blog. The good news is that there has been plenty going on to talk about. Hopefully, over the next few weeks, I can all caught up again and fill you in on some of the fun I’ve had over the break.

I’m making good progress on my Skorne army, although I missed out on the first slow grow tournament because I didn’t make the fully painted requirement. It wasn't a lack of painting, but a lack of planning that did me in: While I didn’t get my 15-point list painted, I did finish both units of Cataphract Cerati that I will be using in my 35 and 50 pt. lists. I also finished off a Titan Gladiator, a Cyclops Savage and a unit of Paingiver Beast Handlers - so I’m making some progress. Next I’m going to tackle the Nihilators, just to get the last of the units out of the way.

Our Slow-Grow league is now at the 25-point level, and I continue to build out my army. I could probably come up with some better combos, but I’m trying to use what I’ve got – especially from the battle box. Right now I'm running Morghoul, a Gladiator, two Cyclops Savages, a minimum unit of Paingiver Beast Handlers, a max unit of Nihilators and Hakaar the Destroyer.

I've managed to get a few games in, and I’m starting to wrap my brain around Hordes and the fury mechanic. I’m using Morghoul as my low-point caster, just to take advantage of his generous beast points. I’m enjoying the speed and power he can grant his beasts – coupled with beast handlers, he can turn a move his beasts surprisingly fast while jacking their POW up to frightening levels. More importantly, it’s a blast to pirouette through and entire formation of Temple Flame Guard, gutting them down to a man in a single turn!

I’m struggling a little more getting mileage out of the Nihilators, as they can’t seem to get a good match up. In my first game they fought TFG, and couldn’t beat their high armor (forcing Morghoul to clean up), and in the second game they faced Kayazy, and they couldn’t hit the high defense. I’m starting to sense they are more tar-pit than offensive powerhouse. At least by pairing them with Hakaar I get some souls when they die, and thanks to Tough they tend to die a little at a time, feeding a constant supply of souls. Even so, I’m wondering If I wouldn’t be better off with something else.

Easing my way back into playing again after taking some time off has been fun, and a new faction is definitely reinvigorating. I’m enjoying the Skorne story and learning the background of the faction, and the guys at the FLGS have been really good to put up with my sloppy play while I figure the Hordes thing out. It’s good to be back.

Weekend Painting Update

2010-11-07T20:09:00.002-07:00

It's been a quiet weekend, and I managed to get some painting in. I've been trying to keep up with my goal of painting a little every day, and for the most part I've done pretty well. This weekend I finished up the first of two minimum Cetrati units for my Xerxis "This Is Sparta!" list, and I think they turned out pretty well. The models still look a little shiny, as it is pouring rain here and I don't want to hit them with dullcote unit I get a dry day.

So far I've really enjoyed painting the Skorne. The ornate armor has been fun, and they just have a really harsh, severe look to them that I enjoy. I'm trying to decide if I dive right into the second unit of Centrati, or take a break and go after a warbeast. I may even jump back to my Cygnar and paint up the primed Cyclone sitting on my desk. Given the nasty fall weather, I'm starting to prime a dozen or so models whenever we see a nice day, just so I always have a backlog to paint. Now if I could just find time to sneak down to my FLGS and get a game in!

My first painted Skorne unit! I loved these guys the first time I saw them in Primal.

I'm really happy with the black cloth. The medium tone is PP coal black,
while the highlight is 50/50 coal black and trollblood highlight

A Little at a Time...

2010-10-27T20:05:00.005-06:00

Rawr!

I had a pretty good weekend of painting, although I'm just now getting around to taking some pictures and getting them posted. A few posts back I talked about staying motivated while painting, and I'm trying to get in the habit of painting a little bit every day rather than waiting until I can sit down for a marathon session. I've set up one project at a time on a little tray that is easy for me to get out and put away in just a few minutes, and I have to admit I'm surprised at how much I've been able to get done painting for 45 minutes to an hour before bed.

In my last post I talked about the Skorne list I'm starting on, and I managed to get my first model finished to test out the paint scheme. I'm not overly creative, so I tend to stick with the standard color schemes (I like it when my models look like the art in the books...) I was a little afraid of the Skorne - so much detailed filigree on the armor, but it turned out not to be bad at all. I'm switching up the studio scheme a bit as well - I'm still going with red armor, but almost all of the cloth on mine will be back (which has helped me finally figure out a good recipe for shading black as well.)

Siege and Reinholdt, delivering rockets to face-holes since 2005

I finished Siege the week before, but it just doesn't feel right to have a painted Siege without a painted Reinholdt (because seriously, unless you are playing a tier list, when do you field Brisbane without his 1-point little buddy.) I'm still working toward a teir 4 "Big Guns" theme list, but that is going to go on hold for a while while I work on the Skorne - After painting three weapon crews, two grenade porters and a trencher UA, I need a break from painting trenchers before I tackle the commandos.

Behold! A Bedevere for a new era!

Finally, early last year I painted up a Lancer to look just like a Sword Knight (back in MKI when Sword Knights were absurdly good thanks to the UA they got in Legends). G'daybloke from Lost Hemisphere dubbed him "Bedivere," after the knight who returned excaliber to the Lady in the Lake. The name stuck, and he quickly became one my most favorite models. So, when firefly showed up and seemed like and obvious 'jack marshall buddy for the Sword Knights, it only made sense for me to make Bedivere 2.0!

Family reunion! Bedevere 1.0 and 2.0 together with the boys

This is Sparta!

2010-10-24T15:26:00.011-06:00

A long, long time ago, I was trying to decide what Hordes faction I was going to play. As it turns out, I’m not really good at making these kinds of decisions, which is probably why I own every battle box that Privateer Press has put out. It is less a problem of finding a faction that I like, and more of a problem of liking them all. As I’m trying re-learn the MK II game, I thought it was probably time to take on a new faction to get a fresh perspective. Not having a Hordes faction feels like I'm only getting half the game, so I figured it was time to finally commit and give it a go.

It has been almost two years since I narrowed the field down to either the Trolls or the Skorne, and now I’ve finally made my choice: I’m going Skorne. What finally pushed me over the edge? The Extreme Titan Gladiator model I picked up at PAX. This softball-sized monstrosity is one of the most amazing sculpts I have ever seen. Originally, I picked him up just to paint, but he is too magnificent – he needs an army built around him!

Several of the guys at my FLGS are starting out with Hordes by building “slow-grow” armies. They are buying and painting models at incremental point sizes, and not buying more until the first batch gets painted and on the table. I’m going to join them and take the same approach with my Skorne, but I’m starting out with a basic 50-point list, and then not adding any new models until that list is completely painted. Here’s my starter list:

This Is Sparta! (50 pts)
Tyrant Xerxis
- Titan Bronzeback
- Titan Gladiator
- Cyclops Savage
- Basilisk Krea
Nihilators (Max)
Cataphract Cetrati (Min)
Cataphract Cetrati (Min)
Tyrant Commander & Standard
Feralgeist

I built this list around the models that attracted me the most in the Skorne army: Titans and Catapharacts. This army should offer layers of punching power. It starts with the Nihilators, who play the role of the Arcadians in the movie 300: they run out front and tying up the enemy while the well ordered phalanx of Cetrati make their advance.

“They shout and curse, stabbing wildly; more brawlers than warriors. They make a wondrous mess of things. Brave amateurs - they do their part.” -300

The two units of Cetrati make up the heart of the army, supported by the battle plans of Xerxis and the Tyrant Commander. The Krea can protect one unit against ranged attacks with its Paralytic Aura while Xerxis’ Defender’s Ward protects the other.

The beasts support each other, with the Savage’s Prescience making one of the titans incredibly focus efficient, while the Gladiator’s Rush animus extends the charge range and Xerxis’ Fury spell makes sure it pays off with a +3 damage boost. Inhospitable Ground and the Krea’s Spiritual Paralysis should help ensure that I get the charge off when the time comes, and with an army of Titans and weapon-masters, that should be a truly devastating charge. Combined with Xerxis' Total Annihilation feat, my Cetrati can be rolling FIVE damage dice on a POW 11 charge!

The main downside I see with this list is the low model count and the relatively slow speed. While the army has plenty of punching power, it just doesn’t generated that many attacks per turn, making it very susceptible to a good tarpit unit, such as a big unit of Kriel warriors that keep making tough rolls. Mobs of infantry could definitely bog them down if the Nihilators can’t take them out first. Powerful ranged armies could also pose a problem, but that is why I took the unit of Nihilators – to run them into enemy lines and cause havoc, while the main formation advances under it's DEF and ARM buffs. The fact that the Cetrati all have 8 wounds should at least give the small squads some staying power and provide them with some resilience against snipers or units with Anatomical Precision.

Of course, all of this is just theory machine - I won’t know what this army is capable of until I get it on the table, but I'm really excited. For those of you who are already Skorne players, I’d love to hear some feedback - drop me a comment!

Painting Motivation

2010-10-15T16:38:00.006-06:00

I finished up Siege in just a few nights,
stealing away a little time before for
painting before bed each night.

In my last post, I talked a lot about how I am trying to get refocused and back into the game now that all of the MKII dust is finally starting to settle. For me, painting models is a hugely important part of the hobby – in fact it is almost accidental that I ever became a Warmachine player. There was a point in time when I would have been happy just picking up models and painting them.

Why do I paint? First off, painting is cathartic. It is my "unwind time." It is an activity that blends both creative process and technical execution, and engages both sides of my brain. It helps me push out work and worry, and lets me focus on something that is both very simple and yet very rewarding.

Secondly, painting gives me a connection to the model and the game. When you hold something in your hands and look at it for hours on end, and you tend to think a lot about it, both from a rules and a fluff perspective. I'm always seem to have a better handle on the pieces I've spent time painting.

Finally, fully painted armies look awesome. This is not a damnation of putting raw pewter on the table – most of us will do that at one time or another – but you only need to look in No Quarter at the stunning battle report photos to know what I’m talking about. Two fully-painted armies facing off on a table loaded with quality terrain just looks incredible.

Unfortunately, over the last year, I have fallen seriously behind on my plans for having a fully painted army. Now I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things, and I thought I would take a few minutes and think about ways to stay motivated at the painting table. Here are my thoughts:

1) Set manageable goals. It is demoralizing to miss your goals, and people tend to avoid failure, so you are better off setting reasonable goals to keep yourself motivated. Leave yourself enough time to finish projects without cutting corners on the quality you want to achieve. I have 157 Cygnar models in total, and 84 of them are painted, leaving me with 73 models to go. While having a fully painted army is my ultimate goal, it’s a little overwhelming to think about. Small goals let you taste success and feel accomplishment without dreading a looming mountain of pewter. This leads me to…

2) Make “projects” for yourself. Come up with little projects of related models to keep yourself interested, and then give the project a fun codename (I learned this one from Bobaferret and G’daybloke). Maybe it's a battle box, or maybe a unit of Gun Mages with the Dude and their custom Cyclone. The point is that these mental groupings give you nice incremental goals to work towards and a sense of greater purpose. That, and goofy codenames are fun to say.

3) Paint often. This year at PAX, someone asked Gabe (the artist of Penny Arcade), “How do I become an awesome artist like you?” His answer: “Draw every day.” You hear the same thing about writing. I would submit that painting is no different. Paint every day. It had become pretty common for me to think “Ah, it’s late, I don’t have much time left before bed – I won’t paint tonight.” After a while, I realized I was only painting once in a blue moon… Now, my goal is to try and paint at least five nights a week. Even if it is only for a half an hour, I'll paint. It helps keep your skills fresh, and you will be surprised how much progress you can make!

4) Mix things up. Having a Cygnar army means you eventually go crazy painting blue. Paint some mercs or something in-between just to mix things up. If you paint a 10-man unit, reward yourself with a ‘jack or a warcaster before taking on more troopers. Pick up a Reaper mini and paint that. Paint something for a friend’s army in their color scheme. It doesn’t matter what you are painting, just don’t let yourself get bogged down to where your painting becomes a chore and you lose interest. Keep things fresh so you stay engaged.

5) Post, Blog and Tweet. Share your progress with the world! Whether it is posting on forums, setting up a blog or twitter, you will be surprised how much positive feedback and support you will get, and how motivating that can be. You will also get some great advice that only makes you a better painter. The sense of community I get via this blog and twitter are a great motivator, and I’ve met some really great people.

6) The Big Payoff. Take all your little projects and tie them to a big payoff. Plan a theme force for TempleCon, and have it fully painted when you go. Be fully painted for Foodmachine. Whatever. Having a big event to look forward to is motivating and exciting! You can almost think of your trip to the convention as the reward for all the hard work.

Hopefully there are some ideas in here that will help keep you focused and productive at the painting table. If you have any more ideas, I’d love to hear them – just drop me a comment. Until then, keep painting!

Back To My Roots

2010-10-11T18:29:00.025-06:00

I finally put paint to my Thunderhead, after only
three years of sittting unassembled in my closet!

I originally got into Warmachine as a painter. I bought my first model (a Cryx Harrower) back in April of 2006. I didn’t even play my first game until November 2007. I didn’t play my first game in a store until September 2008, when I came back from PAX fired up and ready to learn. I met up with Bobaferret and the folks from Rivercity Warmachine who brought me into the fold. I played in my first battle box tournament a month later. From there, we had a “slow grow” series of tournaments, working our way up to 750 pts. By the end, I could call myself a Warmachine player.

Over the next couple of years, I continued to grow my army, and I probably became a little more focused on playing than painting. My model count increased while the proportion of painted models decreased. I learned my casters, found my style, and in general got pretty good with my Cygnar. I have never been a dominant force on the local scene, but I played well enough to not embarrass myself. I even managed to place in a few tournaments.

Unfortunately, things have started to fall apart in the last year. Lately, I’m struggling to put in a decent showing, and I’m feeling like a noob all over again. What the hell happened?! I’ve been thinking quite a bit about that lately, and I think it boils down to the switch to MKII, and me not recognizing the turn in the road. No, I’m not going to complain about MKII – in fact, quite the opposite – I love what they have done in MKII. But, somehow I got stuck halfway between MKI and MKII, and can never quite seem to remember if that is how something works now, or the way it used to work…

Hot off of my painting desk: 100% MKII goodness!

We have all heard the old saying, “Practice makes perfect.” That is especially true in a game like Warmachine. When I look at the people in my local group who have really mastered this game, I realize that there is a almost a stair-step function to player knowledge. After a little thought about how that might be structured, I submit for your approval Dangerfish’s Seven Divine Levels of Warmachine Enlightenment:

Level 1: Know The Rules It’s a game, and you need to know the rules. You can’t really play well (even correctly) until you have a pretty firm grasp on the rules that govern the game. If this step is too much for you, you should probably stick with video games.

Level 2: Know Your Faction’s Models The second level of awareness is knowing what your models can do. Not just knowing it, but internalizing it. Remembering the little situational things like the cortex damage from a shock shield or the magic attack re-roll from the Squire's Arcane Realignment. This also means knowing the restrictions on those same models and abilities (yes, Stormsmiths do require line of sight, and no, Epic Stryker does not get to use Overload on the attack granted by his feat.)

Level 3: Know Your Faction's Combos Once you have a good understanding of what each of your models can do, you start to notice the interesting and synergistic ways those models can work together. You notice that the extra die from Dead Eye can really help gun mages get those critical brutal damage rolls or that the Siege/Rienholdt extra shot combo can be a game winner on the feat turn. Knowing these combos tends to be where a lot of the fun and satisfaction can be found in the game.

Level 4: Know Your Enemy’s Models By this, I mean simply knowing what your enemies models can do. Which ones have thresher or vengence? You will approach them differently when you know what they can do... For most players, this is probably developing pretty well while you are starting to really dial in your own combos as well.

Level 5: Know Your Enemy’s Combos By this time, you have mastered your own bag of dirty tricks, and for the most part you know what each your enemy’s models can do individually. Eventually, you start to put together the really nasty combos that they can pull off. I don’t just mean learning them on the forums (like the Molik Karn missile), but actually developing the ability to put them together the possibilities in real time while your opponent is moving models around the table. You have mastered this level when you are seeing combos in your opponent’s army that he is missing.

"It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." -The Art of War, Sun Tzu

Level 6: Know Your Meta Know the tournament scenarios inside and out. Study them, learn them, dismantle them, and own them. Know your local meta: What are your opponents likely to bring? What models and tactics do the top players have and affinity for, and how will you counter those? Is it a jack- or infantry-heavy? What factions are you most likely to see? By understanding the meta around the game, you can prepare your response accordingly and go in with an advantage.

Level 7: "Just Win" You know everything there is about the game, the models, the rules and the meta. Hell, you even memorized the fluff. You planned, strategized and schemed and crafted an unstoppable battle force. Unfortunately, as the old saying goes, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” From the moment you start rolling dice, chaos theory will kick in, and things will start to go sideways. All you can do now is think on your feet, and draw on all of your knowledge and hard won experience to win.

Unfortunately, to reach this much-vaunted Seventh Level of Wargaming Nirvana takes a whole shitload of time and dedication. I think the frustration I feel today is because back in the MKI days I had worked myself up to somewhere in between levels 4 and 5. Now, with all of the MKII changes and less time spent with the game, I find that I’ve slipped back down to somewhere between the first and second levels. The worst part: I didn’t even recognize it had happened because things are so deceptively similar to what they were before to make me think I still knew everything. I finally figured it out when I got my ass kicked by another Cygnar army doing things I didn’t know it could do.

The dwarves I won in a Breast Cancer Brawl auction.
Nothing to do with anything - they just kick ass.

So now what to do? Well, like a college football program gone awry, I’ve come to terms with the idea that his may be a “rebuilding year” for me. I need to take some time and really pour over the faction books. I need to relearn the armies, and purge all the old MKI data once and for all. More importantly, I need to get back to the painting table. One of our locals, Brotherscott, has always told me that “painted models play better.” I used to take that as gamer superstition, but now I think there is some truth to it. While I’m painting a model, I’m thinking a lot about it. I tend to look at the stats more, imagine how I’m going to use it on the table. I even build little fluff stories around them in my head. For me, the time spent painting creates a connection with both the models and the game that I don’t have when I’m just throwing my carrying cases in the car and rushing to game night with no prep.

Here is another overused sports analogy: “Victory is won in the off season” – for me, perhaps it is won at the painting table and in the den. I’m going back to my roots, when I was ass-deep in the Iron Kingdoms, lovingly painting models and devouring the books over my morning coffee and just trying to take it all in. This is an amazingly rewarding hobby, and I want to be sure to enjoy it all. Like most things in life, you get what you give.

PAX Recap

2010-09-13T21:23:00.006-06:00

It's hard to believe that only one week ago I was at PAX, which is quickly becoming my favorite weekend of the year. If you have never been to PAX, it's hard to describe: It has video games like a trade show, panels and tournaments like a convention, and concerts like a festival. Personally, I like to think it as a family reunion where the whole geek tribe gathers once a year.

The only down side is what I now call Post-Pax Depressive Syndrome (PPDS), which is the horrible funk that you feel after having to merge with real life after three days of awesome sauce. I summed up my feelings best last year, so rather than try to creatively re-express those emotions, I'll just dredge them up from the internet time machine and repeat them here:

"So, here I am, one week later, and I find that now that I have rejoined "real" life, the motivation to go back in time and discuss PAX in any great detail has left me. It seems that PAX has become like a warm memory of childhood, locked away safe from the harsh light of this working man's reality, only to be brought out over good scotch and in the company of fine friends. To allow one's thoughts to linger over-long on such a happy time is only to invite sorrow it seems, for these days cannot measure against those..."

Now that I've had a week to recover, I find that, much like last year, I lack the desire to recount the weekend in any great detail, but I'm ready to share the highlights. Helmets and chin-straps, gentle reader, because here we go!

Warmachine

Privateer Press was there in force this year, as usual, with a pile of upcoming releases available at the show. Many of them would be out to the public within a few days, but some of them won't. I picked up a plastic Cygnar starter, a Triumph kit, and some croaks for a friend. I also picked up an Extreme Titan Gladiator, which is so stupid awesome looking that I think I'm going to have to finally take on that Skorne Army.

There were a number of tournaments going on, and it's good to see the Warmachine scene growing at PAX. I didn't play in any of them, mostly because I didn't want to miss other stuff going on. Plus, the guy I was traveling with doesn't play the game, so it would have made for some boring days for him. Still, they were filling tables, rolling dice, and pushing pewter, which is always a good thing, and one of the guys from the local Boise store took home the Working Man's coin, which is cool.

I also got to see Jen Ikuta (Bobaferret) again, which was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. Jen was the person who really got me into Warmachine back when she was the Boise press ganger, and she was my Thursday night sparring partner for almost two years before she was beamed up by the mothership. We had planned to play a 50-pointer while I was there, and I had even put together a very special "lightning in the facehole" Epic Nemo list for the occasion, but it never happened thanks to crazy PAX schedules. I'm thinking I might have to go to TempleCon this year just to get that game in. Thanks to Jen I also got to meet most of the Privateer crew, which was a pretty cool experience. (Oh, and thanks for the beers, Simon!)

Drinking the hootch with Bobaferret at PAX!

Roleplaying

This blog may be mostly about Warmachine, but I spend a huge part of my "gamer time" doing roleplaying stuff. I primarily run the weekly home game, so I always like going to a con where I can just be a player for a couple of days. PAX is great for that - Wizards of the Coast has a strong connection with the Penny Arcade guys thanks to the podcast series, and they always show up in force for PAX. This year they were pimping the "new" red box intro set and the upcoming release of the new GammaWorld RPG.

It seems like WotC has been working hard to make their games more convention friendly, and I think they have really succeeded with the dungeon delve concept. They ran 12 tables, each with the same 6 pre-generated characters. Each table was a different section of the Dread Witch's lair, and was made up of two encounters. Each session lasted only an hour, and you earned tokens for the progress you make, which could be redeemed for either items for your character or D&D swag for you. At first I wasn't sure I liked using pre-generated characters, but it ended up being a great thing - after a few sessions you had a good sense of what your party was capable of, regardless of who was sitting at the table. We ended playing six or seven hours of the delve, and had a blast each time, and met some really fun people along the way.

We also played a preview game of the new GammaWorld, which was super fun and really memorable. Rather than a collection of source books, GammaWorld is more of an RPG in a box, well suited for pickup games and one-shots. Character creation is highly random, and character powers are randomized through a card mechanic. (I ended up playing a chainsaw-wielding telekinetic cockroach berserker!) While this lack of control won't appeal to min-maxers, the "take-what-you-get" approach can be a blast for the more roleplaying-oriented. I'll definitely be picking that one up as soon as it comes out. Best moment from the session: One of party challenges a guard robot to a dance-off... and succeeds!

The roleplaying highlight (and possibly the highlight of the whole show) was the live Acquisitions Incorporated D&D game. Chris Perkins ran Gabe, Tycho, Wil Wheaton and Scott Kurtz through and adventure to retrieve Wil's recently (and quite un-heroically) killed character Aeofel from Hell. I laughed so hard I cried for almost three hours. The rumor is that Wizards will be posting this in complete form eventually, and when they do, you need to watch it. If you have never really got the roleplaying thing, this will make it click. Here's just a taste:

General Geekery

While people were generally gaga for Halo Reach, I would say that the biggest news of the show was Gearbox software showing off Duke Nukem Forever in playable form. I personally didn't play it (the two hour line was more than I could stand to play a game), but by all reports it has no shortage of boobs and potty jokes. Fans should be pleased! Square Enix showed off Final Fantasy 14 Online, which I was excited about (although I recognize I am probably the only person excited about this one outside of Japan). Dragon Age 2 is coming along, although in a departure from the first game you won't import and continue with your first character. You now play a character named Hawke (either a boy or a girl) and from what we learned it sounds like the game will have more of the Mass Effect type character/cinematic focus. Blizzard was strangely absent, leaving me to assume they have invaded Canada.

And whatever time was left over we spent playing board games wherever we could find space. Ascension, Small World and Zombie Dice were all big hits. Sunday night, after the show, we even took over the Sheraton lounge and sipped microbrews while we played board games and made some new friends from Isreal who had come all the way for PAX. What a great show - I can't wait to go back again next year!

All Your Lounges Are Belong to Us!

Ride the Lightning!

2010-08-20T14:07:00.007-06:00

Summer Rampage kicked off at our store today, and I managed to get a couple of good games in. I'm still in getting back into the swing of the game, but I had a far better showing this week than last time. My first list was all about trying out some of the new toys my faction has (most notably the Firefly and the Stormblade Storm Gunner), and the matchup looked something like this:

My Army (50):

Epic Nemo
Squire
Thunderhead
Stormclad
Firefly (x2)
Stormguard (Max)
Stormblades
Stormblade UA
Storm Gunner (x2)
Stormsmith (x3)

Ian's Khador:

Epic Butcher
War Dog
Juggernaut (x2)
Kodiak (x2)
Marauder
Spriggan
Doom Reavers
Grey Lord Escort

You could call it a theme list, although the inclusion of the Storm Blades invalidates it as a eNemo tiered list. The idea was to build something completely lightning-proof, so I could wade in with Thunderhead pulsing and units flinging electroleaps without fear of hurting my old models. In fact, the squire is the only model that is not lightning immune in the entire list, and hopefully I can keep him far enough back that it won't matter.

That's a lot of Khadoran heavy armor...

The Game Plan: I intended to deploy the two fireflies on the flanks and run them up field, hoping to set up early game triangulations with the stormcallers and take advantage of eNemo's Elite Cadre. Nine POW 12 damage rolls that cause disruption every turn is nothing to sneeze at. The Stormclad will get Lightning Shroud, making him a POW 19 wrecking machine, while the Thunderhead will get Failsafe, adding much needed +2 armor and ensuring he stays in the fight until the end. Polarity Shield goes on the Stormblades, as I really wanted to make sure they get their assault order off, and the Stormguard already have Set Defense. I should have more than enough melee with lots of arcing electricity to take care of troopers, and I have high enough POWs that they are even a threat to 'jacks. I need to keep heavies disrupted to minimize their effectiveness, and use lightning bounces (even if it is off of my own infantry!) and stormcalls to take out stealthy or high defense models. This is not a assassination list, it is an annihilation list: Instead of going right for your caster, I'm going to try and kill your whole army, and then your caster.

How did it work out? The list played well, and worked (for the most part) the way I hoped. The Fireflies let all three stormcallers get triangulation attacks off on the start of the second turn, and they managed to kill off an entire unit of doom reavers, with the exception of the Koldun Escort, who went on to make SEVEN tough checks in a row. I forgot to give the assault order, so my Stormblades only got off a regular charge, but at POW 15 they were able to inflict impressive damage, serious crippling two Khadoran heavies. Everything else worked as expected: My heavy 'jacks did their job, and (with infantry support) they could take out Khador heavies quickly without too much problem (although I let the Thunderhead get into melee, which is something I wanted to avoid). My stormsmiths were able to keep almost everything disrupted, which took off quite a bit of pressure.

The Epic Old Man will tolerate no bullshit!

What I didn't count on was eButcher. We don't have a ton of Khador players locally, so I don't get much practice against them, and I have never played against eButcher. His feat turn is absolutely miserable. He almost single handily wiped out my army, and then his rage tokens allowed his jacks to clean up almost everything else. I was left with eNemo, a couple of stormsmiths, a single stormblade and a firefly. So, I did the only thing I could do - I pulled a point of focus off of the squire, and I charged the Butcher! (Remember: Nemo's weapon has powerful attack, so one focus automatically boosts both attack and damage rolls.) I hit the Butcher with four boosted POW 13 attacks, and took him down to about 4 wounds, I feated, used focus matrix to take the three focus off my remaining Firefly, and used it to finish him. I stood there stunned... The old man had just melee soloed the Butcher!

These are the models the Butcher managed to kill on his feat turn.

Thoughts on the List: I didn't run this list with an arc node, which meant Nemo needed to buff his jacks early and upkeep them, which worked out okay. I also didn't take a Journeyman, which is normally automatic - while I missed the armor buff, I'm glad I didn't give up one of the fireflies to get him - the mass of triangulations was more than worth the trade. I do wish I could fit Strangewayes in - I hate spending so much on the Thunderhead and not having a way to keep it patched up. That being said, I don't think I would change anything at this point - the list played great and was a ton of fun. I'll definitely play it as-is a few more times before I make any adjustments. My final lesson: Don't underestimate an eNemo assassination! With a squire and 'jacks on his feat turn, eNemo can make EIGHT POW 13 attacks, boosting both the attack and damage rolls. If Nemo can take out the Butcher on his own, he can take out anyone.

My second game was supposed to be a quick 35-point pickup game that ended up going almost three hours. It was my first chance to face off against Lord Carver, a pair of War Hogs, Rorsch and Brine, and a bunch of Farrow Brigands. The offensive output of the farrow wasn't awesome, but they have great survivability: Carver has a solid spell selection, and the War Hogs are melee monsters, and with the tough rolls on the farrow the whole army was just a pain to kill - and it took a long time. Our lists looked something like this:

My Army (35):

Prime Stryker
Squire
Lancer
Ol' Rowdy
Journeyman
Sword Knights (Min)
Sword Knight UA
Centurion
Trencher Commandos (Min)

Josh's Thornfall:

Lord Carver
War Hog (x2)
Rorsch & Brine
Farrow Brigands (Max)
Farrow Brigands (Max)

It's ironic that a model with Batten Down the Hatches would die to being knocked down and buried under commando grenades, but that is how this one ended. As can happen in Hordes vs. Warmachine, once his War Hogs were down, his fury dried up, and he was forced to either play offense or drag it out the eventual loss. For me, MVP honors were split between Ol' Rowdy, who just owned the middle of the board with counter-charge and grudge, and my trencher commandos, who took out a whole unit of farrow brigands without suffering a casualty. They are truely awsome.

A good start to the rampage - I left the store last night the top of the league ladder... I'm sure that will last until about...now. Still, it's fun to be on top, even if only for a moment.

Oh, yeah - 13 days until PAX!

Full-Spectrum Geekdom

2010-08-15T23:49:00.000-06:00

PAX is only 18 days away, and my geek is in overdrive - and what a great time to be a geek! StarCraft 2 is finally out, and is every bit a polish and fun as I hoped it would be. I've been spending a good amount of time with ol' Jimmy Raynor trying to bring peace and prosperity to the colony worlds.

Getting back to the painting table, I finally finished up my trencher cannon crew, leaving only one more chain gun crew before I've finally finished all of my basic trenchers (10 trenchers, officer, sniper, 3 grenade porters, 2 chain gun crews and a cannon crew!) I still have 10 trencher commandos, 3 scatter gunners and 2 master gunners to go, but they are going to have to wait for a while.

Trencher Cannon Crew - almost done with trenchers!

I've got two Fireflies put together and primed, so they may be next to hit the table. After reading the Mercs book, I also picked up Rutger Shaw, Taryn di la Rovissi and a Nomad to make a three-model mobile jack-wrecking crew. It probably isn't the most powerful combination, but for 9 points it's a quite of bit capability for a Cygnar army, and more importantly, I just loved the fluff behind those two characters, and wanted to put them on the table. (Plus, it is kind of fun to reproduce the cover of the old Iron Kingdoms Character Guide.)

I thought all the warmachine news from GenCon looked promising. I'm not sure what I think of the War Engines yet, but knowing the Privateer Press folks, they will be cool. I love the idea of upgrade kits to turn the standard plastic kits into character jacks. I was also completely stoked for a new Cygnar Morrowan warcaster. Ever since Bobaferret went to work at the mothership I've been harassing her to convince them to give me a Morrowan heavy warjack, and now it seems like that might just happen! My speculation: she'll be an anti-magic troop caster, but we'll see.

I'm starting to whittle down my short list of board games to take to PAX for late-night gaming. Last year Battlelore was a hit, so that one is automatic. I finally broke out Small World with the kids today, and it was a blast! It does everything that I want from a convention game - it plays well with as few as two people or as many as 5, it plays relatively fast, and it can be easily taught to new players within just a few minutes, so I'm thinking it makes the cut as well.

Small World - watch out for those damn Flying Halflings!

And finally, I just finished reading Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, and thought it was a great read. The book tells the story of an alternative WWI history, where the Germans and Austrians developed walkers in the place of tanks, while the Brits depend on genetically-engineered creatures, including a gigantic airship created from a massive hydrogen-filled whale that lends the book it's title. It is a fantastic steampunk adventure, and I couldn't stop thinking about what a great big-box board game it would make. Playing the Clankers vs. Darwinists in a battle for Europe would be a blast.

Taking My Lumps

2010-08-01T15:58:00.002-06:00

This week I managed to sneak in my first Warmachine game in over a month, and only my second in almost two months. It seems that time away from the dice will make you soft, and when you get soft, Warmachine will shit you out dead with zero warning. I have apparently become marshmallow-soft.

I went into the game with a general plan for my list, but once we started rolling dice, I forgot damn near everything. My order of operations was horrible, I messed up the basics basics (like ordering shield wall on my Precursors) and I forgot to pop eHaley's feat during turn two. And again on turn three. Or at all.

A really bad picture of a really bad game. At least I'm consistent.

I finally rallied near the end, and in a well executed turn I almost took out Ashlyn by using Thorn to channel telekinesis, pulling Ashlyn out of the woods she was hiding in, and spinning her around for the back shot. Unfortunately, it took two attempts (boosted) to land the spell against her DEF23 (+2 for Concealment, +2 for elevation, +2 from Quicken), which means I didn't have enough left to cast Temporal Acceleration on the Defender to get the double-tap. He hit her (now a reasonable DEF 17) and took her down to 1 wound, but without a second shot I couldn't finish the job.

I was so frustrated with my game that I was about ready to just leave my minis on the table with the note that said "Free Army." I ended up packing them up anyway, and the next day I just couldn't stop thinking about all of the mistakes I made, and all of the opportunities I missed. Funny thing is, rather than being demotivating, it had exactly the opposite effect. I was suddenly consumed with thinking about the game again - lists to play, ideas to try, on and on... Since then, I've been back at the hobby table, assembling and painting like mad and getting ready to get my A-game back. I had football coach back in the day that was fond of saying, "Boys, you can't love to win until you hate to lose." I guess that's the hallmark of a great game: Winning is fun, but losing is motivating!

At the painting table, I'm trying to finish up the last of my trencher weapon crews. While I still need to get to the commandos, I really, really need a break from painting trenchers. With all the UAs and weapon attachments in MKII you can find yourself looking at a 15-model unit, and with that many models it becomes easy to get bogged-down and burnt-out painting such large bunches of the same thing. To get back on track, I'm going to get these weapon crews done and move off to painting some singles, and hopefully get some variety back. It's time to paint warjacks and solos and have some fun with it. I'm even considering (GASP!) using a commercial painting service to do some of these big units that I just don't want to paint (although I haven't been able to bring myself to pull the trigger yet.)

In other news, I finally ordered a big batch of fleet-scale fighters from Studio Bergstrom for use with my Firestorm Armada ships! These little ships look great, and have an amazing amount of detail considering that each one is only about 3/8 of an inch wide. I plan to mount 3 each to a 20mm square base to represent my various wings.

From left to right: Assaulter, Bomber, Fighter, Interceptor

Finally, we are only 32 days away from PAX Prime! I've had all of my arrangements made for months, but as it gets closer I find that I'm getting really excited. I'm signed up for several sessions of D&D, and looking forward to playing in my first mini-campaign. We had a great time last year, and took a suitcase full of games. Now I need to decided what gets to go along this time around. Let the games begin!

Letters from the Front

2010-07-24T09:50:00.009-06:00

-------------MESSAGE_ID 038540002--------------

_Begin Decryption_

[NOTICE: This message has been censored by Terran Satellite Charter Military Security Services]

_Begin Message_

My Darling,

Not a day passes that I do not think of you, remembering fondly the time that we spent together on Tamsa station. I miss you more than words can describe, and I wish I could hold you in my arms again. Command School has been difficult to say the least. I feel as if I am living on the edge of exhaustion: We are up at the earliest hours, and I find find myself awake and studying until the wee hours of the morning. At this rate I fear I will die of exhaustion long before I graduate - that is, if the horrible food doesn't kill me first!

After weeks of classes an textbooks, we have finally begun simulated fleet battles, and I had my first opportunity at command this past week. Unfortunately, it hasn't gone well. I won my first engagement, but I have been defeated twice since. The last defeat could hardly be called an error in command, as my opponent managed to rupture the reactor containment on my battleship with his opening salvo, and the resulting detonation consumed the vessel instantly. My cruiser squadrons were forced to take evasive maneuvers to avoid the distortion field left in the wake of the collapsing reactors, and within moments my carefully designed formations were left in shambles, and my fleet found itself facing down a full [CENSORED] armada without the support of a heavy capital ship. The instructor even used me as an example to the rest of the class of how quickly things can go awry! I fear at this rate, I will find myself commanding an squadron of frigates instead of a battleship.

It was not a complete loss, as it did provide me with some insight into potentially more effective tactics to employ in future engagements. You see, Terran Alliance vessels depend on their main beam weaponry, which fires in a fixed fore arc. This essentially means the ship needs to be pointing directly at the target it wishes to engage. Typically, this results in port and starboard broadsides lacking proper targets, as your ship is pointing directly at the enemy formation. In response, I am experimenting with the idea of deploying my heavy firepower at opposite ends of my formation, and then maneuvering those capital ships in a crossing pattern, allowing me to bring my fixed fore weaponry to bear against the opposite end of my opponents formation while still providing targets of opportunity for my port and starboard guns.

One thing is for certain, I need to develop more effective strategies quickly. Fighting in the [CENSORED] quadrant has escalated recently, and the Alliance desperately needs to move additional fleet support into that theater. Recent news suggests that our [CENSORED] allies engaged the enemy at the [CENSORED] jump point, but were crushed utterly, giving the enemy access to [CENSORED] and the systems beyond. Resources are stretched thin throughout the fleet, and rumors suggest that we may see action sooner than expected. Let's hope I'm ready.

I cannot wait until I see you again. My love always.

----------_END TRANSMISSION_--------------

I played my third game of Firestorm Armada this week, this time scaling up to a 1,000 point game that included multiple cruiser squadrons, carriers and full flights of fighters. Unfortunately, the game ended up somewhat anti-climatic, as my opponent managed a critical hit on my battleship with his first shot, and then rolled boxcars on the critical table, which equals instant death. Without a battleship, I was at a huge disadvantage, and we eventually called the game as we both realized it was likely to turn into an extended game of cat-and-mouse as I tried to wear down his fleet.

One shot, a bright flash of light, and my battleship was no more.

I'm starting to wrap my head around the game at a meta-level and getting a better sense for proper fleet construction and some of the tactics that should pay off. While I'm still enjoying it, I do have a couple of issues with the game at this point: It is a very random game, and the dice often seeming to have more influence over win-or-lose than I would like, although I may just be jaded by the outcome of this last game. It's also tends to play somewhat long. It may just be that we're still learning the rules, but it seems to take a while to play, and playing to eradication takes forever. I guess you are supposed to just shunt out once you know you have lost, and then add up the VPs. Better scenarios that allowed for quicker, objective-based games would be definitely be welcome.

I do think the game is ripe for a campaign system. Having some kind of game-to-game attrition in play would force you to make the decision of when to shunt ships out of combat - when each battle is a stand-alone, why not fight to the death? But if losses somehow carried over, weakening you... I would also be interesting to let the loser take on a defender role, giving him additional mine deployments or fixed gun emplacements to represent defended territory. If anyone has or has seen something like this, let me know.

I did order a slew of little fighters from Studio Bergstrom this week, and I'll provided pictures of those when they show up. My goal now is to get the rest of my fleet painted up (I picked up some additional cruisers and frigates), and then I really need to get back to painting my Warmachine.

Only 42 days until PAX!

Firestorm Armada

2010-07-10T20:45:00.005-06:00

Warmachine has been slow down at my FLGS for the past month or so. People are busy with other stuff, which thins out the usuals, and the Hordes players are all tired of playing off of printed paper stats (a problem that was remedied this week.) With the Hordes cards out and the PAX Invitational qualifier coming up, I'm guessing we should see play start to pick up again. In the mean time, a few of us decided to take advantage of the lull to try out something new...

Firestorm Armada is a space naval combat game created by Spartan Games, the UK-based company that created the fantasy naval combat game Uncharted Seas. Firestorm Armada has been out for a while (about a year), and I bought my first fleet when it first came out, but I'm just now getting around to putting the models together and playing with them. I'm a huge fan of Fleet Space Opera stories like David Weber's Shiva Option or Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series, so a game that let me play out those stories seemed right up my alley.

My painted starter fleet, ready to hit the table.

The game itself is played with nice looking resin models that mount on clear plastic flight stands, giving them a nice "flying" look. The models are very detailed, and the designs are nice, but being resin, they occasionally have problems with warping, flash and bubbles - nothing that couldn't be easily corrected with some modeling putty, but not as clean as I would have liked. These aren't tiny ships either - the smallest frigate and escort ships range from an inch to two inches long, while the Terran battleship is 7 or 8 inches long (and looks suspiciously like a Imperial Destroyer from Star Wars.) The models paint up fast, and I was able to paint my entire starter fleet over the course of a couple of afternoons.

The game itself does a very nice job of capturing space combat and still keeping the rules very simple and abstract. Some examples: a ship must move at least half of it's movement every turn unless it cuts engines (objects in motion tend to stay in motion). Cutting engines still require 1/2 movement for one turn to decelerate, and then a full turn to spin the engines back up again. Models don't block line of sight or movement, because it is assumed that ships pass over or under each other in the vertical axis. Turns rates also vary by the size of the ship: No ship can turn more than 45 degrees per inch of movement, and bigger ships must travel straight up to 2 inches in-between turns. Unlike conventional naval combat, ramming is pretty much a suicide solution - in space, ramming will result in ruptured hulls, and ruptured hulls result in death.

Combat is resolved with lots and lots of dice. Each weapon system has a set number of Attack Dice (AD) depending on what range band you are at (range bands are determined at 8-inch increments). If your ship has taken hull or crew damage, you lose some dice. Once you have calculated the right number of AD, you roll them. A 4 or 5 is usually a hit, and a 6 is two hits and a re-roll. (This type of re-rolling of high dice is often called an "exploding dice" mechanic.) Depending on the type of attack being made, the defender can then roll dice equal to their Shield or Point Defense values, with each "hit" scored cancelling out one of the attacker's hits. With that done, you tally up the number of hits that made it through, and if they exceed a ship's Damage Rating, it takes 1 hull damage. If the hits taken exceed the Critical Rating, you score two damage and get to roll for special effects on a critical hit table.

The game has some fun rules around "linked fire," allowing ships to combine their attack power. This means that ships that hunt in packs are far more deadly than those that hunt alone. Fighters, bombers and interceptors are all present in the game, but they are managed with simple tokens rather than models (although I'm seriously thinking about buying a bunch of little fighters from someone like Studio Bergstrom to model mine!) There are also boarding assaults, where teams of marines can be sent over on assault boats to capture opposing ships.

My battleship is on the hunt during my first game.

My first few games were very fun. The game played surprisingly smoothly and combat was easy to resolve. There is a lot of randomness in the game, thanks mostly to the big dice pools and the exploding dice mechanic. We had once situation where my opponent's battleship scored nine hits on my tiny little frigate, which should have annihilated it, considering I only have a shield rating of one. When I rolled my one shield die, I proceeded to roll three sixes in a row, and then a five, which means I cancelled 7 of 9 hits, and my little frigate was unscathed. Of course the same thing can happen in the other direction as well - a tiny ship can get on a roll of sixes and decimate a larger ship. Don't get me wrong - it's damn fun, but the dice definitely have a much stronger influence on a win or loss than they do in a game like Warmachine.

We did have a little problem in the starter box games where we would end up losing the cruiser squadrons early, setting up battleship vs. multiple frigate showdowns. On really lucky rolls, a frigate can hurt a battleship, but they typically don't scratch the paint. At the same time, large ships have a harder time scoring hits on small ships like frigates, so the battle can drag on as the frigates fail to damage the capital ship, and the capital ship misses the smaller vessels. I would recommend adding a second squadron of cruisers or some heavy cruisers to early games to keep the punches flying. I also couldn't decided if it was better to focus on taking out single ships completely (thus removing a linked fire partner and another threat) or spamming damage around to take away Attack Dice across the board. It will take a few more games to get a good feel for that.

The factions themselves feel nicely differentiated while not wildly different. My Terran fleet seemed to have good long-distance capability with their torpedoes, good 360-degree firing options, and shield technology to compensate for lower damage and critical ratings. My opponent had more speed and devastating linked fire capabilities, especially at intermediate range, but more limited arcs of fire. While most of the faction differences are just stat differences, they are enough to make them feel separate and unique.

A little masking tape goes a long way in helping you paint nice, straight lines on your ships

New ships and fleet additions seem to come out slowly. The game has been out for almost a year, and we are just now seeing the second wave of models, which covers the other two faction's starter fleets as well as heavy cruisers and escorts for each of the existing factions. I think that is okay - there is a little meta game in fleet composition, but in general, the game plays well at medium sizes. Huge fleet games would be fun, but just larger and longer - they wouldn't necessarily open up new options and combos the way a large game would in something like Warmachine. Spartan Games also makes some civilian ships to be used in scenario play, and the word is that there is a large space station model on the way. The rulebook also promises larger Leviathan and Dreadnought class ships for each fleet, which should be pretty entertaining when they finally come out.

In summary - it's a fun game. I think it will always be a smaller-scale, niche game rather than a full-blown hobby obsession like Warmachine. There strategic depth isn't tremendous, but it is fun, plays smooth, and does a nice job capturing the overall feel of space naval combat. Definitely recommended if you like that stuff, or you are just looking for a fun summer diversion.

Oh yeah - in case you haven't been paying attention: Only 55 days until PAX!

Devil's 4-Way

2010-06-20T23:00:00.004-06:00

It's been almost a month since I've gotten a game in, so I was happy to finally make it down to the FLGS for a nice Sunday afternoon of Warmachine. One of our locals has been wanting to put together a 2-vs-2 Fight Club league game, so that is what we did. We originally wanted to do another 100-point-per-player game like we did for Bobaferret's going away, but everyone had Father's Day dinner plans, so we settled on a quicker 50-pointer.

Four armies meet on the Blasted Heath

Knowing it would be Fight Club, I settled on the Epic Old Man, hoping to get the most of of his feat turn. I supported him with a good number of heavy jacks, and came up with a list that looked something like this:

Battlegroup

Epic Nemo
Ol' Rowdy
Centurion
Defender
Lancer
Squire

Support Forces

Stormguard (Max)
Storm Tower
Stormsmiths (x2)
Strangewayes
Rupert Carvolo
Black 13th

We rolled randomly for teams, and go figure, the two Cygnar guys ended up together. This was almost unfair as my teammate was playing regular Stryker, which meant all of my models could benefit from Invincibility on his feat turn. I ended up facing off against a Amon-led Menoth list, while my partner faced a Hoarluk-led Troll army. Of course, I'm super rusty, so I forgot to even deploy the Piper, and it wasn't until the first Stormguard died and I went to make my tough check that I realized he wasn't there!

General Nemo leads his 'jacks into battle!

The Menites came screaming across the field and the battle was joined. By turn two, Rowdy got charged by the Avatar, which should have scrapped him but suffered some amazingly bad rolls. Plenty of Stormguard were lit on fire (where is that Piper!?!) but all in all, I weathered it pretty well. In return, Nemo buffed jacks with Fail Safe and Lightning Shroud and then popped his feat to load them up with focus. Rowdy managed to take out the Avatar with the help of some charging Stormguard, and I did healthy damage to the Castigator and the Reckoner. A well placed earthquake from my partner knocked down a horde of approaching light jacks, and I proceeded to disrupt most everything else. At the end of our turn, my partner popped Stryker's feat, leaving about half of my army with boosted armor (including an armor 28 Fail-Safed Centurion!)

That extra armor saved my bacon on the next turn. Amon cast Synergy, popped his feat and went to town. Luckily, most of his jacks in combat with my heavies were disrupted, so the didn't benefit from the focus-allocation portion of the feat. He still had plenty of light 'jacks left, and they went to town murdering Stormguard. Amon even moved up and got into the act, setting up what I assumed to be an impending assassination run on Nemo. In the end, he didn't end up killing as much as he needed to (pretty common on Stryker's feat turn), but he also didn't leave me many good lanes to get to him and he managed to tie up my ranged-attack options. On my turn, I bounced a couple of lightning bolts onto him for about 7 damage, and then in desperation my Defender took an unlikely shot against the DEF 18 warcaster - and hit! Lights out, Amon.

Smile like a donut, Amon!

I quickly turned my attention to my left flank, where my partner was doing his best against a warbeast-heavy troll army. To be honest, I hadn't been paying much attention to that half of the table, but it looked like he had been holding his own. I spent a turn repositioning and then we mounted an all-out assault. A couple of turns of earthquakes and boosted defender shots lead to focus-loaded, knocked-prone Hoarluk. My Black 13th (who had graciously been sniped by Stryker), laid in four brutal damage shots to end the game for the glory of Cygnar!

Final thoughts: It was good to get out and get a game in - Just to play again, and to hang out with some people I really enjoy. I like the 2-vs-2 format, and the Fight Club rules (2/3 of your points in Warjacks) keep the game from bogging down with long infantry turns (We managed to play the whole thing to the end in about three hours.) I haven't played much with eNemo, but I really enjoyed him in the 'jack-heavy format. Strangewayes also really shined for me - sometimes I struggle to get my points out of him, but this time he was a veritable toolbox, giving out focus, casting Evasive Action to reposition key 'jacks and keeping things patched up. This was also my first outing with the Lightning Tower, and while I see it's potential, I used it pretty poorly this time around, and I look forward trying it again. Oh, and next time I'm going to actually deploy everything I pay for!

A great game and a hard-fought battle! It's was good to be back playing, and it is good to be back blogging (even if this is kind of sloppy!). Here's hoping your league, your painting and your summer are all going well!

As Dawn Rises...

2010-05-02T10:56:00.003-06:00

Spring has sprung, and life is getting busy again. The kids soccer season is in full swing, my wife and I are working like crazy to get the yard back into shape, and on top of all of that, I’m just took on a new role at work. Why do you care? Well, you probably don’t, but it does mean that my posts will probably be even more infrequent than usual for the next few months, so there.

The good news is that even though I haven’t had much time for blogging, I’ve managed to keep a decent gaming schedule going. We just wrapped up the Shattered Grounds: Nightfall league here last weekend, and that was a lot of fun. This was the first league I’ve ever participated in, and all-in-all, it was a good experience. As I thought about the mechanics of league play, it made me realize how hard it must be to put together a good league format. You need something that encourages people to play, but doesn’t punish the folks who can only really get in a few games a week. You need to encourage participation but not set it up so only your best and most active players get something out of it. I thought this league did a pretty good job with all of that.

The “passport” concept, which admittedly seemed a little silly at first, ended up being one of the most enjoyable parts of the league. I guess it works for the same reason that people enjoy achievements on the XBOX – it gives you something incremental to focus on. Even if you can’t win the ladder, you can be focused on getting a stamp for playing (and another for beating) each faction. Or, maybe you are trying to unlock that next stratagem. I typically only have time to get in a couple of games a week, so I knew there was no way I was going to win the whole thing (when you earn more points for playing then winning, number of games becomes a powerful factor), but the passport concept still gave me something very enjoyable to focus on and work towards, and kept me wanting to get into the store and sneak a game in whenever I could.

The league scenarios enjoyable but nothing special, with the exception of Fight Club, which quickly became my favorite, to the point where I’m going to do my best to keep it around in the local meta. I got into the game because giant steam-powered stompy robots are super-cool, and I love a format that puts a lot of them on the table.

Which brings me to the only thing that didn’t work well – the finale event scenario. In our store, the defenders ruled with an iron fist. Every person who started the first game as a defender stayed a defender, which caused a few problems. First, it was demoralizing as hell, and second, it ended up becoming a game of player attrition… Attackers got frustrated and quit playing, and there was nothing to bring the defenders together to sort out a overall winner. As far as the scenario itself, it had several problems. First and foremost, the “flags” were too far back – a properly defensive army (I’ll share mine in a minute) could easily hold them. In fact, I annihilated my two enemies on their side of the field, which hardly felt defensive. Also, the attrition rules weren’t strong enough – it would take far too many games to wear a defender down to the point where it would matter. Personally, I would have liked to see an intentionally unbalanced scenario (Attacker get more points, or gets a reserve force they can bring on in waves or something like that.) As it stood, it was just far too easy to defend.

Here is what I brought for my 35 points:

Commander Stryker
Squire
Ol' Rowdy
Lancer
Black 13th
Gun Mage Captain Adept
10 Stormguard
6 Trencher Commandos + 3 Scattergunners
Piper of Ord (From the "Pirate's Cove" map bonus)

My intention was to have a list that could attack and defend, but I started my first game as defender and never lost (I just ran out of challengers). It ended up being a great list. I forget how cool good old Prime Stryker can be – it is great to have the utility of Arcane Shield, Blur, and Snipe all from one warcaster. Big units meant that attrition wasn’t going to be a huge deal (with the exception of the Black 13th, where it was punishing!) With Arcane Shield and Tough (from the Piper) the Stormguard are an amazing unit, and typically people were so worried about dealing with the commandos that were already in there face that the Stormguard could get all the way there unmolested. Oh, and don’t forget – snipe works on commando grenades as well as rifles, so they get a huge amount of utility from that spell. Fun, fun!

Epic Farewells

2010-04-12T23:01:00.068-06:00

The wind blew aside the smoky haze that obscured the battlefield, giving the two warcasters a clear view of what awaited them across the sun-baked hardpan. A massive wall of warjacks stretched across the horizon, an ominous line of smoke-belching steel. The gobber that stood next to Major Markus “Siege” Brisbane lowered his spyglass with a soft whistle. “I’ve never seen so many warjacks in one place… You’re going to have your hands full.”

“So, the ranger’s intel was good after all.” Major Victoria Haley’s artificial hand gripped the shaft of Echo, her mechanical war spear as her piercing blue eyes gazed across the battlefield. “They must have forced-marched for days to come so far south so quickly.”

“I’ve never known mercenaries to be willing to work with the Cryx like this. The pay must have gone up significantly.” Brisbane’s dark face scowled as he considered the implications.

“An unlikely alliance indeed,” a new voice interrupted. The three figures turned to find General Adapt Nemo slowly climbing the rocky hill to join them atop their lookout. Siege’s back straightened noticeably as he offered a respectful salute to the grizzled old man. Haley offered him a smile and a hand up as he navigated the last bits of shale to clear the top of the bluff. “Let’s just thank Morrow that we received word when we did, and not allow our advantage to go to waste.”

This is a sad week for the gamers of River City Warmachine, as our beloved press-ganger Bobaferret will be moving away to take on new adventures. The been called up to active duty, and will be heading out for Seattle to become the new Quartermaster! Our local store owner threw a going away party for her last night, and we used the event as an excuse to get one last game in. Not knowing how long it would be until we got to play again, we wanted to make this a game to remember…

Bobaferret and Fluffy had been talking about a 100-point mangled metal game for a while, and we had also been talking about a huge 100-point-per-player team game. Of course, being ingenious, we decided to combine them. Team game, 100-points each player, and Bobaferret and Fluffy would go single caster Mangled Metal. I got the lists where I could, and put the rest together from memory, but this was pretty close to what was on the table:

The Armies of Cygnar		Cryx and Merc Challengers
Epic Haley - Defender - Lancer - Thorn - Thunderhead - Squire Siege Brisbane - Lancer - Ol' Rowdy Journeyman - Defender Reinholdt Rupert Carvolo Strangewayes Gun Mages - Officer - Cyclone 10 Stormguard 10 Sword Knights - Unit Attachment - Ironclad	Epic Nemo - Centurion - Centurion - Centurion - Centurion - Centurion - Charger - Charger - Charger - Charger - Charger - Defender - Defender - Defender - Ironclad - Ironclad	Goreshade - Nightmare - Harrower - Harrower - Seether - Seether - Seether - Seether - Seether - Stalker - Corruptor - Deathripper - Deathripper - Deathripper - Defiler - Defiler - Helldiver - Helldiver	Bart Montador - Buccaneer - Freebooter - Freebooter - Mariner - Mariner - Mule - Mule - Nomad - Vanguard Gorten Grundback - Ghordson Driller - Grundback Gunner - Grundback Gunner - Grundback Gunner Rorsh & Brine Wrong Eye & Snapjaw Dirty Meg Dougal MacNaile Rutger Shaw - Vanguard Thor Steinhammer - Rockram

The battle took almost 5 hours to play out, and there is no way I can remember everything that went on well enough to put together a regular battle report. Instead, I've decided to do something a little more flavorful... Hope you enjoy it. (And sorry about the poor quality of the pics - I only had my iPhone!)

The tide of battle was turning, and not the way the Siege had hoped. His initial infantry push had been strong, and both the Stormguard and Sword Knights had made steady progress, each unit scrapping an enemy helljack while taking only minimal casualties. Now a second wave of nightmarish machines surged out of the smoke and haze, tearing into his troops.

As the battle lines parted momentarily, Siege caught a glimpse of his antagonist through the chaos. Their eyes met for only a second before the withered elf hissed arcane words that summoned in a force of spectral warriors to charge into his troops, rending flesh. Siege knew that if they were going survive, he needed to do something fast.

Goreshade! Haley’s position gave her a panoramic view of the battlefield compared to Siege’s perspective from down in the trenches, and she watched the drama unfold with cold detachment. She spared a quick glance to her left flank, where Nemo’s battlegroup seemed to be holding their own against the advancing mercs. She looked back in time to see Siege shoulder his rocket launcher and spring into action. She traced an imaginary line between Siege and the enemy warcaster as she realized his plan. Eyes narrowing, Haley quickly scanned the battlefield, searching desperately. It took only a moment to locate that which she sought – a spectral woman, standing forlorn at the rear of the enemy's force. This was the Deathwalker, the key to Goreshade’s survival…

At this point in the battle, Goreshade’s army had already taken out my Thunderhead, a Lancer, an Ironclad and my Journeyman (leaving the Defender inert). He had two Helldivers burrowed in my backfield and a Stalker on my flank. I needed to end this fast or I wasn’t going to have an army left to battle back with. This was only my second two-warcaster game, so I hadn't done a lot of thinking about the kind of combos possible in this situation. I spent a long minute looking at the cards, and then hatched a plan.

Haley activated first. She moved Thorn forward and used him to arc Domination on one of the Seethers, which turned around and pulverized the Deathwalker, taking away Goreshade’s safety blanket (a lesson I learned in my first MKII field test tournament). She then cast Temporal Acceleration and Dead Eye on Siege. Next, Ol’ Rowdy activated and uses his Tremor special attack to knock everything around him down – which includes all of the Bane Thralls and ‘jacks that are blocking line of sight to Goreshade. Finally, Siege advances, pops his feat (halving armor for the first damage roll), casts Mage Sight to negate Goreshade’s stealth, and then rips off a rocket. Thanks to Dead Eye and a boost, he is rolling four dice to hit. Boosted damage against halved armor means he one-shots Goreshade. If that hadn’t worked, I still had two more shots (one from Reinholdt and a second from Temporal Acceleration!)

And then there were three.

A brilliant fireball lit up the horizon in the fading daylight, a white-phosphorus flash that etched an after-image of the battlefield with crystal clarity in Haley’s mind. In that instant the hordes of helljacks went silent… Some seized up where they stood; others crashed into the churned mud of the battlefield, carried forward by their own momentum. A ragged cheer went up from the remaining sword knights as they realized the full implication of this turn of events.

Victoria Haley had no time for such celebration. While one enemy warcaster may have fallen, two more still pressed hard on their left flank, where General Nemo and his phalanx of heavy armor had forestalled their advance. As she began to plan her counterattack, she caught sight of a Rhulic warcaster moving quickly forward. The enemy raised his forge hammer high and with a great battle cry he unleashed tremendous arcane power.

The earth itself bucked as a shockwave sent Nemo’s line of Centurions careening off to the side in a shower of mud and shattered stone, leaving the general completely exposed. The pirate warcaster raised his hand cannon and barked out the firing order. A roll of thunder echoed across the valley as an executioner’s squad of ‘jacks joined him in a single, massive volley. The last echoes were just fading from Haley’s ears as Nemo’s body hit the ground.

This was an unhappy turn of events. A well-played feat turn from Gorten opened up a huge gap in Nemo’s lines, and then Bart’s battlegroup coordinated to take the old man out. Bobaferret was out of the game.

And then there were two.

Fortunately for me, Bart had to leave himself a little bit out in the open to get the shot on Nemo. Using my newly discovered cocktail of Foxhole, Temporal Acceleration and Dead Eye, I manage to take out an already-wounded Bart, which rendered the bulk of the Merc force inert. My marshaled Cyclone had been pretty ineffective against such ‘jack-heavy armies, so I decided that it was time to get him into the mix a little more directly. Strangewayes put a focus on him, and he picked up Snapjaw and threw him into a pack of gun-bunnies, killing the 'gator and knocking the rhulic ‘jacks down. Lesson learned: Don’t underestimate the Cyclone in melee – he’s not just for shooting things.

The blood pounded in Siege’s ears as he pressed across the battlefield. He had managed to take out the pirate warcaster with a pair of well placed shots, and now he closed in on the leader of the rhulic battlegroup. He stepped out from cover, and instantly two shots rang out against his warcaster armor. His powerfield absorbed the brunt of their lethal damage, but they struck with the force of sledgehammers nonetheless.

Shrugging off hits that would have felled a normal man, he raised his rocked launcher and uttered an incantation, causing a sinkhole to devour the rhulic ‘jacks that sat between him and his prey. A grin split his face as his finger squeezed down on the trigger. “Gotcha,” he said, sending a rocket corkscrewing toward the stout form of the enemy warcaster.

A ball of fire blossomed where the enemy warcaster stood, raining mud and gravel down all around. As the smoke cleared, Siege was stunned to find his opponent battered, but still standing.

"This one just won’t die,” Siege grumbled, a hint of respect in his voice. He opened his mind and reached out to Ol’ Rowdy, hoping the veteran Ironclad would respond to him as well as it did for Lord Commander Stryker. Eager to please, the battered ‘jack charged forward, belching smoke like a runaway locomotive. Siege’s arcane energy surged through its cortex, infusing the great iron warrior with tremendous strength. Rowdy's quake hammer came down in a deadly, crushing arc, and brought the battle to an end.

Only the sound of Siege’s ragged breath broke the eerie silence. The air was pregnant with acrid smell of sweat and blood. Siege surveyed the scene in the dying half-light of dusk. The hulking masses of literally dozens of warjacks littered the field, wisps of smoke still drifting from their stacks as furnaces went cold. They had held the line, but at a tremendous cost.

Big Guns!

2010-03-21T20:33:00.025-06:00

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!"

Big Red One

2010-03-14T20:40:00.006-06:00

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.

Let's Get Small

2010-03-12T20:13:00.008-07:00

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!

Welcome to Ironhead Station

2010-03-10T21:31:00.000-07:00

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.

Buongiorno!

2010-03-07T09:29:00.000-07:00

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.

Flying Lead

2010-01-23T10:43:00.001-07:00

I played a second round of tune-up games Thursday night in preparation for this weekends Resurgence MKII launch event. This time we were playing the 50 point lists, 12-minute turns, and using the resurgence scenario, which has 3 different control zones that score progressively more points the further you are into you enemies territory. We played two games, only going to round three both times, so we could have time to tune the lists.

I started out with 50 point list I described a few posts back, and I found myself frustrated on a few points. First, I just wasn't getting the points out the Thunderhead and Thorn. I'm not saying they aren't worth it in Mark II, but so much of this army is built around using Haley to give the rest of army ranged superiority that there isn't a lot of focus left over for the T-Head. Plus, I felt like Prime Haley had better synergies with these units than Epic Haley, so I decided to stick with the regular version all the way through. With a few adjustments, my lists now look like this:

25 Point List (30/30)

Haley (+5)
Squire
Lancer
Journeyman
Stormguard x10
Gun Mages
Gun Mage Captain
GMCA

35 Point List (40/40)

Haley (+5)
Squire
Lancer
Defender
Journeyman
Stormguard x10
Gun Mages
Gun Mage Captain
GMCA
Stormsmith

50 Point List (55/55)

Haley (+5)
Squire
Lancer
Defender
Journeyman
Hunter
Stormguard x10
Gun Mages
Gun Mage Captain
Cyclone
GMCA
Stormsmith x2

By dropping the T-Head and Thorn and replacing with a Defender and a regular Lancer, I free up enough points to fit a hunter in, which is a perfect match for the two focus that the Journeyman has on him every turn. (I may have Jr. run the Defender in round two for the same reason). I debate whether or not I want a Defender or a Centurion, but I like the flexibility of the melee/ranged combo. I wish I could fit Rupert in, but you can't have non-Prime character solos until the 50-point rounds, which means I would have to hold back points in prior rounds to fit him in.

Facing off against a pile of angry elves. Feeling the disparity caused by spending 21 points on 2 jacks. The blue tape marks the corners of the three control zones.

The good news is that my modified list worked out pretty well. Even against overwhelming numbers of ranged infantry I could push through. With this list, Haley's feat turn is an absolute bitch for your opponent. For those not familiar with Haley, her feat allows each model in her control area to have an addition attack at the end of it's activation, regardless of rate of fire. So, turn 3 tends to looks something like: Move Haley up, cast Temporal Barrier (to give all enemies in your control -2 DEF), and put Dead Eye on the Gun Mages. Then, you charge the Stormguard. Each Stormguard is POW 12 and causes a POW 10 electroleap, so they can spawn up to 40 damage rolls (two primary attacks each, two electroleaps). In my games so far I have been able to decimate the front lines, and if the army is packed tight enough, well into the back line.

The gun mages then advance and clean up. They typically use critical brutal shot, and thanks to the extra die from Dead Eye, they roll a fair number of criticals. They get 14 shots this way, with half of the attacks getting the extra attack die. Combine this with True Sight from the UA, and not much can hide. Finally, the marshaled Cyclone gets to go, generating 2d3+1 attack rolls, and thanks to Rune Shot from the Dude, he can use arcane effects as well.

You are starting to get the picture - in one turn 27 models generate up to 76 attacks/damage rolls without spending focus to purchase more. The biggest challenge is getting it all done in a 12-minute timed turn! (You have to resovle an attack every 9 seconds!)

It's great to see 'jacks on the table again, and the Cyclone is already turning into a favorite. Marshaled by The Dude, he's an absolute horror.

At this point I'm pretty happy with the list and how it's playing. It remains untested against a pile of heavy armored jacks, and that's the one thing I fear. I've proved it to be reliable against ARM18 infantry, but I'm worried about a heavy jack swarm. The hunter should help, but I might have to shift tactics and use the Gun Mages to slam things around rather than trying to kill them. A lot of AOEs that can deviate onto my fragile Gun Mages could spell doom as well, but I should be able out-range almost everything but mortars... Yes, I'm afraid of Khador. Hopefully it will hold up!

Epic Nemosity

2010-01-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

I took a few minutes this morning to put the finishing touches on my Epic Nemo. I had this model mostly finished last weekend, but I still needed to do a few small touch-ups and seal him. Of course, immediately after sealing him, I notice a few more touch-ups that need to be done... *sigh*

Epic Angry Old Man about to deliver lightning to your face-hole.

This is what Nemo would look like running away. You will never see this.

As I was playing a game the other day I was looking at my Journeyman Warcaster - he's really well painted (at least by my own personal standards), and I realize the difference is that back then painting was my primary hobby, and I played only the occasional game with a friend. Now that I am more of a player, I think I must be starting to cut corners to get models on the tabletop faster... My models these days don't seem to hold up under the scrutiny of a digital camera, but at least (I hope) they look great on the tabletop.

Tensions Rising

2010-01-16T17:56:00.000-07:00

I played a couple more games this week as I tested out some list ideas for our upcoming Resurgence MKII launch event. It is an escalation format, which means you start with a 25 pt. list, then go to 35, then to 50, by adding models in each time. It forces you to make some hard choices, because you have to keep everything you had the previous round (with some allowances for upgrades - for example you can pay the point difference and upgrade a lancer for Thorn or an Ironclad for Ol' Rowdy). I've been playing with lists all week, and after some playtesting I still have mixed feelings. Here is what I have at each level:

25 Point List (28/30)

Haley (+5)
Squire
Lancer
Journeyman
Stormguard x10
Gun Mages
Gun Mage Captain

35 Point List (40/40)

Haley (+5)
Squire
Lancer
Thunderhead
Journeyman
Stormguard x10
Gun Mages
Gun Mage Captain

50 Point List (55/55)

E. Haley (+5)
Squire
Lancer
Thunderhead
Journeyman
Stormguard x10
Gun Mages
Gun Mage Captain
Cyclone
Strangewayes
Stormsmith x2

The overall idea is to use the Stormguard as the front screen (they have Ranked Attack now) and deliver the Gun Mages behind them. The Stormguard's Electro Leap should help them take out whatever front line forces they meet, and they have combined melee attacks if I run into something heavy. The GunMages will spend most of the game with Dead Eye on them, making it much easier to getthe Critical Brutal Shot. The Gun Mage Captain is in there primarily for Tactics: True Sight to deal with stealthy stuff. I have to go two points light on the first list to fit the T-Head in for round two, which is a little scary in an already small point size.

My two practice games were at the 25 and 35-point level. I won both, but the 25 point level is scary. Normally I lose about half my front line early, making me feel very exposed. Haley's Blitz feat turn (top of 3 for both games) was critical - Dead Eye on the GMs, use Temporal Barrier for the -2 DEF, and then everyone gets two attacks. Even half a unit of Stormguard can take out most of an enemies front row with Electro Leap attacks (on the feat turn, even with only half the unit that is ten POW 12 attacks that generate ten POW 10 electro leaps!). The Gun Mages can usually follow up an annihilate most of the second line infantry with 14 shots, getting a few brutal crits off in the process.

In both of the games my feat turn was truly frightening and I was able to slaughter the enemy troops wholesale. While the list is good at killing armies, it takes a little more work to kill warcasters... I managed to get the job done, but with only a handful of troops left at the end. (Admittedly, the 35 point went much better with the help of the Thunderhead!) I also have no idea what I would do if I faced off against a Khador list with two or three heavy 'jacks. So, at best I think the lists needs some tweaking, and at worst I may head back to the drawing board.

In other news, I forgot to mention in my last post our local group managed to show up on Page 5 of No Quarter this month for our Breast Cancer Brawl tournament! Now I can say I've had my picture in No Quarter (I'm one of those teeny tiny little people in the group shot, which is ironic, because I'm about 6'4" in real life!) Congrats to Bobaferret for putting on an awesome event!

MK II is Upon Us!

2010-01-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

Like everyone else in the Warmachine universe, I picked up the new Prime rule book the day it hit the streets, and I'm pretty happy with the book. Typical for Privateer Press, the book is a gorgeous piece of layout and design, and the art is excellent as usual. there are a few pieces I don't care much for (What is up with Skarre's weird stiletto legs?) but I was happy to see some of the updated warjack art. Either way, it felt great to have MK II in my hands. No more field tests or asking which version someone wants to play. It is upon us.

To celebrate, I played my first "official" MK II game Thursday night, once again against Bobaferret's Retribution army. Our FLGS is having a MK II launch event on the 24th of this month, and it will be a escalation event, where you army goes from 25 pts. to 35 and then to 50. To warm up, we decided to play a 25 pt. game. I didn't get to play at all over all of my holiday time off (How does that make sense, right?), so I felt really rusty. I'm sure my play was a bit clunky - but that's what friendly games are for: Knocking the rust off. Armies looked something like this:

My Cygnar Army (25 pts)

Haley (+5)
Squire
Lancer
Journeyman Warcaster
Defender
Precursor Knights x10
Stormblades

Bobaferret's Elves (25 pts)

Ravyn (+6 pts)
Hydra
Arcanist
Houseguard Halberdiers x10
Houseguard Riflemen x10
Ghost Sniper
Mage Hunter Assassin x2

After playing 750 point games, the smaller size was really challenging to build a list for. The game itself was a rough one... We played a "Mosh Pit" type scenario using this roundish piece of hill terrain to define the mosh pit. I pushed ahead fast, but forgot that you can't run and shield wall on the same turn (I told you I was rusty). When the Houseguard Riflemen started shooting up my Precursors the next turn, I was starting to fear that I had seriously overextended myself.

Round 2 I moved up a little further, and this time I shield walled. Temporal Barrier would assure I didn't eat a charge this turn, and would force the 'Ferret to advance cautiously. I did manage to shoot some lightning around and take out a few enemies, which made me feel better.

Moments before the last of my infantry get wiped out by Rayvn's Thresher attack...

Round 3 was the money round: Haley pops her feat and throws Deadeye on the Stormblades. We wade in and manage to kill off most of the infantry. Suddenly things are looking up. I've got most of Ravyn's infantry dead, and a huge pile of troopers standing in front of her to gank her next round. Unfortunately, I don't know Ravyn very well... She casts Vortex of Destruction and then dives in and threshers my pile of infantry, killing most of them. My Defender (which has had it's heavy barrel destroyed by the Hydra in prior rounds) gets picked up an chucked at Haley, and they both get knocked down.

The assassination attempts drag on for a couple more rounds, both of us unable to get the job done. I finally get off a lucky damage roll to take Rayvn down, but by this time I'm down to Haley, the Defender, the Journeyman, 2 Stormblades and the Lancer. Bobaferret is down to Rayvn, the Hydra, 2 Halberdiers, 2 Riflemen and a Ghost Sniper. A brutal but good game. We were both fighting tooth and nail to stay alive, and it showed.

In other news, I picked up Darksiders on the XBOX 360 yesterday. I've seen this game at PAX for the last couple of years, and both times I knew there was something special about it. The visual style and polish is so far very impressive, and the game is a blast to play. Has a very visceral, Devil May Cry sensibility to it, and the controls are smooth like butter.

Also, went and saw Sherlock Holmes last night, and liked it much more than I expected to. It had a nice blend of steampunk and occult horror, and if you are a fan of either one, there is likely something here to enjoy... I was entertained the whole time (a rare thing these days, especially for movies over a couple hours long.) I approve.

...And Vacation Ends

2010-01-03T15:58:00.000-07:00

I finally got my Precursor Knights completely painted and sealed today. They have been sitting on my painting table and taunting me for over a month now, and it's good to have them finally finished. They are a unit I really enjoy playing, and I think I'm going to be using them even more frequently now in MKII with the reduced power of the Sword Knight.

The gang's all here. Zombies everywhere be a'feared.

For my color scheme, I went with a GW shadow grey and P3 Menoth White Highlight. I wanted them to fit well with my Cygnar army, and yet still stand apart as something different, and I think I've accomplished that. I made liberal use of a Menoth White Base-colored wash to give the whites a very antique ivory look. The white stripe across the bottom of the robes was an afterthought, but I thought it tied the whole scheme together nicely.

The unit leader and the UA. Nice models.

And that pretty much wraps up Christmas vacation for me. I'm planning on setting a new painting and playing goal this year, and hopefully I will do better than last. After taking on a whole unit, I want to take a break and paint some single models - I'm behind on epic warcasters and I need to get my Thunderhead (and soon a Cyclone) painted. Once I've recovered I'll probably tackle the Long Gunners or the Gun Mages. I'd like to get caught up on what I already have before the new wave of trencher stuff hits.

Of course, to acomplish any of this will mean that I have to shake the horrible Dragon Age addiction that current has a hold of me. I loved Mass Effect, and I had high hopes for Dragon Age as well - and I'm happy to say that so far it is living up to those expectations. I'm about 30 hours in and well on my way to saving Ferelden from the Darkspawn hordes. Of course, Mass Effect 2 drops at the end of January, so I'd like to have saved the world by then. At least January won't be boring!

Dragon Age: "Seriously, I thought you would be taller..."

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T10:20:00.001-07:00

Happy new year to my friends in the blogosphere! Here's hoping that 2009 treated you well, and that 2010 treats you even better! All told, it was a good year for me - I find myself more than a little disappointed that we are almost a decade into the twenty-first century and I still don't have a flying car or a robot sex slave, but what can a guy do? A new year always makes me feel both nostalgic and hopeful, and this morning I'm sitting at a coffee shop this morning looking back on the year gone by, and thinking a lot about the year to come, and I thought maybe I should put some of those thoughts to digital ink. So here goes...

Last year was my first full year playing Warmachine, and it was a great year. I've made some great new friends down at my FLGS, and I've learned a lot about how important a good community is to the health of a game. When I first started getting interested in Warmachine I was really intimidated. The game had been out for years, and was on it's fifth expansion. I hadn't really played tabletop games before, and I thought there was no way I would be able to get involved in any competitive way - but thanks to a great local community and an outstanding press ganger, I've been able to jump in with both feet. I've won more than I've lost, I've been in the hunt at several tournaments, and even placed third in out Breast Cancer Brawl!

Of course this year looks to be one of the best ever for Warmachine players. Mark II promises to clean up much of the sediment that has built up in the system over the years, and new models and books will revive interest after what felt like a long draught in 2009. We should see even more new players as the new rules level the playing field - at least for a short time. I know that I personally can't wait to get my hands on a Cyclone and a Firefly and put them to work!

I picked up a couple of started fleets for Firestorm Armada, and I'm hoping that game catches on (and that Spartan Games doesn't errata the rules to death like they did with Uncharted Seas). I'm a huge fan of Sci-Fi fleet combat stories like Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series or David Weber's In Death Ground and Shiva Option, and I love the idea of playing out my own fleet-scale broadside battles in deep space. I have no idea if the game will even catch on locally, but I'm hoping I can find at least a few other folks with an interest.

I also finally got my D&D game back on track last fall. I DM a long-running Eberron game that went on hiatus late in 2008 when 4E hit the scene. Between D&D and Warmachine, it has become abundantly clear that a change in core rules (even for the better) is a disruptive thing, and the shift to fourth edition had quite an impact on our game. It was only after playing in a couple of RPGA events at PAX that everything clicked for us, and everyone finally decided that 4E was going to be a good thing. When we got back, we rebooted the game, and we've been having a blast ever since.

So, what's in store for 2010? We'll, I still have the goal of paining my entire Cygnar army (as well as their supporting mercs). I didn't make as much progress on that as I wanted to last year, so I'll have to keep working on that. I like to get a regular schedule and play Warmachine at least one time a week, and I need to do a better job of planning for (and defending) that time. I'd like to get my Khador army on the table and get some play time in there.

On the roleplaying side, I'd like to see my D&D game push well into the paragon tier and finish the current story arc of their campaign. I'd like to host of couple of "NanoCons" and run one-shot games of couple of other systems that I have a lot of interest in - most notably Spirit of the Century and CthulhuTech. I'd love to go to GenCon (I've never been!) but I need to figure out how to do that while still being able to attend PAX (GenCon is a convention, PAX is more like a family reunion.)

Ah, so much opportunity. There is nothing like the first day of a new year. Hope springs eternal, and none of my best-laid plans have had a chance to go completely to hell yet. Here's to a great year!

Snow Days are for Painting

2009-12-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

Over the last few weeks I’ve managed to get back to the painting table, and I’m making good progress on my Precursor Knights. The basecoat is done, and I started shading this morning (my favorite part!) They are coming along nicely, although I had forgotten how monotonous painting an entire unit + UA at once can be.

I’ve start to pick up the beginnings of a Khador army, so I’ve been doing quite a bit of pinning and gluing as a result. Cygnar will always be my main faction, and it remains my ultimate goal to have the entire Cygnar range fully painted and at my disposal. So, I’m going to pick up a second army (which I plan to play in naked pewter) to field while I leave my Cygnar on the painting table and not worry about packing/unpacking them every week. Once the Cygnar is done, I can turn my attention to the Reds.

So why Khador? To be honest, I’m a total fluff gamer. When I look at a new faction, I don’t look at the rules as much as I look for an army that has an aesthetic that appeals to me, looks fun to paint, and has characters and back-story that I enjoy - and Khador fits that bill. In fact, my initial army is going to be a berserker army lead by the Epic Butcher and full of things like Doom Reavers, Fenris, berserkers and extreme sculpt warjacks. This is going to be and army that looks imposing, and is as likely to kill itself as it is to kill my opponent.

When I need a break from unit painting, I’ve also been working on painting up my Space Hulk models. I’ve always been a fan of Space Marines and the 40K fiction, but never really could get into the tabletop game. Space Hulk seemed like a nice way to scratch that itch with a very small commitment. If you haven’t seen the game, the components that come with it are beautiful, from the models to the corridor tiles. The space marine models in particular are stunning, and almost demand to be painted. Instead of painting them all at once like I would a unit, I’m going to tackle each one individually, as they deserve that kind of attention. As far as the Genestealers (the alien models), I really don’t know what to do there – I don’t have a lot of interest in painting them myself… They might get sent out for commission work.

(It's too cold to seal him, so he's still a little shiny.)

Foodmachine is tomorrow at my FLGS. At this point I’m planning on playing, but I also feel like I’m getting sick. We’ll see how it goes. Oh yeah, and there are only thirteen days left until Christmas. If you haven’t started yet, it’s time to go buy some crap for the people you love. So get on it.

No Country for Old Men

2009-12-07T18:33:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe it has been a month since the last time I posted, but sure enough, November has come and gone, Christmas is on the horizon, and it is far past time for me to check in! November was a quiet month for Warmachine – there were no local tournaments, and in-between work and the holiday break I only managed to get a couple of games in. One of those was last Thursday, as did my part to help out with the Hordes MK II Field Test. This time around it was a battle of the Epic Old Men, with my eNemo facing off against Jen’s (Bobaferret) eDoomshaper. It’s been a while since I’ve played MK II, so it was a kind of clunky-but-fun game. Here are the lists we took:

My Cygnar Army (56 pts)

Epic Nemo (+6)
Squire
Ol' Rowdy
Thunderhead
Lancer
Journeyman Warcaster
Ogrun Bokur
Arlan Strangewayes
Gun Mage Captain Adept
Sword Knights (x10)
Sword Knight UA
Rupert Carvolo
Stormsmiths (x3)
Black 13th Strike Team

Jen's Pink Trolls (56 pts)

Epic Doomshaper (+6 pts)
Earthborn Dire Troll
Dire Troll Mauler
Mulg the Ancient
Troll Axer
Troll Bouncer
Farrow Bonegrinders (x4)
Feralgeist
Gatorman Posse (x5)
Troll Whelps

I’m not going to do a full battle report, but here were the highlights: We decided to play a “King of the Hill” scenario, with a 12-inch hill we had laying around. I went first and was able to push my Sword Knights into the middle early. I learned a lot about MKII Sword Knights this game – they are no longer the offensive powerhouse they once were, but when paired with the Piper (who can pipe “tough” every turn in MK II) they become one hell of a tar pit unit. With Flank and a change they can still do some damage (POW 10 + 4d6) but otherwise they are now much more useful for their staying power than their killing power. That being said, I had a hell of a time killing warbeasts, and knew I was going to have to go for the scenario win.

The rush for the hill. Some gatormen are going to die. Rowdy eyes Mulg.
At the bottom of turn three I was pretty sure I have victory locked up when I had a close call. Jen trampled her Earthborn through my line of Sword Knights and into position to deliver two Primal Shocks! (If you haven’t read MK II trample rules yet, do so now… It is far easier and more effective to trample these days!) Luckily eNemo had two focus on him, as the assassination attempt would have been successful otherwise. As it was, he survived with two wounds, and the game ended by scenario.

End Game: Nemo withstands two Primal Shocks FTW.
MK II still feels strong to me, and I’m excited to get on with it come January. In general, I still think it plays smoother and faster than the current version, and I like having less rules per model. Sure, models like Rowdy and Thorn were awesome, but the amount of rules you had to remember was just absurd. I like this way better now. Still getting used to some of the role changes in my army (like Sword Knights changing from offensive powerhouse to defensive tar pit) but I don’t mind them. I was starting to feel like some of the Cygnar units had gotten so strong that there wasn’t much motivation to try other things. MK II feels like it is pushing the game back to more of a combined arms affair, which I really like.

On a side note: I talk about Warmachine quite a bit on this blog because, well, I like it quite a bit. But the truth is, I’m a huge gaming geek and I like a lot of different stuff, and I’m probably going to start talking about more of that other stuff here. I’m a huge fan of roleplaying games, and at one point I had even talked about starting a separate blog for that. As it turns out, keeping up with just one blog is hard enough, so I’ll probably just be posting all of that stuff here. I’ll be using tags, so If you are only interested in following my Warmachine stuff, that’s easy enough, but hopefully you’ll find some other interesting stuff in here from time to time as well.

eHaley vs. Kaelyssa

2009-10-30T18:33:00.000-06:00

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.

End of Turn 2: Losing Thorn this early hurts

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.

Turn 3: The Thunderhead does his job

Turn 4: Things are dying fast now, and I don't like the direction it's heading. I still have numerical superiority, but that doesn't mean much against an army that can shoot through anything. This needs to end now. First order of business is to free up Haley from the threat of Narn. Luckily, the Black 13th start in his back arc, and with the aiming bonus the "in-melee" penalty is negated. Ryan kills him with one shot. Haley moves up, and casts Temporal Acceleration on the Sword Knights, giving them three attacks this turn. The piper plays Heroic Call and makes them tough, and they charge in. The extra movement allows them to get across the rough terrain around Kaelyssa, but unfortunately, only two of them can fit into the building with her. Luckily, two is enough - although it isn't until the sixth (and last) attack that one finally connects, bringing her down for the win.

Endgame: Sword Knights FTW!

Wrap-up: I really, really like the retribution. They are have some very cool play machanics, and they make for fun, on-your-toes games. They may be a faction I have to dabble with eventually. As far as my Cygnar, this was a good learning game for me. I finally got good use out of the Thunderhead, and I think I could use him even better if I remeber to Deadeye him. I'm also still struggling to use the Stormlances well. I should have ran them harder and got them around into the backfield. It might almost make sense to put arcane shield on them for the first few turns, and then switch it over to the Sword Knights as the mosh-pit forms.

I'm also getting a good handle on eHaley and her spell list. While her spells can be pretty subtle, once you start to think of all the nasty situations you can use them to set up, they become pretty fun. I definately need to get better at remembering her feat... Much like prime Stryker, I always end up using it a turn later than I really should. The more I play with her, it very much feels like a good turn 2 option, to guarantee you get off the charge.

Saving Second Base

2009-10-25T09:54:00.000-06:00

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.

Paint it Pink

2009-10-21T22:22:00.000-06:00

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...

Back in the Saddle

2009-10-11T12:04:00.000-06:00

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).

I did finally manage to find my way back to the painting table this weekend, and mostly finished up Strangewayes. I say mostly, because I still need to do some detail work on the face and add some eyes, but I just ran out of patience. It felt good to be painting again though, and I was happy to see I hadn't lost too much ground having taken the summer off.

We've got our Breast Cancer Brawl event coming up at the end of this month. Bobaferret, our local Press Ganger has done a hell of a job promoting it, and it looks like it is going to be the biggest tournament our store has ever had. Needless to say, I need to start tuning my game back up, so I can at least make a decent showing. I'd like to get some special stuff painted pink (like maybe a pink eHaley with a pink female Jouneyman and a pink Squire), but we'll just have to see what time allows.

PAX POX

2009-09-14T21:04:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been a week since PAX. I had high hopes of really covering the convention - on location blogging from my iPhone that spared no detail. Unfortunately, the wi-fi at the convention was less then co-operative. I think I summed it up well in this almost hiaku-like tweet:

"Sucking on the broadband teat - chapped nipples of wifi... "

So, after a couple of failed updates that cost me long posts that I had typed in with my now near-bloody thumbs, I pretty much gave up on the whole "blogging-from-iPhone" idea. Instead, I figured that I would just post a couple of big updates when I got back, and cover the highlights of the show. I made it home on Labor Day, exhausted, but still awash in a warm post-PAX glow. I caught up on my sleep for most of that day, and I figured that the next day I would catch up on my blogging.

Unfortunately, by the next day my warm post-PAX glow had been replaced by a post-PAX fever... That's right, gentle reader, I had caught the dreaded PAX POX! For those that hadn't heard, there was a hellacious flu outbreak at the show - not during the actual convention, but in the days that followed. Hundreds of people reported (via the #PAX tag on twitter) coming down with nasty cases of the flu. It knocked me out for almost a week.

So, here I am, one week later, and I find that now that I have rejoined "real" life, the motivation to go back in time and discuss PAX in any great detail has left me. It seems that PAX has become like a warm memory of childhood, locked away safe from the harsh light of this working man's reality, only to be brought out over good scotch and in the company of fine friends. To allow one's thoughts to linger over-long on such a happy time is only to invite sorrow it seems, for these days cannot measure against those...

What little I will say: I picked up my Retribution book (only days ahead of the rest of the known universe) as well as the Extreme Juggernaut and a pretty snazzy Cygnar t-shirt. I didn't even make it to any of the Warmachine events (PAX has the odd ability to fold space and time down to a point where you can only accomplish one-quarter of what you had hoped, while still filling your days with 4X the joy of an average day), but my friend Tallyn42 did play in the events, and you can read about that here.

And I find now that even this little bit of reflection is making my heart ache for better days... Alas, I am overwhelmed by emotion (or maybe that is the last bit of the flu). Regardless, I must retire. Fear not, gentle reader, for I will leave you with these images of the neat things you can take pictures of in glass cases. While we have all seen these models a hundred times in magazines and books, I will say that if you have not seen them first hand, it is hard to imagine the mastery apparent in their execution. Every time I get to gaze upon them I am truely humbled and inspired, and my desire to paint is simultaneously rekindled.

Artistry of a different fashion - this was done in sidewalk chalk. Yeah, no shit.

Direct from PAX

2009-09-06T11:10:00.001-06:00

Well, my hopes of blogging real-time from the convention haven't quite played out like I wanted it to. One, we have been super busy, finding far more to do than last year, which has been awesome. Two, the wifi at the show has been terrible, and I've already lost two posts to connection drops when uploading. (My blogging app probably deserves some of the blame for that.)

Anyway, what a great show this year! I'll post more detail on this stuff later, but at a high-level, here is what's happened (along with random sights from the show floor):

We played in a couple of Living Forgotten Realms RPGA games. One was a "convention special," which means it was a more difficult dungeon-crawl type game. The other was set in Cormyr, and involved dealing with a ton of NPC and a bunch of skill challenges with only a single, short combat. It was a blast and totally made me rethink the way I run my games. (I'll probably throw up a more complete post on that one sometime in the future.)

The expo hall is even bigger than last year! Privateer Press has a booth right as you walk in, and they were stocking all the October Retribution releases. I picked up their army book and the new No Quarter. I need to swing by today and see if they have the Extreme Juggernaut on hand...

On the video game front, all the big stuff is here and playable - StarCraft 2, Diablo 3, the new WoW expansion, Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age, Left for Dead 2, Guild Wars 2 and tons more. The most surprising to me was an MMO called Aion, which looks really amazing.

For Panels, we caught the keynote with Ron Gilbert (who wasn't as funny as I thought he should be), and a Q&A with Gabe and Tycho (who are far more funny than they have any right to be).

We went to a "The Art of the Dungeon Master" panel with all the big names from WotC, and I decided that Chris Perkins (the DM for the Penny Arcade guys) scares me just a little. It was a good panel, and it sounds like the DMG 2 is going to be an awesome book for helping people to run better games.

Right now the "Beyond D&D panel is about to start, so more later.... Loving PAX!!!

-- Posted From My iPhone

Painting for PAX

2009-08-30T18:46:00.001-06:00

With PAX only four days away, my preparations have kicked into overdrive. I've have a ton of office work to get done before can I go, and I still have a bunch of painting I'd like to get done as well. Given that, my free time this weekend was all about speed painting.

First off, I'm signed up to play in a couple of different Living Forgotten Realms RPGA sessions. I'm not usually a Realms fan (I'd rather play Eberron or Pathfinder), so I wanted to play something straightforward that I had a good sense for the lore - which for me means dwarves. I can't quite decide what class to play yet (I'm torn between Paladin, Warlord or Cleric) but I knew I wanted a good-looking mini to put on the table.

I was surprised how hard it was to find a good dwarf model (especially considering that I was limited to what I could find locally - as I have no time left to order anything.) I finally settled on one of the Warhammer Fantasy Runelord models. Warhammer dwarves are a little shorter than I'd like, so I mounted him on a fancy Micro Art Studio resin base. I painted him up in just under a couple of hours. Now that I see it in the photo, there are a few little details that I need to touch up, but all in all, I like him, and I think he'll serve me well on the table - especially when put up against the cheap plastic WotC miniatures.

I also put the finishing touches on a lance of battlemechs I've been working on from the BattleTech Introductory Boxed Set. I'd like to have all of the mechs needed the three introductory missions painted up for PAX, but we'll see how far I get. This group represents the mechs required for one side to play the first couple of missions. I'd like to get the opponent mechs painted as well (red, of course, so we can have some iconic Red vs. Blue action.)

275 tons of 1-inch tall plastic fury.

On an unrelated note: Thursday night some folks at my local game store were playing a demo copy of the new Space Hulk, and I have to admit, I was impressed. The game has some nice production values and really great "table appeal." I never played the original, but watching them play this one, I found myself really wanting to pick it up. It might just be able to scratch the 40K itch without having to actually play 40K! Just what I need - another game.

The new Space Hulk. The minis look really great.

Epic Nemo vs. Kaelyssa

2009-08-27T21:39:00.000-06:00

I finally made it back to my FLGS tonight for my first game in a while, and in turn, I'm filing my first battle report in a good long time. This time I was playing Bobaferret's Retribution of Scyrah army that she brought back with her from GenCon. I have to admit, I'm a little intimidated by the Retribution, but at the same time, I figure if they have a mouth-hole, I know where to shoot them.

Here is what the the lists looked like:

My Cygnar Army (745 pts, 27 VPs)

Epic Nemo
Ol' Rowdy (bonded)
Centurion
Lancer
Squire
Journeyman Warcaster
Gun Mage Captain Adept
Gun Mages + Officer
Sword Knights (8) + UA
Rupert Carvolo
Stormsmiths (x3)

Retribution Army (746pts, 24 VPs)

Kaelyssa, Night's Whisper
Hydra
Gorgon
Gorgon
Epic Eiryss
Narn
Dawnguard Sentinels (10)
Dawnguard Invictors (8)
Dahlia Hallye & Skarath
Aiyana & Holt

This is my first time playing eNemo, so this list is a bit of an experiment. I wanted to be somewhat 'jack heavy, because Nemo has the tools to make them awesome. The Stormsmith's elite cadre status makes them a must - not only does the extra damage make them dangerous, it also seems highly likely that I might need to deal with some sneaky, high defense stuff (also why the GMCA is in there). Sword Knights are a staple, and the Gun Mages are quickly becoming a new favorite with their UA.

Deployment

Turn 1: I run, pushing my army upfield as quickly as possible. Thanks to eNemo's Energize spell, my 'jacks are finally able to keep up with the infantry (Even the Centurion!) The GMCA rolls snake eyes when he tries to take out Eiryss, and suddenly feels very exposed. Jr. throws an Arcane Shield on him while Nemo puts Polarity Shield on the Sword Knights. Rupert also pipes Heroic Call, making them tough.

Bobaferret opens her turn by rolling snake eyes with Eiryss, making us wonder if it is going to be one of those games. This ends up hurting her worse then I would have guessed - she was hoping to take Polarity Sheild off the the sword knights so Narn could charge his way all the way to Nemo. With that still up, he can't quite make it. The rest of her army just advances, and Boy Toy starts to shoot up Ol' Rowdy. Kaelyssa pops her feat giving everything in her control area stealth and denying me the charge next turn.

The end of Turn 1

Turn 2: Rowdy advances (again, with the help of Energize) into the Invictors and uses his quake hammer to knock all but one of them down. He proceeds to kill a pair of them. On the opposite flank, the Centurion kills off a pair of Sentinels. The Piper plays March to give the Sword Knights the extra movement they need to walk up the front lines, and I manage to kill off five more Sentinels and another Invictor, thanks to the Lancer providing Flank. The GMCA shoots Eiryss right in the face-hole, but doesn't quite kill her, so a Stormsmith has to help him finish the job. The other two Stormsmiths fail to kill Narn, so I have to commit an entire unit of Gun Mages to do the job (which ends up being okay - everything else has Stealth this turn anyway...)

Bobaferret retaliates by killing half of the sword knights and the UA leader with Sentinels and a nasty spray attack from Skarath. Aiyana casts Harm on Ol' Rowdy, and then everyone picks on him: He takes shots from Holt, a CRA from the Invictors, and a shot from Kaelyssa, piling on the damage. Thanks to dynamic capacitor, I am able to choose which column that takes the damage, and I manage to keep him alive (just barely!) with only one open box on each system.

End of turn 2. Only four invictors stand between Ol' Rowdy and Kaelyssa.

Turn 3: I really consider just trampling my way to her warcaster, but as I look at it, I don't think Rowdy could survive it. Still, I load him up with five focus (thanks to his bond), figuring I can always pull it back with Focus Matrix if I need to. If I don't do something with him this turn, he's dead for sure.

First, I kill off the Gorgon engaging the Lancer - If my Ol' Rowdy plan doesn't work, I'm going to use him to spell her to death after I pop Nemo's feat and reload him with focus... Hopefully it won't get that far. The Gun Mages advance, and use Ricochet shots to clean out the Invictors that lie in between Ol' Rowdy and the enemy warcaster. With the Invictors out of the way, Rowdy charges. At a DEF 16 Kaelyssa might be hard to hit, but with five focus I should be able to get it done. Thanks to Gung Ho, I charge for free, boosting the first attack roll. I hit with a critical, dealing 13 wounds and knocking her down. The second buckler attack now auto hits, and with a boosted damage roll it is enough to kill her. Ol' Rowdy FTW!

With only one box left in each system, Ol' Rowdy arrives with five focus to crush Kaelyssa!

Final thoughts: The extra mobility that eNemo and the Piper brought to my army was critical to engaging and killing off a good chunk of infantry in the second turn. The Gun Mage's ricochet shots were also huge in allowing me to open up the game-winning charge lane for the kill. Nemo's polarity shield kept me from eating an early charge, and more importantly, it denied Narn that little bit of extra movement he would have needed to get all the way to Nemo in turn 2.

As far as the Retribution: they are going to be amazing. It feels like they have managed to take the best part of each faction - they have the sword knight's "battle buddy" and Flank, great ranged attacks combined with good melee on the same model, they have weapon masters, and warjacks with strong melee and ranged options. They have stealth, and units with the Circle-like mobility to move through your army. The only downside I saw is that the Myrmidons seem soft - if you can deal a concentrated burst of damage (like a unit of sword knights with a UA can) they go down fast. I also found myself liking the models much more in person that I did from the previews - that is a good looking army. In all, I'm impressed, and I would almost consider picking them up if I wasn't pretty sure that everyone else and their dog will be playing them as well.

PAX Approaches!

2009-08-24T22:45:00.000-06:00

It's almost time for PAX! Last year was my first time at the show (PAX Cherry!) but this year I plan to be back with a vengence. For me, PAX is a chance to hang out until 3 in the morning and play games with a lot of like-minded folks, and play some games that I might otherwise not get around to playing. So what's on tap this year? I'm rolling in with a suitcase full of gaming goodness! Here's what is coming with me:

Living Forgotten Realms: I'm going to be playing in my first RPGA event while at PAX, and a buddy and I are signed up for a couple of different sessions. I've been running a game of D&D on-and-off for the last few years, but I haven't been on the player's side of the DM screen in almost 20 years. I'm realtively new to 4E, having just switched over about a month back, but I think I have a good enough handle on it for this kind of deal. Other than that, I have no idea what to expect from this format, but it should be a good time.

BattleLore: I picked this game up a good while back, but I haven't really had a chance to put through it's paces. It's a nice balance of board game and war game, with a slick card mechanic for orders and tactics and a simple dice mechanic for resolving combat. It really seems like a great "in between" game to play with friends who have some interest in pushing around little men, but not the patience or inclination for full-fledged miniature gaming. You can check out my first impression way back here.

Cutthroat Caverns: "Without teamwork, you will never survive. Without betrayal, you’ll never win." A simple card game that puts the players in the role of an adventuring party that has discovered the "Sacred Item of Unimaginable Marvel" - and of course, you each want it for your own. Unfortunately, nine monsters (randomly drawn from an encounter deck) stand between you and the exit to the dungeon. If you don't work as a team, you won't have the horsepower to make it out, but if you don't backstab the others at just the right moment, you can't claim the prize for yourself. It's straightforward screw-thy-neighbor gaming at it's best.

Infernal Contraption: This is a game I bought at PAX last year in the Privateer Press booth. It's definately a beer and pretzels affair, but is surprisingly fun to play. Another card game, this one has you trying to assemble an "infernal contraption" with the goal of forcing your opponent to consume all of his resources (cards) before you run out of cards yourself. This quickly became our go-to game inbetween events.

Battletech: An old favorite that I haven't played since I was a teenager. This is the granddaddy of big, stompy robot games, and is an interesting mix of board game, wargame and RPG. The game itself has had some rough years, passing from FASA to FanPro, and ultimately to Catalyst Games Labs. The good news is that Catalyst seems to be doing well by the series, and has put out a Introductory Boxed Set that is a great introduction to the game. (You you read my impressions the boxed set, along with my glowing fanboyism here)

And that's about it - and that should be plenty. I think it's going to be a great geek party - they have already sold out all of the three day passes (something like 75,000 passes!) and the daily passes are going fast.

9 days until PAX.

Summer Recap

2009-08-21T11:18:00.000-06:00

It’s been too long since I’ve posted, so I figured I better check in. Summer is finally wrapping up, having been full of family vacations, camping trips and all the other wonderful things that come along with daylight that lasts until 10 at night. It’s been an awesome summer – We spent a week in the Sawtooth Mountains camping, went whitewater rafting by Jackson Hole, I took up kayaking, and I’ve managed to get back into the best shape I’ve been in for ten years. I also managed to get on a much more regular play schedule (with the exception of the last few weeks), making it down to my FLGS more often than not for Thursday Night Warmachine. The additional practice has been great, although Ireally need to get more stuff assembled and painted and try out some new options.

Unfortunately, I’ve accomplished almost nothing on the hobby front this summer. I’ve only painted a couple of models, and I know I’m falling seriously behind. I really wanted to have my entire Cygnar army painted by the end of the year (in time for MK II), but I’ll just have to see if that can still happen. Other that that, I’ve been trying to keep branching out, and learning my warcasters. Here is a quick recap of my Warmachine summer:

I’ve been playing quite a bit with eStryker, and I’m starting to get a handle on him. At first, I was a little too myopic on setting up his assassination run, and probably not getting enough out of the rest of my army. I’ve started running the Gun Mages with him, and they offer a board control/threat quality seem to be a good combination with him.

Of course, when running eStryker, the Stormblades feel almost required, and I’ve been working hard to make them perform. At first, I kept trying to use the "advanced move" that they get from the elite cadre to give them a head start, but whenever I lead with them they seem to get wiped out before I really get any mileage out of them. I’ve had much better luck deploying them behind a Precursor Knight screen, and using that to deliver them (they can still fire lightning blasts through the PKs thanks to kneel). Then, the PKs will either get off the initial charge or absorb it, and as they either push through or evaporate, the Stormblades are set up for a counter charge or a follow up strike. I’ve also done the same to good effect with Trenchers (which does allow you to take advantage of the advanced move). This “Stormblade delivery system” approach seems to be working, and all in all the list seems to be getting stronger.

I also played my first 1,000-point game about a month back. It was an epic affair that pitted my pStryker and pHaley vs. eDoomshaper and Calandra on a really tight “urban” map with a river passing through the center and two bridges. I managed to win that one, but in the process, I acquired a burning hatred for Callandra’s Starcrossed spell. That spell is balls. Even with that, I’ve had a good record vs. Trolls. I think their medium bases give my shooty Cygnar armies somewhat of an unfair advantage – I always get LOS to something, and sometimes you feel almost dirty shooting them up.

Like everyone else, I’ve had the opportunity to face off against the new Bastions a couple of times. They are impressive models and very cool looking, but they aren’t as bad as all talk they are getting. My first game I managed to kill them all off in the first couple turns – which I think is the key – don’t let them get into you too deeply. I started to using a block of Precursors to engage them – the Bastions kill the first rank, then my second rank uses Morrow’s Name and March for an extra attack, doing some hellacious damage in return. They are definitely a tough nut to crack – so tough in fact that you have to have a strategy for them from the start of the game – but nowhere near as bad as Trollkin Champions, which I still have never managed to kill off thanks to their tough rolls. Hell, I’m usually lucky if I can kill half the unit of Champs.

Speaking of tough rolls – the highpoint of my summer games came a few weeks back in a game against Calandra – I had an overloaded eStryker on her just wailing away. She was knocked down, so I was auto-hitting and rolling POW23 overloaded damage rolls, but she kept making tough checks. I’m spending focus for extra attacks, and she just keeps rolling tough rolls! By this point, we’ve got the entire game store around our table cheering every time I spend a focus and she rolls another tough check. Finally, on the sixth check (and my last point of focus!) she fails! eStryker FTW!

So, that’s my summer so far. With August coming to an end and the kids heading back to school, I’m planning to get back to blogging and painting on a much more regular schedule. PAX is only a few weeks away, and my excitement is building! I’ll be taking my iPhone and trying to provide complete mobile coverage of the show. I’m taking a suitcase full of games (more on that in my next post) and I’m already signed up for two RPGA D&D session. Hope you all had a great summer - It’s good to be back!

Mobile Blogging Test

2009-07-10T12:36:00.000-06:00

I'm testing out my how well I can blog from my new iPhone. I'm hoping that it works well enough that I can use it to effectively cover events like PAX, which is coming up in about two months. While the iPhone keyboard is probably going to rule out long posts, I would like to be able to push little updates throughout the various events of the show, giving my coverage more of a "man on the ground" feel.

Also - if you read this blog and are going to PAX, drop a comment! I've talked to quite a few of you through comments, it would be great to meet some people face-to-face and maybe get a game in...

Oh, and to test out how well it deals with pics, here is a snap of my Stormclad I took at one of my last games (pretty happy with the camera on the new iPhone, by the way...):

I'm using an app called BlogPress, just in case anyone is interested. You can find more about it here: http://blogpress.coollittlethings.com/

-- Posted From My iPhone

That's Not Nine Inches

2009-06-25T20:58:00.001-06:00

I managed to sneak into the FLGS for a quick game after work. This one was a "training exercise" with Cygnar vs. Cygnar - my eStryker vs. Bobaferret's Siege. Me and the 'ferret have a long standing tradition of the winner writing the battle report (history is written by the victor, right?). I've been writting quite a few battle reports lately, but I won't be writing one tonight... I got a taste of my own medicine, losing the game with a pair of rockets to the face. So, keep an eye on the ghettokore studios blog for the full battle report.

Tonight my focus was learning eStryker. I played him for the first time in the tournament (yeah, dumb, I know), and realized I needed to spend some time with him. He is my first foray into epic warcasters, and I made the mistake of thinking that epic warcasters are just a jacked up version of the original version. In play, they are nothing alike - prime Stryker is a versatile and ultimately defensive caster, where eStryker is a cruise missile in warcaster armor designed to stick it in and break it off. It was going to take a completely different approach.

Here is what our lists looked like:

My Epic Stryker Army (749 pts.)

Epic Stryker
Squire
Ol'Rowdy
Journeyman
Stormclad
Rupert Carvolo
9 Precursor Knights + UA
8 Trenchers + UA
Black 13th
Stormsmith

Jen's Siege Army (750 pts.)

Siege
Squire
Ol'Rowdy
Journeyman
Defender
Reinholdt
Rupert Carvolo
8 Precursor Knights + UA
7 Sword Knights + UA
Epic Eiryss
Gun Mage Captain Adept
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt
2 Stormsmiths

In the tournament I lead with the Stormblades, only to realize that they are just too few and a little too fragile to use as a speartip. They need a delivery service. I had originally planned to take Sword Knights (yeah, I love them just a little too much), but at the last minute I decided to swap them out for the Precursor Knights. The Precursors don't have quite the same damage output, but they make a great delivery service - they can't be targeted by spells, they block line of sight to whatever is behind them, and thanks to kneel they allow the Stormblades to shoot electric death from the back row. I liked this arrangement much better, and if not for some shortcomings (more on that in a minute), I think it would have been a great strategy.

I still struggle a little with the stormblades in this list. They do well, but there are so many synergies to remember (elite cadre bonus, UA bonuses, Stormclad bonues) that I will have to play them for a while to remember to use them all. In fact, between all of those synergy rules, all of Ol' Rowdy's rules and all of the Black 13th's rules, preparing to run this list is an awful lot like studying for an exam.

One last note: It's been a while since I've taken a Stormsmith, and I had forgotten how useful that little guy can be. Mine killed both a GMCA and Aiyanna off, more than earning his 12 points. One of bobaferret's picked off Ryan from out of the middle of the 13th, taking the teeth out of that unit. I love the angry old men - Soft targets beware!

So, why the provocative title you ask? Tonight was a night of misjudging distances at key points in the game. First, my March-empowered Precursors fell a half an inch short when charging the enemy's line, leaving them an inch away and out of shield wall. But that wasn't the worst of it: At the top of turn three I had Epic Stryker perfectly set up for his assassination run, only to find out I did not leave a large enough gap between my Stormclad and a stormblade trooper (by a millimeter!) for him to fit through. The charge failed and I took the rocket to the face for the loss on the next turn. When Siege gets to you there isn't much you can do about it - if I have learned one thing from playing him for the last month is that the best strategy against him is just to kill him fast.

Tournament Report

2009-06-20T22:22:00.000-06:00

My FLGS held our regional qualifier for the PAX Invitational on Saturday. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, PAX is a incredibly fun convention put on by the guys at Penny Arcade, and every year they throw this big party, and as part of that party, there is a by-invitation-only tournament. This year our local press ganger managed to finagle a slot for us at the event, so the winner of this tournament would be walking away with a kickass steamroller trophy, a free pass to PAX, and the chance to represent Idaho in the tournament.

The event was a 750 pt. Steamroller 4 event. Being the middle of summer, attendance was relatively small, with only eight showing up to play. That was fine with me, as it meant only three rounds instead of four. (Those 1:45 minute rounds get long…) I was a little disappointed that no out-of-towners showed up, but I guess when you live in Idaho that is somewhat expected (The next major population center is over three hours away).

As I said in my last post, it’s been over a month since I played, and I had a heck of a time putting lists together. I ended up going with a Siege list and a eStryker list. The Siege list I was happy with – I know it well, and I’m pretty successful with it. I have never played eStryker before, but this list is a variant of the regular Styker list I have run very successfully in the past. Unfortunately, I broke the cardinal rule – never run a warcaster for the first time in a tourney. It doesn’t matter how much theory machine you do, you just won’t have a sense of the nuances until you play it. Anyway, here is what the lists looked like:

Siege List (750 pts.)

Siege Brisbane
Squire
Lancer
Defender
Journeyman
Reinholdt
Ogrun Bokur
9 Sword Knights + UA
8 Trenchers + UA
Black 13th

Epic Stryker List (750 pts)

Epic Stryker
Squire
Lancer
Centurion
Ol' Rowdy
Journeyman
Gun Mage Captain
Rupert Carvolo
2 Stormsmiths
8 Sword Knights + UA
Stormblades + UA

Game 1: vs. Ian’s Khador (Scenario: Destruction)

For my first game, I drew Ian and his Epic Vlad list. Yay me. Khador has just got my number – I don’t get to play them much, and I haven’t figured out a good answer to them yet. His list had eVlad and a war dog, a Spriggan and Drago, a unit of Iron Fang Pikemen, widowmakers, Eyriss, the Drakun, and a pair of mortar crews. They may have been a few other pieces in there, but those are the ones that mattered.

I hates me some Khador.

I took my eStryker list, and it just got chewed up. I used the advance move on my Stormblades, and I’m not sure why. I know better than to use them as a speartip, and as they advanced Eyriss and the mortars chewed them up completely. Widowmakers tore up my advancing sword knights and the Drakun charged Rowdy. Long story short: on round three eVlad feats, widowmakers sneak through a gap and shoot eStryker to death. I think I managed to kill one IFP. Blegh.

Game 2: vs. Scott’s Menoth (Scenario: No Man's Land)

I decided that the eStryker list was going back into the case until I had some time playtest it. I would be finishing the rest of the tourney with my Siege list. For this game I would be playing Scott and his Protectorate list, which included (from what I remember) eSeverius and the Hierophant, a Revenger, a full unit of Exemplar Vengers, a unit of Idrians + UA, a unit of zealots with the Monolith Bearer, Vilmon, Gorman, the Piper and DeBray.

Of course, DeBray deployed in the middle of the table, denying me the ability to deploy my trenchers there. I ended up having to deploy them on my far right flank, directly across from his vengers. That was okay with me – my worst nightmare with this list is having calvary wrap around into my backfield. I was hoping the trenchers would be good enough to serve as a tarpit and at least slow down his cav (which, they managed to do for the entire game). I pretty confident that my Sword Knights could take the middle, but I underestimated the speed and toughness of the Idrians, who had outrageous defense through some combination of spells and buffs.

On turn three I went in for the assassination, using Illumination to get LOS through Gorman’s smoke cloud, feating, and letting the rockets fly. The first one took eSevy to within 4 boxes, but I missed with the second (Reinholdt provided) shot! In response, I got black oil in the face from Gorman, assuring that more rockets wouldn’t be coming next round. Suddenly glad I took the Defender, I loaded the jack with focus, stuck him in a gap and shot the old man in the face for the win.

Game 3: Tony’s Cryx (Scenario: Mosh Pit)

The third game was definitely the most enjoyable of the day. The armies were well matched, my opponent was a really nice guy, and we duked it out something fierce. He brought a eGoreshade list with Bane Thralls, Tartarus, bile thralls, Slaughterborn and a unit of Bloodgorgers, two or three bone jacks, the Nightmare, the Withershadow, a Scarlock, and probably some other crap that I’m forgetting.

This time my trenchers managed to advance-deploy the way I wanted them to, and ended up popping smoke most of the game to fend off the Sudden Death-fueled counter charges of the Bane Thralls. I was lucky enough to experience, for the first time, the joy of the bile thrall purge, with two well-placed purges killing off most of my trenchers and a fair number of sword knights. Tony had amazing luck with his tough rolls on the Bloodgorgers, and I ended up having to kill most of them three or four times, allowing them to swamp my Sword Knights for most of the game. The Nightmare managed to sneak into my back lines through some crazy, cryxian bullshit (Phantom Hunter + Spectral Curse), and made me very happy that I had taken the bokur, who made short work of it (it had already been worked over by the sword knights pretty well, which explains why Siege survived in the first place).

The end of the last game. Mosh Pit in red.

This game finally ended when time ran out. We both had about half of our armies sitting off the side of the table, as the killing had been fierce. I ended up winning because I had more VPs in the Mosh Pit (9 vs. his 7), but I think I got pretty damn lucky, because things were falling apart fast for me. Had he been aware of the time, he could have probably killed me outright. Still, a win is a win, and I’ll take what I can get.

Wrap-Up

So, that’s another tournament under my belt! I didn’t place, but I did finish with a 2-1 winning record, which makes me happy. I took Best of Cygnar, but as the only Cygnar player there, I pretty much had that locked up when I walked in the door. I definitely need to get back to playing more regularly to keep the rust off. I used to play on Sundays, but with summer camping trips I need to work out something else. I still think my eStryker list has some potential, but I need to play it in some friendly games before I attempt it again in such a competitive setting.

Also, you can check out Ghettokore Studios for a less one sided version of the tourney...

The Comeback

2009-06-18T22:59:00.000-06:00

Summer is officially upon us, and I've been doing just about everything but playing Warmachine. In fact, I haven't gotten a game in since we had the Mark II tournament back in April. No real reason -I've just been busy with summer stuff and fishing trips, but I wasn't about to miss this week's tournament at my FLGS. This one is a qualifier to the PAX Invitational. It is a 750 pt. Steamroller 4 event, and the winner gets a pass to PAX and earns a spot at the invitation-only tournament. I have no illusions of winning, but I'm going to play anyway, if for no other reason than to get a few games in.

That being said, with over a month off, I am in desperate need of a tune-up. Thankfully, Jen (bobaferret) was gracious enough to throw me a Thursday night game to help me knock the rust of things. I decided to jump back in with a version of the same Siege list I had success with in the MKII tourney, only this one would be a little bigger as we move 750. Here is what our two lists looked like:

My Cygnar Army (750 pts.)

Siege Brisbane
Squire
Lancer
Defender
Thunderhead
Journeyman
Reinholdt
Herne & Jonne
10 Sword Knights + UA
Black 13th

Jen's Mercs (750 pts)

Capt. Bartolo
Mariner
Mariner
Dirty Meg
Dougal MacNaile
Rupert Carvolo
Stannis Brocker
Aiyana & Holt
10 Precursor Knights + UA
10 Steelhead Halberdiers
3 Steelhead Heavy Cavalry

Deployment

Turn 1 (both): Deployment was uneventful with Jen winning the initiative. Nothing fancy on turn 1, with both sides basically running forward to mix things up as fast as possible - I had a unit of halberdiers over there as well as a unit of cav and a cav solo. I started worrying about my noticeable lack of infantry, and my complete lack of a good tarpit unit. I had dropped a bunch of points on the Thunderhead this game, wanting to test the idea that his pulse could eat through infantry fast enough that I wouldn't need the tarpit unit (just so you don't have to wait in suspense let me tell your right now, it can't.)

The end of Turn 1

Turn 2, Jen: We start to get it on, with Jen charging halberdiers into my lines. One gets into melee, but fails to kill anything. The Precursor block continues to creep forward while the twin mariners take advantage of the PK's kneel tactic and blast away at me from safely in their little Morrowan cocoon. One tees up the Thunderhead, who is looking like an obnoxiously big target in the front of my army. The other manages to deviate a shot onto the Black 13th and kills Ryan (oh, sweet Ryan). Meg and McNaile scramble around the whole time, making the 'jacks even better. Calvary sweeps around the right side, crashing by flank and forcing my Defender to deal with them instead of doing what he really needs to be doing.

The top of Turn 2

Turn 2, Me: I think about pulsing with the T-head, but it is just easier to drop a Ground Pounder on the halberdiers. Herne and Jonne try to AOE them to death, and manage to take out a few more. Sword Knights go in for cleanup. All but two die, which makes me mo' happy. Defender kills the cav that is in his grill, but realizes he has two more right behind it. I'm betting on a double-charge on Jen's next turn. I can't actually remember what the T-head ended up doing this turn, but looking at the photo, it must have been completely ineffective.

Bottom of Turn 2

Turn 3, Jen: The halberdiers charge the defender, doing some damage, and more importantly setting up flank for the cav charge, which comes next. Amazingly, the cav charge is an Epic Fail, with neither able to hit. The PK block advances over the fountain, and the Mariner's continue to pound on my T-Head. He's not looking so hot anymore, but he's still standing. Holt shoots a Sword Knight, and sends him to Urcaen. Bart moves up and pops feat, but doesn't catch nearly enough in it to make me nervous. [I forgot to snap a picture at the end of Jen's turn, so you will just have to picture it in your vivid (if slightly twisted) imaginations.]

Turn 3, Me: With Siege, my philosophy is pretty much win or lose, the game is ending in turn 3. Luck favors the bold. I shuffle the Sword Knights to get them out of the way (and out of Bart's feat). The Black 13th sneak up to the edge of Bart's control area, Lynch and Watts both scoring hits, softening him up. Herne and Jonne move up on the hill and take their shot at the boss, but miss wildly. Siege will need to finish it himself (as usual). I swing out around the left side of the sword knights and use Foxhole to sink the front line of Precursors and assure I have a clear line of sight to Bart. Siege feats, and fires off a Ground Pounder, and ends up laying out more damage than Bart's half-armored, already damaged ass can take. That's game.

End game. Rocket to the Face Hole.

While it was a win, it was a rough game. I felt rusty as hell, and I hated this army list. The Thunderhead was a 154 points of big-ass target, and I spent the whole game wishing their were trenchers up there instead (which is probably exactly what I'm going to do for the tourney version of this list). I also wonder about Herne and Jonne, who always seem to fall short of their potential for me. Back to the list-builder for a tune up on this one. Still, it was good to be playing again... Looking forward to some tournament play this weekend.

Paintin' Hordes

2009-05-31T17:21:00.000-06:00

So, picking up from where we left off last time, I'm still thinking about starting up a Hordes faction. Last time, I was debating between Trolls and Skorne, and in the mean time the Circle may have snuck into the running for a few days. I think I'm pretty much back to where I started, and I'm starting to dabble a little with each of them. On Friday I picked up a Trollblood starter box and a blister of Kriel Warriors. I figured I would paint the KWs first to get an idea if my paint scheme was going to work before I dove into the warbeasts.

My very first Kriel Warrior... I'm pretty happy with it.

For a color scheme, I was thinking of doing something grey and almost stone like. What I ended up with actually looks a lot like the troll illustrations in the books (a cold, granite grey-blue) rather than the bright turquise blue of the studio colors. For a base coat I used GW Space Wolves Grey and hit it with a wash of P3 Greycoat Grey. Greycoat Grey is a really interesting color - as you dilute it, it breaks down into almost a cobalt blue. I used GW Shadow Grey to add a little detail in the form of spots on his shoulders, back and his temples.

Yay, tartan! I'm trying to imagine how
many of these I will need to paint.

I also started assembly on my Skorne Titan Gladiator. Wow, what a pain in the butt that is. I'm guessing that will generally be true of Hordes compared to Warmachine, thanks to the more organic nature of the models. Still, I used a half a ribbon of Green Stuff getting his torso caulked together. Okay, I stuffed a bunch down inside him as well, but the joint a the waist makes me nervous - there just is not enough metal there.

Surprsing how much green stuff can fit in there...

I'm not sure what I'm going to take on next. The Gladiator is really appealing to me (I jut love how that model looks), but I would also like to crank out a few more Trolls while I'm feeling the muse. I may keep working on Skorne assembly while I paint up the warbeasts from the Trollblood battle box. At some point I also need to do some work before next week's 750 mangled metal tournament (like assemble Darius and the Thunderhead), but I'm kind of in a groove right now, and I don't really want to stop... Anyway, I'll keep you posted as I make up my mind. I'm not really in a hurry - my focus for play is still Cygnar. My Hordes army is going to be more of a "masterwork" army that I can really take my time painting and lavish attention on. That ends up being hard to do with my primary army, as I feel so much pressure to get things painted up and on the table (as Brother Scott always says - "Painted models play better.")

Feeling Feral

2009-05-27T22:41:00.000-06:00

I'm back from my fishing trip, and barring a little excitement that involved the near-sinking of a boat, I had a good time. I took an extra day to hang around the house and help my wife get caught up with yard work, and then it was back to the grind. Ah, how the shackles of adulthood do chafe...

Anyway, over the long weekend I started thinking about what I wanted to do next. I’ve been paining Warmachine models for the last couple of years, and playing actively since last September, and I think I’m ready to shake things up a little bit. Like a lot of other people right now, I’m feeling the urge to pick up another faction and try something different. I’ve been holding out on getting into Hordes for a long time, mostly because I haven’t been able to decide what faction I wanted to play, but I'm thinking now may be the time. Plus, I need a break from painting Ultramarines blue for a while.

So, what is it going to be? Let’s get the easy decision out of the way first – it won’t be the Legion of Everblight. I already own a bunch of Crxy stuff, and I’ll dig stuff out if I feel the urge to play a dragon-blighted-dirty-tricks-fast-assassination army. While the Legion warbeasts look properly cool, I don’t really feel inspired to paint them, and I strongly dislike the look of most of the nyss models that make up the bulk of the infantry. If I don't feel inspired to paint just by looking at a model, it's probably a bad sign...

Next up, Circle Orboros: I like this faction a lot from a painter’s viewpoint. The models are cool, and there is a huge variety in the range (from Tharn vs. Druids, Constructs vs. beasts, etc.). I like the mobility of the army, and I think they would be my definite choice for a second Hordes army, but right now I’m in the mood to play something really beefy and destructive, which really leaves two options… Trollbloods or Skorne.

The Skorne: From the first time I picked up Primal I liked the look and feel of the Skorne. The titans had me right away – they just didn't look like any of the usual fantasy stuff I had seen before. I dig the samurai-flavored armor and the clean rank-and-file nature of the troops. The Skorne are easily the most “army-like” faction in Hordes, and I like the idea of well-ordered phalanxes of disciplined troops. Their different units all look very similar, and I have to imagine that when they are fully painted and all blocked-up together on the table they would look stunning. In general, they have great armor making them strong defensively, but they also feed off of their own souls, encouraging very aggressive play, which is appealing to me. I’ve been playing a fairly smash-mouth style with my Cygnar lately, and with good success – I’m guessing it would work even better with an army built for it. The downsides: Painting lots of repetitive armor, which is of course loaded with detail. It seems like very technical painting, but not very artistic. I’m also not fond of the heaping amounts of cheese the Skorne received from Metamorphosis. Sure, it made them way more dangerous, but it also pushed them across the line where they are just not fun for opponents to play against. I don't like the cheesy game, and I don't want to play it.

The Trolls: I love me some trolls. I like the look of them, and I like the fluff, and they seem like they would be a lot of fun to paint. The models have a load of personality and a little bit of humor, which I can appreciate. Mechanically, they are tough as nails, which is also pretty appealing, and they have the type of interdependent combined-arms mechanic that I find appealing. They also have some of the largest and most impressive models in the game, which calls out to the painter side of me. While maybe not as disciplined as the Skorne, the Trolls still solve problems the old fashioned way – by caving you skull in – which I can appreciate. Downsides: Unless I do something very different in the color scheme, I’m back to painting blue. On top of that, troll models generally have a relatively low point cost, which means a lot of models, and in turn a lot of painting would be required. Mechanically, they do have a number of abilities that are based on critical hits – combine that with tough rolls, and there is a lot of randomness involved in Troll success. Me, I don’t so much like leaving things to chance.

Not really sure how to decide. I think I could enjoy playing either one, so it comes down to the enjoyment I would get from painting them. For the next few months I expect to get in a lot more painting than playing… I already own a Skorne battle box, which I picked up as one of our local stores liquidated their stuff at ½ off… Maybe I'll just pick up a Trollblood box, paint them both up, and decide which one I enjoy painting more before I sink more money into extra units, etc… I'll keep you posted - feel free to throw in support one way or another.

Gone Fishin'

2009-05-21T23:18:00.001-06:00

It has been a busy couple of weeks around here. Spring is finally upon us, and I've spent the last few weeks doing all the little lawn projects that spring tends to bring with it... Planting new shrubs, laying pavers, staining fence, blah, blah, blah. On top of all that, my computer experienced an Epic Fail, and Dell had to send me a new one, and that cost me a good week's worth of transferring files and getting everything set back up again. What does it all mean? It means I've done almost nothing Warmachine-related in the last few weeks.

Tomorrow I'm heading out to spend the opening fishing weekend with my dad. It was an annual tradition back when I was a kid, but one I've missed out on for the last bunch of years as life has gotten more hectic. It was one of my new year's resolutions to make sure I get up to his cabin this year and spend some time with him, and I'm really looking forward to it. Plus, the idea of completely unplugging for four or five days is really appealing right now. Hopefully when I get back I'll be recharged, ready for family, work, friends, painting and playing, and the last effects of MKII fever should have worn off.

I've got a lot to look forward to in June, and should be a great month for gaming. Bobaferret, my local press-ganger, has not one but two events planned for us, two weeks apart! The first is a Call to Arms kick-off tournament with what should be a pretty interesting format:

750 points, one list.
Two 'casters or warlocks
You may bring ONE epic (No, you may not bring the epic and non-epic version of the same caster)
Mercenaries are the only faction that may field Merc casters
No warcaster attachments (i.e. Hierophant or Squire)
Derlyss is included in Mortenebra's point cost and is allowed
Scrap Jack is included in Old Witch's point cost and is allowed
Laris is included in eKaya's point cost and is allowed

I still haven't figured my list out for this one, although I'm thinking it's a great opportunity to get to know Darius. Might be time to get out Kraye as well...

The other event is a regional qualifier for the PAX Masters Invitational. This one is a straight-up 750 Steamroller 4 event, which is always fun. Winner earns a pass to PAX and the right to compete in the tournament there. I'd like to roll into that event fully painted, and depending on the list I bring, that is very possible.

Speaking of PAX, I made my hotel reservations this week, and now I'm starting to get very excited. I had a great time there last year. It's a fun show with a great vibe. If you are thinking about going, check out my impressions from last year, as well as my tabletop report. And if you read this blog and you are going to PAX, let me know - we'll have a beer and talk shop.

And that's all for now! I'll see you in a week, when I will probably be slightly hung over and smelling of fish!

Classic BattleTech

2009-05-03T21:36:00.000-06:00

BattleTech was my first foray into gaming beyond classic Red Box D&D. I picked up the first printing back in the summer of 1985, which would have made me somewhere around 12 years old. We spent that entire summer fighting epic combats between huge, armored robots, and I loved every minute of it. This is the game that coined the term "Mech" - a term that has almost become synonymous for describing giant robots - it has become part of the geek vernacular, and you even hear it used by people who never played the game.

BattleTech is a game that defies categorization - it is one part miniature wargame, one part boardgame, and one part giant robot RPG. Each robot has its own character sheet, with tons of details and endless options for player customization. Half the fun of the game was pouring over technical specifications and building your own mech. The core robot-building mechanic involved a three-way balancing act between the available tonnage, structural space and heat management, and it was great fun to see what you could come up with. I still remember building incredibly risky mechs, heavy on the firepower but poorly equipped to manage the heat generated by those massive weapons - they would either deliver a rapid death to my enemies or mushroom cloud themselves as they quickly overheated their nuclear cores.

My attempt at painting up the plastic models from the Classic Batteltech Introductory Boxed Set

So, on a whim, and maybe with hopes of recapturing some of that nostalgia, I picked up the Classic BattleTech introductory Boxed Set put out by Catalyst Game Labs, the latest owner of the BattleTech franchise. At face value, it's quite a complete set that includes: Quick Start Rules, Introductory Rules, a fluff book called "The Inner Sphere at a Glance," a pair of maps, dice, and 24 plastic miniatures to represent your robots on the battlefield.

While the contents themselves have good artistic production values, the quality is a bit lacking on some of the components. The quickstart rules are printed on magazine stock (even the cover) and I doubt will stand up to much abuse, although the other two books are a better quality. The maps are printed on cheap poster-paper, like you would expect to get out of a magazine insert. This was especially disappointing considering the heavy-duty cardboard maps from the original boxed set (thankfully, I still have those). Map quality becomes especially important when you consider that Battletech is not a normal wargame that uses a tape measure and free-form terrain, and requires a hex map to play properly. But of course, if you read this blog, it's probably the miniatures that you are most interested in...

When it comes to miniatures, the good news is that Catalyst wasn't stingy... twenty-four models is a nice amount, given the small scale of the game. Unfortunately, the models are mediocre at best. This is partially the sculpts themselves, and partially the fact that I just don't like a lot of the mech designs. Back when I was first playing the game, most of the robot designs were stolen from anime sources, and frankly looked much better. The models themselves are made from a medium-soft plastic that isn't as nice as GW plastics, but not as bad as something like the D&D pre-painted miniatures. I was a little disappointed at first, but then I decided I would put some paint on them before I passed final judgment. Who knows - it worked for the Black 13th...

So, I painted three of them up this weekend, and I have to admit that they look a lot better with some color (see the pic above). I'm still not a huge fan of the robot designs, but I'd be plenty content to put them on the table and enjoy the game. If I were getting serious, I would probably be looking elsewhere: The Iron Wind Metals versions look somewhat better, and if I were really looking to get back into the game I would consider proxying the far-superior CAV models from Reaper.

All-in-all, the CBT Introductory Boxed Set still feels like a good deal for $40. I think BattleTech almost requires a box-set to introduce it to new players. Because it is more board game than war game, having everything in one place makes it much easier to get a sense of the game. Kudos to Catalyst Games Labs for realizing this and bringing the boxed set back. For many people, it's all they will ever need, especially for casual play. I'd definitely recommend picking it up if you've ever wondered what the game is all about, or if you share my fond memories of it from more than 20 years ago. Either way, it's a worthy addition to any gamer's shelf, and provides a taste of what was one of the seminal games of the last 20 years. I'm looking forward to painting up the rest of the models and getting a few games in with old friends later this summer at PAX.

MKII Tournament

2009-04-26T20:40:00.000-06:00

My FLGS had a small Warmachine MKII tournament today, just to provide us with an opportunity to get a few more games in and to try out the new rules against a variety of armies. It was arranged with short notice, and the crowd was small (only six players), but that was okay by me. The people that did show up were all really great folks, and it made for some very enjoyable games. As far as factions, we were well representated, with everybody but the Protectorate making a showing. We had two Cygnar armies (my Seige and a Nemo), two Merc armies (Bartolo and Gorten), a Goreshade/Cryx army, and a Sorscha/Khador army.

The tournament was a 30-point event, and I wanted to bring a list that would play fast, furious and in your face. Win or lose, I didn't want matches going past turn 3. I'm not a great list-maker as it is, and I spent the night before wracking my brain. I had originally thought about running a Stryker/Stormblades list, but he's a little more defensive-oriented than I wanted, and the Stormblades and all their AOEs can bog your turns down. I finally settled on the following:

Seige's Rocket's Red Glare (30+6pts.)

Major Markus 'Siege' Brisbane
Squire
Lancer
Defender
Reinholdt, Gobber Spectator
Journeyman Warcaster
Sword Knights (10)
Sword Knight Officer & Standard Bearer
Rupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord
The Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team

The idea behind the list is pretty self-evident. The Sword Knights would charge forward to tie up my enemy's lines, killing as much junk as possible. I don't expect to need an arc node, so the Lancer's job is really just to hang out with the Sword Knights and set up Flank. Junior will put Arcane Shield (gasp!) on them, while Rupert will play Heroic Call to make them tough and fearless. The Black 13th provide the list with some ranged punch, and can negate Stealth with Fire Beacon. Reinholdt is there to give Siege the extra shot via Reload, making Siege and the Defender the assassination squad. The idea is to use Foxhole when necessary to create LOS, pop Siege's feat (halving armor for the first damage roll they take this round), and then hit them with two boosted POW14 rockets and a boosted POW15 long barrel. I figure that should be enough to get the job most of the time.

So, how did it all work in practice?

Game 1: vs. Gorten Grundback (Searforge)

Gorten was running a Driller and a gun-bunny (I don't know if the gun-bunnies were Blasters or Gunners - they never got a shot off), Thor Steinhammer had a Rockram and another gun-bunny. There was a small unit of High Shields and a small unit of Forge Guard, and Herne and Jonne mixed in. Somehow that doesn't quite feel complete, but being the first game, that's all I remember off hand.

Early in the game, Jonne managed to deviate a shot onto Lynch, and kill him, which made me sad. To get revenge, Ryan killed him dead, but unfortunately, she hit him too hard and killed him before she could get the chain attack off. I misjudged my range on the Sword Knights' charge, and they fell short, failing to engage the Forge Guard and High Shields. The next turn there was a big scrum in the middle of the field, which lead to the deaths of some Sword Knights, but ended up being to my advantage as it bottled up Gorten's jacks in his backfield. Gorten pulled back, but not far enough, and at the top of turn three Siege was able to pop his feat and hit the little guy with a pair of rockets, ending the first game. 1-0.

Game 2: vs. Sorscha (Khador)

Khador scares me. They always have, and especially Sorscha, although her feat is a lot less painful in MKII thanks the "Shake Effect" rule. This particular list included a Behemoth, a Devastator, a unit of Iron Fang Pikemen with the UA, the Wardog and a unit of Widowmakers. Needless to say, that Behemoth made me nervous. The trick to beating this one would be two parts: 1) survive Sorscha's feat, and 2) ignore the Behemoth and go straight for the kill.

The game started as most games against Khador do - slogging through incoming mortar barrages just trying to get there. The Black 13th were able to set up shop in a forest to take advantage of Prowl, but they didn't do much else besides distract the Widowmakers for the rest of the game. My opponent got a lucky deviation early, managing to kill Junior and make Arcane shield go away, which in turn made my Sword Knights a whole lot squishier. Now I really had to hurry.

Siege cast Explosivo on himself and the Defender, and together they managed to kill off all but a couple of the IFP, which made me feel a lot better. It also opened things up considerably for the Sword Knights to charge forward. This actually worked out well for Siege - I had a good screen of SKs to block LOS for Sorscha's feat, but I could easily move them around and open up shooting lanes on my turn. Sorscha tried to kill them off and open up some lanes, but some seriously unlucky rolls left her poorly positioned at the end of her turn. On my next turn - you guessed it - Siege feats, boosts the rocket, gets extremely lucky on the attack roll, and lands 30 points of damage against her armor 8. Sorscha goes down! 2-0

Championship Round: vs. Goreshade (Cryx)

The Goreshade army intimidated the hell out of me - it was huge. Besides Goreshade there were two Seethers, a Pistol Wraith, a full unit of Mechanithralls with two Brute Thralls, a full unit a Satyxis with the Sea Witch, a Machine Wraith, a Necrotech and a Necrosurgeon. Of course, as soon as Goreshade pops his feat there will also be a unit of Bane Thralls to contend with... I knew that I didn't have a chance if I tried to kill off the entire army. I needed to go for the throat early or die trying - this game would definitely end by turn 3.

I ran forward, bravely into the fray, and the Cryx came rolling forward like a putrid, black tide. I learned that Satyxis are really, really fast, and that every time they hit a jack they hurt your warcaster just a little. I also learned that on a full charge they are more than a match for ARM19 Sword Knights. By the top of turn 3, both armies were fully engaged, and my Sword Knights were starting to get depleted. I needed to do something fast. Goreshade was within striking distance of Siege, but was protected by Stealth from Shadowmancer.

I put a plan into motion that I knew to be a desperate gambit. Lynch descended from his hill into the snarling horde of undead. He closed within 7 inches of Goreshade and shot off his Fire Beacon. It automatically missed, but still managed to deviate onto Goreshade, neutralizing Stealth. Watts hit, but couldn't beat the armor. Ryan missed her first shot, but hit solidly on the second. This was an unfortunate turning point and the ultimate unraveling of the plan, as I needed the Chain Attack Mage Storm to take out the Deathwalker so Goreshade couldn't sacrifice her to save himself. Unfortunately, that wasn't meant to be...

Siege feats, and sends a boosted rocket into Goreshade, but my dice fail me, and I leave 1 wound on the warcaster. The second shot (thanks Reinholdt!) boxes him, but that just takes the deathwalker out and brings him back with one wound. Even Jr. steps up, ready to be a hero, and takes a shot. He hits, but doesn't lay out enough damage to bring him down. Epic fail.

On my opponents turn the Satyxis run around the flank at their amazing 14 inch speed, and Goreshade soulgates in a Seether right next to Siege, ending the warcaster's reign of rocket-delivered terror in a gooey, bloody mess. Game over, 2-1.

Wrap up

When it was all said and done, I didn't even take second place - I ended up with third thanks to the other 2-1 guy losing less points than me along the way. Oh well. It was still a great day of really enjoyable gaming with really good people. I feel like I'm getting consistently better with my army, and I really like where MKII is going. In three games I didn't spot any egregious rules issues, although the Seether felt like it may have been a little cheap, while the Highshields felt a little... well... sucky. All in all, the game remains intact, and I'm actually really excited for where it is going. For me, it's going to be hard to go back to MKI for the next 8 months while we wait.