Power Behind the Throne: VTES, WarmaHordes, and General Geekery

Cinci Warmahordes

2012-01-26T19:57:00.001-08:00

So, this week I had a job in Cincinnati. I decided to look up local playgroups and found one connected to the Prime Generation podcast. They have a forum so I posted that I was looking for a game and someone offered to be around for some at Eastside Games.

I played three games.

Game 1 vs Khador

I generally like to play scenario games, as they prepare me for tournament play (though I rarely play in actual tournaments). The scenario was Destruction, which features two monoliths on each side of the board. They are armor 20 structures with 20 hit boxes each. Destroy your opponent's monoliths to win.

Easy enough.

My opponent played epic Butcher, with
Beast 09
Fenris
ManOWar Drakhun
Full Nyss Hunters
Madelyn Corbeau
War dog
Great Bears

I played a prime Madrak list I've been mulling over.

Madrak
Impaler
Swamp Troll
Dire troll mauler
Min champs
Max burrowers
Fell caller hero
Stone scribe chronicler
Min Krielstone with elder

It was a rough game for the trolls. I had to deploy right because I went second and protecting the objective was going to be incredibly difficult. I essentially lost during deployment because I didn't put sacrificial models up near the objective. The issue was with my slow trolls not being able to screen the objective.

In hindsight I should have left my burrowers undug to screen the monolith, keeping Fenris and the Drakhun from reaching it.

Instead I did not do this, and Fenris and the ManOWar managed to wreck it quickly (I underestimated their threat). My opponent then positioned the Butcher, full Nyss, Beast 09, and the great bears to threaten the second objective.

I tried to damage control with my burrowers, but the damage was done, and eButcher got to the objective and I lost by scenario right quick.

Game two I played a different opponent who was a Retribution of Scyrah player, who played

Garrath
Gorgon
Magister
Madelyn Corbeau
Two Mage hunter assassins
Narn
Full sentinels with ua and soulless
Full Mage hunters with ua

The scenario was supply and demand. There are two objectives on the board, and to score is actually easy, have your warcaster stand near the objective on your side of the board and run a model to contest the zone surrounding the opponents objective.

There's a lot of shenanigans that can go on and other scoring conditions, but it's kind of a wash because I ignored my objective and went for my opponents force. It's actually difficult to play for scenario with the Mage hunters around. They are a long range threat that needs dealing with ASAP.

So I deployed aggressively in the hopes that I could jam my burrowers into the strike force on turn 2. That's precisely what happened. I won the roll to go first, moved up my stuff and burrowed, and my opponent moved up and put Mirage on the Sentinals.

I popped the burrowers into a threatening position, and decided to b e aggressive and put madrak's feat and crusher into play. This is dangerous against Garrath, because Garrath (especially with Corbeau), has great threat range and Grievous weapon master blades, meaning my tough trolls aren't tough against him, and Madrak also can't transfer his attacks. Camping fury is useless.

I decided I had to gamble on the Krielstone and madrak's scroll of "I get to ignore one attack's damage roll" to keep him safe. Maddy moved up and popped feat and carnage. The stone gave bonus strength and armor. The fell caller and chronicler gave +2 mat to the burrowers and if a warrior model killed one with a melee attack they would fall down. Then I sent in the clowns. They managed to carve up 4 Mage hunters and the commander from that unit and 4 sentinels from the other, which overall isn't bad.

Then I had the impaler spear another sentinel, the mauler moved up and riled a bit (unnecessarily and stupidly I might add), the swamp troll moved to contest my zone for no good reason, and I moved the champs in front of madrak as an armor 20 8-wounds tough screen.

My opponent had an assassination vector if he played his cards right, but again the dice weren't great unless he could get some attacks on madrak before Garrath got there. His sentinels with vengeance and mirage managed to position for some good charges and kill a few burrowers.

Then the strike force killed some burrowers, the sentinels killed some more and charged the champs and mauler but did negligible damage. Corbeau allowed Garrath to move during the maintenance phase, and then the magister let him move again with whipsnap. I was surprised at the last, as force bolting a champ out of base to base would have reduced their armor enough to make them killable.

The Mage hunters and narn did some damage, but not enough to kill anything except a stone scribe.

My opponent decided that the assassination was a go anyway, but after mulling over the dice myself it was a bit sketchy. Garrath got to madrak, but he couldn't charge so no autoboost on the first attack, and when he boosted damage I canceled the roll with Maddy's scroll. He hit twice more for 12 wounds, but his turn was over with Garrath standing next to a very alive madrak on zero focus.

The mauler gave fury to madrak. The stone gave him strength. He hit with the first attack and I rolled an 11 for 15 wounds. Madrak missed his next two boosted attacks needing 9s. The fell caller charged into Garrath's back arc and killed him with a weapon master attack.

If Garrath had gotten a charge off on madrak for a free boost it might have gone differently, but my opponent still would have had to crank a damage roll on the last hit (and hit 4 times needing 6s on two dice, never a guarantee) to finish it out. Might have still been sketchy.

Nonetheless it was pretty fun and I learned a lot about retribution shenanigans.

Game three was again against the Khador player who brought

Old Witch
Scrapjack
Behemoth
Full winterguard with Joe
Full winterguard riflemen
Gorman di Wulfe
Epic Eiryss

Against my Grim list

Grim
Earthborn Dire Troll
Impaler
Axer
Full burrowers
Fell caller
Champ hero
Janissa
Runeshapers
Swamp Gobbers

The Scenario was incursion, with 3 flags in the center of the table, one of which disappears at the end of turn 1. First to score 3 points wins.

The old witch's feat does a power 14 attack to any model in her 14" control bubble (if they end their movement in it). The witch went first and so she had the initiative. She hit mid table on turn two and popped feat. None of my burrowers could do much but walk out of her control area and try to kill winter guard. Further, my opponent showed me how the behemoth works and managed to kill a bunch of my stuff with it's bombards. At the end of my turn two my opponent had an easy time getting two control points. I tried some hail Mary nonsense but it was essentially over, and he scored again on his turn 4 to win.

I don't understand why folks don't like the old witch. She's a baller. Lots of good table control, which is one of the only ways to deal with burrowers: deny real estate. I was thoroughly impressed.

Also impressed with the behemoth play. I hadn't seen that jack do much, and maybe it's better against my lower-defense trolls, but it picked off 3-point solos in my backfield like a boss.

I might swap the earthborn for a bomber and see how that works for me. I've heard good things.

My madrak list didn't impress me. It needs some work, and maybe more screening infantry. I may drop my burrowers package for some Kriel warriors and change the beast composition as well. Madrak's fury 5 really hurts his play, and his style tends to be brickish, which I'm not sure I like.

I'm working on pDoomy and eGrissel next, with maybe eMadrak in the works. I'm also considering some Cygnar lists. I still do love me some swan meat.

-Merlin out
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Cincinnati, OH

Ilin' in Illinois

2012-01-05T22:20:00.000-08:00

I realize it's a pretty bad pun. I like them.

I got out to a nice little game store called Unique Games & Gifts (which in my head, is sometimes pronounced as "eunuch") while out of town for business in Illinois. I'm going to temporarily be traveling a bit for the job, so occasionally I'm going to seek out other game stores and play groups and play some more warmachine and hordes.

It's great because I'm out of town with nothing to do anyway, and this way my hobbies aren't cutting into family time.

I have been feverishly painting my Grim Angus list in preparation for some playtime, and I set myself a New Year's goal to get it done (well, by New Year's day, which it was). I managed to finish my Champion Hero solo on December 30th, so it's all done. I got some more Troll models for Christmas, so I'm now far from done with Trolls (again), but I'm hoping to devote most of the winter to Troll painting, with a few possible exceptions.

I decided to take this list with me to IL. I also grabbed a few more pieces to vary up my list if I got a few games in, as I actually hate playing a single list/deck/whatever multiple times in a day (tournaments! Bah.).

I arrived early, but eventually someone showed up to play with, and we decided to get it going.

The scenario was Overrun, which features a huge, ridiculous rectangle in the middle of the board, and to score a player has to have a model or unit in the rectangle, and the opponent can't have anything in it. It's tough to score. The foe can easily run a model around a flank into a hard-to-reach corner to prevent scoring, or just jam up the middle and fight for the center. It does promote aggressive play, which is nice.

I played


Grim Shot First

Grim Angus, Bad Ass Troll
Earthborn Dire Troll
Troll Axer
Troll Impaler
Full Pyg Burrowers (Dygmies)
Fell Caller Hero
Champion Hero
Janissa Stonetide
Trollkin Runeshapers
Swamp Gobber Belows Crew

The gobbers are mostly filler, though I try to run them with the Runeshapers to give them concealment or block LOS. I won the roll to go first and deployed first. I put most of the battlegroup in the center of the table, with the Runeshapers on my right and the support staff for Dygmies on my left. There was a wall in the center of the table gumming up the works. There was also a building on either side of the table near the center, and a forest and hill on each side of the table, more central to the 4 1'x1' quadrants.

My opponent played prime Irusk, with:
Behemoth
Full Iron Fang Pikemen with UA
Man-o-War Drakhun
Great Bears of Brokenness
A Manhunter
Yuri the Manhunter Axe
Widowmaker Marksman
War Dog (?)

It was a bit of a mirror to my own list: a big unit to gum up the middle, a 3-man specialist unit (well, the Bears are specialist at wrecking whatever they hit), and a lot of expensive support. He didn't have any extra 'jacks, but the Behemoth is a huge pile of points and tends to murder stuff pretty well if it can get to and hit it (it's slow and inaccurate for an expensive character heavy) . The IFP set up across from Grim's battlegroup, with the Bears to my right (across from the Runeshapers), and Irusk, the Drakhun, and Behemoth between the Bears and the IFP. The 3 solos hung out in the forest on the other flank, opposite my support staff (not so good).

I read Irusk's cards (I hadn't played against him) and I was impressed. He's got a spell to increase the damage output of a model/unit, and his feat makes all his warriors super-Tough. He also has one of the best jack-buff spells in the game in Superiority, which gives a 'jack bonus accuracy in melee and speed, both of which the Behemoth needs. Nice.

First turn I ran all my stuff and fail-charged Grim up. The Dygmies burrowed.

My opponent put Superiority on the Behemoth and moved his stuff up a bit, but not the full movement. He moved a manhunter into a building on the centerline, in cover, but kept his other two solos back in the woods.

I popped up the Burrowers, saw that they were going to get to the IFP and Drakhun easily, and decided to pop Grim's feat to improve their meager attack skills. Grim moved up behind the recently un-burrowed and did so, then shot at and killed the manhunter in the building (true sight and a decent RAT help) and put the Earthborn's animus on himself.

The Runeshapers moved up and dropped their Rock Hammer attacks on the Drakhun, but the thing was too tough. It absorbed the 3 POW 14s like it wasn't a thing. I buffed the Dygmies' accuracy further with the Fell Caller, and they charged in and killed 8 of the 12 Iron Fang models on the table. I would have killed more, but the last four were a second line, and the Dygmies' attacks are both melee (they are an odd unit). Still, they already killed their points worth of models, and any that survive are gravy after that as far as I'm concerned. They also unhorsed the Drakhun with some fancy rollin', but his unhorsed self was back from their melee range so they couldn't continue to pound on them.

The Champ Hero moved up behind the Dygmies to shore up their command for the inevitable massive casualties check. Grim's beasts moved up, but not much. The impaler threw a spear at one of the IFP in the back, but missed by a wide margin. Janissa put up her wall in front of Grim. The gobbers blew smoke between Yuri and the marksman and the support staff (Champ Hero etc.).

My opponent hadn't expected the Dygmies to massacre so much of his infantry. He spent most of the turn retaliating, with the IFP killing a pair of Dygmies (one was tough), Yuri threshing to kill 4 (one was tough), and the Drakhun and one of the Great Bears killing another 3 (one was tough). This forced the massive casualties check, but they passed easily.

He also popped Irusk's feat and the Behemoth tossed a couple rockets at my backfield (that's what it does, but it's terribly inaccurate) to little effect. At the end of his turn he realized I was going to score a point, and then another on mine assuming I didn't move all my models out of the zone (most of them were in or close to in it). So I won by scenario. Boo. I asked him if he wanted to play it out and he said no. He was done with those Dygmies.

Still, a win by any other name.

I switched opponents for game two. A local Retribution of Scyrah player wanted to show me how nasty Ossyan can be, and I said sure. He built a list on the spot and we set up for game two. I played the same list. We moved terrain around a bit, with the hills in the center of each of our half of the board, and forests flanking on our right-hand sides. The buildings got shucked to the sides (by him so as not to block LOS for his arrowstorm), and I put a pond near my half (for earthborn animus shenanigans).

His list was something like:

Ossyan
Wishnailer (I know it isn't right, but for real: hell no)
Phoenix
Hypnos
Arcanist
Two units of Stormfall Archers
Full Dawnguard Invictors

The scenario was Gaining Ground, with three rectangles on the board, and scoring can only be done on the center one or the one on the opponent's side of the board.

I lost the roll to go first, but my opponent asked me to go first anyways. I did pretty much the same thing I did the previous game, though Grim cast the Earthborn animus on himself. My opponent fired some long shots with Snipe on the Stormfall Archers (who seem pretty sweet unbuffed to me, but I guess they are reviled by Ret players? I like AOEs I suppose), but they didn't do much, as most of my stuff is multiwound, except for the Dygmies, and the Dygmies were underground. He ran with much of his other stuff, and moved the jacks to the middle of the table, on the other side of a rock wall on the center line. Ossyan was a bit to the side of that, and the Invictors got Quicken and flanked hard on my left hand side (they were opposed by my Runeshapers this game). Admonition went on the Pheonix.

I popped the Dygmies back onto the table and then started planning my turn. I should have reversed that order. After popping them up I realized I might be able to move Grim up, pop his feat, catch Ossyan, knock him down with a boosted snare gun shot, and then have the Dygmies walk into him and fill him full of slugs. I vacillated for a second, and decided that the game is really about these Rube Goldberg assassination runs, so I went for it. I was thinking out loud as I did it, and after successfully knocking down Ossyan and popping the feat, I moved up the burrowers and my opponent said "this is where your plan falls flat", and he moved the Admonition Pheonix to engage my Dygmies. In hindsight, I remember thinking I should knock the Pheonix down with the snare gun or try to slam it with the Impaler, but alas. Only one Dygmy escaped the Pheonix's reach, but he cranked his damage roll with the slug gun, rolling boxcars and doing 10 damage to Ossyan. (in double-hindsight, I think I could have just charged 3 or 4 Dygmies into Ossyan with impunity and gotten more attacks that could have ended him quicker and in that event Admonition wouldn't save him as easy.)

I made some room for the Impaler to move up by charging in the Axer at the Pheonix and doing a substantial amount of damage, breaking the sword arm. I also moved up the Champ for that command check. Then the Impaler had a window to get LOS to Ossyan, moved up, hit, boosted damage, needing a 9 to kill, and rolling a 9.

So I diced my opponent in that game. He asked to play it out so we did. Of course, if the assassination run fails then the failing side tends to be overexposed. So I moved up Janissa and put a rock wall in front of Grim (who was on a hill; in hindsight I can't place the rock wall on other terrain, but the hill was a flat circle, so I did during the game without thinking. I might not have been able to get the cover bonus from the wall, which might have made a difference the next turn, though Grim still would have been at 18DEF on the hill from the mess of ranged attacks), and had the Earthborn put his animus on Grim (who would have gotten the armor buff regardless; he was close enough to the edge of the hill for a rock wall to be within 2"). The Fell Caller hung back, the Runeshapers killed two (one?) Invictors and the gobbers dropped some smoke for cover.

Ossyan's feat is a mess of ranged damage. My opponent allocated 3 to the Pheonix in preparation for some beatdowns. Then he moved the Arcanist up, but it failed the repair check. The Pheonix hit the Axer for a handful of damage and killed two Dygmies, one of which was tough. Then Ossyan popped his feat and missed with his gun at my backfield. He put Admonition on the Pheonix again. Hypnos moved in front of Ossyan to cover him (he may have had to run with the speed debuff from Grim's feat) and had it slap two burrowers around, one was tough though. Then the Stormfall archers activated and killed the Earthborn with authority. The next group killed a bunch of Dygmies but they passed their command check. The Invictors moved up, but did not engage anything, instead shooting at the Runshapers, Fell Caller, and Impaler. 4 of them managed to kill the Impaler. Another killed a Runeshaper, another missed, and then next two shots killed but their targets (Runeshaper and Fell Caller) were tough.

Ossyan hadn't landed his DEF debuff to go at Grim. Grim was DEF 22 on the hill with the wall (without the cover he would have been 18, still a tough call for most of the enemy shots at RAT 5-7), and ARM 17 with the animus. So he ignored Grim.

My army was decimated when my turn began. However, Ossyan was still pretty close with only Hypnos blocking the path to victory (again). I moved up Grim. My opponent triggered Admonition, but the clusterfuck of Burrowers, Champ Hero, Axer, and Hypnos left him little space to move. The Pheonix siddled up next to Hypnos. However, my target wasn't the man himself but Hypnos. Grim nailed a snare gun shot on the warjack to knock it down and get LOS on Ossyan. Then Grim managed to land Marked for Death on Ossyan, debuffing his DEF by 2. I decided not to try a Lock the Target as well.

Then the Runeshapers, who weren't engaged, moved to take Rock Hammer shots at Ossyan. One missed. One hit and did 7 damage, more than enough to rekill him. Janissa moved up and hit him again for 4 more.

So that worked out. I'm thinking Janissa with the Earthborn is absolutely ridiculous with Grim. His naturally high defense really milks that cover for all it's worth.

I played another game, again against the first player I'd played against. However, I switched lists to mix things up for myself. My thoughts on the Grim list, as this is the first time I've actually played it against people are that it isn't as pillowfisted as I thought. Sure, the Dygmies and Runeshapers are only (only!) kicking POW 14s, but that's more than enough to mug infantry and threatens a lot of multi-wound stuff too. The solos which I was fearing wouldn't pull their points in weight (the Fell Caller and Troll Hero) didn't get to do a lot, but the games were both over quick and they aren't normally in the thick of things until turn 3. I was afraid the Axer would be pillowfisted, but he cranked the Pheonix pretty well with two boosted Axe hits under Grim's feat for accuracy. Overall I still like it. I might drop the Axer for a Slag Troll, or the Axer and Swamp Gobbers for a Pyre and the Stone Scribe Chronicler, who makes the Dygmies _even more_ annoying.

For game three my Khador-playing opponent decided he wanted to Butcher my Dygmies with prime Butcher. I wanted to switch lists, but it was late and I wanted to keep things moving. I swapped warlocks, but instead of playing my normal prime Doomshaper list (feat. the Nyss Hunters and a pile of the warbeasts I own), I just swapped out Grim for Doomy and the Impaler and Gobbers for a Slag Troll.

I realized later that Doomy has 7 warbeast points and could have kept the goblins. Ah well.

Doomshaper, Shaman of the Gnarls
Earthborn
Axer
Slag Troll
Full Burrowers
Fell Caller
Champ Hero
Runeshapers
Janissa

My opponent played

Butcher
Juggernaut
Beast 09
Full Man-o-War Demolition Corps
Yuri the Axe
Great Bears
Kovnik Joe, the Winterguard buffing agent
Winterguard Mortar Crew

The scenario was a radial (corner-to-corner) scenario called Sacrifice. The players start corner to corner, and on the first player's left hand side is a control zone 8" or 10" in diameter (we never measured, just marked the center and contested thereby). On the first player's right side is an objective. To score the player must control the zone (his doods in it and the other guys doods not in the circle) and have a model base-to-base (B2B) with the objective. It looked incredibly difficult. To really make it work for many warcasters and warlocks they have to sit midfield and disperse their troops all over. Otherwise they would have to have excellent, self-sufficient flanking forces and hope the opponent didn't allocate enough resources to get at them.

I won the die roll and went first. I deployed pretty centrally, which was an issue since we left terrain as-it-was from the previous game. So my battlegroup started the game in the woods. The Runeshapers were on my left with the support solos, and I kept the Axer in reserve to move toward the objective. My opponent deployed the Great Bears closest to the objective (an incredible and self-sufficient flanking force, damn), with the Demo Corps central, Beast 09 in the very center of deployment, and the Juggernaut on my left/his right, ready to go contest the zone (Khador 'jacks are excellent zone contesters, they're stupid-durable and can be tough to move via slams and throws because of their strength). My burrowers deployed centrally with Advanced Deploy, as did Yuri the Axe.

First turn I had to cast a lot of Animi to get moving, due to the silly rough terrain. I had the Earthborn go with pathfinder first and run out of the woods at +2" because of the rough terrain. Then Doomy went and cast the Earthborn animus on himself to get some extra movement (without pathfinder) and the Axer animus on the other two beasts to give them +2" and pathfinder, allowing them to move out of the woods with ease. The Dygmies had burrowed before this, of course. The rest of my stuff just ran up, with the Axer being closest to the Objective and Runeshapers closest to the control zone.

My opponent ran most of his stuff, but was careful to keep out of my threat ranges for the most part. He moved the Bears toward the Objective, and the Juggernaut toward the zone. The mortar fired a shot into the Slag troll and did a few damage (20" range?! I had no idea!). Yuri moved into the center of the table, behind a wall that was on the center line in a normal game, but because of the corner-to-corner nature of the radial scenario it was diagonal to our play now.

Dygmies popped up. I moved around my support staff to get the Fell Caller to buff their melee attacks. The Runeshapers tried to lob AOEs at the DemoCorps but were out of range and the blasts didn't deviate well. They were in the control zone at least. The Dygmies didn't really have targets aside from Yuri. I had two of them get to him and manage to kill him with their attacks. Other than that they just gummed up the center of the board. I positioned my Earthborn and Axer what I thought was about 12" away from the Great Bears. This turned out to be a mistake. They were closer.

My opponent sent in the 'jacks, with the Juggernaut killing a Runeshaper and Beast massacring three Dygmies. The DemoCorp managed to kill a couple more, dropping the unit to 4 (some were Tough, but the Demo Corps have two attacks and finished a lot of them). They made their command check for casualties. My opponent sent two Bears into the Axer and killed it easily (it's tough as nails! It stood up to the Phoenix no problem the previous game!) and put a bunch of damage onto the Earthborn. If he'd charged differently I think he had a shot at getting two on the Earthborn, and that would have ruined my game, I think.

As it was I was still bogged down by a lot of big, tough buggers. I had some tough choices to make. First off the Bears had to die. But there wasn't anyone to get to them aside from the Earthborn, which one of them was engaging, or maybe Doomy himself. If I moved some pieces around I could get a Fell Caller on them, but that was no guarantee of killing Tough bears. I also wanted to get the Earthborn onto Beast 09, as otherwise he was going to ruin my day next turn. I moved the Slag and shot at Beast, but I'd forgotten that Beast 09 is Hyper Aggressive, so he walked into combat with a Burrower after my first shot and the second missed. Sad. Whoops.

I made up for it when the Fell Caller buffed his own melee attacks (he's reasonably accurate anyway) and charged at the two Bears who'd killed the Axer. He managed to kill both of them and neither were Tough (whew!). Then Doomy himself charged the last Bear and killed him, but he was Tough. I had Doomy beat that Bear with a stick until he wasn't tough. Then he healed the Earthborn's broken mind aspect, cast the Earthborn Animus on himself, and the Slag Troll animus on the Earthborn. He also popped his feat (spending focus in his control area HURTS). Then the burrowers burrowed again to get out of the way. The Earthborn walked into Beast 09 and used the power 8 Ice Axe to hit for P+S 22 with the Slag animus. Beast didn't make it. I only had 3 fury on the EBDT so I regened him for one as well. The Runeshapers and the Champ Hero managed to kill two of the Demo Corp so there were only 3 left. If I could keep the Earthborn alive another turn I might be able to table the Butcher. I put Janissa's rock wall up perpendicular to another wall in play, so that the Demo Corps still alive couldn't charge the Earthborn.

Butcher moved around a bit behind his stuff and popped his own feat, choosing not to spend any other focus due to Doomy's silly feat. He managed to blunderbuss a Runeshaper, but it was tough (and steady). The DemoCorps moved up and pounded the champ hero and runeshaper, but failed to kill the former and the latter was tough (again). The other two DemoCorps engaged the earthborn, and one of them managed a big 4-die roll to nearly kill it, but then the last missed his two backswing attacks because of the wall between the earthborn and him. The Juggernaut killed the runeshaper in front of it twice with boosted melee attacks (taking 4 damage for the boosts), but the 'shaper was tough twice. My opponent was not happy. Tough can be infuriating like that. The Mortar missed the champ hero but the deviation still did a bunch of blast damage, but left the Champ on 1 box.

So now the game is looking mighty different. I was worried that the Butcher could camp all day and stay alive, and without the Earthborn I wouldn't have an answer for that. However, the earthborn was hurt badly but survived. I popped the Dygmies up behind the Butcher, but only one had a backstrike on the dog. The dog had to go before I had a chance to hit Doomy. The Dygmy managed to hit the dog with his gun (aiming at RAT6, meh) and kill him. The dog was not tough. The other three Dygmies shot the butcher in the back, and two hit, but he was sitting on a pile of focus and I only managed 2 damage. Now I needed to get rid of the DemoCorp engaging him and heal him up with Doomshaper. The Champ Hero managed to kill one quite handily, but the Fell Caller and Doomy had to kill the other. Doomy used Stranglehold to nuke him after the Fell Caller spray didn't do much. Then the EBDT backed away from the butcher and regenerated for 6 with that damn trollblood regeneration ability.

The Runeshapers knocked the Juggernaut down with Tremor and hit the last DemoCorp with a Rock Hammer but didn't kill it. The Slag Troll maxed out spitting corrosive acid on the Juggie, but it had a few boxes left. Janissa's armor piercing pick finished it off. Now I had the control zone, but nothing B2B with the flag.

Butcher went into "endgame" mode. He moved, shot the Fell Caller to death (no tough) and cast Iron Flesh well away from the EBDT. The last demo corp killed the champ hero and either missed the runeshaper or it was tough (again!). The mortar cranked a shot at Doomshaper, who I'd left close enough to be hit by it, without a rock wall or any protective hookups. That hurt, but I lived.

Next turn the Dygmies ran to engage the mortar crew and Joe. The Runeshapers killed the last DemoCorps and I actually prepared for a butcher rush by backing up and healing the crap out of the EBDT. Janissa gave Doomy cover and he used the EBDT animus for protection.

Butcher was alone except for the mortar. He upkept Iron Flesh, moved forward camping a bunch, and shot a blunderbuss at Doomy, but missed. The next turn I had Doomshaper Purification the Iron Flesh, cast Corrosive Fists on the EBDT, and the EBDT made short work of the Butcher, using the huge power of Lola against the maniac. I think he was rolling dice +1, boosting his to-hits. Two hits finished the job. It was a pretty epic game. Not sure I like the scenario though.

Overall it was a damn good time. I'm thinking that Janissa and Earthborn are absolutely ridiculous together, but going into 2012 I can only take Janissa in one list for multi-list tournaments. The burrowers are pretty mighty as well, and the support they require is good when it gets to the front. The Fell Caller and Champ did a lot of melee damage against the Butcher's front line after the dygmies made a mockery of the front line, so I don't mind the support I like to take, but early spot removal of those key pieces could be really rough.

-Merlin out

Chitown Game

2011-12-19T09:54:00.001-08:00

I played a game of warmachine while on business in Chicago recently. I found the place on the privateer press forums, and they happened to have open warmachine and hordes the night I was in town.

It's a little store called Unique Games & Gifts, in Grayslake IL, north of Chicago proper. I started a game with a small child there, but he had to leave unexpectedly, and so I faced off against one of the local players.

He wanted to try Circle Orboros' new warlock, epic Baldur, the Stonesoul. I had only brought the mercenary stuff I'd taken to the latest Flint not-tournament. I played Constance Blaize.

Constance
Gallant

Full Precusor Knights and UA
Full Nyss Hunters
Gorman di Wulfe
Epic Eiryss, Angel of Brokeness
Harlan Versh
Ogrun Bokur on Blaize

His list was full of new Circle proxies

EBaldur
Megalith
Ghetorix
Gorax
Druids and UA
Shifting Stones and keeper
2 gallows grove

The scenario was killbox.

His only ranged attacks were magic attacks, so I put Banishing Ward on the Nyss and moved everything up. He did the same with his stuff; standard first turn advancing. He kept his troops out of my infantry charge range.

So I had Harlan advance and shoot one of his trees to death. Then I had the PKs advance a bit in shield wall. The Nyss shot a Druid with CRA and everything else stayed back a bit.

However, I'd left a hole in the middle of my troops for the battlegroup, and my foe decided to pull Gallant through it toward his Druids so that ghetorix could wreck it. Ghetorix did wreck gallant. Then Baldur put a rock wall in front of Ghetorix to protect him and the rest of his troops hung back. He also popped his feat and put Roots of the Earth on a few models.

The PKs charged up and hit the other tree, but because I was in shield wall I didn't actually charge and the lack of boosted damage hurt me (I had transference up but hadn't realized the tree was at like 19 Armor with the feat).

I wound up charging the Nyss into the Druids, shooting Megalith With Harlan and Eiryss, counterfeating, and having Gorman auto-deviate black oil onto Ghetorix.

Ghetorix forfeited his action and advanced into Blaize. The Gorax killed Gorman and the Bokur. The Druids and megalith struggled against the defense 15 spellwarded Nyss. My foe put Roots of the earth on Ghetorix and Baldur and a wall in front of Baldur (he'd moved up a bit to keep Ghetorix in his control area).

I don't think my foe was expecting the PKs to kill the Gorax or maul Ghetorix. I popped their mini feat and they made short work of the Gorax and the Battle Chaplain put 10 wounds on Ghetorix. I also don't think he was planning on Blaize finishing off Ghetorix herself. But she had a few extra focus from losing solos on her feat turn and managed to get him. The Nyss killed another Druid and popped Megalith for a bit more with another CRA. Eiryss knocked Megalith's animus out (she did this several times). The PKs also slapped the other Gallows Grove a bit, and destroyed a Shifting Stone during their charge.

My opponent was on his back foot. Baldur was 12" from Blaize and that was too far for him to assassinate. We'd traded heavies, but the Druids and Megalith were struggling with the Nyss. Baldur killed a Druid to drop a crevasse on some PKs and Megalith killed Harlan and a few Nyss Hunters, but I was winning the attrition war.

The Nyss charged Megalith and hurt him badly. Eiryss mugged a shifting stone to no avail. Baldur backed up and tossed out a Rock Wall.

Rupert gave the PKs tough and they advanced into Baldur, hitting him with transference for boosted damage. He was down to like 5 wounds. The Nyss got megalith down to 1 wound, and Eiryss used Sniper to finish him. Blaize put a huge obstruction between Baldur and herself.

Baldur had like 5 Wurm tokens at this point, and without Megalith to heal he was looking bad. He used his self-nuke to kill a couple PKs on him (one was tough) and moved back to heal on a shifting stone.

Constance moved up so that the PKs could use transference to attack and damage Baldur again. He lived due to poor rolls.

Baldur gave up and charged forward to kill some PKs, and with flank Blaize finished him. It was inevitable at that point.

It was a good game. Took about 3 hours.

I forgot to take a pic of the game, but here's the Thai food I ate in Chicago.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Saturday Warmahordes Games

2011-12-02T20:56:00.001-08:00

I went to the Gamer's Sanctuary in Flint last Saturday for a tournament that did not take place due to low attendance. I was still able to get in four games of Warmachine, two against a fellow I did not know, and two against the nemesis Ray.

John played Trolls and had only Grim Angus with him. He played Grim twice against my Constance Blaize list. The lists were something like:

Blaize
Gallant
Sylas
10 PKs + UA
10 Nyss Hunters
Epic Eiryss
Harlan Versh
Gorman Di Wulfe
Rupert Songman
Reinholdt

Grim
Dire Troll Mauler
Troll Impaler
Troll Axer
Troll Champ Hero
3 Long Riders
6 Bushwackers
Fell Caller
Some pig artillery thing, the razorback crew?

We played scenarios. In the first game, we ran at each other, I feated and left Blaize at zero focus trying to mug the Axer with Nyss, and then John managed to kill Blaize with an Impaler under Rage and a Long Rider charge.

The second game was more interesting. We played the Revelation scenario, which has two flags, and both must be scored upon to win. We both advanced again, and again we clashed, but this time Gorman dropped Black Oil on the Long Riders and Blaize camped enough to be relatively safe from the Impaler. We chewed through each other's forces, and when the dust had settled it was 5 PKs, Gallant, and Blaize against Grim, 2 Bushwackers, the Axer, and the Mauler. However, I'd started off the scoring on flag #1, and Blaize was sitting on flag #2. John planned to camp his mauler on Flag #1 and thereby keep the score constantly tied while we jockeyed for position (Grim was Locking down Gallant), but I realized after a turn of this that each player can only score 2 points per flag. So I wound up winning by scenario.

Ray stepped in while John got Taco Bell and showed me the fury of Cryx.

I played

MacBain
Sylas
Gallant
Nomad
10 PKs + UA
Bloody Bradigan
Gorman di Wulfe
Epic Elf
Aiyana and Holt
Ogrun Bokur attached to PK officer

He played prime Skarre with a pile of mcThralls, full Soulhunters with Darragh Wrathe, a Slayer, and some other junk in the backfield.

We ran at each other, but I didn't feat the turn of engagement, and the PKs failed a terror test against Gerlak Slaughterborn (with the reroll; two 10s). So they were out. I managed to put some fear of God into Skarre by putting a Nomad into her backfield, but she just feated and the Soulhunters charged through my shit with Incorporeal and that was game.

Ray and I played again, and he played Venethrax with a pile of Bloodgorgers. This game was awesome.

I played something like

Ashlynn
Gallant
Sylas
ATGM + UA
Mule
6 PKS + UA
Harlan Versh
Gorman di Wulfe
Taryn di Rovissi
Reinholdt

We both ran first turn, but Venethrax also feated. I feated in response and promptly killed most of the bloodgorgers. He jammed up my lines in response, and things got ugly. Venethrax pushed forward on one flank, and the ATGMs met him and managed to not die, by having the Mule occasionally crit-toss him in an AOE backwards. Gerlak and most of the support staff got pimped by PKs on a weird flanking mission. The backfield got murdered by Taryn di Rovissi, who managed to kill a lot of stuff this game, including the Withershadow reroller.

The game came down to Ashlynn (with goblin and seeker), Gallant, the Dude, Taryn, and some PKs against Venethrax, darraghe wrathe unhorsed, and Malice (who was mugged). It was my game to lose at that point, because Admonition was keeping Venethrax away from Ashlynn while Gallant whittled away at him. But I decided to charge Ashlynn into Malice, doing some damage, but giving myself little means of escape from Venethrax, who was too far away to retaliate except for Wrathe's death ride. Which is ridiculous.

So I learned something there. That game needed to end tho, and I still feel it was my game to lose.

Overall some sweet stuff. I didn't take a pic of the games, but I've got something around here. . .


Ashlynn is pretty awesome

-Merlin out

Dungeons, Dragons, Character, & Identity

2011-11-22T08:03:00.001-08:00

I'm playing D & D again, with an entirely new group. Apparently I get invited to established RPG groups somehow. That's all right. We only just began playing, and it's got me thinking about character creation, role playing, and identity.

Two of the players in the new group have never played RPGs. That in and of itself is fine, but maybe I'm just an actor-type player; newer players tend to make two-dimensional characters. One of the new players is literally playing a version of He-Man. The character's backstory is that he is from the planet Eternia and he's a prince etc. He seems to be garnering most of his inspiration from the Dolph Lundgren version, which is actually better than the alternatives (the He-man cartoon from my youth does NOT hold up well). Still, the character is a meathead and a goon, a caricature and a one-note joke. I guess we'll see how long the charm lasts.

The other new player didn't even create their own character, and so wasn't involved in the process at all (the DM put everything together for them). This new player, through no fault of their own, only understands the rude mechanical core of the game. Their character, at the end of the day, is a list of powers and abilities. Perhaps eventually they will work to create a deeper personality. They didn't have a character name until the DM gave them one two sessions in.

Conversely, myself and at least one other player tend to create characters with depth. Deep characters engage with the story more, as they have complex motivations and a rich backstory can give the DM opportunities for engagement. If my character explicitly has a sister which he worries about, then the DM has a ready-made source of adventure engagement and conflict. On the other hand, the DM gave new player 2 above a sister and used them as a plot device to get them working with the rest of the party. However, the sister wasn't much motivation, and the new player balked at the idea of rescuing for a second (which is sad really).

Normally I create characters based on motivations and (at least in real-world RPGs like Vampire) accents which can let me slip in and out of character to the group through aural cues. It's difficult to try and work with accents in D & D, though not impossible. This time I eschewed that practice and made a character based on the needs of the group (4th Edition D & D is a team effort). Then I sort of built them up around that concept.

My own character is in fact uncomfortably close to a facet of myself, the happy-go-lucky night owl socialite. It has gotten me thinking about D & D as either a source or a solution for identity crisis. Many are familiar with the supposed dangers of the game and it's ability to change or warp a person's mindset.
But what about D & D as therapy? What about exploring a facet of one's own personality, not in order to change the self wholesale, but to gain a greater self-understanding? I'm not sure if what I'm doing in this game is at that level of soul-searching, but I will admit that I sometimes miss my hard-partying late nights from a decade ago. Perhaps this character can allow me to relive those days in a more responsible fashion.

The other player in the new group who creates deep characters (player 3?) is still trying to solidify who their character is. I like this approach as well as the deep backstory one. As long as the player is working to create a character rather than a caricature then the story will feel more alive. It was still amusing watching them question their character's motivations during the first session (why would I do this? Why now? Etc).

This whole experience actually makes me long a bit for my other RPG group, who haven't met in nearly a year now. Those guys all created rich characters; some of them explored them while playing, and some of them spent time before games working out backstory. It was great roleplaying in the end, the characters were vivid and three-dimensional, and at times I felt that the scenes created were poignant.

I guess as long as everyone's having fun playing the game then it's all good, but for me character depth is more rewarding than anything else. It's better than +5 baldrics of efficacious stabinating or slaying ancient mauve dragons.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone y'allz

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Elder Sign: Omens for iPhone

2011-11-12T16:05:00.001-08:00

I have to admit, the setup for this game is significantly less time-consuming than that of its forebear. As an iPhone game, I can use this app to get my Lovecraftian horror on from just about anywhere. The game features many of the same characters and much of the artwork from Arkham Horror.

Gameplay-wise, the player controls a group of investigators maneuvering through a museum which has many breaches into various other terrible dimensions. There is an ancient one (always Azathoth for simplicity) who awakes and destroys the world if the doom track fills. The investigators must acquire 14 elder signs before Azathoth awakens.

As the game begins, there are 6 randomly chosen adventures scattered through the museum. The investigator who is active chooses one to do, or spends their turn doing some bureaucracy at the museum entrance (buying or selling items, etc.). After choosing an adventure, the investigator enters the adventure screen.

On the adventure screen, the investigator conjures various random runes necessary for completing adventures. With luck, special abilities to manipulate runes, or items to change them around, the investigator can complete the adventure and gain the rewards, which can be items, spells, or even elder signs if the adventure is challenging enough.

Failing to complete the adventure will have consequences that range from stamina or sanity loss to spawning monsters and adding to the doom track. Most adventures are set up with risks and rewards that are reflective of the adventure's difficulty. Tough adventures yield elder signs and lots of items, whereas simpler adventures will give an item or a clue.

Each investigator has a sanity and stamina level that will deteriorate as they complete and fail tasks. If either trait goes to zero the investigator is deceased of insane and no longer helps the team against the mythos.

Adding to the "race against the clock" feel of the game, there is a literal clock on the screen which advances with each investigator's turn. It periodically strikes midnight, and a random bad thing happens then, usually more doom and monsters.

It's a fun little game. I lost my first few games while learning how to play, but since then I rarely lose. Managing the investigators' sanity, stamina, items, and skills and matching those to appropriately difficult adventures is easy enough. As long as the team is completing adventures I seem to do well.

I think it's pretty good, though it suffers from a grind-y vibe as there is always more adventures spawning to complete. I quite like the art style and general mood of the game, but I'm not sure how often I'll come back to it. Few iPhone games have captured my long-term attention span. We'll see if this one holds up. Overall a 3.0.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone y'allz

Board Games on the Road: Arkham Horror

2011-11-07T11:42:00.001-08:00

I actually got this last Christmas, and I hadn't played it until recently. It's a big time-sink, and a massive game. Luckily, it can be played single player, and since I apparently like single player games from Fantasy Flight Games, I decided it was time.

I'm traveling a bit for work here and there, and since I'm spending some time alone in hotel rooms I thought I should direct that time toward the blog and gaming. To this end I'm going to try and play some single player board games here and there during my travels.

Arkham Horror is an investigation and horror game based on the writing of H. P. Lovecraft. I'm a fan of his work, and the RPG community that's grown around his mythos is impressive. In the game, the players take the role of distinct investigators who must stop the otherworldly entities from devouring humankind.

The set up for the game took a long time. There are over a dozen different decks of cards, another dozen types of chit or counter, and some large cardstock pieces that represent the investigators and the Ancient One, one of eight mythos entities that represent the games antagonist element.

I played two games during an overnight stay. It took about 45 minutes to set up the game for the first time, but I imagine that it will be significantly easier and could be streamlined further by packing the game away in an organized fashion.

Game one featured the investigator Michael McGlen, the Gangster, pitted against the Ancient One Shub-Niggurath. McGlen has a high stamina, starts with a Tommy Gun (one of the more powerful mundane weapons), and takes less damage during combat. Shub-Niggurath makes her creatures more difficult to kill as well. So it was a toughness battle.

Each turn the game has several phases. Each investigator gets to move, do some encounters, collect clues, and so forth. They may even step through gates to Other Worlds. The last phase of each turn is the Mythos phase. During this phase gates open, monsters spawn and move, and additional clues and effects happen.

Each turn a gate will open at one of the dangerous locations on the map unless an elder sign token is on the location drawn, or a gate already exists there. If there's already a gate there, monsters pour out of the gates already on the board.

Here's a list of bad things that will awaken the Ancient One and force a difficult final battle:

Too many gates open on the board (8 for single player).
The Terror Track is filled (starts at 0 and advances every time there is an overflow of monsters).
The Ancient One's Doom track is filled (each time a gate opens a doom token is added)
There's more but I'm forgetting some. . .

To seal a gate requires 5 clue tokens, a successful check against the gate, and requires that the investigator has explored the other world to which the gate leads. It takes at least 3, sometimes 4-5 turns to seal one. A single-player experience seems to require the player to aggressively seal 2-3 gates ASAP to keep the ancient one from awakening due to the amount of gates on the board.

Mike did okay sealing his first two, but by then a Rumor Mythos card had popped up. Rumors are bad effects which linger until a specific condition is met. In this case the Rumor had a 33% chance to increase the Terror level. Mike had to get two gate trophies (seal gates for trophies) to stop the rumor. He did manage it, but by then the Terror track was almost full, and he'd been Cursed as well. Being Cursed is all kinds of bad.

So Shub-Niggurath woke up and ate Mike.

The Rumor card really did him in. It was fun, but difficult.

I played another game as Bob Jenkins, the salesman. Bob's special ability gives him extra items. He also starts with a number of items. I happened to draw two Elder Sign unique items (two of the same unique item?) which I thought was pretty awesome. Bob managed to seal two gates right quick and had saved up enough clues to do a third. He'd also managed to get a Tommy Gun during character creation, so he was tough.

However, a number of difficult monsters have Physical Resistance or Immunity, which makes fighting them without spells terribly rough. A Rumor popped up that put a pile of monsters into Miskatonic University, and if the pile ever grew to 8 (it gains one per turn) the terror track would max out and the final battle would begin.

Thing was, the Ancient One against Bob was Azathoth, and there is no final battle with Azathoth. He (it?) just destroys the world.

Bob spent several turns trying to prune the monsters at Miskatonic U while creatures and gates continued to spawn (because the game doesn't stop while you're dealing with a Rumor). Eventually the list of monsters at the University was just filled with ghosts and spectral beasts who didn't give a shit about Bob's machine gun. The number grew to 8 after a fire vampire knocked out Bob's last stamina and he wound up in the hospital. Azathoth destroyed the world.

So that was cool.

Overall, it's a fun game, but it has some trouble at the single player level. Perhaps since it's co-op, I will try it again and control 2 or more investigators at a time. I'm sure this will change the game in a number of ways, but hopefully it's a bit less challenging.

Perhaps it's meant to be super-challenging? The Lovecraftian mythos doesn't have a lot of rays of hope going for it. Maybe the difficult choices in the game are meant to represent the inevitable decline of humankind as Elder Gods and Things From Beyond encroach on our world.

Flavor-wise, it certainly gets an A. Gameplay-wise, it felt a bit like a gate-sealing grind, with so many additional complications that it felt impossible to win. I know that solitaire games tend to be brutally difficult, but Arkham Horror is the toughest I've played.I'd give it an overall grade-point (on the community-college 4.0-0.0 scale) of 3.0.

There's a stripped-down version of the game available, called Elder Sign. There's also an iPhone game just released called Elder Sign:Omens. I picked it up, and I'll talk about that soon.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone y'allz

Building Lists v. Building Factions

2011-11-02T13:52:00.001-07:00

Many excellent warmachine and hordes players recognize that playing factions is alright, but playing one caster or warlock and building a single solid list is cheaper and tends to be a better play experience. I'm not necessarily a good WarmaHordes player, but I can see the advantages.

I chose to play Cygnar, and I've collect a good portion of the faction, which gives me lots of options when playing Cygnar. However, I've only been playing the Warcaster Constance Blaize in the last two months, and so much of my Cygnar stuff is dusty.

Also, getting skills requires some dedication to a strategy. Having a single 'caster to work with makes it easier to become jouzu at the game. Having a huge faction worth of possibilities leads to a shallow understanding of a broad range of things instead of a deep understanding of a few.

Further, my Trollbloods exploration has made me rethink buying into a whole 'nother faction. I'd rather build a couple solid lists and work from there.

Don't get me wrong: tournament play generally requires several lists from the same faction, but in general it's cheaper to work in lists rather than factions.

To this end, I decided to build a Trollbloods Grim Angus list. One reason is cost: Grim supports mercenaries as well as his own troops, unlike most Troll warlocks, so my Nyss Hunters are ready to work for him. Another reason is that Grim looks like a lot of fun, with a series of debuffs to help his army land hits and buffs to help his stuff move and target. He's really all about buffing accuracy. On top of the rest, he's got a gun, so I can shoot with him. That's something I like about Cygnar warcasters, so it fits into my comfort zone despite being in a different faction.

Looking through the Trollbloods faction book, I decided I would buy a heavy warbeast (because the goddamn warpack didn't come with one) and a full unit of trolls. Then I would cherry pick support solos and the like to support those troop choices, and add in the Nyss Hunters to fill out the list.

I read Sevwall's strategy article about the Pygmy Burrowers unit ("Dygmies") on the Privateer Press forums, and it paints a convincing picture of the Dygmies as a versatile, difficult-to-deal-with unit. They are dirt cheap in army-points cost, but they're also terribly, awfully inaccurate. Trolls have access to a lot of solos who buff units, however, and many warlocks also help. I decided to buy me some Dygmies.

For a heavy, I took a look at the several options available and decided that the Earthborn Dire Troll was the most versatile. It's got a lot of terrain-variable buffs, it can often hit as hard as whatever it's hitting, and it's animus can give buffs to other friendliest based on nearby terrain. It's good. It also has pathfinder, just like Grim, and just like the burrowers, and just like the Nyss Hunters.

So my Grim list is very much shaping up to be a list built around taking advantage of available terrain.

At 15 points it looks like:

Army Name: Grim Beginnings
Trollbloods
15+6 points, 13 models

Grim Angus +6 points
* Earthborn Dire Troll 10 points
* Troll Impaler 5 points

10 Pyg Burrowers 6 points

It has quite a few weaknesses at this level. With only one heavy hitter it will have trouble killing the tougher enemy warcasters and warlocks. I won't be able to afford trading the Earthborn Dire Troll (EBDT) for an enemy heavy unless I feel the burrowers and Impaler can finish the caster. The Dygmies really require some support solos to shine. They have a miserable melee attack stat and a similarly poor command check. To buff those they need a Fell Caller Hero and Trollkin Champion Hero nearby. Grim buffs their accuracy somewhat, but the additional buff from the Fell Caller takes them from good with Grim's feat to hitting just about everything on average rolls. Their poor command leaves them vulnerable to Terrifying entities (lich lords and such) or Abominations (bigger lich lords and such), but the Champ Hero is a battlefield commander with a respectable Command stat.

So to pump the list up to 25 I would take those two solos, each of which cost 3 points (they also kick butt themselves, so the cost isn't too painful). With the remaining 4 points I had a lot of choices, but I would settle on either Janissa Stonetide, another 3 pt solo, and the Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew, or a 3 troll, 4 pt unit of Runeshapers. Probably the former.

These support pieces add a lot to the burrowers and Grim's survivability without reducing their overall punch. However, at 25 the lack of a second heavy might hurt the list's performance somewhat. High-armor opponents might give it trouble, but hopefully if I can kill a heavy with the burrowers, or with the Earthborn during Grim's feat turn, I can win the attrition war. If I can get an Earthborn charge on an enemy 'caster they will probably also die, so that's a secondary option. The EDT can get a 12" charge if circumstances permit, so that can surprise some players.

At 35 points, I still don't add a second heavy, mostly because I don't own one. Instead I add the Troll Axer for his animus and his infantry-clearing thresher attack, and with the last 4 PTs put the Runeshapers in. I could add the Krielstone bearers with UA instead of the Runeshapers (dropping the Gobbers for a full unit) instead, but I don't have the stone yet, and I'm not sure Grim really needs it.

The Runeshapers give the list 3 magical aoe attacks, and if they crit they cause knockdown. At this point the list is very much about clearing a charge lane for the EDT to get an assassination. The aoes, the thresher attacks, and the burrowers cause a lot of problems for enemy infantry, and they can open some serious holes for the Dire Troll to fly across the board.

Grim's Cross Country spell can even allow the EDT to target enemies through forests which normally would block LOS, and the Axer animus can give the Earthborn yet another 2". If it gets all the buffs in a single turn (Axer animus, starts w/i 2" of rough terrain for +2 spd, and Grim shoots the target with his rifle to add 2" with Bait the Line) it can charge 14" away, and with its melee range of a half inch it can get to a lot of enemies. The thing to remember is to move Grim far enough forward that the EDT is still in his control to be forced.

That can be dangerous of course, but on the feat turn the speed debuff can keep Grim safe from much reprisal.

At 50 I add in my aforementioned Nyss Hunters, and. . .another Impaler at the moment. It's not optimal, but with the models I currently own that's where I'm at. I'll eventually get a Slag Troll and fit that in at 50 instead. That thing can wreck it some constructs.

Overall the list will struggle with high armor, but with any luck I can control the board enough to outflank or out last my opponent.

-Merlin out

Trollbloods Warpack

2011-10-25T21:11:00.001-07:00

For hordes and Trollbloods, I did the same thing I did for WarMachine and Cygnar. I picked up the Battlebox, though the Hordes 'boxes are called "warpacks".

The Trollbloods warpack is odd in that it doesn't have a heavy warbeast at all, with three lights and a beefy warlock.

Primal Madrak, Thornwood Chieftain is the warlock in the 'pack. He's a brute with a big magic axe and not a lot of play options. He tends to keep his troops nearby to benefit from his Surefoot spell (models affected by Surefoot or within 3" of the model with Surefoot gain a defense bonus and can't be knocked down). Madrak usually casts Surefoot turn one and upkeeps it on himself all game. He only has two other spells: Carnage, which gives a melee attack bonus to faction models within his tiny control area (he's a low fury warlock), and Stranglehold, which is a cool attack spell that sucks for Madrak because of the low fury.

He's got a sweet axe that hits like a train, and he can throw it and it returns mjolnir-style, which is bitchin'. If he ever crits with his axe the enemy model loses healing, Tough, and can't transfer wounds. That's nasty. He can also ignore a damage roll once per game, warbeasts can't target him with charges or slams, and he is Tough.

His feat, Crusher, gives faction models in his tiny control area the ability to move 1" and make another attack if they kill an enemy model. That's alright. It's even better for beasts who can buy even more attacks. It's great for clearing infantry.

Most of the time, Maddy puts up Surefoot, maybe throws his axe once on the approach, and then casts Carnage the turn his feat goes off. Then his troops and beasts go maul everything they can. He's not versatile but he works.

The beasts in the warpack are two full-blooded Troll Impalers and a Troll Axer.


I'm totally not about to put my Impaler in the washing machine; I just hobby in the basement.

The Impaler light warbeast is a big troll with a spear. It can toss that spear, though it's going to want to boost the attack roll because it's not super accurate. Also, if it crits on the attack roll it slams the struck model back, knocking it down and maybe even crushing models in the slam path. The spear does respectable damage and has reach, so the Impaler can do well in melee under Maddy's feat in a pinch. The Impaler also has an animus called farstrike, which adds 4" to the range of a single model for a turn.

Animi are another difference between Hordes and Warmachine. Warlocks tend to have fewer spells than warcasters, but each beast in their battlegroup adds an animus which either the beast or the warlock can cast (or both).

The Troll Axer Light warbeast is practically a heavy beast. It doesn't hit hard enough for a heavy, but it's one of the strongest lights in the game. It has a big axe (you may have guessed that) with Reach. It also has Thresher, which allows it to use it's combat action to swing that axe at every model within melee range. The Axer animus is called Rush, and it grants an additional 2" of movement and pathfinder to a warbeast it affects.

All full-blood Trolls (so just warbeasts) have a regeneration ability as well. They can be forced (gain a fury) to regenerate d3 wounds. This is a big deal.

One of the main differences between warmachine and hordes is that most warcasters can't repair 'jacks (usually one per faction knows what up), but their are special mechanic units and solos that can do so. However, any warlock can spend a fury to heal a damage on one of their beasts, which means that even a beast that has taken a beating can get back up and fight well.

Warjacks tend to get crippled easier, while beasts are more resilient.

Trolls' regeneration allows them options in the healing order. Other Hordes factions would have to activate the warlock early in the turn and spend valuable fury healing beasts instead of casting spells and animi. Troll warlocks can do the same, or they can activate the beasts first and add a fury or two to a hurt beast to bump it back up.

That's cool.

Without heavies, Madrak has trouble with high armor, and his battlegroup is a actually a point or two short of many other battleboxes out there. He has to rely on the Impalers to slam a key enemy model back to control the board while he and the Axer wail on another target. With some luck he might win the attrition war, or if his Impalers get lucky and slam a model over the enemy warcaster/warlock, Madrak or the Axer can probably swoop in to finish them off. Relying on the probability of critting on three dice is not great strategy, but since Madrak's feat is all about clearing infantry, and Carnage supports a mass of troops, in Battlebox games Maddy doesn't have much else.

I decided to pick up Grim Angus instead of sticking to Madrak, since Grim is a bounty hunter with a real gun and not a magic throwing axe.

I've built a few Grim lists with my meagre supply of Troll models. I'll talk about that later.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone y'allz

Hordes: Gay WarMachine

2011-10-23T18:32:00.001-07:00

So I wanted to play a Hordes army to complement my WarMachine forces, as much to learn the Hordes game mechanics as feed my consumerist addiction for buying shit I don't need.

Hordes is a "sister" game to WarMachine, with most of the same statistics in place, and many shared rules. However, there are some significant differences, most of which relate to the Battlegroup rules.

Instead of a warcaster who gains X focus per turn and then allocates to their warjacks, a Hordes chess-king is called a warlock (apologies to Charlie Sheen) and their battlegroup consists of monstrous warbeasts instead of mechanical warjacks. Warlocks have fury instead of focus, which can be spent in mostly the same ways as focus for warcasters. However, fury works differently in its replenishment mechanics. Warlocks don't automatically regain their fury each turn. Instead they leech fury from their warbeasts. If there isn't enough to fill their fury to capacity, they can regain fury by wounding themselves on a point-for-point basis, but otherwise they're boned. Warlocks begin the game with max fury.

Also, warbeasts aren't allocated fury each turn. Instead, they start with zero fury on the first turn and they can be "forced" to do extra awesomeness by their warlock, gaining fury. They gain fury at roughly the same rate warjacks would spend focus. So while a warjack needs to be allocated 3 focus to work at maximum efficiency, draining the warcaster's resources, a warbeast can spend to capacity. Capacity is dependent on the beast in question. Most heavy warbeasts have a 4 fury, and most lights 3. There are exceptions, but that's the baseline.

The catch is this: if a warlock doesn't leech all the fury off their warbeast(s) each turn, the warbeast may fenzy and maul whatever is next to them instead of doing something more directed. More importantly, warbeasts can't be forced when outside their warlock's control area, so warlocks need to be played closer to the front than warcasters.

In a game which often ends in assassination of the king-piece, being forced to play further forward can be a serious disadvantage. Further, unlike the focus from warcasters, leaving a few fury on the warlock does not provide extra armor. Instead, warlocks can spend fury to transfer damage to one of their warbeasts, which also adds a fury to that warbeast.

Anyway, I don't want to invest in a huge army for my hordes force. I had to choose wisely, and decided that since I already have a mercenary unit that will work for two hordes factions I would look hard at those. The mercenary unit is the awesome Nyss Hunters.

The hordes factions are:

Skorne: a militaristic, ancestor-worshipping, sadomasochistic, aggressive society which is somehow aligned with the deposed monarch of Cygnar, Vinter. Their themes are powerful beasts and hurting their own forces to gain some buff. The Nyss won't work for them.

Circle Oroboros: Druids. Who have aligned with the "devourer worm" (werewolf: the apocalypse anyone?) and a group of atavistic cannibals. Their themes are Werewolves, beastmen, Druidic animism, and lightning attacks. Lots of pathfinder units and forest-using shenanigans. Nyss will work for Circle.

Legion of Everblight: a group of blighted elves who have been corrupted by a dragon named Everblight. Their themes are powerful souless beasts with wings, fire attacks, and speedy assaults. The Nyss won't work for them, but as a faction Legion is quite strong.

Trollbloods: a group of racially-linked humanoids with a tribal structure and an underdog, everyone's-out-to-take-our-land feel. Their themes are literally Tough troops, hungry beasts, and lots of synergistic buffs to help melee troops out. Nyss work for Trollbloods.

Minions: Minions are the Hordes equivalent of "mercenaries" from warmachine. They break down into two subfactions: pigs and gators. Nyss might work for minions, but not for pigs or gators (I think?).

I don't want to play minions, despite the fact that they are inherently a smaller faction with less for me to collect. I wanted a faction that will work with Nyss, so that puts Skorne and Legion out. I leafed through the Circle and Trolls warlock sections, to see which ones might actually support Nyss (many hordes buffs only help faction units). The Trolls had a few 'locks who help Nyss. In particular Grim Angus looks like fun.

I swear his name is "Clint".

So I picked up some Trolls. Unfortunately my Grim Angus list doesn't use the Nyss until 50 points. At 35 it's much more streamlined.

-Merlin

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone y'allz

WarmaHordes Game Sizes

2011-10-20T06:45:00.001-07:00

There are quite a few levels at which the game can be played. The logical starting point is Battlebox games, which are (depending on the faction and contents of the box) 10-15 points. They're good for getting a grasp of the core battlegroup rules: how to buff your warjacks or warbeasts, allocating focus to power 'jacks, managing fury on beasts, keeping things in the 'casterlocks control area, popping the feat, and so on.

15 points: This is still a small game, and often features a prominent battlegroup element, but there is usually a solo and/or unit in the mix. For warmachine armies, often a jack or two from the battlebox will get dropped for more troops. Warcasters rely less on warjacks than warlocks do beasts, and powering jacks costs focus; one is often enough. Warlocks regain fury each turn from warbeasts, so they need them as fury batteries.

In this pic the sword knights represent steelhead halberdiers.

Games at 15 points tend to be quick, tense, and interesting. The Poor Bodgers series at my FLGS is always a single list, 15-point tournament. When I go I get to play 3 games in 3 hours. Since I play warmachine I can mix and match my troops, warjack of choice and so forth, depending on the 'caster I want to try. It's more difficult to do that with Hordes, but hordes runs multiple heavies better at low points, so there's some give and take.

The short, small games at this point level make the lose-your-king, chess, assassination aspect of the game less frustrating. It's super easy to lose at WarmaHordes. If the warcaster or warlock is left vulnerable (even only slightly so) it can mean the end of the game. At 15 points it still feels alright when I lose to a silver bullet assassination run.

25 points: this is kind of a no-man's land for WarmaHordes games. Most games are played at 35 or 50, and the quick, new player friendly tournaments and games are closer to 15. 25 is stuck between those game sizes.

I quite like this level as well, since it builds on the 15 point paradigm, but doesn't add too much more. An extra 10 points is another infantry unit and support, or an extra heavy warjack. Things are escalated, but not to a great degree. Early 'casterkill still doesn't feel too much like a nutpunch.

It's much easier at 25 to create a balanced list, with both ranged and melee forces, jacks and infantry, and a couple solos that support the force.

35 points: this is one of the standard tournament list sizes. At this level there are a lot of models on the board. If a cheap infantry unit like Sword Knights costs 6 points for 10 guys, fitting 25+ models onto the board can be easy.

It is at this level that deploying things correctly becomes a huge part of the game, IMO. Don't get me wrong, mistakes can be made at any level, but "deploy centrally" as a strategy works well up to 25. At 35 there simply isn't enough room. For warmachine armies that feature only one or two heavy jacks, the remainder of points will be spent on troops, meaning several units on the board. Hordes can run beast-heavy better, so some hordes lists will have 4 heavies in a list at 35.

Getting casterkilled early at 35 feels more like a nutpunch than at smaller levels. It takes 10 minutes to set up 30 odd models and get moving around. If the game is over before the armies clash because one player saw an opening and exploited it, that's good on them but disheartening for the assassinated.

I tend to build most of my lists at this level. It's fairly easy to cover most of the bases and plan out the first few turns still. Many times I use self-supporting modules to keep things moving nicely, since it's much harder for a caster to support a larger army with buffs than it is a smaller force. It's also at this point that warmachine and hordes can get seriously asymmetric. Hordes can have multiple heavies kicking around, buying attacks and wrecking havoc, dealing with the consequences next turn. Warmachine tends to get troop heavy because even though there are lots more opportunities for warjacks, the caster has the same amount of jack-powering focus that they did at 15 points. There are exceptions, of course, but in general this is true.

Nemo jack-heavy 35 PTA:

50 points: this is the standard game size for Hardcore events, where the whole army must be painted and turns are timed aggressively. Many tournaments also use this size for games. It's a big force. There are often upwards of 30 or 40 models on the board, and even lists with multiple heavies will have plenty of troop support.

Constance's infantry swarm.

Several of my friends prefer this game size to all others. It allows them to play huge modules and run piles of troops downfield, causing a ruckus. I tend to think that the board gets cluttered at this level, and since I'm still relatively new I sometimes make mistakes in deployment that ruin my game 45 minutes or more later.

Game length is another factor. With 35 models on the board even the first turn advance can take time, and losing to an easy assassination really sucks after setting up a huge array of warriors. There are also an incredible amount of things to take into account at this level. A misstep can have serious consequences, and with 3 units of differing speed and combat abilities, and several large jacks or beasts, there is a lot going on all at once.

Perhaps I'll enjoy larger games more as I get more experience. I'm of the opinion that 35 points is a real sweet spot for WarmaHordes games. It's not enough to cover everything, and the troops don't clutter up the board, but there is enough stuff to have a huge tactical game.

75 and 100 points: these games are off the chain. Sometimes they're played with multiple casters. In the team tourney it was 100 points with two casters. Talk about attack vectors. These games can drag on a bit as well. Privateer Press has recently released a new set of rules for extra large games that make them look more fun, but we'll see about that. Games at this level would take several hours to complete.

I quite like the fact that WarmaHordes scales around at several levels. I'm fond of 15-35 points myself, but 50 is still alright.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone y'allz

The Latest Poor Bodgers Event

2011-10-09T07:29:00.000-07:00

Last Monday there was another 15 point tournament. I decided to play that Constance Blaize again. I quite like the way she plays. I wanted to try a Stormclad with her instead of Gallant, for more heavy-hitting crunch. This meant Stormblades instead of other infantry. I think the list is better against heavies, decent against other infantry (high-defense troops might be an issue), but will suffer against ranged lists.

I played:

Still with the facestabbing.

Constance
Stormclad
Stormblades with Unit Attachment Officer and Standard and a Storm Gunner Weapon Attachment
Harlan Versh, Illuminated One (flanker for Constance)

Game 1 vs. Mortenebra Cryx

My opponent was playing a Morty tiered list, so his 3 heavies all cost a point less. His list was

Morty
Character Skarlock dude
3 Slayers
2 Warwitch Sirens

The warwitches are bananas. They ignore free strikes, they can freeze a model in place with their reach melee attack, and they have several good magical attacks. Oh, and they can give a 'jack a focus if they don't do any of the other stuff. Just ridiculously strong.

I saw their magic attacks and put Banishing Ward on my Stormblades. Harlan has Sacred Ward, so that meant my opponent could only target my warcaster and warjack with his magic attacks. This proved to be an issue for him.

The scenario was Overrun, which features a large scoring area in the middle of the board that's difficult to control.

He set up and went first after winning the roll. He put Spectral Steel on a Slayer to give it ghostly (walk through stuff, ignore free strikes), and everything advanced. I counteradvanced but left my stuff a little bit out of his charge range with Morty and her hookups.

He tried to cast some spells with the sirens, but that wasn't going to work. Instead he advanced his 3 heavies up toward my lines and hid everything else behind the building in the center of the table.

So his stuff is all up in my grill, but I haven't lost a model, so I struck hard. The Stormclad wrecked a Slayer easy. I Think my opponent knew that would happen; it was a sacrifice. However, he wasn't planning on Harlan Versh firing four essentially fully-boosted shots into the Slayer with Spectral Steel and rolling well to do nearly 20 boxes of damage to a second heavy. And he certainly wasn't planning on my Stormblades Assaulting and finishing off said second heavy, _and_ killing his third heavy as well. Stormblades hit really hard; their issue is not being able to get to the fight alive. Having a full unit of dudes to hit those heavies was huge. I moved my 'caster back behind the building and her troops and she popped her feat.

I moved the Storm Gunner into the control zone to contest, but that was the only model I put in.

Morty's force was decimated. My opponent used her feat and spell list to charge a Stormblade, kill it, and then Overrun over to my caster and attempt a long-shot assassination. It was his only chance. He had rerolled attacks with his feat, but he chose not to boost his first two, and he needed 9s to hit. That cost him a lot. He did 6 damage to Constance, but he then conceded the game, as he was out of options.

Game MVP: Stormblades _wreck_ shit.

Game 2 vs Ashlynn Highborn Mercenaries

My opponent played

Ashlynn
Mangler
Gun Mages
Blythe and Bull
First Mate Hawk
Reinholdt

I was worried about Ashlynn and her feat, which is awesome for my opponent and terrible for me. I think the scenario was Close Quarters, which has two control zones close to each other near the center of the table, but offset slightly. To score one must control the zone on the opponent's side of the table. I won the roll to set up and go first, and I wanted to go first.

I figured Ashlynn would feat turn 2, and I wanted to try and offset her feat with my own. I moved my stuff up and cast Transference, thinking that maybe with boosts I could still get hits on her feat turn. He cast Admonition on the Mangler and Quicken on Ashlynn (which I see a lot; not a fan of Quicken on her, as I think Admonition needs to be on the 'caster), and moved up aggressively.

I saw a chance to try and wrong-foot him by charging my Stormclad diagonally at the Gun Mages, which would put a big patch of rough terrain between our heavies. I activated Blaize first and cast Crusader's Call to lengthen everything's threat and popped her feat. The 'clad killed two gun mages with his charge attack. I then had the Stormblades Assault, and they hurt Blythe and Bull a little, but didn't hit a lot. They aren't terribly accurate with their lightning-sword blasts.

I moved Harlan up a bit to take four potshots at the Mangler with his Purgation quadiron, Malleus. He managed to roll well once, and did 8 or 9 damage with his four shots. Not bad.

Then my opponent surprised me. He dropped Admonition, gave the Mangler 3 focus, and then activated Blythe and Bull first to shoot at the Stormclad (their prey). They did 10-ish damage to it, wrecking the cortex. Then he activated the gun mages and did a CRA into a Stormblade, killing it. Then the Mangler charged in and threshered two Stormblades (3 tasty souls). What I was confused about was why my foe didn't use Ashlynn first and pop her feat? She makes her whole force super accurate, gets more crits with the gun mages. . .it's all good. Anyway, she got an extra shot from Reinholdt and Ashlynn moved up toward my warcaster. He planned on shooting Harlan, but forgot that the cheeky bugger has stealth. So auto-miss. Instead he took two shots at Constance, and did a few damage. Then Hawk charged the Stormclad and did some wounds.

So my turn starts and Ashlynn doesn't have Admonition on her to save her from my charge, hasn't popped her ridiculous feat which would protect her from my charges, and is 8 inches away from Harlan and Constance. I had Harlan charge in to give Constance her Morrowan flank bonus to melee attacks, and he managed to hit (needed a 12 on 3 dice) and do a crapload of damage. Constance charged in and finished Ashlynn off easily (with 8 focus to spare).

Game MVP: Harlan Versh. Dude brought the pain.

Game 3 (finals) vs. Harbinger Menoth

Sadly, my opponent was playing an illegal list in the finals and I noticed right away. We asked the judge about it and he was disqualified. We still played the game, and I played sloppy as hell because I already technically won, but I learned alot from my mistakes. I decided to split the first-place prize with my opponent because he won, despite the fact that I get the win on paper. He played a good game.

Warcaster Focus: The Knight of Facestabbing

2011-10-02T21:07:00.000-07:00

The latest Cygnar ally warcaster is Constance Blaize, the Knight of the Prophet. She's different from most Cygnar warcasters in a number of ways, but the most significant difference is her ally status. This allows her to be played as a mercenary or a Cygnar 'caster, and while her choice of forces is significantly limited as a mercenary 'caster, her faction-specific feat and spells make it a viable, and perhaps even a better option.

I stab faces for my righteous deity.

Stats: Blaize has generally unremarkable stats. She's average speed, decent melee attack, meh ranged attack, alright defense and armor for a warcaster (though for the ginormous shield the model has, you'd think it would be even better, armor-wise), and a good command. She's got 6 focus. Not great but not terrible.

She does have the flank ability, which improves her ability to stab fools if there is another friendly Morrowan model within melee range of her target. She also inspires Morrowan friendlies nearby to be fearless. That's about it. Nothing to write home about.

Spells: Blaize's spell list is totally different from other Cygnar 'casters'. She supports melee troops well, with Crusader's Call, a 3-cost spell that gives all friendly models +2 inches on charge attacks. That's awesome, but expensive. She also has Transference, an upkeepable spell that allows her faction warrior pals (this is why whether she's counted as merc or Cygnar is significant) to spend her focus to boost attack or damage rolls. So all of her troops are potentially dangerous, even to enemy warcasters, who normally have such high defense and armor they can ignore average mooks.

Her other spells include Banishing Ward, an upkeep that keeps a unit safe from spell attacks (and removes any on the unit when cast, incidentally), Flashing Blade, which allows her to stab every enemy in melee range for the dirt-cheap price of one focus, and Sunburst, which is her attack spell. Sunburst is a 3" AOE spell, but it's cool in that the blast damage doesn't harm friendly models, so it's intended to help clear her troops out of melee. However, with the -4 penalty for casting spells into melee and her mediocre focus, she's gonna have to boost to try and stick it, and even then she'll need to roll better than average to hit the average defense of 13 while engaged. Meh. This spell does not generally impress me. I'm actually always disappointed when a 'caster's only attack spell costs 3 focus. That's expensive, and even moreso on 6 focus 'casters. It also removes models when boxed, circumventing some of the after-death shenanigans that can happen in-game, but these situations are cornercase.

Weapons: Constance has a single weapon, the Sun Spear. It's not a great name for a weapon. However, it's good at stabbing things. In fact, Constance ends a lot of my games with the Sun Spear. The Spear is Blessed, so it ignores defensive buffs from enemy spells, and with Constance's flank ability and Flashing Blade, I've actually wrecked enemy heavies with it before. That's substantial. It is, of course, a magical weapon, and it also has reach, so she, herself, under Crusader's Call, can charge 11" and engage 2" more with reach. That's pretty good.

Feat: Constance is very much a feat-intensive 'caster, and hers is a little wonky. For each faction warrior model that dies during her feat round in her control range(her turn and the enemy's next), she gains a soul token. For each token on her, all faction warrior models in her control range gain +1 armor. During her next turn, Constance gains extra focus equal to the number of soul tokens on her.

So she wants lots of troops. Warrior models are expensive in Cygnar, so playing her in mercs is a better option at low-points levels, and even at higher levels mercs choices can be better than Cygnar. Which is odd, because she can only take merc units and models that would work for Cygnar anyway, but with the feat and Transference working only for faction models, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

I've gotten up to a 13-focus turn once with her feat. That's 7 souls. I've only played her in small points games with a few exceptions, but at 15 points, losing 7 models is crushing. She's a better large-game 'caster because of this. Playing her at 15 points is just painful, and her feat does absolutely nothing in a Mangled Metal ('jacks only) game.

That being said, while her feat isn't totally awesome (and a plethora of game mechanics ruin it, such as remove-from-play effects, or closer soul-taking models, who get the delicious souls before Constance can) she generally gets two turns of hyper armor from the feat and camping focus. I play her midfield because of the feat. My opponent will have to kill a bunch of dudes to get at her, and then she's sitting at 20+ armor (much more if you can squeeze a Journeyman Warcaster into your list; he's a must at 35 in my opinion) due to feat, and then has 10+ focus to work with the next turn. That enables her to retaliate and still camp 5+ focus, making her tough to deal with. So at least she can be survivable.

I generally wait until my troops are up in my opponent's grill before I pop the feat. Savvy opponents will ignore the army entirely if they can on feat turn, and deny Constance her one trick. So make sure to Crusader's Call and charge a bunch of long-threat fodder into the enemy force on the feat turn. I like Nyss Hunters in both mercs and Cygnar, though in Cygnar they require the Jonas Murdoch unit attachment to make them faction. Keep him safe. Other long-threat units are Precursor Knights, Stormguard, and Sword Knights.

Overall: Constance is a lot of fun to play, but she plays in a different style than most Cygnar 'casters. I love the Nyss Hunters with her, if only because they have a ranged attack and a nice melee assault (literally they have the Assault order with Murdoch) as well. I've found that if she only takes melee troops they can get chopped up easily.

I tend to play Constance in the midfield, camping a bit of focus and/or souls, and using Sugar Ray's Arcane Shield to shore up her defenses. And when my opponent is within 12" of her (something I can check with my control range), I try to get Constance and another Morrowan over there to seal the deal. It works well, since I've won several games with her, and she tends to be the one ending them.

Melee Power: B, she's not able to take down heavies easily like the Butcher or eStryker, but with a flanker and a few focus she makes a good go of it. That's pretty awesome. As this is her strength, she needs to be played more forward, which can be dangerous. Bring lots of troops and watch out for Soul Takers.

Ranged Power: F, She has no gun (which is weird in Cygnar) at all. Nothing to see here.

Magic Power: D, Sunburst is underwhelming. I have managed to use it to clear a charge lane so she could skate across a board and stab someone, but it's not even terribly efficient for that (cost 3 focus plus 1 to boost the attack).

Melee Support: B again, maybe B+. Transference and the feat help offense and defense, respectively. However, the feat only does this by letting some troops die. Constance very much needs a 6-point, 10-man unit of mooks to shove out into the enemy and die. It sucks to spend 6 points on troops whose role is simply to feed her feat. Still, with Crusader's Call helping get the threat out, she's good.

Ranged Support: D. Largely none. It should be noted that any models with assault can increase the threat of their ranged attacks by charging an additional two inches. So Stormblades, normally charging 8 inches and can Assault to shoot during the charge another 6", gain another 2" with CC. So there's some support there. . .but it's not optimal use of either CC or Assault. The Nyss threat is outlandish with Assault, as they have Hunter to ignore forests and can move 12" under CC, and they have 12" range bows. The shot is only power 10, so I guess that mitigates the 24" threat they have . . .

Magic Support: B-. Blaize herself doesn't Synergize with magic-users, but Banishing Ward is huge against magic-loving foes, and can rip enemy debuff spells off of crippled units. Also, several of her best Morrowan pals have spell ward or sacred ward inherently, and so some of her preferred troops are already protected.

Tricksiness: B-. Blaize, for the most part, does what she says on the tin. However, opponents who don't give her Blessed flanking spear enough respect will probably end up dead. Also, while she doesn't buff ranged troops at all she has answers to spell- and magic-heavy lists with Banishing Ward, Harlan, and Precusor Knights.

Overall Rating: 2.5 She's not awesome, but she isn't terrible either.

List Elements: Constance wants some hard-hitting melee troops to benefit from Transference. Reach is a plus. I don't own Horgehold Forgeguard (Or "Hyurgendurg Fyurgnerg" since all things about warmachine dwarves sound like the Swedish chef is speaking, imo), but as a mercenary they rock it out for her. For Cygnar Stormguard are the only reach troops, and while they are good they are a bit expensive. I like Precursor Knights with her, since they require little support to be delivered, and with their UA they get a one-turn wrecking ball feat. I also like Stormblades with her, since they hit like trains, but Stormblades die like gnats to gunlines, so be advised.

Constance also likes Morrowans around to enable flank, so take either her warjack Gallant, Harlan Versh, the merc solo, or her Precusor Knights. Any of the three will do, though Harlan is the least survivable, and he only benefits from her goodness if she's mercenary instead of Cygnar.

I like a ranged element with Constance, despite the fact that her feat and spells say "melee troop jam lolz!". The Stormblades bring a devastating if inaccurate ranged attack and the Black 13th are always good for Cygnar. However, my favorite troops with her thus far are Cylena Ryfell and the Nyss Hunters. They work for mercs or for Cygnar, but can only benefit from Constance's feat and Transference if she's a merc or if they also have the Cygnar mercenary attachment to make the faction. That's Murdoch. If you take Murdoch you have to protect the hell out of him or the Nyss suddenly are mercs again and not benefiting from Blaize's faction-only buffs. Nyss are great because with Banishing Ward they are tough to get rid of, and they also have a nice bow for a combined arms approach. And pathfinder. And hunter. And 7 speed. Nyss are awesome.

She also likes a heavy for countering enemy heavies. The PKs and SBs can pull some of this duty, but having a nice heavy to pound shit into the dirt is welcome. I may purchase Rorsche and Brine to run them with her in mercenaries, but that's down the road.

Most times I want a target for Banishing Ward. The Nyss Hunters and Stormblades are my favs, but it depends on what the other warcaster's spells are and what support they have available to them.

Lists I've either played or seen played that I like:

At 15 points,

Constance Cygnar, with Gallant (9), Min PKS and UA (7), Black 13th (4), Stormcaller (1)

Constance Cygnar, with Stormclad (10), Stormblades with UA and 1 WA (9), and Harlan Versh (2)

Constance Highborn, with Gallant(9), Nyss Hunters(10), and Harlan Versh (or Gorman di Wulfe) (2)

At 25 points,

Constance Cygnar, with Gallant (9), Min PKs and UA (7), Nyss Hunters w Murdoch (12), Journeyman Warcaster (3)

Constance Highborn, with Gallant (9), Nyss Hunters (10), Harlan Versh (2), Max PKs + UA (10) [or Aiyanna and Holt (4) + Ogrun Bokur (3) + Epic Eiryss (3)]

At 35:

Constance Cygnar, with Gallant (9), Max PKs + UA (10), Archduke Runewood (3), max Stormguard (9), Black 13th (4), Journeyman Warcaster (3) , Squire (2), Stormcaller (1)

Constance Highborn, with Gallant (9), Max PKs + UA (10), Piper (2), Nyss Hunters (10), Aiyana and Holt (4), Epic Eiryss (3), Harlan or Gorman (2), Reinholdt (1)

At 50 I'd add in some combination of melee infantry and 'jacks, like max Sword Knights marshalling a Centurion or a min of Stormblades with a Stormclad nearby. For mercs at 50 I'd probably try to shoehorn in a bunch of steelheads. Max halbardiers and min Cav could go a long way.

I've been told by the wise PP forums that Constance needs a kajillion cheap reach infantry for her feat, but I think she actually needs good infantry (which tends to be more expensive), with some cheap infantry in front for the feat turn, or just be prepared to lose a bunch of guys. When it's my Stormblades or PKS the 3 or 4 that live counterstrike like wrecking balls. So it's all good. Steelhead halbardiers don't look terribly accurate to me, and I don't actually like spending all her focus so that her infantry can counterattack after feat turn and just level the playing field. I prefer to charge her into the enemy with some flanking going on and take out a 'caster or at least a heavy.

I haven't gotten the chance to play her with with kitted out Trenchers or Trencher Commandoes. Hell, even Rangers look interesting with her, as they make Stormblades into a serious ranged threat with Crusader's Call and Assault. I'm of the opinion that she actually helps a lot of Cygnar out, but she does it in such a way that she's difficult to use.

-Merlin out

Commander Geriatrix v. Grim

2011-09-19T19:06:00.001-07:00

The scenario is Grind, which is an awesome little basketball-esque scenario where players try to move the objective (the "grind-ball"), into a scoring zone on the opponent's side of the table. Doing enough damage to the ball throws it 4-6 inches in the direction of a player's choice. It can also be thrown by warjacks and warbeasts with open fists.

In actual play, the players can largely ignore the scenario and concentrate on mugging the opponent's force and/or 'caster. Great scenario idea, that in practice makes for boring or perhaps "standard" games.

Army Name: Nemo
Cygnar
35+6 points, 16 models

Commander Adept Nemo +6 points
* Cyclone 9 points
* Lancer 6 points
* Stormclad 10 points
* Squire 2 points

Journeyman Warcaster 3 points

Captain Arlan Strangewayes 2 points
Stormblades 5 points
* Stormblade Officer & Standard 3 points
Stormsmith Stormcaller 1 point

Nemo won the roll and decided to go first. He took the side of the table with the water to deny Grim's Earthborn dire troll animus shenanigans. He deployed centrally, with the Stormblades and Stormclad on the left flank and Cyclone and Stormsmith more on the right.

Army Name: Grim Angus
Trollbloods
35+6 points, 21 models

Grim Angus +6 points
* Earthborn Dire Troll 10 points
* Troll Axer 6 points
* Troll Impaler 5 points

Dannon Blythe & Bull 4 points
Fell Caller Hero 3 points
Janissa Stonetide 3 points
10 Pyg Burrowers 6 points
Trollkin Runeshapers 4 points

Grim counterdeployed with his beasts and Janissa on the flank opposite the Stormteam, and the Runeshapers and Blythe and Bull across from the Cyclone. The Burrowers ADed in the center of the formation.

Nemo ran most of his stuff and put Disruption Field on the Stormclad. I felt like this was a Jack Bullet battle: the SC with Nemo has over a 12" threat and Grim's Earthborn Dire Troll is even more impressive if it starts its turn near rough terrain, has the Axer animus, and Grim has shot the target already.

Grim had the Pygs tunnel, and then moved everything up cautiously. Grim himself did 9 damage to the Lancer on a good damage roll. The Runeshapers' deviations went nowhere. Janissa put up a rock wall and the EDT gave Grim Transmute.

Nemo moved up his force and considered charging the SC in. He was close to 13" away from Grim, but because of the rock wall granting Grim an 18 DEF from melee and 20 from ranged and magic, Nemo decided to spend his focus throwing lightning around.

The Lancer and Stormblades advanced, with two blades hitting the objective and moving it 5" toward the EDT. The SC might have been able to score a point but instead took a shot that missed.

Nemo advanced and fired chain lightning at Bull, who was hit. The arc hit the EDT, Janissa, Grim, and the Fell Caller. With another CL they might have died, but none of those models took enough damage to go down.

The Cyclone got a focus from Arlan and moved up, rolling average metal storm attacks and killing two Runeshapers. The Stormsmith failed his stormcall.

JR recast Arcane Shield on the old man and Nemo ended his turn at def 14 arm 19 with a couple focus on him.

Grim had a decent chance at getting the EDT over to Nemo and ending the game, but a lot had to happen. The burrowers popped up and spread out to charge at the 'blades and SC, with a few going for back arc attacks on the Lancer. I left a gap for Grim to see through to shoot at Nemo.

Grim activated and cast the Impaler animus to improve his own range, then he cast the Axer animus on the EDT to give it +2" of move. Then he moved up and feated, catching everything on his side with the net, including Nemo. Then he shot Nemo and hit, boosting damage and doing 4 points. This also gave an extra 2" to any beasts who wanted to charge Nemo.

I activated the Fell Caller and he gave the Burrowers even more accuracy and tried to hurt the Lancer, whiffing his charge attack but doing fair damage with the second sword. The burrowers failed to hurt the Stormblades and Stormclad much, but managed to wreck the Lancer (no shield bonus from behind).

Then I had to kill some Burrowers to clear the lane for the EDT. Blythe and Bull killed the one really in the way, but he made his Tough check. While knocked down the Runeshaper remaining rock hammered him and he died. The Impaler killed another Pyg that might have been a concern and the EDT went for it, using Pathfinder and his +6" move (started near a forest for rough terrain bonus) to charge 14" and end in Nemo's grill. Using the pow of Nemo's weapon his fists went up to P+S 19, straight dice on the old man. With Grim's feat up he needed 5s to hit. Only took two shots to end Nemo.

It was a stretch, but it paid off.

Game MVP: EDT, the thing is super flexible and lots of fun to play.

Lessons learned: keep Nemo way way back. The EDT could have scrapped the SC instead, but the Stormblade countercharge would have probably ended the troll, and the Cyclone is actually dangerous if the heavies are off the table.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone y'allz

Poor Bodgers Tourney

2011-09-17T17:16:00.001-07:00

I got up the the Gamer's Sanctuary in Flint for a 15 point mini tournament on Monday. I fully expected to do poorly, as I wanted play Constance Blaize and she's not highly regarded in online forums.

I brought two lists, one for Blaize as Cygnar and one for her as a mercenary. She's unique as an "ally" warcaster, so she can either be run as a faction Cygnar queenpin, or in a mercenary contract that accepts mercs who will work for Cygnar (currently, the only such contract is the Highborn Covenant, which can -only- include mercs who will work for Cygnar). I asked Ray whether I should go merc or Cyg and he suggested merc.

So that's what I did.

Blaize 6 'jack points
Gallant 9 Pts
Cylena and her Nyss Hunters 10 Pts
Harlan Versh, the Illuminated One 2 Pts

Everything in the list is a mercenary (either straight up or because of the "ally" rule), so Blaize's "friendly faction" buffs and feat affect the whole force.

The idea is to give the Nyss banishing ward to protect them from spells on the approach, then have them alpha strike with Crusader's Call from 12" away with the feat up. I'll lose a bunch of Nyss to the counterstroke but with the feat up it should make Blaize tough as nails the next turn. Harlan shoots buffed units like a cannon, and Gallant is a good basic beater.

Game 1 was against Cygnar Constance Blaize. Hilarious.

My opponent won the roll and asked me to go first. He had

Blaize
Gallant
6 Precusor Knights with Battle Chaplain and Standard
Black 13th Gun Mage strike team
Stormsmith Stormcaller

I had seen him prepping for the tournament, and he had a different list during prep. Instead of the B13 and Stormcaller he had Reinholdt the Gobber Speculator and 6 Sword Knights.

I thought that wasn't bad, but I offered to loan him a Stormcaller because they are better for Constance than Reinholdt for 1-point filler.

He may have also overheard me lamenting the loss of the B13 in my own list by playing Highborn instead of Cygnar. Either way, I thought the list he actually played looked strong.

I set up the Nyss to take the hill on my side of the board with a first turn run. Gallant, Blaize, and Harlan went up the center-left near a building. Blaize put Banishing Ward on the Nyss to stop Sunburst attacks and Transference on herself.

He moved his PKs up in shield wall, and his Blaize and Gallant mirrored mine, though he played more conservatively back. The B13 got Banishing Ward (drat!) and he also cast Transference. B13 hid behind the PKs and the Stormsmith (who terrified me) hid behind a wall.

I decided to play the next round conservatively, and almost lost the game because of it. I moved the Nyss up a bit and had them do combined ranged attacks, which were moderately successful, killing two PKs. Gallant and Constance hung back, and Harlan moved behind my troops.

I did NOT use my feat. I thought my Nyss with Banishing Ward could survive mostly intact for the next round. I thought I might lose 3, maybe four.

My opponent popped his feat, and cast Crusader's Call for the bonus to charges. I had deliberately kept my Gallant 12.5 inches away from his in an attempt to goad him into failing a charge (Gallant under Crusdar's Call can charge 10" and has 2" Reach on his magic beatstick). I had measured the range for a bowshot from one of my Nyss (12" range), so I was certain if he went for the bait I'd come out ahead.

He didn't take the bait. Instead, after getting her Call in Blaize stayed back. Then his Gallant charged a Nyss, and using Purgation for an extra die on attacks he killed two. Then the PKs charged in and killed two more with boosts from Transference.

This is all according to plan; I was expecting as much. I wasn't expecting the Black 13th to kill 4 more Nyss, including Cylena. I had feared them, and rightly so. I knew he was going to use his Stormsmith to disrupt Gallant and end his turn. . . But he didn't. The SS dropped a lightning strike on Blaize instead, doing no damage.

I was back in, because I knew if I could kill the PK officer and Gallant my next turn then I still had a beatstick and my foe would have trouble with Gallant.

I gave Gallant two focus and dropped all upkeeps. I moved Harlan up and took a shot at a PK, but missed. Gallant charged Gallant and hit him a bit. With the buckler attack Gallant squished the PK Battle chaplain (mission one accomplished). Then Gallant beat on Gallant with his sword twice more, missing once and hitting for a bunch with the second.

The Nyss killed a PK between them.

Constance activated last, and utilizing flank with her Gallant managed to wreck (barely) the other Gallant. She popped her feat with no focus, standing at midfield near a wreck marker.

My opponent moved the B13 first and shot at Blaize, doing about 5 damage with a good brutal damage shot and 4 from Ryan's Mage storm (which targeted Gallant because Blaize had cover even after Ryan had moved). The PKs got the run order (not charge, for some reason) so that one could rush to my backfield and engage Harlan.

Constance moved up and hit Constance (his hit mine) with a boosted Sunfire, doing a few more damage. I should have had gallant eat the shot from Watts earlier. Meh. I was down to 5 wounds and desperate.

The Stormsmith moved up. . .and did two more damage to my Blaize with a stormcall. Again, disrupting my gallant would have been better.

I looked at the table and decided I had a shot at a hail Mary assassination run. Gallant gained his free focus and ran to his Constance, just to engage her and enable my flank bonuses.

Then my Blaize activated. With 7 focus (feat was largely lame) I cast sunburst at Ryan, who was blocking my path to the other Blaize. I hit on the boost, and the damage killed her. Then Blaize charged through the gap and stabbed her counterpart, boosting the hit roll. I hit and did 8 damage. I spent another focus to flashing blade, and killed Watts and other Blaize with a good roll (she was sitting on 2 focus so dice -5 on three dice for damage). That was game.

My opponent said he should have won, and that he made a few mistakes. He was about to tell me about it when I told him I was terrified of his Stormsmith all game, and was surprised when he didn't disrupt Gallant.

He was not happy about that.

Game MVP: Blaize. Flank will bring some pain. Wrecked an ARM 19 heavy with flank.

Game 2 vs. Rhyas of the Legion of Everblight

The scenario is Killbox, which means kill the other casterlock before they kill you, and if your casterlock leaves the center of the board after two turn, you automatically lose.

My opponent lost the roll and I choose to go first after examining his army stats. He was running:
Rhyas
4 Shredder light warbeasts
1 Stinger light warbeast
Full 10-dude unit of Blighted Nyss Swordsmen with the Unit Attachment (2 more dudes for 12 total).

I looked at it, and saw no offensive spells. So no need for Banishing Ward. It was a fast list, but didn't have many ranged attacks. Only the Stinger had a short-ranged spray attack. When I went first I ran my whole force. My Nyss were as fast as his. Blaize, Gallant, and Harlan went to meet the Swordsmen head-on while my Nyss went for a flanking strike.

He counter-ran with his force, pushing two Shredders halfway down the field, and keeping his other beasts and Rhyas behind the Swordsmen's advance. He put Occultation on the Swordsmen, which gives a unit stealth (ranged attacks from more than 5" away automiss).

I walked Harlan to within 2" of the lead swordsman and blew him away with Mallus, Harlan's magical quadiron gun. Mallus works like this: Harlan is only RAT 6, so he's not terribly accurate, but the quadiron allows an extra attack up to four (it's a four-barreled magic revolver) as long as Harlan keeps hitting. RAT 6 isn't so good against the Swordsmen's 14 defense. On average rolls Harlan will miss. But Harlan is a witch hunter. His weapons are Blessed, so they ignore defensive buffs from spells, and they have Purgation, so he rolls an extra attack and damage die if his target has an upkeep spell on them (like Occultation). Harlan killed 3 Swordsmen.

I activated Blaize and moved her left a bit, popped her feat and cast Crusader's Call. Gallant did a similar conservative shimmy. My Nyss Hunters charged into the fray, killing two more Swordsmen and annihilating the two shredders that had run forward.

My opponent didn't seem concerned. He activated the Stinger first and killed two of my Nyss with its fire-spray attack(+2 souls). The blighted Swordsmen activated and did some attacking shenanigans to get extra attacks, but the whole unit only managed to kill Harlan and 2 more of my Nyss (+3 souls).

What really floored me is this: my opponent then activated his warlock, Rhyas, and charged her ninja ass up into a Nyss Hunter something like 11 inches with her movement buff spell, using acrobatics to hop over a few other targets on the way.

And she missed her attack. She needed a 7 to hit, and didn't get it. I thought for sure my foe would spend one of her remaining two Fury to buy another attack and murder the spiteful elf in front of her, as Rhyas also has Sprint. Sprint allows her to move a full advance away if she's killed a model after her activation.

But he didn't. Instead he ended his turn by running his remaining shredders into the backfield.

So I started my turn with +5 focus on Blaize, less than 8" from my opponent's warlock. To top it off, Gallant was also less than 10" from Rhyas. So my goal was to go for the throat and finish the game quickly.

There was a Nyss hunter in my way. I had to figure out how to either move or kill it to clear my attack lane. I allocated 2 focus to Gallant, and activated him first. He gained another focus from his Morrowan Accumulator ability (to his max of 3) and slammed the intervening Nyss, boosting the to-hit because he still needed an 8 (that Nyss defense!). I hit, however, slamming the poor elf into Rhyas and doing a strength-based (power 11) collateral damage roll to both of them. The Nyss didn't make it. Rhyas took a damage or two.

So now Rhyas was knocked down, reducing her defense from 17 (with the Tenacity animus from the shredders) to melee attacks auto-hit. Gallant bought an extra sword attack and stabbed the hell out of her. she transfered the damage, blowing up a shredder instead.

The remaining Nyss Hunters activated, most of them missing the Swordsmen they were engaged with, but Cylena and one pal were free and able to charge the downed Rhyas. They did a lot of damage, but one hit was transfered to the last shredder, killing it.

Blaize didn't have a clear charge lane to Rhyas and needed the extra movement from the charge to engage her to buy extra attacks. But Blaize could see Cylena just fine, and poor Cylena was standing next to Rhyas. Blaize charged and killed Cylena, and then she was standing over the prone enemy warlock with Gallant in range for a flank bonus and nine focus left for stabs.

Game over for Rhyas.

Game MVP: Blaize again, getting it done herself.

I'm seeing a pattern here.

Game 3 vs. Prime Deneghra of Cryx

The scenario is Process of Elimination, which has two large squares in the center of the table, which extend well into both players' sides of the table.

Deneghra's list was spell-assassination heavy:

Deneghra
4 Deathripper bonejacks
Skarlock Thrall
Captain Rengrave

It's a tough list to play against, but I had a hard counter in the form of Blaize's spell Banishing Ward, which makes it impossible to target a model/unit with spells. Deneghra's list is 4 arc nodes (the deathrippers) to fire spells through, a Skarlock 'caster attachment who casts a spell for free each turn, and Rengrave, who is a decent solo.

I decided to park the Nyss in the woods turn one with Banishing Ward, and use Harlan to flank and Gallant to protect Blaize. I won the roll but made my opponent go first. The table was littered with terrain, with woods on either side and a river that ran all over the board.

Denny ran her whole force through the rivers and woods first turn. I did the same from my side but cast Transference and Banishing Ward on the Nyss.

Denny spent the next turn positioning arc nodes weirdly to aim Venom sprays near the Nyss without actually targeting the Nyss, to get around Banishing Ward. He wound up hurting and corroding a deathripper and killing one Nyss. The node he ran over to shoot at Blaize with was an inch out of Denny's control range, so he couldn't spray my caster. Rengrave took an ineffective shot.

I upkept Transference and gave Gallant some focus. Gallant tore the node off the deathripper that had run by Blaize. Blaize cast Crusader's Call and parked in the back of the forest to evade spell assassination. She also popped her feat. The Nyss charged the arc nodes in the midfield and mostly missed. They used two of Blaize's focus to boost attacks and mugged two of the deathrippers, ruining their cortexes but leaving the arc nodes intact.

Denny used her feat to counteract my own (hers, and fired a Scourge at my now-weaker Nyss. Somehow she managed to miss and the deviation flew away to little effect. Her deathrippers, engaged and/or cortex-crippled, swung at the Nyss ineffectively. Rengrave killed a Nyss.

My troops were now also -2 to their melee attack, so they were gonna have trouble hitting the arc nodes without Transference and I had had to drop that spell.

The thing was, the deathrippers and Nyss Hunters were squared off in a struggle, and they're both defense 15 and Melee attack 6, needing 9s on two dice to hit. We fought for the center for several turns. Gallant scrapped an arc node. I decided that the only safe play was to put Banishing Ward on Blaize, and it sat on her the rest of the game.

Eventually, I cleared a lane for Gallant to charge near Denny with Crusader's Call up for +2 inches on the charge. Denny took some beats and tried to retreat. Gallant charged again the next turn, and that was game.

Took a long time, but I pulled it out.

Game MVP: Gallant, who was pretty badass.

Harlan didn't do much in most of the third game, though he did manage some hurt on the back arc of an arc node with three shots hitting in a single turn.

I was 3-0 but the other 3-0 player won the event with a stronger play record. I came in third, actually, though I'm not sure how the 2-1 guy came in second in front of me.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone y'allz

Caine v. Ashlynn

2011-09-12T06:11:00.001-07:00

The scenario is Capture the Flag, which is essentially "assassinate!"

I used an iPhone app to randomly determine which 'casters would be playing this scenario. From Cygnar it landed on Caine, and from the mercenary 'casters I own it dropped on Ashlynn.

Ashlynn is pretty amazing, but ranged armies can give her fits. I had to proxy a lot because of duplications this match.

Army Name: That Caine has Character
Cygnar
35+6 points, 19 models

Lieutenant Allister Caine +6 points
* Ol' Rowdy 9 points
* Squire 2 points (Caine loves the focus from the Squire, and Rowdy is a great, focus-efficient 'jack)

Journeyman Warcaster 3 points (Arcane Shield on Caine is a must)

Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team 4 points (rarely disappoint)
Captain Arlan Strangewayes 2 points (meh)
Dannon Blythe & Bull 4 points
* Captain Jonas Murdoch 2 points (I've been thinking of running this combo a lot. Murdoch gives the bounty hunters once-per game dig in, and access to the assault order [doubling their attacks, essentially]. Blythe gives Murdoch prey with the rest of the unit for a hit and damage buff against their chosen target. Caine can further boost their accuracy and threat with Deadeye and Snipe)
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution 3 points
Gorman Di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist 2 points
Harlan Versh, Illuminated One 2 points
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt 4 points
Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator 1 point
Stormsmith Stormcaller 1 point
Viktor Pendrake 2 points

The basic idea behind this list is that Caine is a badass infantry killer on his own. So he doesn't need a lot of basic infantry. Instead I opt for many cool units, most of which are multi-wound models, which increases their survivability. I should probably drop Arlan for something else: a Gun Mage Captain maybe? There are a lot of options at two points. Maybe also drop the Stormsmith and add Runewood for pathfinder and charge bonuses?

Army Name: Ashlyn's Paperthin Armor Brigade
Highborn Covenant
35+6 points, 25 models

Ashlynn D'Elyse +6 points
* Nomad 6 points
* Sylys Wyshnalyrr, The Seeker 2 points

I wanted to try Sylas. He's awesome.

Arcane Tempest Gun Mages 6 points
* Gun Mage Officer 2 points
** Mule 8 points
Gorman Di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist 2 points
Harlan Versh, Illuminated One 2 points
10 Nyss Hunters 10 points
Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator 1 point
Taryn di la Rovissi 2 points

This is an interesting list, but area-of effect attacks will pick it apart fast. Most of the models here are high-defense, low armor. Luckily Caine's list had little access to aoes.

Caine won the roll and took the side of the board with the hill. He deployed with most of his stuff looking to get on the hill, though he and Rowdy (and their entourages: goblin, r2d2, Arlan) went more left of center.

Ashlynn put the Mule and ATGMs on her left flank across from the hill. The Nyss deployed to take the right flank forest, with Ashlynn, her Nomad and entourage up the middle.

Dannon and Bull opted for the Mule as prey. I was hoping to stack Aiyana's harm effect (kiss of Lyliss; +2 damage on all subsequent attacks) with the prey bonus for a net +4 and dice -2 against the Mule's armor.

The AD solos went near the middle. Caine moved up with Blur on the B13 and Snipe on B&b&m. Ashlynn moved up as well with admonition on herself and Quicken on the Nyss.

Caine's second turn was money. Eiryss tried to shoot Quicken off the Nyss, but missed. Harlan activated and managed to kill 3 Nyss with his purgation-havin' quadiron. The B13 moved up and Lynch's Fire Beacon missed but deviated nicely, ao that Watts and Ryan could kill 3 more Nyss and Gorman Di Wolfe. Rowdy moved up cautiously. Caine himself feated but didn't kill much other than Ashlynn's Harlan and Taryn the Gunjugs, and three ATGMs. He teleported back to safety. Aiyana and Holt moved up but most everything was out of range by now. B&B&M did several damage to the Mule and Bull pushed it back 3 inches, moving up himself.

Ashlynn responded with her feat, which made her troops' already-awesome defense even better. She also used Sylas to cast Gallows and move Rowdy up, which put him in charge LOS for the loaded Nomad. The Nomad mauled Rowdy and the remaining two Nyss nearby finished him. The last Nyss engaged Eiryss but missed.

The gunmages killed Bull,'but he was Tough. The
Mule, shooting at Murdoch on a hill, needed an 11 to hit. He got it, but not with a crit. Murdoch and Aiyana and Holt died from the shot, but Murdoch is Tough as well.

Ashlynn's force was decimated, but she'd taken out Caine's only heavy and had two of her own. He feat also made counter-attacking rough.

However, Caine himself was out of the feat, but within range to Thunderstrike the Nomad, and with enough movement he could slam it back into Ashlynn, knocking her down. After taking some basic attacks that is precisely what Caine did, and he managed to get enough slam distance to knock her down. The B13 then shot her to death.

Sad. Thunder Strike is very much a cointoss. If Caine had missed (not likely, but he needed to boost to hit the nomad near Rowdy's wreck and had to use the Squire reroll) he'd have had a tough fight ahead. Also, if he hadn't rolled the 3 on slam distance he wouldn't have gotten far enough to knock Ashlynn down. However, those are rolls and chances Caine has to take, and when he hits them it is game.

Game MVP: the Black 13th strike team. They rarely disappoint.

Lessons learned: don't let Ash get slammed. Even quickened Nyss in a forest will get picked off by Harlan Versh. Caine's feat is unreliable against high-defense models (maybe Rangers?). Rowdy gets scrapped too easy without AS. The B13 still rock. Blythe and Bull with Murdoch was hard to use, and they rolled poorly for damage. However, having some Tough guys around is nice.

WarmaHordes Team Tournament

2011-09-04T14:36:00.000-07:00

Ray called me on Tuesday and said that there was a WH Team tourney on Saturday. He also asked if I'd team up with him, as he had theorymachined a bunch of Cryx/Cygnar villainy. I managed to find some family support and got to play, and the villainy commenced.

We played:
Army Name: Shootethrax 2.0
Cryx
50+6 points, 46 models

Lich Lord Venethrax +6 points
* Malice 9 points
* Skarlock Thrall 2 points

5 Black Ogrun Boarding Party 6 points
10 Bloodgorgers 8 points
10 Croe's Cutthroats 10 points
General Gerlak Slaughterborn 3 points
Necrotech 1 point
Satyxis Raider Captain 2 points
10 Satyxis Raiders 8 points
* Satyxis Sea Witch 2 points
Withershadow Combine 5 points
1 Scrap Thrall

and

Army Name: Stupid Caine Tricks
Cygnar
50+6 points, 30 models

Lieutenant Allister Caine +6 points
* Ol' Rowdy 9 points
* Squire 2 points

Journeyman Warcaster 3 points

Arcane Tempest Gun Mages 6 points
* Gun Mage Officer 2 points
** 2x Hunter 6 points each
Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team 4 points
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution 3 points
10 Nyss Hunters 10 points
* Captain Jonas Murdoch 2 points
Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator 1 point
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord 2 points

The basic idea was that Caine's ranged buff spells Deadeye and Snipe make the units Ray was taking (Ogrun and Cutthroats) awesome, as generally speaking Cryx doesn't have access to ranged buffs and Cygnar doesn't have access to the dirty-tricks shooting of the more evil factions. It worked okay. Further, giving Snipe to Malice, so that he can harpoon a jack from like 18 inches away and drag them into your lines to get mauled, is gross.

In fact, the Black Ogrun also have drag, so the list was very "GET OVER HERE!" with Snipe and Deadeye to pull stuff in. We didn't get to do too much of that, but what there was was nasty.

Round 1 vs Constance Blaize (Cygnar) and Baldur (Circle)

Baldur was running a unit of bloodtrackers, a tricked out ravagers unit, two woldwardens and the Megalith, and the shifting stones with ua. Constance had a min Precursor Knights with ua, Gallant, a Charger, Jr with a Hunter, Squire, Strangeways, a min unit of Trenchers and a max unit of Sword Knights with UA. And a Stormsmith. Someone had Swamp Gobbers as well.

We won the roll, set up first, and deployed our mess of infantry all over the map. Caine gave Blur to the raiders and Snipe to Malice, and Rupert gave the raiders Tough. The raiders ran to engage the Trenchers (like an 18 inch run, ridiculous). pretty much evverything else ran. Venethrax cast Lamentation and upkept it all game. Soul Harvester is a hard counter to Blaize's feat.

Deployment photo!

The Circle moved up and Baldur feated, giving his entire army cover and making it difficult to fight them. We made some mistakes because of the feat. I had never played against it so I wasn't sure how it worked, and Ray misremembered it. Everything moved up, with the bloodtrackers (Prey= Satyxis) engaging some Nyss with a run. Nothing much happened otherwise; the Trenchers killed two or three Raiders with help from Transference, but it was expensive. Baldur had Solid Ground up and Constance had Transference up.

Ray and I realized we'd kept Caine too far back to feat this turn, so we just went our way. Caine dropped Blur but left Malice with Snipe, then the Satyxis Raiders murdered a bunch of Trenchers with Soul Harvester on them (Venethrax gets a pile of souls). Also got the Stormsmith. Venethrax feated, and the Nyss assaulted the bloodtrackers, killing a couple and making clouds. The sword knights on the far flank were engaged by a Nyss and a Raider.

The gunmages and Hunters managed to kill a Ravager and hurt another. Cutthroats engaged the other Ravagers in Baldur's control area and feat, and the trolls and ogres hung back a bit. Gerlak set up for a ridiculous turn. B13 did nothing.

The counterstrike was rough, with several Earth Spikes from Geomancy killing four gunmages and quite a few cutthroats. The ravagers killed more cutthroats in the woods (though they had some trouble due to Tough from the piper). The bloodtrackers killed a couple Nyss (poof! clouds!), and the Sword Knights killed the stuff engaging them. Constance managed to get a bunch of Raiders dead, but we were controlling the middle zone at this point, with only one Trencher and one Sword Knight contesting it.

Poof! Clouds!

Ray did something awesome and terrible, with Gerlak getting soul harvester and a reroll from the withershadow combine, and proceeding to kill the Trencher, the entire 12-man unit of Sword Knights, and a blood tracker with his berserker fury. Constance's feat was up as well, so all those tasty souls went to the Lich Lord instead of the Knight of the Prophet. It was amazing to watch. The Nyss killed all but 3 bloodtrackers and their ua. The remaining gunmages, B13, and Hunters killed another Ravager and put some damage on a woldwarden. The bloodgorgers charged up and wrecked the Hunter and engaged the other woldwarden. Malice and Rowdy didn't do a lot this game, but this turn they moved up to cover Venethrax's soul-gorged, ARM 30 advance.

Caine feated and killed 3 Percursors and put a bunch of shots into Megalith, doing 8 or so damage (without boosting, weirdly). Then he teleported behind the Ogrun. The last Raider ran away to deny the bloodtrackers a new prey target.

At this point we were winning the attrition war but our clock was running down. We were talking out a lot of strategy and we had a ton of models with a ton of attacks. We also had gained a control point.

The next counterstrike was pillowfisted. The woldwarden on the gunmage-flank charged up and failed to hurt them, then dropped earth spikes all over the place but didn't do much. Megalith did similar, also using his defense-debuffing animus. He killed two of the B13. The remaining Earth Spikes hit Malice, but didn't do much damage and he never got the crit knockdown.

The Ravagers finished Croe's but couldn't hit the gunmages. The bloodtrackers had trouble with the Nyss. The Precursors charged up, killing two trolls but getting countercharged by Rowdy in the process (splat). The gunmages moved up to contest the zone again and shot at the withershadow, killing one.

We had 20 minutes left. Venethrax used up like 12 of his 20 focus (SOULS!) killing Constance with Soulfire spells. That took some time. The Hunters killed the woldwarden on their flank. We tried to kill the lone precursor to survive the counterattack in the zone but he survived. only 1 control point. We hit the chess clock with 5 seconds left on it.

Now, here's the thing: we were playing death clock, which means that when the clock runs out you lose. We didn't realize that any work done up to that point was wasted. So Ray's caster-kill, and our control point advantage, and our huge army-attrition differences, meant nothing. The other team had like 30 minutes to mosey through their depleted-army turn, and when they hit the clock, we would lose.

Ray had trouble with the chess clock early, and it wasn't running during our first turn. He'd docked us like 20 minutes for it, but it was probably too much. Had we had 10 more minutes we may have been able to hail-mary Venethrax over to Baldur and win the game (or kill the 3 gunmages left in their control zone and win that way; they'd been ignoring the scenario).

So we lost.

Round 2: Vs Strahkov (Khador) and epic Goreshade (Cryx)

Strahkov had a Spriggan, Torch, Beast09, a min unit of Assault Kommandoes, a min unit of Kayazy Assassins with Underboss, the Great Bears, and a unit of Doom Reavers. Goreshade was a tier 4 theme list chock full of Banes: 2 full units of Bane Thralls with all the trimmin's, a full unit of Bane Knights with Tarterus to back them up, the withershadow, Skarlock, and a bunch of scrap thralls to feat into new Banes.

Strahkov had a bad game. We won the roll and went first again, deploying things better to move Caine forward turn one. We gave the Raiders tough and fearless and Blur, and they moved up a bit, we moved things up more conservatively against Goreshade's special ability "If a BaneNoun kills a living dude, it becomes a new BaneNoun!". We really just advanced up little more than a walk.

Again Venethrax upkept Lamentation all game, and again Malice got Snipe.

They moved up all their stuff conservatively as well, though the Doom Reavers charged up to the Raiders and killed one. Goreshade put Occultation on himself to gain stealth, and Strahkov could have done the same (he has the spell), but instead decided to put Superiority on Beast09 and run all his slow 'jacks up the middle.

Ray looked at me after their turn and said "let's kill Beast09 and Strahkov." I thought it would give us an early advantage, so I said hell to the yes. The Raiders killed most of the doom reavers. Malice activated with some focus for boosts and walked up, using Snipe for a better threat range on Beast09 to harpoon him and drag him into our lines. Then he pummeled him with his fist a bit, and possessed Beast09 to present his back arc to the rest of our forces. Rowdy hit Beast good and solid, and the withershadow combine finished him and used their dark industries to make him into a fresh heavy warjack for Ray to use, a Harrower.

The Khador player was not happy. It got worse. Caine moved up and cast Deadeye and Snipe on Croe's Cutthroats, and Deadeye on the gunmages as well. Using the extra die on ranged attacks from Deadeye, and the incredible range of Snipe, and the extra die of Poison damage from Croe's poisoned weapons, the cutthroats advanced and managed about 6 attacks on Strahkov. One of them rolled high and it was enough to finish him (even on average rolls they'd hit 3-4 times for 5-6 damage, enough to kill the warcaster). They had a shot left over and killed a Great Bear.

I had the piper give pathfinder to the B13, who walked through some woods to get a clear shot at the Kayazy on the far flank. Lynch's fire beacon was outside the range of attack, so it deviated. . .right onto the middle of the kayazy, negating their stealth. The rest of the B13 killed 2 assassins and the Nyss killed 2 more with CRAs.

They failed their command check for massive casualties. So they were out of the fight a bit. Khador was having a rough go of it. With Strahkov gone his other two 'jacks went inert, and with the Kayazy fleeing he was left with two Great Bears and a unit of Assault Kommandos.

The gunmages shot at some Banes who were out of range. The hunters hit two but failed to penetrate their armor. The trolls and ogrun prepared for a charge next turn.

The Banes just advanced, though the Knights killed most of the cutthroats ad a pair of Nyss, and Tarterus actually made several new Knights in the process. The Great Bears managed to kill a cutthroat as well. We were down to two.

The Nyss countercharged the Bane Knights and killed 5 of them and another Kayazy (who'd failed their command check again to rally). The Harrower tried to clear out a shooting lane for the B13 to get to Tarterus, but missed the attack and the blast did nothing except kill another cutthroat (down to just Croe). I maneuvered Rowdy into the woods to get Caine line-of-sight to kill a Bane Knight in the way, but I failed to kill it with him as well.

I moved the B13 around to try and get shots at Tarterus, but Ryan couldn't get line of sight, so I had to Fire Beacon with Lynch, stick it, and hope to put some hurt on him with Watts. The Fire Beacon hit, then Watts rolled fire on his Brutal Damage shot (17 on three dice), one-shotting the Bane Lord. That let Ryan see past to some Bane behind, and she killed three with her Mage Storm.

Venethrax moved a bit and popped his feat. The Bloodgorgers moved up and killed a few banes, using their overtake move to escape the clouds (from V's feat) and counter-attack. The gunmages tried to help, and the Raiders managed to kill a bunch of Kommandos and they failed their command check for massive casualties (thanks for playing, dude, holy crap what a bad game for Khador, I think the doom reavers killed a Raider and then he only got to roll command checks the rest of the game).

The Bane Knights (down to three from 12) killed two Nyss with Vengeance and then their activation attacks. The Kayazy rallied but did nothing. Goreshade moved up and popped his feat, splooging Bane Thralls all over our mid-lines, and a few charged the Bloodgorgers on the far left flank, spewing yet more banes (MOAR BANES!).

The Nyss murdered everything on the right flank with assault. We had killed everything on one side of the board, but our objective was on the other side. The Raiders moved up and killed most of the Banes on the objective, and the Bloodgorgers and Ogrun killed the rest (and a bunch of the spawned Banes. The gunmages and Hunters mostly failed to hit things (cover from a wreck marker and engaged by Raiders made it rough even with Deadeye). Venethrax moved up a bit. Caine did as well.

Now we had a control point. The Banes countercharged again, killing a few Bloodgorgers, but Ray made a few too many Tough rolls, and the Ogrun crew have 8 wounds each, which made it tougher to kill them. Only three more Banes joined the force, and they were mostly on the far flank. After Goreshade's last turn, we had ten minutes to clear a Skarlock, a Scrap Thrall, and four Bane Thralls from the objective. We did so with 42 second to spare. Venethrax himself killed three of the Banes.

So we won. Third place. Of four teams. :p

Somehow I managed to forget to snap a pic of the bane thrall madness (MOAR BANES!) in the second game. My bad.

-Merlin out

Cygnar Blaize v. Doomshaper

2011-09-01T18:22:00.001-07:00

Army Name: Constance as a Swan
Cygnar
25+6 points, 19 models

Constance Blaize +6 points
* Gallant 9 points
* Lancer 6 points (limp noodle)

Archduke Alain Runewood 3 points
Captain Arlan Strangewayes 2 points (better as a Squire)
6 Precursor Knights 5 points
* Precursor Knight Officer & Standard 2 points
6 Sword Knights 4 points

Army Name: Doomshaper's Irregulars
Trollbloods
25+7 points, 14 models

Hoarluk Doomshaper, Shaman of the Gnarls +7 points
* Earthborn Dire Troll 10 points
* Troll Axer 6 points (not as good against DEF 13 stuff)

Janissa Stonetide 3 points
6 Nyss Hunters 7 points
Trollkin Runeshapers 4 points
Viktor Pendrake 2 points

Blaize again won the die roll and chose to go first. In hindsight this may have been a mistake. She set up her Precursors to use the forest as cover and backed them up with Runewood (for pathfinder) and Gallant (for the focus). The building in the center of the board made life difficult, as she'd have to split her forces to contest both zones. She ran the Lancer, Arlan, and the SKs on the right side for that reason.

Constance herself had trouble with the forest, it slowed her down a lot. She cast Banishing Warr on the SKs and Transference, both of which she upkept for the 2nd turn. Her whole force ran to get in position.

Doomy moved up his forces conservatively, setting the Nyss on the right to fight the PKs and using the EDT and Runeshapers centrally. The Axer was deployed left with Doomy and Pendrake to handle the Lancer and SKs. Janissa backed up Doomshaper with a rock wall of course. Doomy put his own Banishing Ward on the Nyss to keep the Sunburst off, and put Fortune on the Runeshapers to help stick aoes (assuming they could find non-spell warded targets).

Constance decided not to charge across the field, as she herself couldn't fit all her troops into her CTRL range for the feat and Transference. The PKs moved into shield wall and the SKs and Lancer moved into a chargeworthy spot. Runewood gave pathfinder to Blaize to help her through the woods. Gallant again backed up the PKs but was in rough terrain.

So Doomy got to make the alpha strike. His first order of business was to fire some aoes at the troop spam and try to kill some doodz. The Runeshapers moved up, splitting to see both sides of the board (center building was rough), and tossed out spells at Constance's jacks. Nothing else they could see was targetable by spells. Amazingly, Gallant was actually just in range of the Runeshapers on the right and the first one got boxcars on the attack roll, knocking down Gallant, Blaize, Runewood, and the PK officer. Gallant also took a few damage. The other two aoes scattered, managing to kill one Sword Knight and one Precursor Knight with blast damage.

That done, Pendrake moved up in an attempt to bola the Lancer down, but after advancing I checked the range with Doomy's control area and just shot the bow instead. No damage. The EDT moved up and put his animus on Doomy and the Axer. The Axer, now quickened by the rough terrain nearby, charged 10" at the Lancer and a couple SKs. He missed the (boosted!) charge attack and managed only a little damage on the next swing.

Doomshaper moved up and used his feat, which punches any model in the nuts if they use focus for a d6 per point. It's rude. I made sure Blaize, Gallant, and the Lancer were all in the area of effect. Then Doomshaper put Fortune on the Nyss to improve their accuracy. They activated and shot a lot of PKs, but shield wall saved all but one. Constance had managed to weather the storm well, only 3 warrior models down. The Nyss probably should have charged instead.

Blaize did not upkeep Banishing Ward, and took a couple points to upkeep Transference. Runewood activated and stood up the fallen with Battle Plans, then missed a handcannon shot at a Nyss. The PKs charged into the Nyss and a Runeshaper, killing the 'shaper but mostly missing the Nyss. They got one, but not being able to use Transference because of Doomshaper's feat was difficult. Gallant moved up and killed another Nyss. Four left. Constance had nowhere to go to keep all her troops in her control except directly behind a building. She hid there and used her feat.

The Lancer got a focus from Arlan and took 3 damage for stabbing the Axer for a couple points with the spear. Then the Sword Knights attacked, rushing and killing Viktor Pendrake and charging the Axer. The Axer took like 3 damage from poor damage rolls.

So now Doomy still had most everything he'd had before, but had a bunch of troops in his face. He was hot on fury, so he left one on the Earthborn, who barely made his threshold check. The Axer activated and used thresher, but managed to only kill one Sword Knight (+1 Soul) with his several attacks. Then he pumped Fury into whacking the Lancer, but missed once and hit for middling damage with the second attack. Sad.

The Runeshapers fired their magical attacks at the Sword Knights in front of the Earthborn in an attempt to clear a path, blasting them both to bits (+2 Souls).

Then the Nyss went, using Fortune to hit and kill a bunch of PKs (+3 souls, including the battle chaplain). The Earthborn cast his animus on Doomy and then charged over to the SKs, killing and eating two of them. Because he ate them, they provided no souls to Blaize. Which is odd.

So Blaize was down to a couple PKs, a Sword Knight, and her 'jacks and solos after feat turn. She had 12 focus. If she were not behind a building she might have been able to win this one, as there wasn't many models in one control zone and if she had line of sight to the Nyss she could have killed them all herself with Flashing Blade. Alas, it was not to be. She moved out to see the Nyss and managed to kill two with a Sunburst, getting a 14 to hit (needed a 13). However, she missed the blast damage on one. The PK left fighting the Nyss failed to hit it even boosting with Transference, and Gallant failed to kill Cylena with three attacks, two of them boosted. Sad. The Trolls still had a Nyss contesting the zone after all that. Runewood tried to move up and shoot the Nyss, but needed boxcars and missed.

The Lancer, Arlan and SK were dead in the water at this point, but they beat up the Axer a bit. if Constance could have killed that last Nyss (should have boosted blast damage on the Sunburst) then she might have won this one.

Doomshaper went and the Nyss murdered the last fighting PK and Cylena pinched Gallant for no damage. The Axer hit the Lancer a bit and killed the last SK, and then the Earthborn wrecked the Lancer. It was then forced to Goad and moved to Arlan and killed him as well. Then it was forced again to moved toward the edge of the zone and get in the way of anything trying to contest. The Runeshapers moved back into the zone Blaize almost had and fired aoes at Runewood, killing him and sealing Blaize's fate (without pathfinder she couldn't get to Doomy, who was camping in rough terrain).

Doomy cast defensively and put up the EDT animus, and Janissa gave him a rock wall. He got a control point. Constance activated and killed the last Nyss with a Sunburst, then charged at Doomy but was short a half inch. She'd powered Gallant and he charged Doomy as well but was again short a tiny bit. Needed another model to kill that Nyss so Blaize could Crusader's Call. That would have made things interesting.

The PK standard bearer ran to the other control zone to contest them both, but Doomy beat him up for a scenario win.

Game MVP: Doomy with Fortune.

Lessons learned: Fortune is better than I thought it was, as it really helps the attrition game. Hotswapping it was amazing. Snacking hurts Blaize's feat. Blaize played more defensively than "troopjam lolz" is pretty good. Terrain can hurt her, and a Squire would have been HUGE for her here. She wants one more than Arlan for Evasive shenanigans, for sure.

-Merlin out

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Merc Blaize v. Grim

2011-08-31T09:09:00.001-07:00

Army Name: Blaize Troopjam lolz
Cygnar
25+6 points, 19 models

Constance Blaize +6 points
* Gallant 9 points
* Lancer 6 points

Archduke Alain Runewood 3 points
Captain Arlan Strangewayes 2 points
6 Precursor Knights 5 points
* Precursor Knight Officer & Standard 2 points
6 Sword Knights 4 points

Army Name: Grim Angus SubPar Shite
Trollbloods
25+6 points, 20 models

Grim Angus +6 points
* Earthborn Dire Troll 10 points
* Troll Impaler 5 points
* Runebearer 2 points (mostly useless)

Janissa Stonetide 3 points
10 Pyg Burrowers 6 points
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew 1 point (not great)
Trollkin Runeshapers 4 points

I'm sticking to the lists, tournament style, because sometimes stuff just doesn't work in context. Maybe Viktor Pendrake actually isn't boss, he just got lucky. Maybe the Runebearer is cool with Grim, but he was against a list that shut him down.

Maybe the Runebearer is terrible with Grim, and he's essentially playing a 23pt list.

Constance won the toss and set up first with lots of cover for her Nyss and solos. They all lurked near a building in the center of the board in the woods after running first turn. Constance cast Transference and Banishing Ward on the Nyss. Now the only models targetable by spells in her force were herself, Gallant, and Eiryss. The PKs ran as well.

Grim set up with his Runeshapers across from the Nyss advance and most of the rest central, though Grim and Janissa were left of center and near some rough terrain.

The Pygs were Advanced Deploy and up about 6 inches. They immediately tunneled and moved directly behind the center building, so they could unburrow and threaten both Nyss and PKs if necessary. Grim's amazing threat range shot a PK on turn one. The EDT gave Grim Transmute and Janissa put up the rock wall. The Runeshapers wanted to throw out some magical aoes and hope for good deviation, but couldn't target anything in their LOS with magical attacks. So they hid in the woods. Impaler, Troll Moses, and the Gobbers did a basic advance.

The Pygs were a problem for Constance, who wants to control the engagement and troopjam early. She feated and moved up a bit to cover a large area of the board with her control area, then ran her whole force to engage Grim with a PK, and put 4 Nyss into the Runeshapers, but out of charge range so they ran to engage. Harlan and Eiryss tried to shoot Janissa but missed and flubbed damage. Sad. Gallant backed up the PKs.

Grim's Impaler moved up and tried to slam Gallant with a spear attack, but didn't crit. He did do an incredible amount of damage on the hit though, taking out Gallant's movement and making him a sitting duck. Grim moved out of melee with the PK, taking a big free strike in the process and giving 11 damage to his Earthborn, then spending a fury to heal the now-crippled branch on the dire troll. He then shot Eiryss in the face, ending her.

Grim feated to give a huge accuracy boost to his force and the Pygs rushed out and killed 3 Nyss, 3 PKs, Harlan Versh, and cranked a bunch of damage on Gallant as well. Constance got 6 souls in the process.

3 Nyss were out of range of Constance's feat and the Runeshapers chopped them down without feeding the beast. The Earthborn charged the remaining, unengaged PKs and ate 2, and since he Snacked on them they didn't give Blaize souls either. He healed 4 more damage. Janissa put a rock wall up for her and Grim to hide behind. The Gobbers put a smoke cloud between Blaize and Grim.

Blaize, even with 12 focus, didn't have a lot of good choices. She decided to attack the EDT with Gallant and gave him 3 focus. Removing Grim's heavy might enable some beats on the Impaler, but first Blaize had to Sunburst the two Pygs engaged by Gallant. She hit the first one and killed it, but the second made a tough check on the blast damage. She cast another Sunburst and killed it, but was then down to one focus. Gallant moved up and cranked the Earthborn, but a snake eyes on one damage roll meant that the troll had 4 life left after the attack. The PK next to him attacked as well, but failed to kill him.

The Nyss managed to kill 4 Pygs on the other side of the board, and none of them passed their Tough rolls. Both zones were still contested, but Grim was winning the attrition war.

Grim activated and healed the earthborn's damaged crippled branches so that it could operate at peak efficiency. Then he cast Mark the Target on the Nyss to lower their defenses. Then he shot one.

The Impaler moved up and crit-slammed Constance back an inch, doing a few damage. The earthborn killed Gallant and the PK in his grill. The burrowers and Runeshapers killed the Nyss and moved into the zone.

Grim scored a point. Constance only had herself left. Grim would have won by scenario next turn and she conceded after trying to finish the EDT herself.

MVP: Pyg Burrowers were nasty against Blaize.

Lessons learned: Burrowers are a hard counter to troopjam armies. Their ability to pop up within 5" of the burrow token and clog up the midfield with 20 melee attacks from a variety of vectors is simply amazing. I wish the Grim list had a Fell Caller instead of the Runebearer and Swamp Gobbers.

Constance had little answer to the super-threat of Grim's burrowers.

-Merlin out

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Mercenary Blaize v. John Woo Shooter

2011-08-27T11:57:00.001-07:00

Match 4 of round 1. Gaining Ground.

Army Name: Holy Mercenaries
Highborn Covenant
25+6 points, 22 models

Constance Blaize +6 points
* Gallant 9 points (again, Blaize needs the hookup on Morrowans)

Eiryss, Angel of Retribution 3 points
Harlan Versh, Illuminated One 2 points (I don't like merc utility solos in a Cygnar Blaize list, but when we're talking a merc list they're so much better because they benefit from all Blaize's buffs and she benefits during feat turn if they get mauled)
10 Nyss Hunters 10 points (pathfinder, weaponmaster, CRA, super fast, all good)
6 Precursor Knights 5 points
* Precursor Knight Officer & Standard 2 points

Army Name: Caine Netdex (so named because a better player than I ran a similar list at Gencon and I modified it from his blog)
Cygnar
25+6 points, 22 models

Lieutenant Allister Caine +6 points
* Ol' Rowdy 9 points (Rowdy is one of, if not the, best 'jacks in the faction)

Lady Aiyana and Master Holt 4 points (at 25 I had to choose between the Black 13th and this duo. I decided that 4 5-man CRAs from the Long Gunners would be sick if they all hit a heavy for +2 because of Aiyana's damage buff; I lose the ability to deal with stealth tho)
10 Long Gunners 10 points (not great generally, but Snipe and Deadeye can make them murderous)
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord 2 points
6 Stormguard 6 points (the last bits I'm not sure about. This might be better as 10 'guard and no Aiyana and Holt, but since the Stormguard are only in the list as a speedbump, to enable the LGs to get in some extra shots before being engaged, they might do the trick)

Blaize won the roll and again elected to go first. She chose the side of the table with the forest to abuse the Nyss' native high defense and pathfinder. The Nyss and Harlan ran into the woods. Eiryss ran along that flank to half-hide behind a building. The Precursors ran to the walls in the center of the table to use them as cover, and Gallant backed them up. Constance cast Transference and walked behind Gallant.

Caine had some tough choices to make. His game plan was to give Blur to the Stormguard to protect them from ranged and Snipe to the Long Gunners. He decided that was a good plan, but not wanting to waste his own gunshots he also advanced himself, a little too far. Then Rowdy moved up to screen him, but this put Rowdy in danger of a couple of Nyss charges.

The LGs managed to kill three Nyss in the woods with CRAs and Deadeye from Caine. Rupert gave the 'guard Tough in anticipation of the counterattack. Aiyana and Holt advanced along the opposite flank from Eiryss.

So now Constance had a chance at an alpha strike, and things went quite well for her. She activated first and cast Crusader's Call to boost her troops' charge range. Then she put Banishing Ward on Gallant to keep Caine from trying any Thunderstrike shenanigans. She also upkept Transference and feated, ending on zero focus.

Harlan moved up and used his Purgation Quad Iron gun to kill 4 Long Gunners. Rowdy forgot to Countercharge. The Nyss moved in and hit Rowdy hard, with something like 15 damage on two charges (the third in range missed). Rowdy's hammer was out. The other Nyss killed three Stormguard, but one made his Tough check. Then the Precursor Knights charged in, using their minifeat to get a single charge on Rowdy at 4 dice, with the rest just running to engage the remaining Stormguard. That single Precursor Knight hit Rowdy like a ton of bricks, crippling right arm and cortex.

That was a huge loss for Caine. Worse, catching up on attrition was going to be rough against Blaize's diminishing returns feat. Eiryss moved into Caine's control zone behind a building, and Gallant backed up the troops engaged by the Stormguard.

Caine was in trouble. He needed to kill a bunch of Blaize's troops on her feat turn, and survive, while contesting the middle zone. The Stormguard activated first, but they missed their first attack (needed a 6, rolled a 5 on two dice) and then they managed to kill one Precursor Knight. Meh.

Rupert gave them Terror in an attempt to make the Nyss break, but they passed their command check. Then he ran to contest the cente zone. Aiyana couldn't do much this turn. She wanted to put the Kiss spell effect (+2 damage against target model) on Gallant, but Banishing Ward prevented it. She had to settle for the Nyss, but missed the roll. Holt charged the Precursor Officer, but missed 3 of his 4 attacks and then flubbed the damage on the fourth to barely scratch his target.

Rowdy moved away and ate free strikes, getting scrapped in the process. Caine stood still to aim and feated, but he needed 9s to hit many of the Nyss due to engagement. He did kill a few after shooting his own Stormguard in the back on accident. He managed to kill a couple and a whole bunch of PKs, but missed his attack against Harlan Versh. He also missed both of his initial gunshots against Versh. He only needed a 4 on two dice. He bought an attack, hit, and boosted damage, but Versh's armor was through the roof due to Constance's feat. Caine bought one more and managed to kill the witch hunter. Took four focus though. He then teleported behind his LGs.

The LGs dropped two big CRAs on Gallant, and rolled good damage, but not enough to hurt the lug. No control points scored.

Constance got 9 extra focus due to her feat and souls. She gave two to Gallant and upkept Transference. There were still 4 Nyss on the board and two PKs. The Officer killed Holt and the Standard Bearer moved to power Gallant. Constance activated and cast a fully boosted Sunburst at Rupert, killing him. The Nyss charged up and killed two LGs and the remaining Stormguard. Eiryss shot Caine for a few, and Gallant charged in to finish him off. Blaize wins.

Game MVP: Nyss Hunters. Those elves were bananas awesome.

Lessons learned: Nyss are awesome. Still. Constance seems strong so far, but she's won the roll to go first and chosen the side of the board that offers the most cover. I thought Caine had this one in the bag, but he didn't protect his heavy hitters, losing four LGs and Rowdy to the alpha strike. He should have played more conservatively.

Round 2 will be:

Merc Blaize going first against Grim Angus
Cygnar Blaize first against Hoarluk Doomshaper, Shaman of the Gnarls
Ashlynn going first against Caine
Haley first against Stryker

I really don't relish the concept of a Blaize v Blaize confrontation. This exercise was an attempt to get a feel for various models, and while i like her playstyle running her in a "mirror match" won't teach me much, IMO.

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Grim Angus v. Slo-Mo

2011-08-25T19:55:00.001-07:00

Match three of the basement series, again using Gaining Ground as the scenario.

Army Name: Haley Gunshow 25
Cygnar
25+5 points, 21 models

Captain Victoria Haley +5 points
* Defender 9 points
* Squire 2 points (pretty standard fare here, Haley loves ranged attacks for feat turn and the Squire takes Temporal Barrier to a whole new level)

Gun Mage Captain Adept 2 points (meh. AD and in-faction for feat)
Stormblades 5 points
* Stormblade Officer & Standard 3 points
* 1 Stormblade Storm Gunner 1 point (Solid Group with Haley; TB protects them from the alphastrike charge and they counterattack like demons)
6 Trencher Commandos 6 points
* 2 Trencher Commando Scattergunners 2 points (a first strike unit, more awesome because of the scattergunner attachment)

Army Name: Grim Angus Basix
Trollbloods
25+6 points, 20 models

Grim Angus +6 points
* Earthborn Dire Troll 10 points
* Troll Impaler 5 points (both the beasts are here to support Grim, either with a +4" range animus from the Impaler, or the EDTs amazing defensive animus with Janissa's rock wall.
* Runebearer 2 points (this guy did not impress me with Grim. Shoulda taken Pendrake or similar)

Janissa Stonetide 3 points
10 Pyg Burrowers 6 points (tough little monkeys who hit hard but are terribly inaccurate. Grim's support makes them super awesome)
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew 1 point (had a point left, but these monkeys were pointless)
Trollkin Runeshapers 4 points

Grim won the roll to go first and just moved everything up, and had the burrowers tunnel.

Haley advanced the 'blades into the woods on her side of the table, to cover them against the burrower strike next turn. Then she moved up and tossed out TB as an army-wide accuracy buff. The commandoes moved up and tried to ace the Runeshapers, and they killed two, but one made his Tough roll and stayed alive.

The Defender moved up and took a potshot but was just out of range.

Grim had some order-of activation issues. The burrowers popped up, ready to murder the commandoes and maybe some 'blades. Then the Impaler moved up and gave Grim Far Strike, and the Runebearer gave him a Harmonious Exaltation to reduce a spell cost by one. But then when Grim moved forward to feat, he didn't have line of sight to much. He killed a commando and discarded a bunch of fury after casting a free Return Fire.

The EDT moved up but then turned a bit to give Grim his animus. The burrowers killed all but one of the commandoes and the GMCA, and managed to hit one Stormblade as well (Arcane Shield made them harder to kill tho). The Runeshapers dropped two aoes toward the Defender, hoping to scatter onto the , but they only succeeded in killing the last commando and a Burrower (whoops, my bad). Janissa did her rock wall hookup for Grim.

Haley responded by giving two focus to the defender, then cast TB and moved around the Burrowers, stabbing one to death afterward. Then the 'blades moved in and assaulted the remaining burrowers. With two chances to kill most of them I thought it was money in the bank, but Tough is a bitch. After all was said and done the 'blades had killed 7 of 8 Pygs, but 4 had made their Tough checks (or made two Tough checks). Haley was saving her feat for crushing the EDT or Grim, but now the burrowers were gonna wreck havoc again. The Defender aimed and shot Janissa out from downtown, putting a crimp in Grim's hiding plans.

Grim didn't have a vector on Vicky hiding in the forest, so the turn was spent on attrition. The burrowers tunneled again, freeing LOS to the Stormblades for most of the rest of Grim's force. The Impaler crit-slammed the officer back into a grunt, killing them both. Then the EDT charged over the walls in the middle of the table and killed three more 'blades with his bare hands.

The Runeshapers moved up to block charge lanes and dropped aoes out, killing a couple more storm blades. Grim moved up and shot one of the final 'blades himself, and since his beasts were Fury Heavy he ended his turn on zero Fury, with the EDT animus on himself, next to a rock wall that was always there. Another point went to Grim in the control zone.

Haley was now short on forces and saw an opportunity to ice the Troll. She gave the Defender 3 focus and then feated and moved up so that Grim wasn't behind cover from her angle. The she fired two boosted handcannon shots and managed to do 10 damage to the warlock. If she'd kept her focus she could have cast a boosted spell as well, with a reasonable chance to hit. Alas.

The defender advanced and fired two boosted heavy barrel shots at Haley, but needed 14s to hit. If either had landed they probably would have forced a Tough roll out of Grim, but they fell short.

Haley was hung out to dry, and Grim shot her with his knockdown gun/net and then the Impaler charged and finished her.

Game MVP: Pyg Burrowers. Those little beasts killed 8 guys on their alpha strike, with little chance of stopping it other than "lose by scenario". They were just-unburrowed again at the end of the game, and would have wrecked the defender given half a chance. Beasts.

Lessons learned: Burrowers are money. Grim doesn't need to cast many spells, and can save his fury for animi, meaning his beasts can buff and boost themselves instead of him. Grim doesn't need a Runebearer. Haley wants to TB every turn but it starves her for focus. Stormblades aren't great with her. Tough is a bitch.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Cygnar Blaize v. Ashlynn BR

2011-08-24T14:44:00.001-07:00

This was a highborn covenant smackdown match. Constance, as an "ally" warcaster, can work for mercenary contracts that will work for Cygnar. Ashlynn, while a mercenary, has strong ties to Cygnar and her only mercenary contract is the highborn covenant, which includes only mercs that will work for Cygnar.

Again, the scenario is gaining ground.

Army Name: Blaize as a Swan
troopjam
Cygnar
25+6 points, 19 models

Constance Blaize +6 points
* Gallant 9 points (because of Constance's flank ability with Morrowan models, I consider the first 'jack and unit in her army to always be Gallant and a unit of Precursor Knights. Her army choices begin after 10 points IMO)
* Lancer 6 points (this is not a 'jack I particularly like. Some have said that Constance can do spell assassinations with her Sunburst attack spell, and the Lancer helps with the angles on that. I tend to disagree, but I also wanted a cheaper 'jack with reach to support my Sword knights, so it's a dual purpose choice here)

Archduke Alain Runewood 3 points (had to proxy, but buffs units with Pathfinder and gives Sword Knights reform, all good really)
Captain Arlan Strangewayes 2 points (my favorite two point solo in Cygnar. His ability to give 'jacks evasion to move about the battlefield ignoring free strikes is huge)
6 Precursor Knights 5 points
* Precursor Knight Officer & Standard 2 points
6 Sword Knights 4 points (Constance's feat begs infantry fodder, the two units of Knights are it, Constance can flank with her Precursors and Sword Knights flank with faction warjacks).

Army Name: Le Resistance
Highborn Covenant
25+6 points, 13 models

Ashlynn D'Elyse +6 points
* Gallant 9 points (battle of the Gallants! He's better with Constance, but Ashlynn loves DEF 13 on her feat turn and having a Nomad with a free focus from Harlan is good).

Arcane Tempest Gun Mages 6 points
* Gun Mage Officer 2 points
** Mule 8 points (this is a standard Ashlynn combo, all the gunmages and the Mule have crit effects on their weapons, so under her feat they are pushing stuff all over the board.
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution 3 points
Harlan Versh, Illuminated One 2 points
Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator 1 point (merc solos are great. Harlan is there to power Gallant, Eiryss is super dangerous, and Reinholdt takes Ashlynn from awesome to amazing with a bonus hand cannon shot).

Unfortunately for Ashlynn, Blaize won the roll to go first. This allowed the Knights to take the side of the board with the forest and hide in there. Blaize's entire force ran forward, save Arlan who power boosted the Lancer after walking.

Ashlynn countered by cautiously advancing toward the hill on her side of the board and moving Harlan and Eiryss up in front of a building. Eiryss shot a Precursor Knight, but that was a bad sign. She'd gotten close enough for a couple knights to counter attack her next turn. The Mule got Quicken from Ashlynn to increase it's threat by two, but it missed the Knights in the woods and the deviation went away into nowhere.

Constance popped her feat and Crusader's Call to allow her stuff to charge an additional two inches. Gallant charged Gallant, missed his first attack, and then bought two attacks on the also-engaged Mule, which had an upkeep, so Purgation gave him an extra damage die. He mugged the Mule good but only crippled its cortex, so no real effect. It still had 10 boxes left.

The Precursors charged in and managed to kill Harlan and Eiryss (big loss for Ashlynn there) and hit Gallant for 16 boxes (popped minifeat), crippling his movement.

The Lancer and Sword Knights ran to engage the gunmages, but couldn't actually attack them. Runewood had given pathfinder to the Precursors in the woods two turns in a row and was sitting midfield after missing a hand cannon shot.

Arlan had powerboosted the Lancer and was sitting way back because of it.

Ashlynn popped her own feat and killed the two Precursors who had gotten Eiryss. They were out of Blaize's control so they did not provide souls. Gallant got fully loaded and put a serious hurting on Blaize's Gallant, crippling everything but movement.

The Mule took a free strike from Gallant to extricate itself, but with the sword crippled it didn't do much damage. Then the Mule fired a boosted steam lobber shot into a Sword Knight behind the Lancer and of course got the crit. The Lancer and four Sword Knights were hit, knocked down, and thrown 2-9 inches away. Two Sword Knights died.

The gunmages activated and killed several Precursors engaging Gallant and another Sword Knight. When the turn ended Constance had 5 souls for extra focus, and as her troopjam had secured the center of the table she got a control point.

Ashlynn's feat is tough to work around. Constance focussed on what she could reliably hit under Roulette. She upkept Transference to boost her troops success rate, and the remaining two Precursors wrecked Gallant. Constance's Gallant moved in and tried to thump the Mule again, but without cortex it couldn't boost, and Ashlynn's feat is brutal against luck.

Constance had allocated two focus to the Lancer. Runewood used reveille to stand up all the knocked down Sword Knights and Lancer. Then he charged a gunmage and killed it. The Lancer charged the Dude but missed. The Sword Knights charged in but missed (except the Dude, who didn't make it) I had been using Constance's focus with attacks against key targets, but it was a lost cause most of the time. She still had 6 left after everyone else had activated and she moved up and cast Sunburst through the Lancer at the Mule. The blast damage killed a gunmage and Reinholdt.

Because Ashlynn chose not to use Admonition to engage the Precursor Knights, Constance got another control point. Blaize 2 Ashlynn 0, first to 4 wins (or assassinate other 'caster).

Ashlynn could have moved into the center to contest the zone, but would have been leaving herself open to Blaize in doing so. It was a tough call. She decided to kill all the Morrowans on Blaize's side to limit flank opportunities. She personally killed the last two PKs, and the Mule finished off Gallant.

The gunmages remaining (only two) were engaged and couldn't do much, but did kill a Sword Knight. Constance got another control point.

At this point Blaize did nothing on her turn, so as to not allow Ashlynn to contest the center by triggering Admonition. Blaize wins by scenario.

For fun Ashlynn made a desperate assassination run post-loss, but didn't seal the deal. Constance was camping focus and Ashlynn couldn't hurt her easily.

Match MVP: Blaize herself? Transference, Crusader's Call, and Sunburst were all important to her victory. Runewood giving pathfinder to PKs two turns was big.

Lessons learned: Blaize, if she goes first, will push the scenario. The threat range on her troops using Crusader's Call is nice. She needs a Morrowan pal to make herself a decent threat. Ashlynn is a beast, but losing her support solos early hurt a lot. Roulette is tough to deal with against high-defense troops, and Gallant's 13 defense would have been great if he hadn't had movement crippled by feat turn.

-Merlin out

Doomshaper v. Douchebag

2011-08-23T19:54:00.001-07:00

I decided to get some practice learning the rules to my models. To this end I'm doing some smaller games using different forces I've collected. The first matchup is prime Douche against the primal Doomshaper. These two are widely derided casterlocks from their respective factions.

The scenario is Gaining Ground (control center zone for 1pt or opponent's zone for 2pts, first to 4pts wins). Here's the lists and some listbuilding thoughts.

Round 1 match 1 thornwood prim(al) rumble

Army Name: Pstryker armorbuffs
Cygnar
25+6 points, 18 models

Commander Coleman Stryker +6 points
* Centurion 9 points (Arcane Shield from Journeyman or Stryker puts the cent at Armor 24. Stryker's feat adds 5 to that)
Journeyman Warcaster 3 points

Arcane Tempest Gun Mages 6 points
* Gun Mage Officer 2 points
** Charger 4 points
Captain Arlan Strangewayes 2 points (I've been running this 14pt module a bit. Many folks run a Hunter 'jack on the Dude; this is the same amount of points, but if Arlan powerboosts the Charger it gets a fully boosted shot and then a second unboosted shot from the 'jack marshal bonus. And they're both Rune Shots from the Dude)
Stormblades 5 points (hardhitting infantry)

Army Name: Doomshaper's Irregulars
Trollbloods
25+7 points, 14 models

Hoarluk Doomshaper, Shaman of the Gnarls +7 points
* Earthborn Dire Troll 10 points
* Troll Axer 6 points (with these beasts Doomy can deliver the earthborn a good distance away. If the EDT is near a forest it gets +2" move, and the Axer animus can add two to that. Doomy can also force the EDT to Goad it another 2" if it kills a model)
Janissa Stonetide 3 points (Janissa w/ EDT animus on Doomy is a must, as with her Rock Wall ability he goes from defense [laughable] 13 armor 15 to 17/17 with cover from the wall and the animus armor boost near an obstacle)
6 Nyss Hunters 7 points (Doomy's Hookups aren't faction specific, so enter the Nyss, a great merc choice, if expensive)
Trollkin Runeshapers 4 points (area-of-effect spellblasters that also gain Force lock with Janissa nearby; Force lock keeps a model in their melee range from advancing. Also tough and steady, which is dope)
Viktor Pendrake 2 points (two points left over and this is my only choice for Trollbloods at 2pts)

Stryker won the roll to choose sides and took the hill instead of the forest half of the board. Also kept Doomy away from the water (water grants another 2 defense under EDT animus). Cast Arcane Shield (AS) on himself and Blur on the 'blades to keep them safe from Nyss bows. Moved up.

Centy ran onto the central hill. 'blades ran across from forest and next to hill. Gun mages ran up on other side of hill past water. Charger and arlan ran to hill as well. Junior cast AS on Centy and advanced in the back of the force.

Doomy cast Banishing Ward on the Nyss to keep them safe from Earthquake shenanigans. He moved up a bit. EDT cast animus on Doomy and failed a charge. Axer riled and ran. Janissa put a rockwall up near Doomy and EDT. Nyss ran into woods. Runeshapers and Pendrake advance.

Stryker had to feat this turn, so he needed to engage a bunch of stuff and try to push other threats out of the way with Thunderbolt shots. The Nyss in the woods were going to be a problem. The Stormblades ran to engage 3 of them, leaving 3 to counterattack next turn. The Centy advanced a bit and polarity shielded (can't be charged). Stryker moved up but camped 3 focus. The charger got the powerboost from arlan and fired a crit thunderbolt at the EDT, knocking it down and pushing it 3". Then it missed the second shot (too many linear obstacles in play). Gun mages fired some Thunderbolt shots at the Axer to push it back but the Runeshapers and a building were behind him and he could only go back so far. Gunmages moved up to contest central zone with Stormblades.

Doomy stood up the EDT with fury. He then advanced forward to catch the enemy entirely in his control area and feated himself. He then cast purification to wipe the upkeeps and animi off the table, and EDT animus on himself for protection.

The Runeshapers moved up and tossed aoes at the gunmages but didn't do much. The Axer used his animus and then engaged the gunmages and threshered them. He needed 9s to hit, and missed all of the attacks except for the last one, which was boosted. One dead gunmage.

The Nyss moved out of the woods and killed two Stormblades with good damage rolls. Cylena and two spare Nyss tried to shoot the unengaged 'blades but missed with a 3 and snake eyes.

Doomy was way up to capitalize on feat, but with only two fury left for transfers and a Centurion near enough to charge, things could get ugly. Janissa put her rock wall behind Doomy to box him in and make sure he kept his armor bonus from Transmute, the EDT animus. The Earthborn moved up to block a charge lane but fell short on distance. For good measure Pendrake advanced and threw his bola at the Centurion, knocking it down.

For getting the alpha strike the trolls didn't do well. Poor rolling and Stryker's feat kept Cygnar rolling.

Stryker saw Doomy flapping in the wind and went for an assassination. It was a good idea. The Charger on the hill only needed a 9 on his boosted Thunderbolt shot to hit, and he managed to crit knockdown Doomy as well. So after activating two models Doomy was on his ass and had taken 5 damage. Not good.

Worse, the Centurion had shaken the knockdown with a focus and charged Doomshaper's prone form. His two reach spear attacks autohit the warlock and did massive amounts of damage, which Doomshaper transfered to his earthborn Dire Troll. After those two hits Doomy was out of fury and the EDT was down to about 10 hits left. The stormblades finished off the earthborn, but if Stryker had done that first Doomy might have been more hurt by the Centurion.

Still, losing his only heavy with a Centurion on the board really hurt Doomshaper.

The gunmages and Junior fired shots into the prone Doomshaper, but only managed a few more damage. The Charger and Centurion actually took some serious damage from Doomshaper's feat (d6 per focus spent). Stryker backed up to weather out the counterstike, hoping to outlast the Trolls.

Them trolls rallied, however. Doomshaper had to cut for two Fury and shook his knockdown. Pendrake managed to aim and hit the Centurion with another knockdown bola, disengaging Doomshaper. The Nyss killed 3 of the 4 remaining Stormblades and the last failed his morale check. Cylena led a Combined Ranged Attack on the Journeyman but failed to dent his armor with a poor damage roll.

Doomshaper moved away from the action and cast Stranglehold on the Centurion, hoping to force it to forfeit an action next turn, but he didn't penetrate the armor. The Runeshapers moved up in hopes of disentangling the Axer, but again their aoes deviated poorly, and those that connected got woeful damage rolls. The last Runeshaper engaged the centurion, which force locked it in place until it was dealt with, and tossed an aoe at the Charger, mugging it severely. The Axer needed to thresh four gunmages, needing 9s to hit. He boosted the first two attacks and killed two gunmages, and then rolled two 9s on regular attack rolls to get the others.

Janissa activated and dropped another aoe on the Charger.

Suddenly Stryker was down to one gun mage and one fleeing Stormblade for infantry, and his Charger had crippled movement, cortex, and hammer. He allocated three to the Centurion and shook the knockdown. He then spent the entire turn trying to kill the Runeshaper forcelocking the Centurion in place. Scrambling, he put AS back on himself and put a disrupted pistol shot into the Runeshaper engaging the Centurion, but failed to hurt it.

The last gunmage tried as well, but missed both the Runeshaper and the Centurion. The charger took a boosted shot and managed to hit the Centy instead. Junior missed them both.

So the Centy had to spear the Runeshaper himself. He missed his first attack as well. Then he bought another and speared it to death, but it made its Tough check to stay alive. Ridiculous.

Doomshaper took a commanding lead, with the Axer and Runeshapers finishing off the Charger. Janissa put 10 wounds on the Centy, crippling the shield with her armor-piercing pickaxe. Doomy himself re-emerged from cover to kill Arlan with a spell, and the Nyss Hunters killed the Journeyman and Stryker's remaining infantry.

Stryker began his turn with only a knocked down Centurion on his side, and conceded defeat to the old troll.

Models of the game:

Stryker: the Charger. It almost enabled a turn three assassination.

Doomshaper: Viktor Pendrake. Dude knocked the Centurion down twice, forcing Stryker and the Centy to spend a focus standing up two turns in a row.

Lessons learned: all the armor in the world isn't helpful if the enemy can sidestep the tank and get to the rest of the force. Stormblades with Stryker are good (Blur ftw). Nyss Hunters are off the chain, tho. Huge, pathfinder threat, capable in both melee and ranged. The total package. Doomy is fragile, but was a lot of fun to play.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone y'allzs

Gun Mage Fever

2011-07-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

Cygnar Fluffernutters Vol. 1:

I've been considering the idea of tiered/theme lists in WarMachine for a while. Essentially, the idea behind theme lists is that you can only take certain models, units, etc. But, in exchange you get some benefits, whether it's decreased cost on units, or free models, or even starting the game with upkeep spells in play or focus points on 'jacks.

My buddy who got me into the game said "never do tier lists, it's like tying one arm behind your back." And in a sense, it is. The model selection tends to be extremely limited for most of them, and the benefits rarely outweigh the "cost" of limited model selection. That being said, I have always liked the idea of artificially limiting the building blocks for any given project, as an exercise. Call it theorymachine calisthenics. It's one of the reasons I like drafting in CCGs; I like being forced to use unpopular choices so that I have to reconsider them or otherwise _make_ them work.

So with that, I decided to at least work toward a few tier lists in warmachine. Flipping through the Forces of Warmachine: Cygnar book, I was looking for theme requirements that could be met by multiple theme lists. Two units show up multiple times (in multiples) in several theme lists: Arcane Tempest Gun Mages, and Long Gunners. I decided that I liked the ATGMs better than Long Gunners, and if I had to buy two units of something (most theme lists require doubling-up on certain infantry, which isn't often done; most players only ever want one of a given unit in their collection) I would buy those. Even better, the first unit was on sale used at my FLGS, and a resculpt came in April. So not only would I have two units, but they would look totally different.

When I actually got the units, I mixed the two sculpts a bit so that each unit has 6 unique figures (most units have 3-5 sculpts, with some duplicates). I also painted them in different colors, both for differentiation, and because ATGMs can be taken in one of the mercenary contracts. So then my merc ATGMs look different from my Cygnar ATGMs. Even better, the Forces of Warmachine: Mercenaries book has another tier list that requires two units of ATGMs, so now I'm working toward 3 theme lists with my purchase.

The lists:

Army Name: Gun Mage Fever 1
Cygnar
Theme Force: Sons of the Tempest Tier 4
35+6 points, 23 models

Lieutenant Allister Caine +6 points
* Avenger or Defender 9 points

Arcane Tempest Gun Mages 5 points
* Gun Mage Officer
** Hunter 6 points
Arcane Tempest Gun Mages 5 points
* Gun Mage Officer 2 points
** Hunter 6 points
Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team 4 points
2x Gun Mage Captain Adept 2 points each

I like this version because it has some symmetry, but after playing it a few times, I'll probably drop a hunter and both Gun Mage Captain Adepts for a Stormclad on Caine. Then I'll move the Defender/Avenger to the now 'jackless Gun Mage Officer for Rune Shot. Caine needs the Stormclad beatstick. Prime Caine's tier might be cool enough to actually play in a serious game.

Army Name: Gun Mage Fever II
Cygnar
Theme Force: The Huntsman Tier 3
35+5 points, 27 models

Captain Allister Caine +5 points
* Minuteman/Firefly/Sentinal/Charger 5/4 points

Arcane Tempest Gun Mages 6 points
* Gun Mage Officer 2 points
** 2x Hunter 6 points each
Arcane Tempest Gun Mages 6 points
Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team 4 points
Gun Mage Captain Adept
Rangers 5 points

This list is weird, and I don't actually own eCaine or several of his 'jack possibilities. I'll probably run it after I get epic Caine once or twice, but this is one of the theme lists that loses a lot for little gain. It'll still be fun to play, and Caine's epic version is pretty amazing even without his Squire and goblin buddy, but I'll just use it for casual play.

And now for the mercenary gun mage fever!

Army Name: Gun Mage Fever III
Mercenary Theme Force
Theme Force: Viva Le Resistance Tier 4
50+6 points, 35 models

Ashlynn D'Elyse +6 points
* Nomad 6 points
* 2x Vanguard 5 points each

Anastasia Di Bray 2 points
Arcane Tempest Gun Mages 6 points
* Gun Mage Officer
** Mule 8 points
Arcane Tempest Gun Mages 6 points
* Gun Mage Officer 2 points
10 Precursor Knights 8 points
* Precursor Knight Officer & Standard 2 points
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord 2 points
Rutger Shaw 2 points
Taryn di la Rovissi 2 points

I generally prefer 35 point lists and games to 50s, but I feel that Ashlynn's tier list is so much better with the extra points for a Nomad or Mule and more Precursor Knights. If I had some serious gun mage fever I could even drop some support pieces like Rutger Shaw (who is there to hook Taryn up with Tough and Dodge) and Rupert for my GMCAs.

As you can see, I don't yet have all the models (don't want to play eCaine until I've got some more pCaine games in, and my FLGS hasn't gotten Anastasia in for months) that I need/want for my lists, but it's still cool to know that I can work toward three tier lists with one doubled unit. That's Cygnar and Highborn tier lists with some unit-purchasing efficiency.

I'm a huge fan of pCaine's tier because after setting up the basic (and awesome!) gun-mage framework of 16 points (2 units of ATGM at -1 pts, with a free UA, and the Black 13th), I have X points left over for 'jacks (25 in a 35 point list with Caine's 6 JPs), and as long as I can afford 3 'jacks I've hit tier 3 and 4. This allows me to tap into my stable of Cygnar warjacks with ranged weapons (umm, most of them) and play around with different combinations.

Or I could buy more gun mages. Probably not though.

Hunter Hunter Defender GMCA GMCA
Minuteman Minuteman Minuteman (or more gun mages?) Stormclad
Hunter Hunter Hunter Hunter
Charger Sentinal GMCA Minuteman Stormclad
Avenger Avenger Hunter
And so on.

Next month: Long Gunners, or how I learned to stop worrying and love dual shot CRAs.

Monday Night Combat

2011-07-19T06:24:00.001-07:00

Well, warmachine games at the Gamer's Sanctuary in Flint, really. I went up for some casual games and played two new opponents.

Game one was my prime Caine tier/theme list (Gun mage fever!) against an epic Caine list that looked remarkably similar. My opponent was a newer player who still had a trick up his sleeve.

We played a 33 point game (that's all my opponent could muster). My list was:

pCaine
Defender
Arcane Tempest Gun Mages + Officer
Hunter marshaled to Officer
ATGM unit 2 (tier requirement) + free Officer (tier bonus)
Hunter marshaled to Officer
Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team
Gun Mage captain Adept

I didn't really have a lot of choices, aside from 'jacks, as the theme/tier list requirements are for all those gun mages. It's a thing I'm trying out.

My opponent, not playing a tier list, played:
Epic Caine
Squire
Lancer
Arcane Tempest Gun Mages + Officer
Ironclad marshaled to Officer
Arcane Tempest Gun Mages
Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team
Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator

Now that I'm typing his list out, I realize that he didn't discount himself epic Caine's 5 warjack points, so he's actually only at 29. I got a free officer and GMCA out of the deal. Ah well.

Epic Caine is one of the most feared assassins in the game. His feat is called Overkill, and when he pops it, he does an additional damage with each successive gun shot he makes that hits. So he's all about getting more shots. Reinholdt can give a warcaster a reload for an additional pistol shot, and eCaine has one with each pistol to start. He can then buy 6 more with his focus, or 7 with the extra focus from a Squire. So his power-12 shots can be doing power 22 by the end of his run, if he hits with all of them. That's insane. And since it's ranged he can do it from 19 inches away, with his seven-inch move. His ranged attack rating of 9 seals the deal as an incredibly accurate assassination 'caster.

I knew this going in, and I planned accordingly. I used my gun mages to screen my advance and took some potshots at eCaine's forces. I was rolling very poorly, and I missed many of my approach shots. Eventually, I decided that hiding my pCaine was a waste of time. I put Blur on him to jack his defense against ranged and magical attacks to 20, daring my opponent to try his assassination run.

He took the bait and moved up eCaine after getting a focus from the Squire and a reload from Reinholdt. Now, he needed 11s to hit, so he boosted his initial attacks with focus to try and make one connect. The Caines have a low armor rating, so if he could land a couple shots he could have won the game. But alas, his three boosted initial attacks missed, and then he spent all his focus shooting but _not_ boosting. Then he ended his turn without activating any of his other troops, and conceded the game.

It was a most unsatisfying victory.

I managed to find another opponent and decided to try out the new Cygnar warcaster, Constance Blaize. She's a cool customer with a religious theme, and in the couple games I've played with her lend themselves to assassination-style play. She likes to finish games herself with her Sun Spear. Her feat and theme lend themselves to a melee-centric army, but I find that I really want a ranged element in all the games I play, so I've been adding in some ranged toys to help cover her advance.

Constance Blaize, knight of the Prophet
Gallant
Cyclone
Precursor Knights (full) with UA
Stormblades
Black 13th
Rupert Carvolo
Arlan Strangewayes

My opponent played the Iron Wolf, Harkevitch.

Harkevitch
Black Ivan
Destroyer
War Dog
Full winterguard with grenadier and UA
Widowmaker snipers
Widowmaker marksman

Kovnik Joe
Prime Eiryss, Mage Hunter

Harkevitch's list has tons of ranged attacks, and I wasn't sure how to approach it. It's entirely possible I should have popped feat and bum's rushed it first turn, as it went first and got decent board position. As it was, the warjacks dropped huge area-of effect bombards on my guys and killed a number of them early. The most effective thing in his list by far was the widowmaker snipers. They killed 3 of my Precursors on the top of turn two, and then shot several Precursors or Stormblades every turn. I simply didn't have an answer to 5 snipers in the woods (well, I did, but my Cyclone whiffed on his attack rolls, needing 6s on two dice he missed 4 times out of 6). That probably cost me the game, but I did have a chance.

He had moved Harkevitch up after feating, and I could have gotten Constance next to him, but I didn't realize that the war dog would not be able to countercharge (I knew it could do it, but I simply played sloppy and poorly) if I ran my last precursor next to it. If I had done so, I could have put Constance with 6 focus next to Harkevitch (or at least close enough to stab), and since she ignores upkeeps she didn't care about Escort. With flank she would have been MAT 9 rolling an average of 23 damage against Harkevitch's 19 armor with feat. SIX times. Chances are I would have ended the game then; if she hits four of those six times for average damage she wins the game.

But alas I did not do that, and then the wardog killed my precursor/flanker. The option was lost, and instead Constance was caught by pEiryss flat footed and without her shield guard Gallant. It took Harkevitch's jacks two turns to kill Constance, and it was sad that they were having such trouble.

Good game, and good loss for learning experience.

-Merlin out

Warmachine Mini Tournament

2011-07-12T21:52:00.000-07:00

I managed to get up to the Gamer's Sanctuary on Monday night for open Warmachine/Hordes play, and found that there was an impromptu tournament going on.

I had the five bucks to participate, and I wanted to get in a few games, so this seemed ideal. Further, I'd never played with Scenarios before, and I feel that they add a lot to the game. Playing the standard "chess" warcaster-kill game is a little boring to me; and I feel that many warcasters aren't as good at assassination as they are at scenario or objective-based play. So if you're only playing caster-kill games, each faction's roster of 'casters isn't as competitively deep as it could be otherwise.

Of course, as 'caster-kill is still a victory condition for most scenario games, assassination 'casters are still good. But army-buffing 'casters like Commander Douchebag are actually pretty good at scenario play.

My 15-point "Duel" slapped-together at the last minute list was:

Lieutenant Alister Caine (+6 Warjack points)
Ol' Rowdy character Ironclad warjack 9 points
Stormblades Unit 5 points
Stormblades Officer and Standard Unit Attachment
Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team

In scenario play, controlling objectives either requires solos or whole units, or warjacks. I hadn't considered this before building the list, and instead just went with stuff that I liked, had painted, and that is generally considered good.

I've already written about Caine, and I still like him alot. He has the potential, even without the Squire and Reinholdt, to put 4 reasonably accurate power-12 shots into a target. Against many warcasters a boosted power 12 will put a dent in them. And two fully boosted shots with another two focus left to Teleport away makes Caine a headache in small-points play. Further, his feat is great at murdering swathes of infantry, and can give an early points advantage.

The Stormblades are a glass cannon. They hit like trains, and hit like trains _twice_ with the UA, or once with the UA from a serious distance. However, they're not going to last through much engagement.

The Black 13th are elite gun mages who I've also already written about. When I roll poorly for damage they don't shine, but every once in a awhile they roll fire and they wreck shit.

Ol' Rowdy is the pet warjack of Stryker, and he's probably Cygnar's best warjack. He's stupid-accurate with his hammer, he's got above-average armor, he can pay a focus to counter-strike during the opponent's turn, and he can counter-charge (if an enemy model ends an advance within 6"of Rowdy and in Line-of-Sight, Rowdy can out-of-turn charge that model). He's goddamn dangerous. He's also built on the Ironclad chassis from the battlebox, and so his hammer has critical knockdown, and Rowdy can drop a reasonably accurate Earthquake as needed.

All of these models are solid choices in any army. In a small points game they performed well.

Round 1: Cygnar v. Khador

I'd told Mike, the local Press Ganger and tournament organizer, that this was my first ever WM tourney, and only my 15th game (something like 15, more than 10 and less than 20). He said I could play him in the first round, and since he was the TO it was an autowin. He also told us that anyone who actually beats him gets an extra prize, since we were autowinning anyway. He played Khador, known for high armor, slow jacks.

His list was
Kommander Harkevitch
Spriggan
Winterguard full unit
Winterguard Weapon attachment
Winterguard Unit attachment
Winterguard support solo (Kovnik Joe)

Harkvitch allows the slow Khador heavies to move more quickly, and they protect him while they stay close with a spell called Escort. The Winterguard are a common tournament sight, as the full unit described above is 13 dudes, and with Kovnik Joe supporting them they gain a lot of special rolls, including extra attack dice or Tough (harder to kill).The Spriggan is a shield-and-lance heavy warjack which also fires low-power area-of-effect grenades for clearing infantry.

Mike won the die roll and set up first. I set up across from him, splitting my deployment a little with the 'blades in the middle (they're slow, so I needed them as close to the action as could be), Rowdy and Caine a bit to the left (near some walls for cover), and the Black 13 on the right (on the other side of a building that took up a good part of the middle-right-center of the board.

We were playing a scenario that required us to get a lot of models into a control zone in the middle of the board and keep the enemy models out.

Mike just moved his guys up and made his winterguard Tough with Joe. That was good for them, because I got a crazy-lucky scatter on Ryan's Mage Storm that plopped into 4 winterguard and Harkevitch like 15 inches away from Ryan. Even with Tough I managed to kill 3 guys.

Caine then moved 7 and popped his feat, which allows him to fire a shot at everyone in range. He killed three or four more winterguard, then used his basic attacks to kill another. He put Blur on the Stormblades to shore up their ranged defense and Teleported to relative safety in cover.

Harkevitch moved up and managed to shoot Ryan. He kept Escort up, and then the ranged attacks came. Joe gave the winterguard boosted attack rolls, and the grenadier weapon attachment blew up a Stormblade. Then the rest of the winterguard moved up and shot, but didn't manage to actually kill much. The Spriggan had more luck, dropping two 3" grenades into the thick of the Stormblades and killing 3 more.

It seemed silly to upkeep Blur, so I dropped it. Rowdy charged a winterguard (as much to get into a favorable position as anything else) and missed it twice, rolling snake eyes twice in a row. Caine cast Snipe on himself to get more range and put two shots into winterguard, killing them. He bought another attack against Harkevitch, but missed. He then Teleported back a bit. The B13 moved around and shot Harkevitch, hitting once but doing no damage, since Harkevitch's armor was at 19. The stormblades Assaulted forward for ranged attacks (they were out of reach of their melee attacks) and managed to kill a few winterguard but again did not scratch Harkevitch.

Harkevitch had his winterguard harass Caine but they missed. He popped his feat, which gives armor to himself and the Spriggan for a round and allows Harkevitch and the Spriggan to make a ranged attack before charging. Between the two of them they killed the other four Stormblades. Kovnik Joe hid behind a hill.

Mike said that the round would be called after this turn, and decided to try something ballsy. Caine put two on Rowdy and then moved to get a good line to slam the Spriggan away from Harkevitch using Thunder Strike. He hit pretty easily, but I needed to roll a 4 or more to get rid f Harkevitch's Escort armor bonus (if he has a 'jack within 3 inches he gets +2 armor under Escort). Even without Escort, the Kommander was at 20 armor, which was gonna be tough to get through. Caine managed to roll a 6 on the slam, which also pushed the Spriggan out of the control area (so I could win by scenario even if my assassination failed). Caine took his two shots at Harkevitch and managed to do a couple points of damage. The last two B13 moved into the zone and shot Harkevitch in the back, and they rolled gangbusters, doing 8 or so damage to him.

Rowdy took a free strike from the winterguard in front of him, but he managed to charge over to Harkevitch, hit on the charge with a critical knockdown, and do an absurd amount of damage on the damage roll (harkevitch's 20 armor was good, but Rowdy's power 18 hammer and 12 on the dice did the trick).

So, that worked out well. Rube Goldberg it may be, but it was a lot of fun to pull off.

Round two: Cygnar v. Cygnar

In round two I found myself squaring off against Cygnar. It happens. In fact, there were at least four guys there who play Cygnar. My last opponent played Mercs instead, but he's got a sizable Cygnar force that I've seen him play. My opponent, Ignus, played this list:

Epic Stryker (Lord Commander Stryker, Epic Douchebag, Stormb Brigade, etc.)
2 Lancer light warjacks (as from the battlebox)
Stormblades
Stormblades UA (Officer and Standard)
Stormblades weapon attachment

I looked at the list and cringed a bit because I knew just what it could do. eStryker has some awesome spells, and plays much more aggressively than basic/prime/normal Stryker. I'll write him up more at a later date (I own him but have only used him once), but with Lancers he can arc a spell called Rebuke onto my units, which means they can't get orders (charging or running is an order, so it slows me down) or do special attacks. Stryker also has a spell that makes his Lancers much more formidable in melee combat (well, any 'jack really, but in this instance two Lancers).

However, my opponent gave me some chances. Epic Stryker allows Stormblades to Advance Move, meaning that after deployment they get to walk forward a bit, before either player's first turn. Ingus won the die roll and deployed his 'blades front and center, with a Lancer on each flank and Stryker behind. I deployed my B13 on the left-hand side near a huge forest, since they gain Prowl in cover, and the blades near the center to avoid some rock walls and get charge lanes. Rowdy and Caine took the right flank.

Ingus moved his 'blades up wit Advance move, then ran his whole army forward toward the middle of the board. We were playing a "take control of the center and opponent's side" control zone scenario, so we had to cross the field to get points. Or kill the other 'caster.

Caine Blurred the Stormblades, then moved up 7 inches and popped his feat on the bottom of turn one. He caught 6 Stormblades in that salvo and managed to kill all but one. He used his first normal pistol attack to kill the one that survived the feat, then cast Snipe on himself to extend his range and tried to kill another but missed on snake eyes (that's a lot of double aces so far tonight). He then Teleported to behind a wall. The rest of my army ran, either through the woods if they were the B13, or through the middle for the rest.

My opponent was disheartened, but soldiered on. He moved up a Lancer and then arced Rebuke onto the Stormblades (Blur did not help as much as I'd hoped during these games). His remaining 'blades milled around the center, knowing they were out of range of my own Stormblades since mine couldn't charge. His other Lancer engaged Rowdy with its spear, but didn't hurt the heavy 'jack much.

Rowdy mauled the Lancer in front of him in two swings, but it wasn't wrecked yet, so I felt I should move the Stormblades to finish it off and contest the center point. They tied up his other Lancer and wrecked the one bothering Rowdy. The B13 moved up in the woods and shot two more of Ingus' Stormblades, leaving him the Standard Bearer. Caine activated and moved up, killing the last Stormblade and taking a potshot at Stryker that missed. Then he Teleported back behind Rowdy again.

I didn't want to be anywhere near epic Stryker. He's a sword-toting wrecking ball. He can overboost his powered armor to gain a +xd6 Strength bonus during his turn, but takes xd6 damage as well. Until he's hurt he's dangerous. In the one game I played him, I wrecked a heavy 'jack with him and did like 14 damage to an enemy 'caster. He also has a ridiculous threat range and vector, since he has a spell that grants him an extra move once per turn of 2-6 inches depending on how many focus he spends, and his feat gives his whole army an additional 3 inches of movement and another melee swipe (including himself).

The remaining Lancer killed the 'blade engaging it. Stryker Rebuked the 'blades again, then moved up and killed two more of them.

I activated the B13 and they took shots at Stryker, hurting him a little but not much. Caine took a few shots but again didn't kill, just chipped away at him. Rowdy stayed back as cover for Caine. I engaged Stryker with 2 of my remaining 'blades but they failed to hit him (dude has some serious defense and armor stats to boot).

Ingus decided he needed to go for an assassination on Caine, and cast Velocity to move Stryker 6 inches away for a charge lane on my 'caster. This gave my Stormblades engaging him free strikes as Stryker left their engagement arc, and they stabbed him to death on his way out.

So two victories, both of which were unexpected. I wound up in the finals of the 8-player tourney, as after 2 rounds there were only two undefeated guys.

Round 3: Cygnar v. Mercs

My opponent, Andy, was playing Ashlynn, who was featured in my last visit to the Gamer's Sanctuary write-up.

Ashlynn
Mule heavy warjack
Precursor Knights
Precursor Knights Battle Chaplain and Standard Bearer
Boomhowler and Company

Andy's army was very tricksy. Ashlynn has a Quicken spell that allows a +2 movement, and Andy used it a LOT to move his guys inordinate distances. It also grants some ranged defense bonuses, and that certainly helped. We played on the same table as my last game, and I even played on the same side, as Andy had the most tournament points and got to choose table. He also won the die roll to choose to go first, but told me to set up first instead.

We were playing a "take an 8-inch circle Control Point on your opponent's half of the board" scenario.

I deployed and moved my guys much as I did in the last game, being the same table and all. Andy put Boomhowler and Co in the middle, with the Precursor's behind them, and the Mule and Ashlynn on his right (my left near the woods and B13) flank. Ashlynn gave Boomhowler and Co Quicken, and they ran 16 inches to threaten the center of the board. The Precursor Knights advanced behind in shield wall formation for extra armor. The Mule ran as well, but pretty slowly.

Caine saw the opportunity to wreak havoc and moved deep into the board to pop his feat. He personally killed one of Boomhowler's trollkin, knocking two others down (he killed them, but they made their Tough checks and were knocked down instead removed from play). He also killed 5 of the 8 Precursor Knights, and one of the remaining guys was the standard bearer, who is too busy praying to pick up a mace. That was a devastating blow to the backline. Caine took his initial attacks and managed to kill another trollkin outright, then Teleported to relative safety. My Stormblades activated and assaulted the remaining trolls, killing the two Caine had already killed once (Tough! *shakes fist*), leaving only one grunt and Boomhowler himself alive. Rowdy moved around a bit to threaten Boom howler. The B13 put out a bunch of shots but didn't manage to do much.

Ashlynn popped her ridiculous feat (all models making attack rolls in her control area for a round [her turn+my next turn] roll two extra dice, and Ashlynn chooses two to discard) and moved the Mule to fire a Steam Lobber shot at Caine. Caine was hiding behind a wall, but the Steam Lobber has Arcing Fire so it doesn't care about Caine's cover. However, he got unlucky and the shot missed Caine's 17 defense, even with five dice to choose from. (he needed a 12 on 3 of 5; got an 11 with 4,4,3,1,1) Ashlynn moved up and shot a Stormblade. Boom howler moved, and I had Ol' Rowdy countercharge him. Even rolling two extra dice didn't save him from Rowdy's hammer, and Boomhowler failed his Tough check. The last trollkin killed a Stormblade. The Precursors moved up in Shield wall to protect ashlynn.

I was winning decisively at this point, but I started playing sloppy, and Ashlynn's feat is difficult to weather. I took a lot of shots and missed most of them during my turn. Rowdy engaged the Precusors and the Stormblades killed the last Trollkin and managed to kill the Mule. Caine finished off the 'jack himself.

Ashlynn moved onto the wreck marker from her Mule and cast Quicken on herself to get bonus speed and defense against Caine's pistols. She cast Flashing Blade and killed all but two of my Stormblades.

I was really sloppy the next turn. I just shot at her with all my guys and had Rowdy mug a Precursor Knight, moving the last two 'blades to engage her. It was foolish, as she is incredibly dangerous in close combat. Further, I forgot to Teleport Caine away from her so that she couldn't stab him. Just poor play on my part.

Ashlynn ignores free strikes (whoops, forgot that) and walked past my Stormblades to get at Caine. She stabbed him twice and did a bunch of damage but he wasn't out yet. I moved the blades and Rowdy to block her advance and moved the Black 13th into the Scenario Objective. I got a control point, and as long as I held it I would win the game next turn. I teleported Caine 8 inches away from her.

She managed to get back at him with Quicken and stabbed him twice more, leaving him on 2 boxes. I won on Scenario.

It was then we realized that she is a weapon master and he should have rolled an extra die for damage four times. So he should have won. However, the TO let it stand as my victory, tainted though it was. Hey, I forgot to teleport Caine during one turn, and that stood, so I guess it's alright. I decided to split the first place prize (store credit) with Andy anyway, because I felt like he should have gotten that victory.

Ashlynn also should have killed my Stormblades for trying to stab her; she has Riposte. She's pretty badass, actually.

If I was a good player, I'd have used the B13 to clean the Precursor Knights off of Rowdy with Black Penny shots, then used Rowdy to fire a Boosted Tremor at Ashlynn while she was sitting on ridiculous defense. He would have needed a 9 (7 if he gets the back arc bonus) on three dice to knock her down (about a 60/75 percent chance), but if I had we wouldn't have even needed to worry about her weaponmastery.

Still it was good times. It was nice to play some scenarios and learn how to hold the objectives too. That's all stuff I'll need to know if I play in larger tournaments.

So, playing Caine against a lot of infantry in small points games is awesome.

-Merlin out

Late Bloomers

2011-06-25T16:07:00.001-07:00

I'm already a confessed electronic RPG fan, but I've also got an eye for nostalgia and 16-bit gaming systems. The Nintendo Wii has cornered the market on that. This is most fascinating to me because I bought the Wii to play the silly motion control physics type games. Then I figured out that those physics weren't all that versatile. However, there's a deep back catalogue of excellent RPG and adventure-RPG games on the Virtual Console service, and I've enjoyed several over the last few years.

Chrono Trigger: This is my latest download, and I'm really enjoying just about every aspect of it. The music is excellent, the story is deep and engaging, and the combat (the bread and butter of any RPG experience, though it is sometimes a grind) is fun. The combat system actually changes and grows differently depending on which characters the player decides to use from the roster, as there are dual and triple techniques that require more party members to execute.

This one threw me for a loop when my main character and virtual proxy was slain in a cutscene, and was gone for like 3 hours of gameplay while I completed an optional(?) sidequest to resurrect him. Most JPRGs tend to allow the player to focus all advances and powerups on that single character, without worrying for his safety. I foolishly did this, and I missed him while he was gone. 3.5

Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario: I'll lump these two together, as they're practically the same game. I was skeptical at first, as the art style of both games is, well, Mario-cartoon. They're "kid-friendly" titles as well, and while that tends to turn some people off, I've always been able to enjoy games in an objective space.

Quite simply, if a player can get past the art style and occasionally childish storyline, these games are fucking stellar. I couldn't put them down at some points. The music is amazing, the combat is engaging and awesome, and the writing is great. While all RPG stories are a bit contrived, the Mario RPGs spend a lot of time winking at those conventions, so a savvy player feels like they're always in on the in-joke. Kids won't get that, but since the games are kid-friendly they don't need to; they're still fun. 4.0

Dungeon Explorer: This is a bit of nostalgia for me, as a good friend had a Turbo-Graphix 16 when I was wee, and we played this game then. I played it a lot. However, I never beat it, as I never had the stretch of time at a friend's house necessary to play through a one-player game (it's rude?).

I picked it up to see how it holds up, and I was again pleasantly surprised. Most of the TG16 games I've bought aren't so good in retrospect, but Dungeon Explorer is a blast. It plays like Gauntlet II, but there's two types of magic which have specific effects for each of the dozen character classes. The Fighter and the Thief can beat the game straight through, with no continues, utilizing some strategy. The other classes have a rougher go of it, but it's a lot of fun all around. Good music to boot. 3.0

Final Fantasy whatever: it's the first game for the old Nintendo Entertainment System in the FF series. I guess it's actually like the third release in Japan but the first in the US? Whatever.

I've already given away the pun blind here in that I didn't enjoy this game much. The final fantasy games have, with a few exceptions, always been a mystery to me. I've never been particularly engaged by their story, and the gameplay feels more like a grind than a fun romp.

Final Fantasy Tactics breaks this mold, and I loved it. Final Fantasy Legend II for the Game Boy is another wonderful game (one of my all-time rags actually). But Final Fantasy for the NES is blah. I'm not down on the characters, the music, the combat. . .I just put it down one day and haven't returned. 1.5

The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time: this is often heralded as one of the best RPGs and one of the best console games in history. Nintendo even plans to release it again (and again, and again in all likelihood) on their 3D handheld. However, I didn't dig it all that much.

There's a difference between party-based RPGs and single-dude adventure RPGs, and for me that gap is huge. I want a deep roster of fantasy character tropes to work with in any game, and as fun as it was running Link all over the countryside, OOT just didn't do it for me in the long run. I was still just one guy all the time.

It didn't feed my fractured psyche at all.

The music was good, the chicken rescue missions were fine, and the story seemed good, but the insipid side quests and childish storyline were too much for me. It amazes me that Zelda games are too childish for me, but Paper Mario was not. Go figure. 2.0

Baby's room: painted.

Baby Furniture
: assembled.

Arcane Tempest Gun Mages: painted, based, and arced.

Harlan Versh, Illuminated One: painted, arced.

Precursor Knights painted (of 12):2

Number of VPs the Flint crew got at the NAC at origins this year: 1

-Merlin out

Location:The Hizzle

Silly Battle Report and Hobbyist Painting Schedule

2011-06-21T13:51:00.000-07:00

There's an open invite at the Gamer's Sanctuary in Flint to play Warmachine or the sister game of Hordes on Monday nights. I don't often get there to play, because the wife and I work and have a toddler, so getting out on a weeknight can be a bear. There's another wee one due soon, so that will liven things up further.

But I got to play last night. I got there a bit early, and started a demo of Malifaux with Adam, who is really interesting in showing people the game. It's clear that he likes it a lot. He said he enjoys it because it's a true skirmish game, meaning that a player doesn't need a lot of models to play the game and compete in tournaments. That's all good. He showed me the Lady Justice starter box, and I might pick it up, if only to play a smaller-scale minis game than WarMachine some time. Plus, the miniatures in question are gorgeous, and I'm enjoying the painting side of the hobby. More on that later.

After my demo I found that most of the guys I'd played with before were already getting their game on. So I had to make some new friends to get in a game. I wound up talking to two guys who wanted to play, and we wound up deciding to play a small-scale, three-player game of WM. At 15 points WM is very much like Malifaux described above, with not a ton of models on the table. Adding a third player can really mix it up. We decided to play "King of the Hill", inventing some scenario rules to encourage combat in the center. However, I wanted the scoring to reward aggressive play, while the other two did not. We wound up going with a less stringent point system, and I feel the game suffered for it.

It was still lots of fun.

Player A was a Protectorate of Menoth player, who played prime Scrutator Severius as his warcaster. He had the starter box as his starting point, so his 'jacks were a Revenger, Repenter, and Crusader. Then to pad out his list to 15 points he added a Hierophant, which is the Menoth equivalent of Cygnar's Squire, and a Vassal of Menoth mechanic to repair his 'jacks if they got wounded. Solid. He won the die roll and set up first in one corner of the board.

Player B was playing Mercenaries, specifically the Highborn Covenant mercenary contract, which can include any mercs who work for Cygnar. I own several of the models Player B used, including his warcaster Ashlynn D'Elise. He ran a single Mangler 'jack with her, instead using his points to buy 12 infantry in 6 Steelhead merc Halberdiers and 6 Cygnar ally/merc Percursor Knights, as well as having 3 points for one of the more dangerous merc solos in the game, Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios. Eiryss is downright nasty. He also had a one-point goblin who helps Ashlynn take extra shots. B set up in a central spot between and across from my own and A's deployment zones.

I decided to play a 'caster I've never used, epic warcaster Lord Commander Coleman Stryker, the leveled-up (or, "just different", according to some sources) version of the basic Cygnar posterboy. Epic Douchebag is a more melee-centric 'caster than prime Stryker, and he's got some powerful attacks that allow him to finish games on his own. He's dangerous. I decided to use some powerful troops to support wonderboy, giving him his character Ironclad Ol' Rowdy, a full unit of Stormblades with the UA, and the Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team. That's a lot of elite units to bring out to a small game, but I knew it would be an uphill battle.

Player A moved his 'jacks up super-slow and had Severius cast his awesome upkeep spells to help power and defend his warmachines. Player B raced around some terrain in his way, moving the halbardiers and Eiryss up one flank and the PKs and Mangler up the other. Ashlynn took center stage with her goblin buddy. Ashlynn also cast a Twister cloud in my direction, but it deviated away from the fight. I ran my whole crew closer to the center of the table, as victory conditions dictated that we must fight over it. The only exception was the Black 13th, who moved out on the flank, toward the Menoth 'jacks, and missed all their shots. However, Ryan's Mage Storm area-of-effect attack hurt the Crusader and Mechanic (the mechanic was what I wanted to kill, but poor damage roll. . .).

Player A actually backpedaled the next turn, dropping back and using the mechanic to heal the Crusader's damage and the Hierophant to heal the mechanic's wounds. I was surprised. Ashlynn moved up and got all in the objective with her troops. I knew that it was time to strike, so the Black 13th shot a few guys on Ashlynn's team, then Stryker himself shot a halbardier and cast an electrical storm on 3 others. The Stormblades charged in and finished off the halbardiers, but I knew that the counterstrike was going to hurt. Rowdy got close but didn't actually engage anything.

Player A again moved slowly, just moving his Revenger flamethrower 'jack to try and shoot Eiryss, who was threatening that side of the table. Turns out Eiryss is _really_ hard to shoot, as he defense is 16. Even with three dice the Revenger failed to hit. Other than that the Menites stayed pretty far back.

Ashlynn was not so conservative. Player B moved her up and used her feat, which forces two extra dice on every attack made within 12" of her until her next turn, and Player B gets to choose which two to drop. So everything on her side essentially hits during this turn, and everything on the counterstrike will probably miss. She also cast Distract on my Stormblades, meaning that they weren't as good at hitting or defending themselves. The Mangler and PKs killed all but three of the 'blades and hurt Rowdy pretty well (better than average damage rolls).

I had a hard time countering that, with Ashlynn's feat up my accuracy sucked. Stryker and the B13 were out of her Roulette-bubble, however, and the four of them fired some shots into combat, Stryker disrupting the Mangler and the B13 killing some PKs. The Stormblades charged the Mangler but only one hit through Roulette. He did some impressive damage to a heavy 'jack, but not really enough.

Player A stayed out of the fight and tried to crispy Eiryss again. Ashlynn & Co. hurt Rowdy some more, and the Mangler killed my remaining Stormblades. Epic Stryker really likes to have spare melee troops around to benefit from his feat, but with the 'blades gone I wasn't doing much. Eiryss moved over to threaten me instead of Severius. I had the B13 clean the PKs off of Rowdy, had Rowdy charge and kill Eiryss, and then had Stryker charge the Mangler himself. Ashlynn actually used her upkept Admonition spell to move behind the Mangler during this charge, and the Rowdy used his counter charge ability to try and rush and punch her. He missed, but he had her engaged. Ashlynn stabbed Rowdy for his temerity.

Stryker used his Overboost ability to hurt himself and gain additional strength for melee attacks. Then he chopped the Mangler into pieces himself in three quick swings. I used his feat to move over the wreck marker of the Mangler and stab the now-closer Ashlynn with a single attack which did a substantial amount of damage. Ashlynn's player was not pleased with the turn of events, as I'd managed to almost kill his warcaster, and besides her all he had was a goblin in the control zone.

Player A joined the fight finally, moving his flamethrower 'bot in and setting Ashlynn on fire (finally got a good roll, Ashlynn's defense is even better than Eiryss') and killing her. Player B was out of the fight. Player A moved his guys up a bit toward me and popped Severius' feat, which stops my 'caster gaining any focus next turn. Uncool.

At this point I was in some trouble, as I'd lost a huge chunk of my army, and Rowdy was hugely damaged, with his big hammer arm crippled (roll one less die to attack). Aside from Rowdy all I had was Stryker and the B13, and since the Menoth 'jacks had spread out a bit I moved up my guys and took potshots at Severius. The B13th rolled well and managed to do 10 wounds to him. Stryker shot his decent-power Magnum at the Repenter and disrupted it (it can't gain or use focus while disrupted).

Player A thought he had me dead bang at this point. He moved his flamethrower 'jack Repenter in to shoot, but as he couldn't give it focus he had to roll well. He _did_, setting Stryker and Rowdy on fire and doing several wounds to Stryker. The Revenger ran at the B13 and engaged two of them, killing one. Severius tried to convert the other B13, but I passed my command check.

He overextended, however, and Stryker managed to put the fire out (rolled a 1 or a 2 during the start of my turn, fire goes out. Otherwise stay on fire and take a Power 12 attack every. single. turn. until you roll a 1/2 during Maintenance phase) and walk close enough to get Sevvy in range of Magnum. Stryker squeezed the trigger and it was lights out for the Scrutator. Cygnar won the hill. Combined arms FTW.

It was a weird game. We should have set more aggressive point-gaining conditions, as we were playing to three points, but after our 5 or 6 turn game (which took more than two hours) no one had scored ANY points. Next time I'll lobby for better chances at getting points.

I think I'm going to Gen Con, but I'm going to want to paint a lot of stuff before I get there:

Epic Nemo warcaster
Constance Blaize warcaster
Heavy warjack kit mainly for Defender or Gallant
Storm Strider battle engine
Harlan Versh
Epic Eiryss
Archduke Runewood
Full Unit of Precursor Knights and Battle Chaplain (12 models)
and Full Unit of Arcane Tempest Gun Mages

I've got like 5 weeks to paint A LOT of stuff, and I'm gonna have a new daughter soon. I hope I can get it all done.

-Merlin out

Battle Report: Newness

2011-06-18T20:35:00.001-07:00

There's a new Warmachine book out, and it's all the rage with the scene. I like it quite a bit, though as a newer player the shiny newness doesn't have quite the same appeal to me. I played a game with Ray, using proxies to represent the new models which have not yet come out. Ray wanted to try the new Sanctifier heavy warjack for the Protectorate of Menoth, and I wanted to try out a lot of Cygnar newness.

Our lists were, at 50 points:

Me playing Constance Blaize, Knight of the Prophet +6 points
* Gallant 9 points
* Squire 2 points

Journeyman Warcaster 3 points

Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team 4 points
Captain Arlan Strangewayes 2 points
Archduke Runewood 3 points
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution 3 points
Harlan Versh, Illuminated One 2 points
10 Precursor Knights 8 points
* Precursor Knight Officer & Standard 2 points
Stormblades 5 points
* Stormblade Officer & Standard 3 points
** Stormclad 10 points

My opponent ran High Executioner Servath Reznik +6 points
* 2x Sanctifier 9 points each
* Scourge of Heresy 9 points
* Hierophant 2 points

4 Choir of Menoth 2 points
5 Exemplar Cinerators 8 points
10 Idrian Skirmishers 10 points
* Idrian Skirmisher Chieftain & Guide 3 points
Vassal of Menoth 2 points
3 Wracks 1 point
1 Covenant of Menoth 2 points, but that's a point too many. . .I gotta remember to add these things up for my opponent. :p

My foe won the roll to go first and decided to deploy a 'jack wall in the middle of the table, with the Scourge front and center and the Sanctifiers running its flanks. Reznik came behind them. The Idrians found some cover in the woods near the center-right (my right, I guess) of the table and declared their prey to be the Black 13th. The Cinerators came down the center-left of the table, climbing toward a hill on that half of the map. The book said no knockdown and the choir no shooting. The Idrians dug in in the woods, making them tough to get rid of. Reznik cast Iron Aggression on one sanctifier and Ignite on the Cinerators.

The no shooting thing was funny, because my army wasn't shooty at all, I set my Precursor Knights in the middle of the table, with the Stormblades on their left a bit (across from his Cinerators) and the Black 13th and Harlan Versh on the right. Behind the infantry in the center left was my 'caster, 'jacks and support solos. Epic Eiryss was on the left flank up a bit for Advanced Deployment.

I moved the PKs up in Shield wall for armor. The Stormblades ran toward the same hill the Cinerators were approaching. Eiryss put a bolt into the Cinerators to remove Ignite, staying a good distance away. The 'jacks and support moved up behind the melee wall, and the Black 13th moved behind the Precursors a little to screen them from the Idrians who were hunting for their blood. Harlan moved up just a bit. Constance put Banishing Ward on the Stormblades, so that both of the frontline melee units were immune to Reznik's Perdition tricks.

Next turn saw the book giving flaming attacks to all the Idrians, who immediately moved up and took some potshots at my guys. They set Versh, the Stormblade Officer, and a couple of my grunts on fire, but they failed to penetrate anyone's armor. The 'jack wall moved up a bit, with one Sanctifier running to move up behind the Idrians. This is the one with Iron Aggression on it. The Vassal Enlivened it as well. Reznik recast Ignite on the Cinerators, but they were out of range to hit anything with their charge. Choir said no shooting again.

Then the shit hit the fan. Harlan and the PK managed to douse their flames but the two Stormblades on fire died horribly. I activated Constance early and cast Crusader's Call to give all the troops +2 inches on a charge and then popped her feat. I realized later that all her (faction) models get this hookup, which also spikes the threat range on her 'jacks. Nice. I moved Runewood to get a shot at an Idrian blocking the PK's charge lane to the IA Sanctifier, gave the PKs +2 to their charge attack and Terror, and blasted the Idrian off the table. I had the PKs charge into the IA Sanctifier and the Idrian front runners (there were 4 and the UA hiding in the woods still). The PKs managed to do some hurt to the Sanctifier, but not much. I had decided not to pop their minifeat for extra damage yet. Two of them died to free strikes I incurred intentionally to get more guys at the Sanctifier.

The Black 13th and Harlan took a few shots and managed to kill an Idrian, but it was tough with the cover and the few who were available were engaged by Precursor Knights. Harlan straight up missed his first shot, which of course meant he wasn't much use. I then had Gallant activate and charge the IA Sanctifier, using reach and an opened left by a murdered PK to get to it. He did about 15 boxes of hurt with the two focus he had (one from Arlan and one from Morrow accumulator). The Stormblades charged in and all but erased the Cinerators from the board. There was one left after their charge, and the Stormclad mugged it too. Again I lost a grunt to a free strike during this, and it put Constance at 3 soul tokens for the next turn. Eiryss killed a member of the choir. I had Junior move the Arcane Shield from the Stormclad to Gallant, since the Stormclad was now close enough to both Reznik and Scourge to be a victim.

My foe dropped Iron Aggression, deciding not to kill the PKs screening his 'jacks. The Idrians decided to whack the Black 13th, and the paper-thin trenchcoat armor of those elite gun mages wasn't bolstered enough by Constance's feat to save them. He managed to kill a few more PKs with Scourge and the other Sanctifier, but now Constance had 9 souls on her, and things were gonna get ugly for him next turn. He moved Reznik up and cast Engine of Destruction to make him a death machine. His plan was to wreck the Stormclad with Reznik and then hide behind the wreck, then use his remaining focus to Perdition and move the second Sancifier closed to Constance.

He rolled poorly on his first two damage rolls (3 and 4 on two dice, i think), which meant he had to keep burning focus to make sure the Stormclad didn't just end Reznik next turn. He got two good rolls after that, but then Reznik was low on focus and the Stormclad was still up, though heavily damaged (all systems but movement crippled). Reznik bought one more attack, stabbed a PK to death, wracked it, then tried to Perdition the second Sanctifier closer, but Junior's armor was at over 20 by now, and Reznik was out of focus to boost damage. He did kill two more Stormblades with the other Sanctifier (now both Sancs were flush with focus from souls, since we're playing SoulMachine, cue the Parliament Funkadelic y'allz!) by stabbing the wrack and making it explode around them in a pow 14.

He wanted to Perdition the 'blades, but of course I still had them warded, and the PKs have Spell Ward all the time. It was nice. For me. The Covenant said no spells, Reznik popped his feat and waited for the hammer to fall. Under Reznik's feat I couldn't allocate to Gallant, and my upkeeps all dropped. That was all right, as I was starting to realize that Constance's threat range and ability to stab things is pretty good with Gallant involved. I activated the PKs and tripped their minifeat for extra damage dice and they managed to finish the formerly-Iron Aggressioned Sanctifier, which freed Gallant to move around. They also pounded some Idrians down. Harlan killed the three who'd come out to get the Black 13th with his Quad Iron.

Then I had the Stormclad get out of the way of my Shenanigans, as it was blocking Constance's charge lane. I had Arlan give a focus to Gallant (it's worded as "gains a focus" instead of "allocate", and Reznik's feat stops allocations, so I think that's legit?) so that it could run over to Reznik and give Constance the flanking bonus. Runewood gave Constance a +2 to her first charge attack and (needlessly) Terror. Constance's 11-inch charge with 2-inch reach was more than enough to get to Reznik, and even if the hill was rough terrain Runewood could have given her Pathfinder.

She cast Crusader's Call for that extra 2 inches of threat, and with her remaining 12 focus she charged in a finished the High Executioner. In two swings with the flanking bonus. Nice.

Aftergame points:

The Sanctifier was pretty solid, since I needed to get rid of Idrians to get to him, and they just powered his decently-fast, reach heavies. My opponent has been honing a Reznik list that normally includes a Guardian and the Vilmon+Paladins module instead of the two Sanctifiers. I'm not sure the two Sancs were better, but maybe. The Paladins probably would have been eaten up by the enchanted maces of PKs, but you never know.

Gallant was all right. In fact, I never allocated to it from Constance. Arlan and the Morrowan bonus were pretty good to get it going. I probably should have given it one the turn it charged the IA'd Sanc, but alas.

Runewood was good as a Pathfinder insurance policy, and he did manage to pick off a key model with his handgun in a jam. That was cool. He made the PKs insanely accurate on their charge turn as well, and I liked that a lot.

Constance is interesting to me for a number of reasons. First, I did not cast many spells with her. I'm a newer player, and I like pCaine and pHaley, and I'm always strapped for focus. With Constance, I cast Banishing Ward turn one, and Crusader's Call turn two and three. That's it. If I wasn't able to get to Reznik on the last turn I would have cast Transference and used my focus to bolster the attacks of the remaining Stormblades and PKs (would have walked around the crippled Sanctifier to get to him too), but she's quite light on the spellcasting. That's alright, as her 16 armor gets a decent boost from camping a bit.

Crusader's Call is super deluxe awesome. She helps her whole force get that charge. Stormblades can Assault 10 inches, and PKs 11. Moreover, her 'jacks get the benefit as well, so the Stormclad and Gallant both had 12-inch threats with their reach. It was nice.

I briefly considered a Centurion with her, as it can then charge 9 with reach for an 11-inch threat, but then it gives up its no-charge * action, so. . .maybe? With Sword Knights marshaling it it can Pronto as well, for a 15-inch threat! But mediocre mat might discourage some. Still, interesting options.

-Merlin out.

Great Lakes Qualifier Report

2011-06-06T17:43:00.001-07:00

I played a version of the deck I played at this tournament last Origins.

Round 1: Paul (ishatarri ven Tap/bleed)-->> John K(? Muaziz does something)-->> Sean K( g6 Salubri Marionette)--> Me (Shadow Out of Time v5)

Things went pretty badly for John and myself early. The tourney was 16 players, so that meant 4 player tables. I find that this sort of thing makes for odd tourneys. Alas.

I had a slow start. John got up 4 Tremere (3 little ones and Muaziz). I got Nehemiah and Tyler. Tyler got Mind Numbed early, which hurt. Nehemiah still brought a Reckless into the house, but Sean was a consistent bleeder and I hadn't draw a Villein yet.

Paul was the winner for all this. His Mustafa and Ubende were hurting my votes a lot, and Shasa was bleeding hard with Legal Manip and Uncontrollable Impulse. Usually after some Mind Numb/Freak Drive action.

John stayed alive for awhile, but eventually succumbed. The table leveled a bit. I was gaining pool each turn at least, and Paul was hurting now as he'd gotten up Victor P and made him Prince of Paris. Worse for him, Sean had Serena the black, who is Greta Kirscher with a third eye bonus.

The game turned on a single play. Sean got a Pulse on Serena, and then bled with the Marionette. I had an Archon Investigation. I knew that burning her would help Paul immensely, but he was low on pool and I had the cards in hand I needed to oust him.

I played the Archon. Tyler bled for two at stealth, but Paul had the Scalpel Tongue he needed (and I didn't have the Hall of Hades Court) to cancel Nehemiah's votes during the KRC ousting referendum.

Paul then ousted us both in quick succession.

Paul: 4VP and GW

Game MVP: Mind Numb. Slow down your predator, oust your prey.

Round 2: Me--> Dave S (Alan Sovereign wall street wall)--> Devin (The Reg Driscoll show)--> Matt (!Sal bleedbox)

Matt was an effective predator. His deck actually had a lot of blood denial elements with burning touch, hide the heart, and Greg winter all making an appearance. He got out Langa, Nketchi, two Bros in Arms, and Greg early. That was a lot of minions coming my way.

I got Nehemiah and Giangaleazzo, but Gian got mugged early by Langa after an aggressive Villein. He never quite recovered. Nehemiah stole Greg, but Dave blocked pretty much everything for a while.

Dave got General Perfido, Alan merged, and Piotr. Alan got a gun and the general anima gathered him. Piotr got a lawyer for plus bleed.

Devin got a Soul Gem and a Presence skill on Reg. Then he played Little Mountain every turn and forgot to draw a Freak Drive for a bit.

I did not do well with a single minion and Alan blocking everything. Worse, Matt got Uriel with Bashee Ironwail. He bleed for 5 using all his guys.

I made a crazy deal to refill Nehemiah by voting for something that wouldn't hit Dave. I called a neonate breach and hit Devin for 1 and Matt for 4. Devin saw his chance and became a sudden predator, bleeding for 5 unblockable with Reg, burning him with Daring the Dawn, and then bleeding again with new Reg.

With Matt gone I managed to hit Dave for 3-4 pool per turn, but his portfolio was too deep for me to do lasting damage. I begged Devin not to oust me, but he did. Dave got him in the two player. No GW and no MVP.

Round 3: Ryan (HoS bleedbox)--> Me--> Kevin (Weenie vote with TEN Kaymakli Nightmares)--> Alayna (DoC vote)

I knew what Kevin was playing because he'd wrecked Robb earlier in the day. I'd also played against his deck on another occasion so it was known to me. So. . .when I had the opportunity to bring up Shawda Dorrit by turn two I took it. Her three votes turned his deck from a table nightmare at a four player to a weenie bleed nightmare for Alayna.

She got two DoC, but the weenie pressure was high and she could not afford more. Ryan got Byzar and Viuda Blanca.

I also got Nehemiah and Mylan up, but it took a long time. I actually didn't do much until Nehemiah showed up, though I did make Kevin put some damage on himself with KRCs, while he was bleeding the hell out of Alayna.

I didn't get any Dominate, so my Deflections were dead cards. Ryan did bleed me a bit with Trochomancy, and got a Pulse on Byzar later. His main contribution to predatorhood was milling two cards per turn with a Slaughterhouse.

The game fell into my lap from there. I waited until Kevin was going to oust Alayna on his next turn and ousted him before he had the chance. Alayna was on 3 pool by then. She lunged unsuccessfully at Ryan, passing a big nasty Reckeless that was unblockable, but her three bleed got blocked.

Ryan failed to oust me, but I actually did not draw another pool damaging vote with my 8 cards + Nehemiah goodness. Still, with Mylan I was able to bleed for three with my three guys. Ryan bled ms a couple times, but now Giangaleazzo had joined my ready region and I did draw some KRCs.

Me 4VP and GW.

Game MVP: Shawda Dorrit, for being cheap and votey and just what I needed to win this game.

I did not make the finals by a half VP ( I was actually 7th of 16 players with a single game sweep, behind Alayna's 4VP and GW on tournament points. David Wilson, who organized the event, posted a redaction of the finals on the Michigan VTES Facebook page.

I'm having trouble generating a link to a Facebook page for linkiness here. Perhaps David will mosey by and leave some info in the comments here. I'd quote him out of context but. . .

I played my Al Muntaquim Chainsaw deck in a pickup game during the finals, but the Lambach on my left wouldn't let me get a Magic Chainsaw, and the game devolved into mutual bullying. It broke when my predator decided to oust me, and then the Lambach player, in quick succession. My Caitiff had just finished munching on the last Tzimisce, too.

Ah well. It does what combat decks often do: it wrecks it's predator and then loses spectacularly.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone y'allz

Location:Ypsilanti MI

Battle Report and VTES

2011-05-31T06:57:00.001-07:00

Managed to play a game of WarMachine and one of VTES this weekend. I have been itching to play my Caine list again (well, one of them; I've got a few) and I just modified my African deck for the Qualifier next weekend.

Battle Report: Cygnar v Blindwater

I played a pretty basic PCaine list, with a few modules that I wanted to try out. For instance, I wanted to use the much-maligned Gun Mage Captain Adept to shore up Caine's terrible Command check. I also wanted to try The Dude Marshaling a Charger, with Arlan backing them up for bonus focus.

All that went fine. I still played pretty badly and my dice weren't helping out. I gave the Gatormen a run for their money, but on the turn that counted I tried to do something cute instead of winning outright, and it cost me the game. Matt played well, for sure, keeping his anti-range stuff up to stop me from mugging his caster.

Issues I had:

Occultation is a cool spell that prevents my ranged attacks from hitting a model/unit. Matt kept it on key units all game, and his warlock at the end.

Thunder Strike is cool and all, but not very reliable as a striking engine. Go with 4 pistol blasts where possible.

Terrain is a bitch.

Then we played a quick game of VTES.

Devin(Huitzi Baali Tend)--> Ray (John Woo Garou) --> Matt (g2 Gio Zombies)--> Me (Are you an African or an African't?)

This was an odd game. Devin brought out Huitzi and that's it for a while. Ray got Ramona and Guiliano, and merged Ramona fast.

Matt got out Gloria and Lia Milliner.

I got out Kenyatta and Urenna early, with Fish right behind them. I computer hacked and predator's mastery'd Devin for a three bleed early. I also managed a KRC to get my Ishtarri a Kholo title within the first few turns.

Ray did some weirdness. He got out TWO Renegade Garou (Ramona had two vessel on her) and gave one a .44. He then assumed he could bully the table at his leisure. He did NOT rush matt early, and when he did he deliberately did not knock Gloria into torpor.

I was a little bent about this. All while be was doing so he kept looking over at my ready region. I told him that he really shouldn't worry about me this early, but he wanted Matt to keep the pressure on me.

I ran out of forward steam with Matt rushing and bleed with all his guys each turn. I had to leave a healthy guy up to block the inevitable Zombie rush. All the while I was complaining to Ray.

Devin was lower on pool, but he got an Unleash Hell's Fury in play, which slowed me down considerably. He also began to bleed Ray for 5-6 with Huitzi every turn. Ray, who'd spent down to 10 to get his setup going, began to go full backwards. Devin had two Majesty for the two werewolves.

Ray pool cycled into 7 pool again so he had at least one more turn. Matt mugged me some more and summoned a fresh Horde after I killed the first finally (I was deliberately not killing it for a while).

I sacrificed my Kholo to Daring the Dawn bleed Devin down to 3 pool, but I did not draw the two stealth I needed (or the Strange Day) to oust him.

Devin bled Ray for 6 again.

Ray pool cycled back to 5 pool and rushed backward twice again. Again Devin had two Majesty. Ray was exasperated.

Matt mugged me some more. He Graverobbed my Kholo as well. Go Matt.

I bled Devin and lost another minion to Unleash Hell's Fury. Still no result. Devin bled Ray for 5 to oust him.

All the while I was telling Ray that if he'd kept on Matt early the table might have broken the other way. It was, after all, a four-player game.

Matt got Devin in the two-player after the table broke, the wrong way. ;)

Matt: 3VP and GW, Devin 1VP

MVP: Graverobbing. That hurt my game a lot and helped Matt's all at once.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone y'allz

Location:Flint MI

Warcaster Focus: John Woo (Anti-)Hero

2011-05-29T06:46:00.001-07:00

I wanted to call him a "John Woo Film Protagonist" but everybody in a John Woo film has the same basic flavor.

Lieutenant Alister Caine is a two-pistol slingin', moody, insubordinate jackass of a warcaster. I decided to buy him because he was cheap, and he looked like a lot of fun. He is a lot of fun.

Stats:
Caine has some extraordinary stats. His speed is incredible at 7, making him one of the fastest warcasters in the game. His melee attack and strength are abnormally low, but this is offset by his awesome ranged attack score of 8. Caine hits even the fastest light infantry on average rolls, and he can hit other fast warcasters (16 defense is common on quicker 'casters) if he aims (forfeits his movement to get a +2 bonus to ranged attack rolls) most of the time. His armor stat is ridiculously low, and he doesn't have a lot of damage boxes, so any hits are going to hurt and even blast damage can get to him. His defense is unusually high at 17, which can make the difference against non-area attacks. His focus is the low end of average at 6, and because of this deciding how to use Caine's focus each turn can be tough.

Caine has a special ability called Range Amplifier. If he's the point if origin for a spell he casts (so any spell not cast through an arc node like the Lancer) it gains +5 range. That's awesome.

Spells:

Caine has two awesome upkeeps in Blur and Snipe, both of which I talked about in my Stryker post. Blur adds defense against ranged attacks for a unit, and Snipe adds range to a unit's guns. Caine can of course use them on himself as well. Blur would give him a whopping Defense 20 against ranged attacks (great against ranged armies), and Snipe makes his guns even more effective.

Caine also has the Deadeye spell, which gives a model or unit an additional d6 on their first ranged attack roll that turn. This isn't an upkeep, so it can be cast on multiple units per turn and will stack with an upkeep spell on the unit. So Caine can give an extra attack die to every shot the Black 13th make, for instance, and all while under the influence of Snipe.

Offensively, Caine has a spell called Thunder Strike. It costs 4 of his 6 focus, but it's an impressive attack. It hits a model with a power 14 attack and it slams that model d6 inches directly away from Caine. Models that are slammed and models hit by models during a slam are all knocked down, so Caine can get an accuracy buff to his troops to hit the slammed model or whatever was hiding behind it (warcasters should be wary of hiding behind their 'jacks with Caine lurking around).

Lastly, and most irritating for opponents, Caine has a spell called Teleport. Teleport moved Caine to a spot within 8 inches of his position and ends his activation. So Caine can hit and run like crazy, walking his 7 inch speed and then teleporting back to safety behind a screening unit after making some pistol attacks. This particular spell irritates the hell out of some players.

Weapons:

Caine has a sword, but he's terrible with it and should never ever use it willingly. His real bread and butter are his twin spellstorm pistols, a couple magical-weapon hand cannons with 12 inch range, power 12, rate-of-fire 2 stats. Using his focus and impressive 8 RAT, Caine can fire 4 reasonably accurate and decently damaging shots each turn. That clears out a lot of infantry. If he gets a bead on an enemy caster he actually has enough focus to boost 4 damage rolls as well, and "boosted power 12s kill 'casters" is an idiom that experienced players often chant to newer players.

So Caine himself can be a decent assassin.

He's like MAT 4 with a power 8 sword, so if the enemy can engage him, chances are he's in some serious trouble.

Feat:

Caine's feat is called maelstrom. His front arc extends to 360 degrees and he makes one normal spellstorm pistol attack against every enemy model that he can see within his control area (focus stat x 2 or 12 inches). He ignores intervening models, so squishy units hiding behind tough units are getting shot as well. All of these attacks are boostable.

It's a lot of infantry hate, really, though I have seen Caine wreck a light warjack with decent damage rolls on his pistols. He's a one-man show during the feat, and it can gain accuracy bonuses just like other shots: he can forfeit his movement before the feat to get a +2 aiming bonus. It also suffers normal penalties, so shooting into melee will be at the usual -4 penalty (represented in game as a +4 defense buff for units engaged).

Normally the feat gets popped early, so Caine's troops can focus on other problems. Also,Caine will hit more than half of most enemy forces on his feat turn, so he's good at attrition battles. If the forces have already clashed then he loses some accuracy, which could make it fougher to win the attrition war.

Overall:

Caine's kind of a dick. There's a couple irritating strategies that Caine has available to him that can seriously frustrate opponents. Using his high speed and teleport spell, Caine can "kite", moving forward to take a couple shots and then teleporting away. He's great at hit and run for this reason.

He can also support a ranged army quite well with spells. Any unit that has some kind of critical effect (roll two of the same number on an attack roll to crit) on their guns will love his Deadeye spell, and he can "hotswap" Snipe in addition. Hotswapping is when a 'caster puts an upkeep buff like Snipe on a unit on turn one during the advance. Then the next turn Caine pays to upkeep the spell on that unit during his maintenance phase.

During activation, the unit with Snipe takes their go early. They benefit from the enhanced range. Then Caine activates and puts snipe on another unit who could use some range. This removes Snipe from the first unit. However, through careful turn ordering two units can gain the benefits of a single upkeep spell.

I haven't had much success with Caine, but he's still lots of fun to play.

Melee Power: F, None to speak of. If Caine is stabbing something with his pathetic sword, something has gone terribly, horribly wrong, and you are losing.

Ranged Power: B+. I'm tempted to go higher here, since Caine can quite easily get 5 accurate power-12 shots per turn, and many more than that on his feat turn. However, there are a few Cygnar 'casters that simply have more stopping power than Caine. He's got a lot of shots, but against a warcaster camping several focus or a heavy they won't do much.

Magic Power: C. Caine has a tough go of his focus each turn. He's either shooting the crap out of enemy models himself and using focus to help, or he's supporting his army with Snipe and Deadeye all over the place, or he's casting one ThunderStrike. It costs 4 of his 6, and he nearly always wants to boost, so we're talking 5 focus minimum most of the time. That can be a tough choice. If Thunderstrike slams Caine's target to oblivion or knocks down the enemy 'caster for ranged assassination, then it's bananas. If something goes wrong, Caine is boned and his army isn't feeling the love either.

Melee Support: C-, Caine's Blur spell helps deliver a low-defense unit like Stormblades or Stormguard forward. With Snipe and Deadeye Stormblades can Assault across 14", which is butch. It's ranged support for a melee troop, however.

Ranged Support: A, Caine has Snipe _and_ Deadeye, which are two of the best ranged buffs in the game. Only 'casters with Guided Fire and eHaley do ranged support this well for Cygnar.

Magic Support: D, Caine's Blur can again be used defensively against magic-heavy opponents, but Caine doesn't support his own spellcasters well.

Tricksiness: B-. Caine has a few modes, and his startling speed and pile of magical gunshots give him a lot of threat vectors. Thunderstrike can keep his opponents away from screening warjacks, lest he slam one into the caster and fill them full of spellstorm shots. Even when he's cowering in the back, his buffs are likely making a huge difference on the battlefield.

Rating: 3.0

Lists with pCaine:

15 points:

pCaine Ol' Rowdy (9), Stormblades + UA (8), Black 13th(4)

Caine + Defender (9), Arcane Tempest Gun Mages + UA (8), Reinholdt (1), Gorman di Wulfe or Squire(2), Stormcaller (1)

25 points:

Caine + Rowdy (9), ATGM + UA (8) + Hunter or Arlan +Charger (6), Rangers (5), Reinholdt (1), Squire (2)

Caine + Hunter + Hunter (12), Stormblades +UA + WA (11), Archduke Runewood (3), Black 13th (4), Reinholdt (1)

35 points:

Caine + Rowdy (9), ATGM +UA + 2 Hunters (20), Archduke Runewood (3), Stormblades + UA + 1 WA (9)

Caine + Defender (9), Squire (2), Stormblades +UA+ 3 WA (11), Reinholdt (1), Stormclad (10), Arlan Strangewayes (2), Black 13th (4), Gorman di Wulfe (2)

50 points:

Tiered, Caine +Stormclad (10), ATGM+UA (7) w Hunter and Defender (15), ATGM +UA (5) w Hunter and Defender (15), Black 13th (4)

Caine + Rowdy (9), Squire(2), Reinholdt (1), Stormblades + UA + WA (11) + Stormclad (10), Arlan (2), Rangers (5), Black 13th (4), Journeyman (3), Runewood (3), Gorman (2), Harlan (2), GMCA (2)

-Merlin

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Daft Duffin Draft

2011-05-27T12:52:00.001-07:00

Sometimes the wife and I like to play two-player games, and as I'm a CCG type of dude I've roped her into playing those. We occasionally play starter-deck VTES (relatively level playing field) two-player, and I even got her to draft Magic: The Gathering a few times with me. That's a lot fo fun.

I managed to get a box of 3rd edition boosters for $30 around these parts, and it's been sitting around for a few months gathering dust. The little lady asked if we could draft them somehow and I jumped at the chance to play some VTES with her. I suggested the Duffin Draft format, though we didn't follow it exactly. She hadn't played that way before, which took some explaining, but we got going eventually.

The variations we used were twofold: 1. Players have unlimited transfers to influence out vampires, and 2. We didn't actually draft. We just opened a pack and played it. Drafting with only two players is lame anyways, as both people know what everyone's playing after the first pass, so it removes some of the surprise inherent to draft.

We played three games, but the first was friggin' epic in scale, lasting the better part of an hour, which is insane for two-player Duffin Draft.

The packs:

Me: Paolo De Castille (4-cap Las pot ani dom), Luca Italicus (10-cap Las POT OBT NEC FOR DOM tha) Archbishop kung fu special, Klaus Konrecht (8-cap !Tor AUS CEL PRE pot for Cardinal), Chiropteran Maurader (draft = Fake Out), Decapitate, Pushing the Limit, Rafastio Ghoul, Instability, Leather Jacket, Corrupt Construction (useless in this context), Sibyl's Tongue (useless).

I thought that this was actually pretty hot. Not only did I have a Master Card, but as long as i didn't have the edge in a two-player game, I could play Instability to gain two pool and recycle it every turn. I also had two permanents in the Leather Jacket and Rafastio Ghoul. Having an extra bleeder might be nice, and protection while I'm trying to use the FIST cards I drew would be welcome.

My wife, unfortunately, got an amazing pack:

Jonathan Gursel (3-cap !Tor aus pre), Ulrike Rothbart (3-cap !Ven for dom), Mugur Sabau (9-cap !Gan PRO OBF NEC CEL vic Archbishop diablerie special), Stealth Ritus (strong in draft!), Stunt Cycle (useless), Templar (Relatively useless), Helicopter (amazing), Direct Intervention (christ), Restoration (draft: dom as for), Guard Dogs (draft: basic wake!), Art Scam (draft: burn the edge to gain 2 pool as a +1 stealth action)!

My master plan of pulling up Luca for his giant diamond FISTing skills and then getting a Leather Jacket as insurance and defending my pool while gaining via Instability was awesome. But the wife pulled up her two three caps, bled every turn with stealth so that she didn't have to fight Luca, and got a Helicopter on Ulrike. Every turn thereafter she'd take the extra Helicopter action to gain two pool with Art Scam.

So in a format known for the lack of pool gain, I was gaining a net of one per turn even with her bleeding (only one could sneak past Luca safely, and she correctly didn't take any chances), and since I couldn't bleed if I wanted to force her to play Stealth Ritus she was gaining a net of three pool per turn. I was losing the long game, and in Duffin Draft normally the guy with the long game (if he's lucky enough to have it) does pretty well. Worse, when I tried to even the odds by recruiting my Rafastio Ghoul, she'd DI it!

I made a play by getting Paolo out once I thought I had enough pool to outlast her. Then I was actually bleeding every turn as well, and he could play my fist cards at basic to bully her guys. Funny thing was, she thought that she needed animalism to play the draft version of Guard Dogs, so she never tried to block me. At this point I thought I'd have her, but then she also realized she could influence out another minion, and she had12 friggin' pool (three per turn is a lot since I was giving her the edge with Instability and then she'd burn it for Art Scam). So she got up Mugur with only 3 pool on the side.

I managed to get her down to one, but she was bouncing back every turn since she could outbleed me. I did finally punch someone for 3 with Luca (she DI'd the Pushing the Limit so I had to Decapitate him), but it was fresh Mugur so he didn't hit the bin.

I still was doing well until I told her she should check her down cards (she'd set her useless cards aside so they wouldn't distract her) now that she had another minion. She told me she couldn't play any of them. I reminded her to check the draft text. She asked if she needed animalism to play the drafty version of Guard Dogs. When I said she could my fate was sealed. Now she essentially had a two-minion advantage AND a Helicopter to keep her poolgain moving.

I didn't last much longer after that.

Hilarious game of Duffin Draft, though.

Quick VTES rundown

2011-05-15T16:58:00.001-07:00

We played three VTES games yesterday. Things went south from the start rather quickly.

Game 1:

Matt (G2 Gios w Zombies)>>> Me (are you an African or an African't?)>>> Ray (Lucretia Trophy)>>> Robb (Nergal is a pretty good minion)>>> Sean (G4-5 Malks)

My deck has three weenies from each of the Laibon clans and 10 Abombwe skills. I use the stealth and bleed from Abombwe to weenie bleed a bit, and eventually I get a couple Kholo titles and call votes.

My crypt draw was not so good. It often isn't, and i'm considering modifying the deck to remove one of the four clans now that KotEK has increased my small-cap selections. I got two each of the Osebo and Guruhi.

This was a pain because it meant the Akunanse Kholo in my hand was dead and needed to go. I guess having a confident discard is good?

Anyway. Ray got Dimple early, Robb got a bad crypt draw and had to influence up Eurayle and use an Anarch Convert to dig for Nergal, Sean got Keller Thiel and Bloody Mary, and Matt got Ambrogino.

I got Ismita and Urenna Bunu, and eventually Lumumba and Kamaria. I beat up Dimple and bled Ray for quite a few with my weenie bleed tech.

I had an early Consevative Agitation, but without Kholos to go with it the table conspired to fail it.

Ray was on the ropes, but he managed to get up Lucretia and Tusk. Robb got Nergal. Sean got Morel, and Matt got Andrea Gio.

I did what I usually do when playing against Shambling Hordes decks with my Laibon, which is luckily draw one of the two Legend of the Leopard early and then use it to steal my foe's first zombie minion. Matt was pissed. He summoned another Horde the next turn, but as usual I find that hordes decks don't do well with their first horde heisted.

Ray got some crosstable con boon love from Sean unnecessarily, which I felt was not in Sean's best interest, as Ray was not predating efficiently upon Robb. In fact, Ray Red Listed my stolen Zombie, but then I got it killed by rushing Matt's second horde with it.

Then Ray Red Listed Urenna and did the Red List mark, Carrion Crows and diablerie. The table again voted for Lucretia's life. He got a lot of crosstable help for being a shitty speed bump. All the while, Robb was bleeding for 3-6 with Nergal each turn, and he eventually got an Enkil Cog to go with his Rutor's Hand.

So i thought it was weird that Ray was getting all that love when I could be bleeding the hell outta Robb, but alas, my voice of reason involved me getting a VP, so my opinion was discarded as biassed.

Which isn't a terrible assessment, really.

Matt had trouble doing anything. He did bleed me for 5 with Ambrogino once. Then Sean Kindred Spirits'd the hell out of him. Every turn.

Matt was first out, and then I got Ray. Sean went next, bled for 9 by Nergal in a single go-round, 6 on Robb's turn and 3 on Sean's.

By the time the game had got this far Robb had 15 pool and I had 10, and I lost the attrition war, though I did put a hurt on him in the end.

Robb 3VP and GW, me 1VP Sean 1VP

Game MVP: probably Enkil Cog. Which is insane on a +2 bleeder.

Game 2:

Robba had to leave, because he had to go make porn.

Ray(Big Gay Al's Aggravated Fisting Assault)>>> Me (She Smote on the lyfte honde and on the rigght hande)>>> Matt(!Brujah badass voters)>>> Sean(Nahkthorheb villainy)

My deck is a silly White Lily multirush monstrosity. Ray's deck is an Al Muntaquim Domain-for-Aggs and then punch for LOTs deck. Matt's deck seemed to be a modified !Brujah starter. Sean's seemed to be a modified FoS starter.

Ray didn't pay much for doodz, Al and a few Caitiff don't cost shit. I was worried he'd come wreck White Lily despite her Ak-47. I also got Banjoko, so I paid 18 pool to get started.

Matt got Hektor and Armin Brenner. Sean got Nahkthorheb and Abdelaobek.

Ray basically rushed right every turn in an attempt to stay alive. Nahkthorheb got a Heart of the City early, and with that and a few Enticement he was a 6-pool bleeding machine most turns.

My deck has some card flow issues, and I did not get any of the 4x Freak Drive, 4x Forced March, or 4x Tattoo Signal in the deck. This severely limited my capacity to wage war. The fact that I didn't want to hurt Ray or Matt because they were both going at Sean also limited my actions.

Sean eventually got Ray, at which point Matt and I tried to conspire against Sean. I only backrushed and I managed to enable a Vendetta via Deflection so that Matt could crush Nahkthorheb. I would then contest Fame with Matt and bleed him for the oust, and rush Matt into oblivion.

But it turns out Nahkthorheb is a resilient bastard. Despite our two-front assault Sean's last minion rescued Famous Nahkthorheb from torpor, who then hunted with a Perfectionist and bled me for 5 with a Legal Manipulations. I had 5 pool. My blocker didn't have the intercept to stop him.
Sean managed to oust Matt shortly thereafter, as Nahkthorheb drew a couple Majesty and Matt didn't have a lot of Grapples in his deck.

Sean 4VP and GW.

Game MVP: Nahkthorheb easily.

I will never speak of what happened in Game 3, and any comments pertaining to the details of said game may be censored from the record.

It was a stupid game.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone y'allz

'Jack Marshals

2011-05-13T20:18:00.001-07:00

As warmachine is a game that is ostensibly about powerful giant robots, it's kind of a pain that warcasters have such a limited pool of focus to power their mechanical death engines. Warjacks can (with some exceptions) get three focus at most each turn. Even high-focus 'casters (7-9 focus) can only super-power three 'jacks per turn. Even if they do, they aren't casting spells or boosting their own attacks.

Granted, three focus on a 'jack is a lot. It means that a melee-oriented machine can buy 3 extra attacks, or boost accuracy and/or damage on two attacks. Since warjacks need to spend focus to charge, often a "fully loaded" warjack will charge into combat by spending one focus, then boost it's first attack to make sure it hits (depending on it's chances). Often it uses the last focus for an additional attack with the main weapon again.

Ranged warjacks use focus differently. Guns have a rate-of-fire stat, which determines how many shots they can take each turn. So a Hunter light warjack, for instance, with it's ROF 1 Long Arm gun, is only firing one shot per turn. The Hunter has an axe as well, so it can technically mix it up Kung Fu style, but the gun is often better than melee options for ranged 'jacks. Considering this, the Hunter is operating at peak ranged power with only two focus, one to boost the attack roll and one to boost damage. Maybe less if the intended target has a low defense or armor stat and both rolls don't need to be boosted.

Other guns are different. The Thunderhead character heavy warjack has a ROF 3 Electro Coil weapon. That baby can fire three times per turn, so the T-Head likes having a lot of focus for buying attacks.

One way to get "extra focus" in an army is to use 'Jack Marshals. JMs are troopers or solos that can run a warjack outside of the 'casters main battlegroup. This has advantages and disadvantages.

Pros:

1) JMed 'jacks gain a focus-like ability once per turn. They can run, or charge, or gain an additional attack, or boost a single roll (either attack or damage but not both).

2) JMed warjacks can operate independently of the main battlegroup ('jacks must be in the warcaster's control area to be allocated focus from the 'caster)

Cons:

1) JMed warjacks can't get a full load of three focus. Since a heavy can often one-turn another heavy (kill it in a single turn before it can retaliate) when it has a full load of focus this is a huge problem.

2) Jack Marshals can be slain, thereby denying the 'jack any support, and a (pseudo-) focusless 'jack isn't coming close to its full potential. Most 'jacks need a focus or two to even operate at decent efficiency.

3) JMed warjacks aren't part of the warcaster's battlegroup, so any battlegroup-wide spells or effects won't affect JMed 'jacks. Some 'casters have awesome battlegroup spells and Marshaled 'jacks get none of that love.

So there's a bit of a trade-off.

The general consensus seems to be that JMing warjacks isn't worth it. This is due to several factors. A big one is that the game favors melee attacks significantly. It's fairly easy to rack up cover and shooting into melee bonuses and push defense up to a level that makes shooting difficult. Further, a ranged warjack often doesn't have a large rate of fire, so the biggest ranged weapons in the arsenal can most often be only fired once per turn. Conversely, a 'jack can buy as many melee strikes as it has focus, and many of the penalties to attack that cover and concealment grant against ranged attacks are meaningless to melee attacks.

Of course, getting there to beat face can be a problem. Warjacks (heavies especially) are pretty slow.

Still, the armies inevitably engage, and then melee is the dominant mode. Even 'jacks with good guns will have trouble counterstriking a heavy in their face, as they can't fire while engaged, can't disengage without getting a free strike in the face, and even if everything works out chances are the ROF 1 gun isn't going to put that heavy down in a single shot.

Similarly, a JMed melee jack is only going to get one extra attack in the same scenario, while 2 or 3 extra attacks (such as an engaged 'jack fully loaded with focus might have) are usually the right amount to end the argument. JMed warjacks simply can't finish the deal some of the time.

Further, a melee 'jack which is JMed needs to be near its marshal to get a JM bonus anyway. Precisely within the command stat of the Marshal in inches. Some marshals have a 10 command, and some have a 7. So the marshal needs to be close enough to his 'jack to be effective, and as he's essentially making a deadly combatant more deadly savvy opponents will murder 'jack marshals as early as possible. Let's take a look at a few 'jack marshals and compare them.

Captain Arlan Strangeways:

Arlan is a cool dude. He's so cool he can calmly smoke a pipe and wield a giant comedy wrench in a wartorn hellscape.

Arlan's a solo, meaning he can operate independently of his army. He's got a lot to offer faction warjacks, including the 'jack marshal ability. He can also forfeit his attack action to give a focus to a Cygnar 'jack, to give a 'jack evasion so that it can't be hit by free strikes, or he can repair a damaged warjack.

That's awesome. He's a great dude to have around. Thing is, he does all this whether he's the JM to the target 'jack or not. If he's also JMing a 'jack he can effectively give it two focus: one from his action and one pseudo focus from the JM bonus. He's so useful opponents will seek him out and ruin him as early as they can, so any JMed 'jacks will go autonomous if he dies (not part of 'caster battlegroup but not JMed).

And when he dies his JMed jack loses a lot of efficiency. Without focus or the JM pseudo focus 'jacks can't run or charge, rendering their range of threat limited. I've already gone over what a lack of attacks does for warjack efficiency.

So solo Jack Marshals are asking for it.

The range on his stuff is pretty short, so if he's supporting or marshaling a melee 'jack he's in the thick of the action. A smart opponent will take offense at his nonchalant pipe smoking and end his life.

Rutger Shaw:

I'll write more extensively on Shaw at a later time. For now, I want to mention that he's a solo mercenary 'jack marshal. This is cool because merc' JMs can only control merc' 'jacks, which actually means that using him allows me to take death machines not normally allowed. Alas, they aren't in my 'caster's battlegroup.

Shaw is a melee oriented 'jack marshal. He has a special "Drive" technique which allows him to make a command check and give his JMed jack a reroll on a missed attack roll (ranged or melee). He also has the flank ability with his 'jacks, so if he's running into close combat himself with a target engaging his 'jack(s) he gets some hefty combat bonuses.

He's also Tough. The Tough ability allows a model to roll a d6 when it would die, and on a 5 or 6 it doesn't. That helps a bit.

Rutger's still a target, and since he's in the thick of combat if he's using all his a abilities he's gonna get slapped as well. Maybe he'll make his Tough check.

The Dude (Arcane Tempest Gun Mage Officer):

So named because if his resemblance to a pop culture icon from the 90s.

The Dude is actually a unit attachment, an officer who must be taken with a unit of Arcane Tempest Gun Mages. This would be a shame if ATGMs weren't awesome, but they are so good on that. The Dude is interesting in that he's actually a JM who is better suited to marshal ranged warjacks. He has a special Rune Shot ability that allows a 'jack marshaled to him to fire one of the special ATGM spell-bullets every time it makes a normal attack. So a gun with a ROF 2, like the Charger's Dual Cannon, can fire two special bullets per round.

Further, since the Dude is a ranged JM, he's farther away from the action and his survivability goes up. On top of all that, when a unit attachment who is a JM is slain, his JM status actually passes on to the unit leader. So even if The Dude is killed that Charger is getting the JM bonus until the unit is all dead. Since The Dude grants Rune Shot, after he's gone that special is not available, but still having the JM bonus through the whole unit is nice.

Out of all these marshals I've used The Dude the most. He actually can add 4 inches of range to a ranged warjack's shot with the special Snipe Rune Shot, and it costs the 'caster nothing to do it. The other bullets become more useful as the enemy approaches.

I'll be testing out Shaw in a few armies and we'll see how it goes. Perhaps it's not as useful as I think, but in a faction strapped for focus I think JMs might be the way to go.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Saturday Night Games

2011-05-04T06:49:00.001-07:00

Ray asked to demo Devin and Robb at WarMachine and get in a game of VTES as well. I said that sounded good. Problem is, Ray spends most of his game store time chatting instead of actually playing games. I must just be too focussed on getting the games in.

Eventually we started a 5 player game of VTES, though Robb had to leave.

Me(new school nos royalty)>> Adam(Thucimia swarm bleed)>> Devin(Mission Impossible Anarchs)>> Ray (Petaniqua wall) >> Matt (Nergal wall).

Two blocky Baali decks at the table. Both of them were built by Ray as well. My Nos Royalty deck ignores 2nd tradition in favor of breeding and booning. I got Ben rose and petrodon, and both of them made a third trad early.

Adam, who never has good card luck, didn't get Thucimia in his draw. He got Bertrand, Alu, Sukainah, and Mike Dicarlo instead. He bled without stealth many times per turn.

Devin got Maris Streck, Maldavis, and an Anarch Convert in play. Maldavis was an anarch. She also Pulsed early for +2 bleed.

Ray got Petaniqua and Yvette, who is Hopeless. Yvette proved herself useful by getting a Heart of Cheating on turn two. Ray merged Petie early with an Epiphany.

Matt got Nergal. Then he contested Alu, but yielded the next turn (Adam was on the other side of the table and Matt didn't realize he was already in play). Then he got Lubomira.

The game played strangely. After I Parity Shifted Adam for 5 and got out my 5th minion I was identified as "the table threat", at least by Ray. To be fair, I'd stolen his Rack cross table to keep him honest. When I got up my 5th Nos (Slag), Petaniqua blocked his bleed cross table and made him Infernal and dead (Diabolical Lure and Petaniqua).

Matt then bled me for 5 every turn with Nergal. Nerg got a Bowl of Converging awesome early, but I Concealed it. Then Devin blocked Petaniqua getting the Bowl with Maldavis, which cost Devin his Maldavis. Devin got Maldavis out again, because Ray diablerized with a Rebirth. The Anarch convert had been knocked into torpor as well.

It was a confusing whirlwind of blocking and hitting.
While all of this was going on Adam was busy bleeding for one with all his guys and keeping enough pool to keep me honest. Devin was brought down to like 2 pool, but he Failsafe'd himself back into a reasonable amount.

Ray got Harzomatuili and put himself down to 2.

Nergal kept on me.

I realized that my Nos deck needs more oust. It tends to be Swarm-y, but it lacks lunge power. I drew an Anarchist Uprising and the Minion Tap I needed to survive calling an anarchist uprising, but when I went for it the newly-minted Kamaria hanging out with Nergal played Delaying Tactics.

I bled a bunch and Adam's new Sadjid al Musbah played a lot of Nest of Eagles to make me feel sad about things.

Devin had gotten Thaumatergy on his second Maldavis and now he was reducing bleeds as well with Detect Authority and Telepathic Counter. He actually had quite a racket going with his single anarch. He used the Anarch Museum to pull an Undue Influence or Power of One each turn, play them, and then pull the pool from Undue back to pay for next turn's Museum fish. Then he'd use PB:LA to untap Maldavis and reduce bleeds. It was not bad at all.

But Ray had the Ruins of Evil and PB:M in play, as well as a Vessel to go with his reacquired Rack. Devin bled a bit and Ray staved him off. It was a bit of a stalemate. Ray never bled Nergal at all. Probably because he built both decks.

I called my Anarchist Uprising the next turn without much resistance, and managed to oust Adam and piss off the table some more. Devin lunged at Ray for like the fifth turn running and didn't get the oust. Ray finally bled, and Nergal predictably misdirected the bleed at me, but I played Two Wrongs to cancel the bounce.

Nerg bled for 3. I tried to oust Devin but he Detected Authority and Telepathic Countered my chipping assault. He then left himself untapped after bleeding Ray for a couple. With Two Wrongs and bleed reduction flying, we decided that Robb was here in spirit. Represent.

Ray sat there, but played Smiling Jack. Nergal bled for 3. I ousted Devin with a bleed from Petrodon. Then, not having a lot of stealth, I discarded and ended my turn.

Ray played wall and did nothing. Matt bled for 3.

I decided that if I was gonna do anything, I should just start taking actions with action cards to move them so I could maybe draw stealth. I did have a couple +1 stealth cards, buy Ray was sitting on KRCG and Harzomatuili at this point. I decided to essentially sacrifice my third traditions (named after former drummers of Pearl Jam by Devin's request) by taking actions.

I tapped "Dave Krusen" and declared a Parity Shift. Ray tapped KRCG and announced a block with Harzo, i played a Faceless Night, but Ray backed down after he realized he had less pool than I did. Harzomatuili was now tapped at least. I stole 3 pool from Matt. I had actually drawn a Cloak and an Elder Impersonation now. I tapped Ben Rose and announced another third Tradition ("Jack Irons"). There was no resistance. I tapped "Dave Abburzezze" and announced a Con Boon. Ray tried to block but I cloaked it. I gained six pool. I then had Petrodon call another Con Boon. I used some of my 15 pool to influence Zelios (I'd started last turn) into play.

Matt looked frustrated. Ray said we should play on and that he "had this", but I had a KRC at this point and Ray was down to only a few pool. I probably would have ousted him in the next turn or two.

I say probably because Ray called the game after his untap phase. Devin wanted to see some WarMachine and it was pushing 11 pm at this point, and the store closes at 12.

Ray showed me the 2 Forced Awakening and 2 Eyes of Argus in his hand, so he would have stopped D actions, but my votes were all getting to referendum, and they were all passing as well.

Called due to time, me 2.5 VP, Ray .5 VP, Matt .5 VP. MVP: Benjamin Rose. When I ran out of vote actions he called votes to get my hand size larger. That's some good shit there.

I demoed WarMachine using the Cygnar Battlebox for Devin's battlegroup and an identical 'jack lineup with a different 'caster for me.

He was playing Stryker and I was a dude named Alister Caine. Good name at least. Caine will get a more in-depth entry later, but suffice to say he's a two-gun wieldin', flapping trenchcoat wearin', hard drinkin' warcaster straight out of a John Woo movie.

I explained the basic rules and Devin and I went back and forth a bit. Caine managed to completely mangle Devin's Charger with only a couple shots from his pistols. I was impressed.

Devin went for a spell assassination with Stryker, and as Stryker has weak spells he fell a bit short. Caine finished him off with a couple gunshots to the face, but Devin was playing well. He used Stryker's Blur upkeep spell on the Douche himself, making him defense 19 against ranged attacks. Caine's a damn good shot at RAT 8, but he still needed 11s to hit! I had to boost all Caine's attacks to hit, but I did every time (lucky; average roll on 3d6 is 10.5) and managed to kill Stryker. Devin was looking at a different faction (Protectorate of Menoth) but as he's an artist he might paint some good looking' models.

-Merlin out

Edit: my decklist per Brandonsantacruz' request.

Crypt 12 doodz:

4 x Petrodon (+1 bleed is good w Warsaw Station in play)
2 x Baron Dieudonne (more untap, Prince)
2 x Ben Rose (Prince, good votey special for hand jam)
1 x Zelios
1 x Slag
1 x Jeremy Wyx (+1 bleed is still good)
1 x Ruxandra

The crypt is good; I nearly always get a Prince, Alonso, and a support weasel (or Zelios). If the game is going well I might want to dig for more guys.

Regarding the library, there are a lot of ways to make a good Nos Royalty deck. I decided to go breed and boon and didn't add any Second Traditions, because then I could try to avoid combat cards altogether. Cock Robin an his punchiness are better for the second trads IMO.

Master cards (21 but I probably won't play the skills):
4 Obf skills (third trads are better with basic black)
3 minion tap
1 blood doll
2 Two Wrongs
1 Direct Intervention (it's never bad, I don't play competitively without them anymore, and I've been testing this one for tourneys)
Parity Shift enablers:
Slum hunting ground
2 Warsaw Station
Monastery of Shadows
Labyrinth
Papillon
Bleeding the Vine
Accelerators:
2 Zillah's Valley
Info Highway

Votes:
I told the guys during the game that I "wasn't playing a Parity Shift deck". Clearly this was a lie, but since I hadn't looked at the deck in 6 months I'd forgotten what a filthy bastard I am. Helpful.

3 random praxis seizure
1 Nos justicar (for Alonso to use to enable cryptic rider or for a title if I don't get him
2 cryptic rider
6 con boon (should be more)
1 can't take it with you (I'm playing around w this and shift)
1 kindred segregation (prayer tech)
1 ancient influence
1 anarchist uprising
3 Krc
4 Parity Shift (all my jyhad-backed copies)

Prolly needs another 2 Ps and another 2 con boon. Could use a Reins of Power.

27 Stealth cards (whichever you like?)

1 Conceal
2 Old Friends

6 Third Tradition (may be all that I own)
3 Fourth trad (in case I have extra actions or need speed, might be able to drop)
1 Shreknet

That's it.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Flint, MI

Classics from the Daze of My Youth: RPGS

2011-04-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

It's a cheap pun, but I quite like cheap puns.

I wrote this at Christmas, while between classes. I did not publish it, so that I could keep the ol' blog going in case the semester got anxious.

It got anxious. And I never posted it. Silly of me, really.

So here it is anyway:

RPGS

Might and Magic II: This game was absolutely immense for the time. There was something like 100 hours of gameplay, with many optional sidequests and specific character-driven storylines. I remember liking the randomized encounter and treasure systems, and the character options. Not a lot of fantasy games allow the party to have a ninja. Ninjas are awesome, and they’re exponentially more awesome to pre-teen boys. Still, the game lacked a certain something. Maybe it was the music or the graphics, both of which were good but not great. 2.5

The Bard’s Tale: This game was one of the first party-based rpgs I ever played, and it’s incredibly cool. The graphics and music on the Amiga were immersive, and I can still recall some of the songs for which the game was known. The fact that the bard had a series of instruments he could play, and each tune would change for the instrument was incredible for the time. The game’s puzzles were awesome and at times difficult, and there was at least 30 or 40 hours of gameplay. Great stuff. 3.5

Moebius: The Orb of Celestial Harmony: This game was weird. The player takes the role of a disciple of “Moebius” and then must work their way through the four elemental planes (earth, wind, etc) to reclaim the world from whatever evil has taken control. It was something like a combination action-RPG, as “combat” was a separate side-scrolling almost street-fighter-esque mini-game. I remember that the game was incredibly difficult, and that it had a spiritual component. In order to ascend from one plane to the next, the player had to complete a “meditation” mini-game in which they kept a randomly spinning yin-yang within a certain area of the screen. Moebius gets special mention because it was so unique and because the melodies that Mobius gave to the Amiga platform haunt me to this day. 3.0

Ultima IV: I’ve skipped Ultima III because I didn’t play it as much as IV and I have even less good things to say about it. And I don't really want to talk about Ultima after IV either. Fock that noise. IV had some really cool things going for it, in that the player actually did a strange virtue-based character creation process to get their character set up. After that, the player had to wander the world and collect a party of characters which all represented virtues and use them in combination to complete a divine quest. There was a lot to like about the game, but I didn’t really enjoy playing it that much. The combat system was lame, the magic system was whack, requiring the purchase and mixing of reagents to cast spells, and the music in the game was forgettable. Apparently I was quite affected by the music of RPGS on the computer. 1.5

Defender of the Crown: I’m not sure how to characterize this game. Is it a Simulation? An RPG? A strategy game? The player takes the role of a Saxon noble in middle-ages Norman-dominated England and tries to become powerful by conquering or allying with the other nobles on the map. It’s incredibly difficult, as the Norman antagonists are all much better at everything in the game than the Saxons are, and there isn’t any progression in the game. So the player can’t eventually become a better swordfighter or jouster through gameplay. The player has to either lead troops to battle or siege, joust at tournaments, or lead daring personal raids in the night to gain fame, a lady, recognition, and more land. I could only win as the sword-fighter Saxon (Geoffrey of Flapjack?), as that was the part of the game I didn’t suck at. Plus, the sword-fighter guy got more chicks than the jousty guy or the jack-of-all-trades type guy. It was an odd game, but I managed to while away a few hours with it. 2.0

Heroes of the Lance: This was a side-scrolling “adventure”-RPG where the player got to take control of one of the characters from the iconic dragonlance books to complete their first quest in Xak Tsaroth. It was a weird game. When the character that the player was using died, they were replaced with the next Hero of the Lance in line. There were 8 or 10 in all. The wizard Raistlin was a great choice, and Riverwind the barbarian was one of the best jumpers in the game. It was important to be able to jump because the game had a lot of platforming sections where the heroes had to traverse caverns filled with holes or traps. The sad thing about this game is that there was only one way to win it: kill the black dragon at the end. And there was only one way to kill the black dragon: throw the priestesses’ blue crystal staff at it. So after figuring out the maze of the game and condensing it to a list of 20 or so caverns to traverse, the game became incredibly easy to beat, and therefore not fun. Not that it was much fun to begin with: the jumping bits were frustrating and controls not always responsive. The music was awesome for about five minutes and then it became grating. The theme song was a little too energetic. And the game’s replayability after winning was pretty much nil. 1.0

Nethack: I’m going to condense all modern roguelikes (Angband, Moria, etc.) into a single header here as Nethack. I was always terrible at this game, but nonetheless I played the hell out of it. To this day I have never completed it, though now I have access to piles of spoilers which I could use to learn the ropes better. The learning curve on nethack is quite simply astounding. It’s a game where you must replay and work with contexts to learn just how to succeed, and even then there is a possibility of death. And death is permanent, so after dying the player must restart from the beginning. It’s terribly frustrating, and yet I still find it fascinating and I occasionally play through a game, only to lose of course. 3.0

For roguelike sampler goodness, check out the Desktop Dungeons freeware game.

-Merlin out

Cygnar No-Brainers

2011-04-21T16:30:00.001-07:00

There are lots and lots of models to field when building an army, but some are so good it's actually harder to not choose them for a force. I'll focus on some basic Cygnar ones for now, though certain mercenaries are also considered necessary for competitive play.

Squire:

The Squire is current the only Cygnar faction warcaster attachment. Warcaster attachments are solo models that hang out with a warcaster and do something cool for them. Generally, they aren't offensive powerhouses in their own right, but instead make life easier for the strongest piece in any given force.

The Squire is no exception. It's a little R2D2 robot thing that follows the 'caster around and opens doors for th... Wait that's not quite right.

It follows the 'caster around and buffs their arcane power. A 'caster's control area is extended 2 inches while the Squire is within 5 inches of the 'caster. The Squire has three "Arcane Accumulator" boxes, which a 'caster can use during the beginning of the turn (only one per turn) to gain an additional focus. That's an extra focus three turns of the game, and many games are over by turn three. Also, a 'caster can reroll a magic attack roll that misses once per turn while close enough to their Squire.

That is a lot of good stuff. Of course, one has to weigh the worth of these advantages with the "cost" of the Squire in army-building points. It costs 2. The average game is between 25 and 50 points. At smaller game sizes the Squire looks a little less awesome, but at 25, it's probably worth it. At 35 or 50, it's almost an auto include.

There are some interesting balancing factors to the Squire's design, such as the fact that a warcaster can only have one attachment. This would be more important if Cygnar had attachment options, but they don't. The Squire is it. Also, the Squire has zero offensive capacity. It has no weapons, so it isn't directly contributing to the fight.

Journeyman Warcaster:

The Journeyman Warcaster, also known as "junior" or simple JR, is a solid supporting solo for Cygnar. I painted mine to look like a junior douchebag and so I will refer to him as McGrath or Sugar Ray for the remainder of my posts.

Sugar Ray has terrible stats. He's got some decent weapons with a Hand Cannon pistol and a magical sword, but dude's melee and ranged attack rating suck balls. He's got decent defensive stats, and 5 wounds, so he might survive a couple shots, but it's best to keep him away from the fray.

The good stuff he brings to the table are his spells and focus stat. He, like a leading warcaster, has some focus. Not much, only 3, but it can take some of the burden of controlling multiple warjacks off of the main ' caster. Often I give Sugar Ray a light ranged jack like the Charger to run, and he performs this task quite well.

Sugar Ray knows two spells as well: the abysmal Arcane Bolt spell, which he should almost never cast, and the awesome upkeep Arcane Shield. Many Cygnar players take McGrath without any 'jacks at all. They have him cast Arcane Shield on a unit or a heavy 'jack on the first turn, and then they keep him back away from the fight. Sugar Ray can then spend one of his three focus to upkeep AS each turn, and has two left over to fire a reasonably accurate fully boosted (boost attack and damage = "fully boosted") Hand Cannon shot each turn. It's not bad at all.

I quite like that he's a versatile model. He can dish out that shot, he can power a Charger, he can buff a friendly unit of infantry, he's all good. Savvy opponents will hunt him down and kill him, ending his Arcane Shield and rendering his Charger inert, so he should be kept safe if possible.

He costs 3 points, which is terribly expensive for a solo, especially one that can't hit for beans without his focus, but he enables so many other units and strategies (Stormblades or a Heavy 'jack with Arcane Shield is great) it's difficult to not take him, even in smaller games.

The Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team:

Hereafter B13 for brevity, this is a squad of gun-toting characters who add an incredible toolbox of abilities to a Cygnar force.

The B13 are a character unit, which means that only one of them can be fielded in a force. Some units, like the Squire, can only be fielded one per army, but since there are rules for larger, multiple warcaster games, in a two-caster game both Stryker and Haley could have a droid. Not so for B13. As a character unit they can exist only once in an entire force.

There are so many reasons to choose the Black 13th it's ridiculous. They cost 4 points for a 3-body unit. That's pretty expensive, but these gunslingers are badass.

All of them have similar stats. They have decent speed and pathetic melee attack scores. However, as they don't have a melee weapon that's all bullshit. They have an amazing ranged attack score, and their defense rating is similarly nuts. However, as they're just fools in flapping trenchcoats their armor rating is abysmal. Even the lightest shot that hits or even low-end blast damage will hurt them. As characters they have 5 wounds, so they could survive a decent blast, but not two. And certainly not any direct hits.

Weaponwise, they have magelock pistols, which are special focuses for their spells as gunmages. Each of them has some spells in common. Whenever they shoot, they get to choose an attack type.

Black Penny is a special bullet that ignores the normal penalties for shooting into melee. Combined with their stellar ranged attack score the B13 are great at getting infantry away from troops who are being held up. I don't use this bullet too often, but it's a good ability in theory.

Snipe extends the base shot of the magelock by 4 inches. I use this on the advance often, though if I'm using a 'caster who has Snipe like Stryker, it doesn't stack with this special shot. It's still a great spell to put on B13 because it extends the range of their other bullets.

Brutal Damage is a bullet that deals an extra die of damage on a hit. This is good because the Magelock pistol, while decent, has only a 10 power shot. On average, it can do 17 damage on a hit. Gun mages can't really crack heavy armor reliably. This bullet adds another average die roll of 3.5 to the mix, meaning the gun mages might actually be able to hurt or kill multi-wound, decently armored troops.

Or enemy warcasters.

'jacks are another story entirely.

Each of the characters in the unit also has some other abilities they bring to the table. We'll start with Lynch, the officer and leader of the unit.

Lynch adds a special attack called Fire Beacon to his arsenal. A Fire Beacon bullet does no damage, but it drops a 5 inch diameter area of effect on the table centered on the target of the shot. Anything under that aoe loses the benefits of concealment (normally a +2 defense), camouflage (+4), cloud effects (which block line of sight and grant concealment), and stealth (ranged attacks from an attacker more than 5 inches away from a stealthed unit automatically miss).

My iPhone keeps trying to autocorrect "steathed" to "steamy Ed".

Lynch also has True Sight, which means he also ignores concealment, stealth, etc. Lynch is badass.

Watts is the next guy in line. He doesn't have any additional attack types, but while Watts is alive members of the B13 have Prowl. Prowl is an ability which gives stealth to any model which has concealment or cover. Running the B13 into the woods on turn one isn't a bad idea if Watts is alive.

Ryan is the last, and perhaps best of the B13. She's got twin Magelock pistols, which grants her an additional attack (with special spell-bullet and all) each turn.

Better yet, Ryan has a special attack called Mage Storm. If she forfeits both her attacks, she can instead fire a storm of magical energy. It centers a 4 inch area of effect on the target. Anything under the area of effect takes a power 12 damage roll. That's much better than blast damage.

In addition, the Mage Storm stays in play until the next turn, and if enemy troops walk through or end their activation there they take a power 12 damage roll.

In addition to that, the storm counts as a cloud effect, meaning it blocks line of sight to stuff hiding in or behind it. Dropping a Mage Storm onto a friendly heavy 'jack isn't a bad idea sometimes. It probably won't hurt the 'jack much (Arcane Shield nearly guarantees it won't) and enemy models won't be able to charge at the heavy due to the cloud effect.

Shooting cheap troops in the back with the Mage storm to block line of sight to a friendly warcaster is solid as well.

Most savvy opponents will kill Ryan first. She's awesome. Of course, if she's screening herself with Mage Storm it will be pretty difficult to knock her down. She's immune to her own mags storm damage, so technically she could follow an ironclad on the advance, shoot it in the back with Mage Storm, and hide within the storm. If Watts is alive, Ryan will get stealth within her own Storm.

While the B13 don't have melee weapons, they do have the Gunfighter advantage, which means they can shoot their ranged weapons in melee. Surrounding Ryan with infantry probably means that she'll drop a Mage Storm into their lap on her next activation.

So the B13 help the whole army with stealth, can generate cloud cover on the advance or block charge lanes with it during a clash, do serious damage to squishier warcasters, hunt enemy solos, or murder a pile of infantry. Warjacks and enemy heavies aren't worried about them, but they are a solid addition to almost every Cygnar force, even at the 15 point level game, which is generally the smallest game size.

In fact, the Battlebox plus the B13 is a 15 point army in an of itself, and it has a ton of versatility.

-Merlin out

Torpid Blood Report

2011-04-17T18:21:00.001-07:00

I played in a 17 player tourney hosted by David Wilson yesterday. It was a decent turnout and there were good games to be had. The Flint crew that I came with did exceptionally well for us, and Devin and Robb made the finals. Even more shocking, Robb won. He gives me some credit for his victory. Apparently by not making the finals I had no opportunity to backoust him during the same.

That's fair.

I played a silly War Ghoul deck I've been kicking around lately. Originally it was a Terrifisto superstar deck. Since Mr. T is the Archbishop of Detroit I titled it "Represent!" However, since the printing of Agent of Power T is obsolete in the deck. Horatio can do the whole trick on turn 2 most of the time.

Represent!

Crypt: 12 dudes
2 x Horatio 2-cap Sabbat Tzimisce vic
2 x Terrence (and Phillip) 4-cap Sabbat Tzimisce vic aus ani
2 x Lolita Houston 4-cap Sabbat Tzimisce aus VIC
2 x Devin Bisley (D-Biz) 5-cap Sabbat Tzimisce AUS ANI vic
The Rose 5-cap Sabbat Tzimisce PRE VIC aus
Elizabeth Westcott 5-cap Sabbat Tzimisce AUS vic ani cel
Piotr Andreikov 2-cap Sabbat Tzimisce Black Hand aus
Wendy Wade 3-cap Sabbat Tzimisce aus ani

Library (71 cards):

Master Cards (18, 10 trifle):

6 x Agent of Power
1 x Dreams of the Sphinx
1 x Giant's Blood
2 x Fame
2 x Obtenebration
2 x Vessel
2 x Wash
2 x Charisma

Action cards (24):
8 x War Ghoul
8 x Nocturn
1 x Carlton Van Wyk
1 x Vagabond Mystic
1 x Gregory Winter
4 x Asanbonsam (Cosby) Ghoul
1 x Unlicensed Taxicab

Action Mods (7):
2 x Lobotomy
2 x Shroud of Night
3 x Changeling

Combat (9):
2 x Chiropteran Marauder
2 x Meld w the Land
5 x Trap

Combo (3):
3 x Plasmic Form

Event (3):
1 x Dragonbound
2 x The Unmaskening

Reaction (7):
3 x On the Qui Vive
3 x Telepathic Misdirection
1 x WWEF

It's a cute little deck, but with a bad draw it can be painful. Absolutely no one has Obtenebration, and if I don't get AoP or the skills early, my game is hosed.

Round one:

Matt (kyasid toolbox) -> Me (Represent!) -> Kevin (Petaniqua Garou Storm) -> Sam (Maris and Presence Malks)

I got everything I needed early. On turn two Piotr had no resistance when he summoned a Nocturn, Nocturn bled for the Edge, and the Piotr made the shadow demon into a flesh beast. Good stuff. Kevin got a wild look in his eye at this point. On turn 3 Lolita did the same thing while Piotr bled. Marconius popped up behind me and Quentin King III was in Sam's ready region.

I got up my entire uncontrolled region out: Lolita, Piotr, Horatio, and Wendy. Also got 3 WGs, Greg, and 2 Cosby Ghouls in play.

Kevin still brought out Petaniqua ADV. I considered NOT crushing her into oblivion, but when I realized she had AUS and the potential to kill a WG without red cards when merged I scrapped the idea of a normal game. I knocked her into torpor.

Matt bled me a bit with Dominate, but I had the Unmasking and two Cosby Ghouls in play, and his deck was more bruise and bleed than S + B. He killed my two blocky Ghouls and Julia Prima bled me for 4 with a Govern, but after that I murdered his ready region.

Kevin brought up Eurayle to support his werewolf engine, but I beat her up in short order as well. He did manage to Resurrect a Cosby Ghoul from my ash heap and recruit Carlton, but it was futility at this point. All the crosstable rescues in the world didn't stop me ousting him. Dragonbound sealed his fate and Matt's as well.

In the one on one Sam's Malks couldn't bleed and vote my pool away before my 3 War Ghouls killed his minions. He conceded shortly afterward.

Me 3 VP and GW, Sam 1 VP

Game MVP: asanbonsam ghoul. Thang kept me alive through the Kyasid lunges so that I could win.

Game 2:

Me (Represent!)-> Jimmy (malk wall)-> Eric (Akunanse toolbox)-> Phil (toreador grand ball)-> Ryan (Toreador. . .?)

This game had such potential. My opening crypt draw was Piotr, Lolita, Horatio, and Terrence. Nice. My opening hand was Agent, Fame, Obtenebration skill, Nocturn, War Ghoul, Chiropteran Marauder, and Trap. Fuck yes.

But I went first.

I put a blood on Lolita and proceeded. Jimmy put two on Dolphin Black. Everyone else went for big caps, but when I got Lolita up Jimmy got Dolphin. He blocked every action I took for the first 4 or 5 turns.

When the dust settled, Jimmy had Dolphin and Anatole. I had my whole crypt draw. Eric had Kamiri Wa Itherero and Amavi, Phil had Alexandra and Tatiana Romanova, and Ryan had Eugene and Katherine (c? 7-cap tor g5?).

Eventually everyone but me and Ryan got another minion. Jimmy got Kite, Eric got Sanjo (maybe. Don't recall), and Phil got Vicky Ash.

I told Jimmy that if he was gonna block all my actions I'd just bleed him with my 4 guys every turn until Ryan ousted me. Anatole got a .44 and put Horatio and Piotr into torpor. Then Jimmy said "you can play your game."

I felt this was odd. I got a War Ghoul and crushed Anatole. Jimmy wasn't expecting my Trap. He played like 4 Aura Reading for cards, never looking at my hand. Oh well. Anatole never escaped torpor either.

And there we sat for like an hour and a quarter. Jimmy couldn't draw the stealth to get past Eric's animalism intercept with KS. Phil couldn't draw votes to oust. Ryan bled me every turn but wasn't drawing bleed cards.

Jimmy brought himself low with an Assault Rifle on Kite (which killed my Dub-G). Eric got another minion, dropping to two pool. Phil started bleeding like crazy. Ryan kept up the pressure.

I tried to sucker Jimmy into blocking Lolita with Dolphin Black (who I'd made famous) most of the end game. I still had a Chiropteran Marauder, and I still could have gotten a vp at least. He never took the bait.

Ryan got me as the first oust of the game, and Jimmy got Eric, and then Phil got Ryan. This all happened with like 10 minutes to go. The table then timed out.

Jimmy 1.5 vp, Phil 1.5 vp, Ryan 1 vp.

No MVP.

Somebody let Dudock win the finals. I blame David Wilson. We'll see what Robb has to say.

-Merlin out

Location:Ypsilanti MI

Warcaster Focus: Captain SloMo says "No!"

2011-04-13T07:09:00.001-07:00

I played Stryker a few times before thinking about picking another warcaster. Captain Victoria Haley actually sort of fell into my lap. I was browsing at a hobby shop during my travels and found her at a ridiculously cheap price.

So I bought her and painted her up before I knew how to even play her or build an army around her. Turns out she's a solid warcaster with a spell list that annoys opponents.

I decided to paint her a little different from Stryker, as I don't actually like the idea of painting 40-plus models in the same exact color scheme. So while my army palette is "traditional" Cygnar-blue, yellow, white, with gold, silver, and black trim- , the various units and models might have blue or yellow or whatever as their primary color. To this end, I refer to Haley as "The Yellow Ranger". Stryker is mostly blue, though I'm not sure he's the "Blue Ranger".

Stats:

Haley's stat line does not impress. If Stryker is the high side of average, Haley is the low side. She's not incredibly accurate with her weapons, she's got light armor, and she doesn't have a ton of wounds.

Haley has a special ability called Arcane Vortex that allows her to cancel an enemy spell that targets her or a model near her. It costs her a focus each time she does it, but countermagic in warmachine isn't common.

She does have an impressive focus stat at 7, but her most awesome spell is also quite expensive, so she almost needs that extra focus to get anywhere.

Spells:

That awesome spell is called Temporal Barrier. Haley has a time manipulation theme going for her. It's an amazing spell. Any enemy unit that starts its activation within 14 inches of Haley (her "control area", defined by 'caster focus x 2 in inches) cannot run or charge. Also, those same units have a reduced defense due to slowness. So the spell protects Haley and her army from charges (one of the stronger attacks in the game), limits enemy movement, and gives a serious accuracy boost to her army. Sure, it costs 4 focus, but it's actually hard not to cast it every turn. It's that good.

Haley has other spells too! She's got the Arcane Shield upkeep, a Cygnar mainstay. She also has a non-upkeep unit buff called Deadeye that adds a die to ranged attack rolls.

For offensive magic she has a basic magic-missile type spell that hits about as hard as her pistol but costs focus, a weird warjack-affecting spell called Scramble, and an amazing infantry-killer spell called Chain Lightning.

Scramble forces an enemy warjack to move its normal speed in a random direction. It knocks down any smaller troops it walks through, and if it hits larger stuff-other jacks or bigger solos- it falls down as well. It's an expensive spell for what amounts to a 50/50 chance for the 'jack to move back into enemy troops. If it moves forward then I'm actually helping my opponent move a dangerous bit of machinery toward my army. I better have a pretty good idea of how to capitalize on that if I lose the coin toss.

Chain Lightning is awesome. It does some damage to the target of the spell and then lightning arcs to d6 more models near the original target. Those arcs autohit, so it's a great spell to fire at warjacks screening infantry. It's also expensive at 3 focus. Unless Haley has some other focus boosts she can't do much to power her 'jacks, counter enemy spells, and such if she casts both CL and TB in the same turn.

Weapons: Haley has a basic gun called a Hand Cannon. Lots of warcasters and solos have Hand Cannons. It's a gun that does decent damage with decent range, but it can only be fired once per round. She's not a good shot with it and will have to spend focus or use defense reducing shenanigans like Temporal Barrier to hit with it.

Haley also has an absurdly large spear called the Vortex Spear. She's not particularly accurate with this, and it does less damage than the Hand Cannon, so. . .meh.

It does have Reach to extend her melee threat, so she can engage non-reach units that don't want to be in melee (like Arcane Tempest Gun Mages) and piss them off, I guess. That's alright. The spear also has Set Defense, which gives Haley a defense bonus against charges. If Haley's getting charged, it means that she didn't cast TB last turn. Why?

Feat:

Haley's feat is called Blitz. Every Cygnar model or unit within 14 inches of Haley gets to make an additional attack during their activation. It's a great feat that speaks to Haley's time manipulation theme. I most often use it at long range, to get additional harassment shots in during an advance. It can also be used on the clash turn to make sure melee troops wreck the enemy frontline.

I tend to take units which hit hard with both melee and ranged attacks with Haley, such as Stormblades. That way if they rush into close combat and destroy the front line, they can use their additional attack to fire into the next enemy unit.

Edit: I've just been made aware of the rules of WM, which state that if a model uses it's initial attacks to make melee attacks, then any additional attacks it gains are melee attacks. So I guess that means if my Stormblades rock the front line with melee attacks then they aren't gaining ranged lightning blasts from Blitz.

Overall:

Haley is a control warcaster. She denies movement and spell assassinations quite well, which means that some enemies will have to work overtime against her. She tends to slow the game down, which is anathema to some of my friends' playstyles. Warmachine tends to favor aggressive play; the player who gets in the "alpha strike" usually wrecks the other army. Haley doesn't allow opponents to get that strike in.

One friend in particular hates Haley. Every time I set her down he sighs a little. It's amusing to me because he has an entire "denial" Protectorate of Menoth army which denies me many of my options. I guess it's always shitty when the other guy's doing it.

Melee Power: D. Haley's spear does woeful damage and she barely knows how to use it. Avoid up front confrontation when possible.

Ranged Power: C. The Hand Cannon is average, and Haley can always boost or cast TB to increase her chance of shooting. Reinholdt can grant her an additional shot as well. Not bad, but not great.

Magic Power: B+. Chain Lightning is awesome, and Temporal Barrier helps with just about everything.

Melee Support: B. Her feat helps melee troops mow through foes, and she has Arcane Shield for buffing up her troops. Temporal Barrier makes her whole force more accurate.

Ranged Support: A. Deadeye and TB are fantastic for ranged troops. The fact that TB also prevents charging the next turn helps her ranged troops stay out of retaliation range.

Magic Support: C. She doesn't have many magic attacks to support. . .so she doesn't need a high score here. Temporal Barrier still reduces the defense of enemies in her control area against magic attacks, though.

Tricksiness: B-. She's got a lot of tricks up her sleeve, but she honestly can't do them all at once, and the opponent will probably know it. She's tricky, but in a way that's straightforward and that telegraphs its punches. So. . .good, but not really sneaky.

Lists:

Haley supports all her troops well. I'd suggest the Black 13th and/or Arcane Tempest Gun Mages in every Haley list. She also likes a Defender for long range shots, and she loves the new Storm Strider battle engine for protection on the approach (the base on that thing is huge, and she can cast Arcane Shield on it).

Haley + Defender or Ol' Rowdy (9), Arlan Strangewayes(2), Storm Strider (9)

Haley + Defender (9), ATGM + UA (8) + Hunter (6), Stormblades (5), Squire (2)

Haley + Ol' Rowdy (9), ATGM + UA (8) + 2 Hunters (12), Squire (2), Stormblades + UA (8), Arlan Strangewayes (2)

I like Arlan with her because he's terribly inaccurate with his spray, but her Temporal Barrier helps him hit multiple targets when he uses it. Oh, and his other abilities are solid as well.

Rating: 3.0

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

WarMachine Units and Solos

2011-04-11T18:24:00.001-07:00

I've covered the basic battlegroup to a warmachine game in the battlebox entry, but there's a bit more going on. Specifically, there are units of troops and expensive and powerful solo models who work well by themselves.

Also, I haven't really gone over gameplay. In a nutshell, combat is handled by rolling 2 six-sided dice and adding the result to the attacker's melee or ranged attack score. So Stryker's 7 melee attack plus 2d6 will, on average rolls, hit defense 14. Stryker and quick warcasters tend to have higher defense stats. Stryker's is 16, so it will be difficult for him to hit himself in the mirror match.

Warcasters and warjacks can spend focus to "boost" attacks, giving them an extra die on that attack. Also, knocking down high-defense units with special attacks or spells like Stryker's Earthquake reduces a target's defense to single digits.

Damaging after a successful attack is handled in much the same way. The attacker rolls 2d6 and adds the power of the attack to the roll, then compares he result to the attacker's armor to do damage. Stryker's disruptor pistol is a power 10 gun, which is about as weak as gunshots get in WM. On an average roll he'll do 2 damage to himself in the mirror match, as his armor is 15.

Focus can also be spent to boost damage. The Ironclad heavy warjack has a hammer that hits for 18 damage plus dice. Hitting Stryker with that is sure to do some serious damage. Damage can be boosted with focus as well.

Units and solos can't boost. But they also don't drain the warcaster's precious focus, so it's a trade-off.

Units:

Units are groups of like-armed dudes who fulfill battlefield roles for their army. There are long-range units, melee units, mixed-arms units, and special ops units. Most don't have an explicit defined role, but for Cygnar, some of the units are named for what they do, like Long Gunners or Sword Knights.

It's hard to mess those up. Of course, It isn't always obvious. Stormblades, for instance, are sword-toting armored troops, but they can also shoot lightning from their ridiculous swords, so they're actually a mixed-arms unit which can perform either role (or both on a good turn).

Units tend to run in several categories of defense and armor combinations: some are high-armor, low defense. These tend to be slower, melee units. Some faster units are high defense, but with abysmal armor. The average is about 13 defense and 13 armor. Stormblades have 12/15 def/arm. Long gunners have 13/12.

Most infantry is single-wound, so penetrating their armor at all will kill them. Solos, warcasters, warjacks, and some butch infantry have multiple wounds.

Infantry also have to stay in formation, which just means that the unit can't spread out too much. All troopers in the unit must be within range of the unit leaders command stat in inches. Most unit leaders have an 8 or so in command, so troopers can be pretty spread out if need be, but there is a limit.

Units also have unit attachments, additional bodies which can be added to a unit to fulfill some tasks or add functionality. The Stormblade unit attachment is expensive, but it adds a multi-wound officer with an impressive command stat to the unit. He also can give the 'blades a special Assault order, allowing them to fire their lightning swords on a charge. This effectively doubles their already devastating offensive power.

Solos:

Solos operate well on their own. They tend to be above-average with stats, or they might fulfill a special role on the battlefield. Most solos are characters, named units that can't be fielded in multiples. Rutger Shaw, Professional Adventurer is one example. He's a mercenary solo who will work for many factions.

Other solos are faction specific. Captain Arlan Strangeways is a Cygnar solo who either helps power warjacks with focus or repairs them. He does have weapons, but most often he's going to be using his special abilities to assist in warjack management.

Some solos can be fielded in multiples, such as Cygnar's Gun Mage Captain Adept. Two of the GMCA can be fielded in any given army. He's a dude who channels spells through a magelock (magic flintlock) pistol. The GMCA's role is one of support, often hunting down enemy solos or unit attachments (like the officer from the Stormblade unit attachment pictured above) and picking them off with his gun.

A decent army tends to have a good mix of units and solos to go with the warcaster and his warjacks. Cygnar has a few "auto-include" solos and at least one unit that's so awesome it's hard not choosing them for an army list. I'll go over them some other time.

Warcaster Focus: Commander Douchebag McWeen

2011-04-09T20:55:00.001-07:00

I started with Stryker from the Battlebox, but as I've already said I am the sort of guy who likes options. As of today I have played with four different warcasters, and each one has a different playstyle. I've got another two I have yet to try. I'll give them each their own post.

Commander Douchebag McWeen:

Stats:

Coleman Stryker is, as I have said before, a pretty basic warcaster. His stats are actually impressive; the high side of average. He has a reasonable ranged attack rating, and his melee attack is above average. His defense and armor are also pretty good for a warcaster. He probably won't get getting killed by average enemy troops.

But nobody takes average troops. Everybody takes exceptional troops.

Stryker's most damning averageness is his average focus stat. This limits his ability to support lots of 'jacks and cast his full spell list. Playing Stryker involves a lot of tough choices as to which 'jacks and units to support.

Spells:

I say units because Stryker has three unit-buffing spells: Snipe adds some range to a model or unit's guns, Arcane Shield is an armor buff for same, and Blur is a defensive buff against ranged and magic attacks. If Stryker casts all these spells in a turn, he's used all his focus on buffs and can't give focus to his 'jacks or cast his offensive spells.

All three of those spells are "upkeeps", so if Stryker wants to leave them on a unit turn after turn he can spend a single focus to keep the spell going. So they don't need to be recast at total cost each turn. That's good. It also allows some ranged-buff shenanigans like upkeeping Snipe on one unit, shooting with them at the enhanced range, and then activating Stryker and casting Snipe on a different unit. This will end the effect of Snipe on the first unit, but it supports long range strategy well.

Aside from his upkeep spells, Stryker has three offensive spells. He's got a basic Arcane Bolt spell, which essentially shoots a model with a magic missile. He's got an Arcane Blast spell, which is similar but also generates a little cloud (called area of effect) of blast damage in a 3-inch diameter centered on the target. These two spells see little use. They don't have great damage and Stryker will normally rather buff his ten-man gun units and power his 'jacks.

He might also want to cast Earthquake. It's an expensive spell for him, but he gets to fire a 5-inch diameter template centered on a target. Anything under the template falls down, meaning melee attacks hit automatically and ranged attacks hit unless the attacker rolls snake eyes on 2d6.

Earthquake is essentially, then, an accuracy buff for Stryker's army. That's good, because Stryker doesn't have the power to end many games by himself.

Weapons:

Against most enemy 'casters, Stryker will have trouble performing a personal assassination run. His gun is low power and his sword is only average, and even if Stryker saves his focus to boost his own strikes or buy more sword attacks he'll have trouble with a fresh, unbruised enemy warcaster.

I should point out that both of Stryker's weapons have disruption, which means if he hits a warjack personally it will lose any focus it has on it, and can't be allocated any focus for a turn. Shooting enemy warjacks with Stryker is still a good strategy to keep enemy 'casters from powering that jack, even though the low power on the gun won't penetrate most heavy warjack armor.

Feat:

Stryker's once-per-game special feat is called Invincibility. Cygnar units close enough to Stryker receive a substantial armor boost for one turn. In combination with Arcane Shield it gives an insane armor boost for a turn. The feat has some utility in that it can be used on the advance to keep the troops alive, or after engagement to help weather an enemy counterstrike.

Overall:

Stryker relies on his army to do the dirty work, and he really likes a combined-arms approach. Most games will see him moving Snipe around during the first two turns to get more ranged attacks in before the armies meet, and then using the feat to survive the inevitable melee clash. With any luck Stryker can either win an attrition war or clear a lane for an Earthquake assassination to be performed by one of his 'jacks.

I like Stryker's versatility. I don't like his personal attacks, because they aren't much of a threat to enemy heavies or 'casters. I also don't like how predictable he is. Most players know what to expect, because Stryker just does what it says on the tin.

I find that if the dice go my way I do well with Stryker. If they don't I'm in trouble. There's a certain amount of luck inherent to any game with a randomized element, but of course some of the strategy in the game is reducing the chances that the dice can ruin a game. That can be tough for Stryker.

Melee Power: C. Stryker has an average-strength sword and a mediocre melee attack rating. He's got Disruption on his blade, so warjacks he hits with it are not getting focus the next turn, but if Stryker's standing next to a warjack something has probably gone terribly wrong. Quicksilver is just powerful enough that Stryker can sometimes get the job done himself.

Ranged Power: D. Stryker's gun and ranged attack rating are pillowfisted and meh. Again, he can disrupt warjacks with it, and in fact I often do, but he's not doing it for damage, and since disruption only affects like 20% of the models you may face. . .meh.

Magic Power: C+. Stryker has 3 attack spells. Unfortunately, two of them are terrible. Earthquake is the star here, and while it does put a 5" circle of knockdown on the table, it does no damage itself. His other two spells cost too much for their effects, and he's got better uses for his focus, even if he's just sitting on it for extra armor.

Melee Support: B+. Stryker's feat, Arcane Shield, and Blur are great for delivering troops to the front lines. He doesn't improve threat range or accuracy, but he's helping his guys get there, which can sometimes be a struggle.

Ranged Support: A. Blur and Snipe, combined with Stryker's feat for survivability, are awesome for ranged forces. Stryker loves having long-ranged elements in his army, and Earthquake is even an accuracy buff for ranged attacks (stuff that's knocked down is easy to hit, doesn't block line of sight to stuff behind, can be targeted by Combined Ranged Attacks, and so on. He's really good at bringing the guns.

Magic Support: D. The feat and Blur offer some protection from magic, but Cygnar is sorely lacking in non-warcaster spell support, and Stryker is indicative of the faction as a whole.

Lists:

Stryker supports everything well. I'd suggest some heavy infantry, like Stormblades or Stormguard. He also loves his pet warjack, Ol' Rowdy, who is simply amazing.

Stryker + Rowdy (9) + max Stormguard (9) + Alain Runewood (3)

Stryker + Rowdy(9) + Max Long Gunners (10) + Gun Mage Captain Adept or Harlan Versh or Gorman di Wulfe(2)

Stryker + Defender (9) + Max Long Gunners (10) + Max Stormguard (9) + Alain Runewood (3)

Stryker + Hunter (6) + Hunter (6) + Squire (2) + Arlan Strangeways (2) + Black 13th (4) + Full Stormblades Unit with attachments (11)

Stryker supports just about everything Cygnar (and mercs) have to offer. He plays pretty well with everything, but he's ultimately a bit mediocre because of his versatility.

Rating: 2.5.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

WarMachine: Cygnar Battlebox

2011-04-08T18:39:00.001-07:00

I think VTES has me spoiled. I've always had a substantial collection of cards for building various decks because I've been working on that collection for more than 15 years.

Being totally new to a money sink/miniatures game meant having to start at the beginning and think small at first. My problem is that I like a few options. I don't mind playing the same VTES deck two or three games in a row, but if it's my only deck for a weekend I'll go a little crazy.

The easiest way to start playing WarMachine (barring demoing the game with friends) is with one of the faction Battleboxes. Which one to choose can be difficult. Since I had the basic rulebook in hand when making the choice there were stats for each WarMachine faction's basic units, 'jacks' and warcasters.

I wanted to be happy with my choice because of the investment. There are five main factions in WarMachine, and also several smaller "mercenary" factions. Mercs aren't a faction except when they are, but I'll cover them at a later time.

Mercs don't have a Battlebox (they had two older versions but it's difficult to find them). One of the newer factions, the Retribution of Scyrah (angry angry steampunk elves) also has no Battlebox. So those two were right out.

This left four factions:

Cygnar: Cygnar is a nation with a US/UK feel to it. They're sort of like the generic white people faction. They are also the default "protagonist" faction for most of the fluffy bits in the rule books. Cygnar has a few main themes, some of which are high technology weapons, lightning-based attacks, and lots of guns.

Khador: Khador is the soviet counterpart to Cygnar's western civilization banality. Climate-wise Khador is a frozen tundra at the outer reaches. Society is lower tech than Cygnar but has a militaristic bend that makes them formidable. Khador's themes are big bad melee power, huge mortarlike guns, and icy kholdunic sorcery. Bonus points for a Baba Yaga-analogue warcaster called the Old Witch.

Protectorate of Menoth: The Protectorate are the result of a group of religious zealots who revolted against Cygnar to become their own geographical force. Menoth is a creator deity who grants his followers power but commands them to carry out crusades against non-believers. Their main themes are "cleansing" fire attacks, powerful magic, and spell-denial anti-magic nonsense. They're the "no" faction.

Cryx: Cryx is a looming presence off the coast of the mainland setting of the game. Cryx is a largely undead force which serves an ancient God-dragon. It's more God-dragon than Dragon-God because it occasionally flies around to completely wreck shit in the back stories for the game. Cryx's themes are evil undead necromancy, fast and sneaky units, and corrosive acid attacks.

My pals have a pretty good selection of most of the
Factions because they've been playing for years. Their most sparse selections were with the Protectorate and Cygnar. So my real choice, I felt, was between those two. A friend was pushing for the Protectorate. Over a year ago a student asked me after class if I played WarMachine. When I said "no" he said he'd figured me for a Protectorate player.

So I bought the Cygnar box.

I think my friend was trying to push me in a more competitive direction, while my student probably didn't understand my appreciation for the "good guys" in a given story. Yes, there's something boring about the generic protagonist, and Cygnar isn't the easiest to win with, but we love to root for the underdog in America, and sometimes I can't help myself.

I will play the hell out of a Lawful Good character, incidentally.

The differences between the two Battleboxes, to me, were thus:

The Cygnar one has a 'jack with a cannon, as well as a 'caster with a pistol.

The Protectorate one has a 'jack with a flamethrower, but no other ranged goodies.

Cygnar's Battlebox just seemed more. . . versatile. Now that I've played the game a bit I know that it's actually skewed against ranged combat, and that heavy-hitting melee armies are strong. Gunlines don't do as well. That's all good though. I still quite enjoy the Cygnar playstyle and I've gotten a few wins under my belt (not many due to inexperience, but some).

The Cygnar Battlebox was ridiculously cheap at my FLGS. $35 for a 'caster and three 'jacks is awesome. The 'caster is Commander Coleman Stryker, which is about as lame and cheesy as a name gets. He's an occasionally lame and cheesy warcaster as well. He has a lot of unit-boosting buff spells and a special Earthquake spell that just knocks enemies down. His feat gives his whole army a big armor boost for a turn. He's got a boring gun and a boring sword which are average on the power scale. Overall he's a boring dude, but he can get the job done. Sometimes it's nice to learn with basic game trappings.

The Battlebox 'jacks are pretty basic. There's a heavy and two light 'jacks. The Ironclad heavy warjack is a big robot with a big hammer. The Charger light 'jack is a less-big robot with a smaller hammer and a double-barrel cannon. The Lancer light 'jack is a shield- and spear-toting robot which isn't so good on offense, but it's got a special ability called Arc Node. The node allows Stryker (or whichever warcaster controls it) to cast spells through the Lancer, which greatly extends the range of his Earthquakes.

Earthquake isn't fancy, but opponents that are knocked down are easy to hit. Stryker's win strategy is often "Earthquake through Lancer and then strike with focus-loaded Ironclad or Charger".

Did I mention that when a warcaster dies, that player's game is over? Much of the strategy of WarMachine involves finding ways to assassinate the other warcaster while leaving yours in relative safety. Many a game ends during either an "assassination run" or just after an overextending failed run by the other player, which can make the game sort of cat-and-mouse.

It's like tapping out to lunge in VTES, and you either get an oust or your prey happens to have three untaps (because he's Neil) to block all the bleeds and survives.

I'll go over some of my warcasters in more detail later. I should really learn how to play better before trying to explain them.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Caspia, Iron Kingdoms

Rage Against the WarMachine

2011-04-07T07:59:00.001-07:00

I avoided playing WarMachine for a long time. I knew it must be an awesome game, since I have several friends who stand by it. They seem to even like it over VTES, which speaks volumes about its quality.

The reason I resisted so long is that miniatures games tend to actually be two hobbies instead of one: the game itself and the painting of the minis. That's a big time investment, and time for
me is usually at a premium.

I lost my will to keep away from WarMachine in January. I saw that my roleplaying group wasn't playing as much, and my VTES and gaming crew is related to that group, so this would be a season of total inactivity games-wise.

That's just unacceptable to me. I needs my games. I borrowed the main book from my buddy Ray and started reading about WarMachine. I have to say that the first story in the Prime MKII rulebook is an engaging bit of fiction that describes the core of the game while building an idea of the characters in the setting. I quite like most of the characters presented in that story.

The game, at its core, is about taking the role of a powerful warrior/wizard hybrid called a warcaster. The warcaster is the center of any army in the game, and is usually one of the most powerful pieces on the table. Each warcaster has a suite of spells that blast opponents, buff friendly units, enhance the 'caster themselves, or perform utility functions like creating difficult terrain. Each warcaster also has a once-per-game benefit called a feat, which is often an incredibly powerful benefit that can change the game (or win the game) if used well.

Finally, warcasters also come with backup dancers in the form of warjacks. Warjacks are steam-powered giant robots that can also be boosted by the same arcane energy that 'casters use to cast spells. Warjacks come in light and heavy varieties, with the lighter ones being faster and more maneuverable, and the heavies being slower and stronger.

Since warjacks and spells are powered by the same energy source, the 'caster's Focus stat, the game is one of resource management. Each caster must decide which spells to cast and which 'jacks to boost with focus each turn. Some 'jacks need focus to perform well, while others do okay without the boost. When building an army list the player needs to keep in mind a typical turn's worth of focus so they have a strategy going in.

Then when the enemy 'caster's feat ruins everything, the player must scramble accordingly.

I quite liked the basic notion of the game upon reading that first story. I get to play a spellcasting badass who has several giant death machines doing his dirty work? Awesome.

It turns out that I quite like painting the minis as well. Funny thing is, as the years go by and (despite my best efforts) quotidian banality sets in, it is becoming harder and harder to get a crew together for games. VTES, to me, really needs five players (four even seems wrong to me). Roleplaying is best in a party/coterie situation. WarMachine is often a two-player game, which is a little more convenient. And painting minis is a one player activity, which is even better.

There is a VTES tourney in Ann Arbor, MI in a few weeks, and I'll be attending that. I'm not sure what to play yet. I'm considering some Trujah ridiculousness.

I'm posting from my iPhone for the first time, because of late whenever I have time in the house I'm painting tiny men. We'll see how that goes for me.

-Merlin out

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Immoren