Michigan Masters Recaps

I played a 3-list divide and conquer (play each list at least once) 50 pt faux masters event last weekend. Overall it was pretty rad. My lists were:

Haley1
Hunter
Squire
Journeyman
Hunter
Lieutenant Jakes
Hunter
Boomhowlers max
Tactical Arcanist Corps
Black 13th
Rangers
Anastasia di Bray
Eiryss

This list was made so that I could place jakes honestly. It worked okay. Jakes was rad. It's predicated on being able to remove a heavy with Haley's feat and 6 boosted damage armor piercing shots from the hunters.

Stryker2
Squire
Ol' Rowdy
Minuteman
Minuteman
Journeyman
Madelyn Corbeau
Reinholdt
ArchDuck Runewood
Stormblade Captain
Stormblade Captain
Stormguard Max
Stormblades with Unit Attachment and 3 storm Gunners

This list is a melee puncher with some tricks. It played way better than I expected it to. Opponents consistently allowed my minutemen to do awesome things while concentrating on storm knights.

Lastly
Commander Sturgis
Stormwall
Journeyman
Hammer Dorfs with Jonas Murdoch
Captain Max Finn
Gorman di Wulfe, Kung Lao Impersonator
Rangers
Lady Aiyana and Master Holt
Mechaniks min
Alexia and the Risen
Stormsmith
Rupert Carvolo

This list is . . .a list all right. I'm not sure exactly how to run Sturgis. This was okay, but it felt off. Also, Sturgis is in peril a LOT early game.

Round 1 I played a game of Outflank against Butcher 1.

Butcher
War dog
Spriggan
Malakov
Torch
Winter guard Death Star (full unit with unit attachment, 3 weapon attachments, and kovnik Joseph gregorovitch)
2 units of kayazy eliminators
The great bears
Gorman

My opponent won the roll and went first. He ran up and cast iron flesh on the WG and fury on the great bears. Malakov put redline on torch.

I counter moved most of my stuff to just give him a few dudes on either side of the zones, and cast deflection. One minuteman jumped wide to flank my right zone.

My opponent decided to pop his feat (probably early) so that whatever he gets to hit dies. However his dice fail him and the 10 attacks he does yields only 3 kills.

I counter feat and kill everything in both zones, scoring 2 points. People underestimate storm blades charging and the minutemans ability to kill shit. This turn my minuteman killed 2 kayazy eliminators.

My feat is devastating. I manage to kill a LOT of winter guard with electro leaps.

He counter strikes but can't get back in. I clear the right zone and dominate it. He tries some last ditch holding actions but my minuteman kills his high-defense model and the stormblades get Aiyana. Win 5-0 on scenario.



Round 2 I'm playing fire support against a menoth player. He drops kreoss 2 tier against my Sturgis. There is a big stupid bridge and river in the middle of the table.

Kreoss
Fire of Salvation
Two bastions max
Bastion seneschal
Two knights exemplar
Two knights exemplar seneschal
Stabby pony chicks max
Exemplar gravus


I play this game fairly badly. I feat for nothing with Sturgis and then flub a decent assassination run. Lame. My opponent plays well through my mistakes and I clock out on a last ditch (bad) run on kreoss.

Round 3 I play another cygnar player who has high-armor lists so I drop Stryker again. He also drops Stryker. The scenario is incursion.

His list is

Stryker 2
Ol Rowdy
2 Centurions
Squire
Journeyman
Black 13th
Runewood
Madelyn Corbeau
Gorman di Wulfe
Hammer Dorfs with Jonas Murdoch
Eiryss 2

I got to go first. I made an early play for Gorman but my minuteman missed 2 boosted 8s to shoot him. I try to keep some stuff out of threat. His Stryker feats, rebukes both my units (!), then backs up. He starts charging storm blades and my arcane shield rowdy charges up with counter charge. He gets some charges on rowdy but they don't break armor. His centurion misses. During feat his dwarves continue to not hurt rowdy. He does kill most of my storm blades.

I counter feat and counter attack, feeding my jacks for revenge. One minuteman kills Gorman and Ryan (score!), rowdy kills a centurion and
Hammer dorfs. My storm blades kill dorfs too. During my feat kill most of the remaining dorfs.



My opponent sends his rowdy into mine and fails to even disable a system (eiryss missed her 7 to hit my rowdy in a wreck marker). He doesn't clear my 3 stormblades to score. Those guys kill Madelyn and his eiryss. My rowdy kills his with the help of positive charge. I score 2 points.

He tries to clear a lane for Stryker on Stryker violence but it doesn't work out. I manage to score 3 more the next turn.

Game 4 was against morvhana2 in balance of power. It's a terrible scenario. My opponent and I are both list locked because of divide and conquer rules. This might be he last round. I must play Haley against his morvhana.

I don't hate it.

His list was tier.
Morvhana
Pure blood wolf
Moon hound
2 tharn ravagers max, one with ua and shaman
Blood trackers max with Niall
Blood pack max
Druid wilder

I go first and take up space. He tries to jam my hunter not realizing they have parry and can walk away.

I decide to feat top of 2 and try for morvhana. I give artillerist to lynch, Haley feats an cast TB catching his warlock. She's a half inch out from getting morvhana with her own hand cannon. Lynch drifts a fire beacon on morv, then my black 13th miss or fail to hurt morv a bunch on 6 more snipe shots. I had run a range forward as well for Mark target so only needed 5s.

My hunters each have 2 focus so I hope to hit 6s and then boost damage on their two shots but I miss the first of each pair and only manage to cripple morv and her battlegroup instead Of Killing her.

The game goes another 5 rounds since morvhana is having trouble with her schtick now. Eventually Haley dies to the pureblood spray.

Awesome game tho. Worth it.

Round 5 was against MOAR cygnar. Sloan v my Sturgis in destruction.

I feat better, my opponents dice fail to kill my stormwall and I repair and nearly wreck his. We grind and I win on scenario.

3-2 for the day. Not a bad run.

-Merlin out.

Location:Fenton MI

MI cup recaps

I played 5 games in the MI cup warmachine tournament last Saturday. I did pretty well too. I did make some mistakes, but overall it was a good day.

Round 1 I played a flint local using Khador in the scenario Close Quarters. He was newer so I decided to get my Stryker drop out of the way. He played strahkov.

Stryker1
Stormwall
Lancer
Squire
Black 13th
Rangers
Sword Knights max
Rune wood
Jr
Eiryss2
Reinholdt
Alexia2

I really like Alexia2. She's printed a lot of money for me of late. She might show up in some other lists. In this one I abuse blur on her ridiculous defensive stat line.

I went first, but he had deployed his conquest on a flank and I thought I could "hide" my stormwall behind the flag on my side and an obstruction.

His list was
Strahkov
Conquest
Dog
IFP normal max w UA
Shock Troopers max
IF kovnik
Widowmaker marksman
Manhunter
Max battle mechanics
Press gangers
Hawk

We both moved up a lot turn one. I shot a few press gangers with sniped rangers. Then they ran into my rangers. Next turn I killed most of the rest of them, feated, and knocked down the shock troopers. I had covering fire and Mage storms blocking charge lanes, and alexia and Dixon Lynch high fived and killed the man hunter in a forest.

He took the bait and feated, but conquest was about 2.5 inches from stormwall when it hit the flag and skirted past the obstruction. So strahkov's feat was a bit wasted. Stormwall killed 5 models with electro leaps while pounding conquest. His mechanics were mostly out of position because of running through a forest that conquest had shambled through without issues.

Conquest counter-slapped stormwall. It hurt a lot. I earthquaked his shock troopers to drop shield wall and killed 3 but those dudes are tough. We wound up going to dice down and I won on army points. Quick round.

I should have saved my feat a turn.

Round 2 I played my haley2 list against my first of 4 opponents from Gamers Gauntlet. He was playing menoth and dropped severius1. I won the roll and ran up. I should have given him a chance to kill my dudes, but instead I stayed out of threat. He ran into the zone with defenders ward and tough on errants. Ugh.

The scenario was balance of power.

Haley2
Thorn (bond)
Squire
Forge guard max
Storm blades with UA and 3 gunners
Alexia1
Tempest Blazers max
Gorman
Anastasia
Piper
Jr
Stormblade captain

V

Severius1
Repenter
Repenter
Avatar
Vessel of judgment
Choir min
2 vassals
Errants max with ua and senechal solo
Zealots max with ua
Piper

This game was good. After we postured on turn one I feated over much of his stuff. He had boxed sevvy in, so I made sure he was barely in my feat so that he couldn't walk up and counter feat on Haley. What good is a time walk if my opponent does it right back?

This game hinged on the avatar moving toward my stormblades after a hammerdorf did some damage and triggered enliven. Thorn and the stormblades managed to wreck a repenter, bring the vessel to 4 hp, and do a bunch of damage to the avatar.

The Stormblade captain then charged the avatar and managed to finish it with a baller damage roll (18 on four dice?). He then used quick work and killed a vassal. Nice.

My opponent was on the back foot at this point. He'd been concentrating a lot of fire on alexia, but she was def 17 against his shooting from non-errants and the errants were hip deep in dwarves.

His zealots managed to roll a LOT of 9s to kill dorfs, but he was back pedaling. The next turn I cleared a path for thorn and TK/reaction drove him to sevvy's behind. Thorn failed to kill the old man tho.

My opponent made a last ditch effort at scenario but thorn got it done the second time.

Round 3 was fire support against retribution. I decided to play Stryker because of the Mage hunters.

Issyria
Hyperion
Chimera
Halberdiers max with ua and thane
Sentinels max with ua
Strike force with commander

I won the roll and went first. He was a bit choked by his side of the table but he did alright unpacking his list.

Turn two I feated to time walk him but I didn't get enough work done because the black 13th were blinded. My rangers got jammed by halberdiers. His turn two he blinded the stormwall and just tried to take up real estate. I had knocked down the sentinels to turn off vengeance.

Turn 3 my blind stormwall jacked the Hyperion all up with fists and killed 4 mooks with electro leap as well. I knocked down the sentinels again but I wasn't killing his infantry fast enough. He blinded stormwall again and dropped it to 3 boxes. It did a bit more memory but was pretty much done.

I have up alexia 2 too easily. I couldn't figure out a way to close the game and went for a weird play that cost me Stryker.

Turns out stormwall can't be targeted by blinding light. I should have asked during the game.

Round 4 & 5 I played against the warmans podcast crew.

Round 4 was process of elimination against paint vagrant playing Krueger2.

Krueger2
Gorax
Pureblood
Stalker
Ghetorix
Double wold scrimps
Stones and keeper
Blood weavers

He won the roll (drat) and decided to go first (drat). So my plan was to score first if possible. I was expecting him to feat on top 2 but he held it. So I feated bottom 2 to score and deflect reprisal. He feated top 3 and I couldn't do much debuffed and under stormwall. I did manage to kill the second objective on bottom 3 with storm gunners and my girl alexia.

Then the game ended. Dice down came pretty early. I feel like Brian was about to eat half my doodz with sprinting wolves. I had been rushed my last turn and my dwarves hadn't gotten tough (piper didn't activate before I ran out of clock).

So I won on control points but it was a weird way to win a game. 8 army points to 0 (I'd killed all the blood weavers and a valu bucket of popcorn scrimps, he'd killed a couple dwarves). 2 control points ftw I guess.

Game 5 was rallying point against bill of warmans playing rahn fires on high tier 4. It seems like a rad list. He won the roll (drat) and opted to go first (drat) against my Haley 2. We postured a bit turn one. Deceleration did a lot of work against his archer guys. My ponies were def 20 with piper deceleration on a hill. Even aiming they needed boxes.

I managed to disrupt his Phoenix and get a couple gunners into it as I feated. Gorman also blinded it. It had immolated 3 ponies tho.

Hyperion swallowed a bunch of dwarves and zombies. I pushed up the middle with stormblades and alexia. Hyperion ate a bunch of stormblades later too. In the late game bill went for a dominate point as he knew dice down was coming. I managed to get alexia on rahn and she went through 5 zombies before he was dead.

Alexia was a boss all day. She's going to be in a Lot of lists going forward.

-Merlin out.

Bored Games are Rad

I've been playing, uh, lots of warmachine to prep for the MI cup.

I did play one game with Charlie, but I got my teeth kicked in by Harbinger.

Then we had a board game night and we played King of Tokyo for a while, then 3 5-player games of Small World, which I'd never played. It's awesome. I won the first on accident. Then Brice, and last William.






I bought the app later the next day on iPad. It's also rad.

Last night Robb came over and we played some games again. We played a game of Death Angel and lost in the final location (real close).

Then we played a game of Letters from Whitechapel with my wife and I managed to get away with it (I played Jack). It was a sweet game.

So yeah. I'm ready for the cup?

-Merlin out

Terra mystica seems rad

Robb and I managed a game of terra mystica last weekend. It turned out to be a sweet game. I hope to play it a bunch and rate the various races on offer.



We played the two-player suggested setup. After playing I feel that the game might even play quicker than we did the first time. Now that we know all the actions it should be way easier.

I won of course. Honestly the first game would've taken much less time if Robb hadn't agonized over how he could win. It's a tutorial game! Settle down. Anyway, it's a great civilization building game with what seems to be plenty of replay ability.

-Merlin out

Pirates!

I managed to actually play some games this month. I also painted up a bunch of privateer models, and I really enjoyed it. I think I might actually paint up A Pirate's Life, the theme force for Captain Shae. It depends on whether I can afford press gangers any time this spring.

I built a haley1 list with pirates, the theme of which was tough-ass pirates all up in my opponent's face early, with Temporal barrier and thunderbolt shots to control whatever slips through the cracks. I'm worried about colossals, but the plan is to apply scenario pressure early.



Haley1
Squire
Ol' Rowdy
Journeyman
Hunter
ATGM and the Dude
Alexia and the Risen
Sea Dog Crew
Jonas Murdoch
2 Sea Dog Rifles
Doc Killingsworth
Lord Rockbottom
Bosun Grogspar
First Mate Hawk

It wasn't until I set up to play I realized that the sea dogs aren't advanced deploy without Mr Walls the mercenary attachment. So that will have to change.

Charlie played his kreoss3 tier list again.

Kreoss
Fire of Salvation
Reguardianer
Full Ponies
Full errants with UA and seneschal
2 min choir
Vassal
Vessel of judgment
Mechanic






I won the roll and it put Charlie on the back foot. His errants killed 5 pirates but I made 4 tough checks. I feated and killed all the errants except 1 and the hunter left the vessel on 4 hp. He pushed into the middle with the vessel and camped kreoss behind it. He tied up a mess of pirates. He killed grogspar.

The hunter shot the vessel off the table even after the mechanic repaired it. Then I noticed that kreoss was about 8" from my front line of pirates. Rowdy moved past the front line to tremor and KD the guardian (and a pirate). The gun mages aimed and under TB had no issues hitting engaged fire of salvation with thunderbolts and moved him out of the way (8" of total push). I buffed the pirates like crazy and 4 managed to charge kreoss. I missed a bunch of 5s but the last sea dog hit and rolled a 22 on his 4-die charge damage roll at dice -7. That was all kreoss had left.



Process of elimination was the scenario. I should have had alexia kill the objective and score me the zone first.

Game two I played my Stryker list. I moved up after winning the roll to go first. I feated bottom of two and kreoss didn't have a lot of good plays. The errants died a lot again to rangers and black 13th.

Top of 3 Stryker scored a point by having alexia2 base the flag and spawn thralls behind the errants left. Stormwall and Stryker managed to disrupt both heavies. I put a lancer in the path of the vengers.






The vengers break stormwall's right side and maul the lancer, but the disrupted jacks are sad. I score another point on Charlie's turn. Turn 4 I charge a thrall with Stryker to base the flag, and toss an earthquake to knock down fire of salvation. Stryker misses because of engagement but the template knocks down fire of salvation AND kreoss. Kreoss is camping 3, but I boost several damage rolls into him and chip him down to 4, then alexia spawns 3 more thrall warriors who charge and finish him.

Two decent games, but going first was important to both.

-Merlin out

Dunwich Horror Expansion

I got the dunwich horror expansion for Arkham Horror and I like it, I think. It's got a bunch of rad cards and new concepts, but I played several games of it one-player while out of town on business and I'm pretty sure the game with the expansion is not for single player anymore.

I feel I can keep up with most aspects of the game, but with the expansion there are now 15 dangerous unstable locations. That means every turn there's a chance a new location will spawn a gate, and since 8 gates on the board means game over, the clock is running fast. If I ignore the gates in dunwich (for the purposes of counting open gates for the game-end conditions) it might make the game work better.



As it was I was doing very with with Joe Diamond, the private eye, but the 8th gate opened. I had sealed 2 and was well on the way to a 3rd. In a normal game that would be all 10 unstable locations accounted for--very rare. With the expansion the clock is too fast.

It's still a lot of fun. I like the new encounter cards and the new other worlds a lot.

-Merlin out

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Crowd sourced Skorne games

I played two games last night against kreoss3 tier 4
Kreoss
Fire of Religious Noun
Reguardianer
2 min choir (advanced move on both jacks)
Vessel of judgment
Vassal mechanick
Vassal
Full errants with ua and senechal
Full vengers

I was playing a crowdsourced skorne list from the forums:

Hexy1



Molik Karn
Titan Gladiator
Cyclops Brute
Aptimus Marketh
Extoller soul ward
Agonizer
Willbreaker
Swamp gobbers
Min beast handlers
Tyrant commander
Nihilators full
Incindiari full

Game 1 was fire support. My opponent won the roll and went first. My first mistake was deployment. My opponent put his vengers on a flank and I hoped to light them on fire without triggering battle driven but this was a bad plan. I realized my mistake as my opponent placed his AD errants on the opposite flank and thereby kept my incidiarri from their preferred prey.

The game was a disaster. I misplayed the soul ward and marketh, so missed a few souls, and my feat was completely countered by errants nonsense and the vessel's doors of judgment. I lost quite handily.



So we shifted terrain, switched to incursion, and I tried again.

Game 2

This was much better. I deployed the incindiari centrally and they did a bunch of work. My opponent decided to try and delay my heavy trading by force hammering Molik, but he didn't count on me making him reroll the attack (Molik was on a hill, he was boosting to an 8) until it missed. Kreoss pretty much HAD to feat to force hammer with all of his upkeeps.

The incidiarri managed to kill a ton of errants because my opponent was between a rock and a hard place: dude I hit dies, then goes to murder his pal because of Dark Dominion, or he does his bond of brother nonsense but the errant I hit is still on fire. He tried to flank his vengers hard into Molik, but I managed to press forward hexy to catch them in feat an Molik killed 3 of them (vengers are bad at killing each other tho, esp w holy ward).



I wind up doing way better on attrition and scenario. Then I derp and leave hexy a little too close, forgetting that the VoJ can push all my screening models (Jesus that thing is bonkers). Kreoss gets to hexy and manages to -just- kill him. One more transfer or another 1" away and it doesn't happen. I could have managed either no problem.

Thoughts:

Rynth's hexy tactica should be required reading for anyone trying the list who hasn't played a lot (or as In my case, any) of hexy 1. It really helped.

Protectorate is dumb and also stupid. I've got some ideas on the list but I'll wait until 3 games to talk about them. . .


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Arkham horror fest

I've played 4 games of arkham Horror and 1 of high command since my last post. Those games are pretty sweet.

Devin and Robb came to my place for some games a week or so ago and we played arkham horror. I remember we played against Ithaqua, who's not the toughest ancient one. I was Darrell Simmons, who is awesome. I might need to revise his rating. I can't remember Robb and Devon's characters. We kicked ithaqua's ass pretty handily.



I'm Darrell Simmons, bitch!

The game was memorable because I kept Darrell's retainer for most of the game, which made me rich. I got a lot done with that cash. Also choosing two encounters in town was an incredible boon.

Then we played a game of high command, and despite the fact that we didn't really have a core strategy Devin and I did well. He wound up winning by 3 points, but we were 10 or more points ahead of Robb's cryx. I played each of the final 4 turns as if it were my last, but the fact that the game went the full length hurt me; while I was doing well Devin was buying VP cards to stuff into his deck.



Khador wins!

Robb came over last Friday for a game of AH and some music stuff. I was again Darrell Simmons and he was Mandy Thompson (who gives a reroll). We kicked ass again, though it was a close game versus Azathoth. Robb told me he'd never beaten Azathoth before, but I don't think I've ever failed to do so. He's got a 14-token doom track for chrissakes.

Notably, we had to defeat two of the worst rumor cards to win the game, All Good Work Undone (or something like that) which removes all elder seals from the table if left to pop(eff), and the one which adds doom tokens randomly. Those made it tight be we pulled it out.

By the end of this game I was saying "I'm Darrell Simmons, Bitch!" Because I was having my second good run in two games with him.

Then my power went out and and I wound up staying with Robb for two nights with my son. We played two mor AH games, a loss vs Nyarlathotep and a win vs Yog-Sothoth.

The Nyarlathotep game was doomed from the start, as Robb and I pulled Sister Mary and Dexter Drake, two of the worst characters in the game IMO. We managed to seal 4 gates before he awoke, and we had plenty of clue tokens to fight the final battle, but Dexter was cursed and was devoured quickly, and sister Mary isn't the stalwart for that fight.

Then we had a great game with Harvey The Professor and Mike the Gangster versus Yog-Sothoth. Robb started with Monterey Jack and got an elder sign from the Curiositie Shoppe turn one, then stepped into a gate intent on sealing it. His first encounter in the Other World sent him lost in time and space, and it turns out Yog-Sothoth devours anyone lost in time and space.

So Robb drew Harvey next after losing his first character on the second turn. Harvey started with the necronimicon, which as it turns out turns Harvey into a beast. He's the best spell caster in the game and reduces all sanity loss, so after getting like 7 spells from the necronimicon Robb was a beast. Harvey killed like 27 toughness worth of monsters and sealed two gates.

Mike had an arsenal of weapons and a bit of luck, and I sealed 4 gates and killed 10 toughness in monsters. The witch house got a gate early and we kept drawing witch house gates after, and so had many many monster surges from it. Stupid witch house. We killed two brutal rumors this game as well.

-Merlin out


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