MI Cup Recap

The Michigan cup tournament was a week and a half ago and I did well.

I took Constance Blaize in tier and haley2 with a stormwall and good Mercs.

Round 1 I played against a minions player who had rask and maelok. I decided Constance could bully either matchup and went with her. My opponent went first but allowed me to go so he could take the side with the wall. The scenario was ammunition run.

I expected my opponent to take the objective in the middle of the board on bottom of two. I had my feat up to counter his bottom of one feat. Instead he killed a handful of knights and set up for a vicious alpha strike.

With Constance having extra focus I blew up both my scorable objectives and had Blaize herself flashing blade his two heavies off the table while she camped 5 with arcane shield.

He tried to shoot me with rask's gun to pull my focus and strip arcane shield, but gallant was standing nearby and shield guarded it.

After that it was a matter of clearing away gators while protecting Constance. I killed rask with stormwall on round 5 but my opponent had done a great job of denying me further control points.

Round 2 I played Haley versus lich1 in process of elimination. I went first. My opponent was screwed by my feat and stormwall killed two ogres and blew the cortex out of malice. He shuffled around but crucially failed to kill an objective by rolling snake eyes on a hellfire.

I took that objective and then jockeyed for table position the turn following. I did some more work on his army but left a bile thrall alive.

His retaliation kills my stormwall, many good solos, and most of my nyss. I'm low on models suddenly. I decide to try a shot at lich with cylena and if she spikes damage I will have the b13 take a crack at the lich. Cylena hits but fails to wound. I have Haley camp and run to the far zone while my hammer dorfs kill the second objective and malice. I'm up 4 points to 2 now.



He piles into Haley with a lot of attacks and hits every single one, but his damage is middling and she's left on 3 wounds. I win on scenario.

Game 3 is kreoss1 v Constance in incoming. It's a scenario with close domination scoring so I plan to turtle on my side and contest his. He doesn't contest my zone much (he could have but doesn't) and it costs him the game. He makes a last ditch effort at Constance with his knockdown feat but I'm hiding her behind stormwall and not much connects.

Round 4 I played haley2 v doomy2 in supply and demand. I'm worried about cracking his armor but I decide to just control the hell out of the game. I go first and run up, he advances conservatively. I feat over everything and he has to sit out a turn while my feat is going. I manage to kill a storm troll with two shots from stormwall (hot dice).

On top of 3 I kill his objective with stormwall guns and dominate the zone. Anastasia gets espionage to go off and Gorman black oils two heaves. My hammer dorfs largely bounce off the axer. The nyss kill janissa. I get 3 CPs. He has to contest to avoid the loss.

Mulg manages to feat/trample/goad to Haley, but he's out of attacks. Stormwall kills mulg and I get my last two CPs.

I manage to get to the finals and decide I'm more comfortable with Constance than Haley. My opponent is the JVM; who is playing vayl 2. He outmatched me in a number of ways.

I lost the roll and he moved up a bit. I moved up and feated bottom 1. After the game he said he thought I feated early. That might be right, or maybe I should have run full out more.

Either way I'm on the back foot from word go. I can't seem to jam my guys into him due to spacing and scather templates. I contest the zone well until turn 3 or 4, but his ranged superior has turned into a heavy trade and I'm given many bad options to choose. The ones I choose don't work (probably by Jvm's design) and I flail until he wins on control points 5-0.

The scenario was into the breach.

I might have been better served with haley2, but I feel like vayl can straight murder Haley with icy grip plus boosted oblits rather easy. Ah well. I'm going to try and give that guy a game one of these days.

-Merlin out

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Mammoth initial testing

I played two games versus a friend who is trying to get better with Denny2. His list was

Denny2
Skarlock
Two bitey arc node chicken things
Bane thralls full
Tartersauce
Satyxis raiders full w ua and captain solo
Croe's cutthroats full
Press gangers full
Doc K
Bosun
Rockbottom

(I think?)

I played two different 'casters with a similar list

The list was:

Warlock
Mammoth
Shaman
Raider
Gladiator
2 x willbreakers
Extoller soul ward
Nihilators full
Pain givers min

In game one I played prime morghoul and added Orin midwinter to finish out the list, somehow missing that I had max pain givers in war room. So that's my derp. Played a point down.

Both games we played scenario 12: fire support (we're lazy).

I won the roll to go first and advanced super aggressive, lobbing some templates at croe's that drifted to no consequence.

My opponent ran up his AD jammers super aggressive and Denny ran up on full camp, NOT incorporeal.

I decide I can get morghoul to clear the raiders blocking LOS and landing space and rocket my mammoth into her face.

I send Freddy Kruger in but he rolls sub par, though I still kill about 6 models. I feel like I had a chance but I forgot to abuse the mammoth before sending in the clown.

So it's ranged assassination time! I puppet strings the shaman and the raider gives it snipe. It hits after a reroll and rolls nuts high on damage at dice -9. I did 7 wounds.

The mammoth gets my second puppet strings, advances (she's just out of 10", and I roll a 6 4 2 to hit, needing a 13. I reroll the 2 into a 4. Boost damage and do 7 more. She's on two. Mammoth buys and boosts, straight rolling a 13 and enough damage to kill her.

I had the extoller in case she was incorporeal.

That went better than it probably should have.

Game two I swapped out Orin for swamp gobbers (because I guess I wanted to play a point down all day) and switched warlocks to hexeris2.

I won again, turn one looks similar to last game, though my opponent doesn't run up as aggressively. He's also shifted his raiders to the center of deployment and moved press gangers to offset my Nihilators.

This became a real game. I used snipe and aiming on the shaman (and puppet strings natch) to kill the sea witch hiding in the woods behind raiders. Then the template festival began and the mammoth rained hell on the raiders and croe's.

The damage had been done, positioning-wise, though. I was going to get locked out on scenario next turn. I used my Nihilators to kill press gangers but 4 up tough is a thing.

I feated top of two to ashes most of the remaining raiders and camped 3, but I was concerned about scenario.

My opponent focused fire on the mammoth and gladiator and winded up a bane charge. Denny feated but he spent too much on the mammoth and ignored my objective until too late: the press gangers failed to kill it.

So scenario stalled while I threw templates at banes. He hadn't brought the ua so they weren't tough. I got some good blasts and killed half of them. My few Nihilators tied up press gangers and the shaman and raider tried to assassinate doc and bosun. Bosun died but doc lived.

The remaining press gangers were already engaging the objective and so failed to break it again, Denny killed some support staff and went after the mammoth. 3 banes with curse of shadows did half its spiral but it lived to sweep. My opponent scored on the flag on the side of his objective.



I tried to clear up stuff and moved hexy up, but he was able to kill the last few Nihilators and my objective while dominating with Denny. He scored 4 points on his turn to finish the game out.

I feated poorly. I could have done a lot better. Tough to stay up on Denny in scenario play.

-Merlin out

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MOAR Games!

It's been an awesome week. In addition to all my other games, Charlie and I played two games of warmahordes on Thursday.

Game 1 was hexeris2 against Charlie's kreoss1 in the scenario destruction. I went first and ran up, Charlie moved up as well. Then I decided I had an angle to feat and maybe spell kreoss to death with hexeris, and that seemed better than letting kreoss feat on me.

So I did. I moved up my bonded razor worm, got my nihilators out of the way, had my will breaker cast puppet strings on hexeris for insurance, moved up my gladiator to rile up extra fury, then charged a nihilator in the back with hexeris. My first boosted hellfire hit and did 8 damage. I feated and missed my second one, but I rerolled the low dice with puppet strings, hit, and rolled at least an 11 to finish the old man on the hill.

I had a back up plan to keep me safe in case I failed, but when Charlie and I played it out kreoss' feat assassinated hexeris camping 2 despite my agonized denying him focus. Stupid choir.

Game two was an ugly, haley2 v severius1 match in the scenario close quarters. I was trying a troop heavy, spellslinging Haley list. I went second. Charlie moved up and put defenders ward on his errants and eye of menoth on severius.



I had eiryss strip defenders ward with her arcane interference bolt. Then I put deadeye on the nyss hunters and deceleration up. The nyss managed to kill 5 errants. Everything else advanced.

Severius moved up and jammed me a bit, getting a good ashes to ashes to burn 6 nyss (boo!). I reacted by feating and turning his warjacks around with TK and domination. I got some more errants off the board and some of his support pieces as well.

He didn't get to do a lot on my feat turn, but he could counter feat. He did, but in so doing left severius vulnerable on a hill. My guns and a stab from thorn brought him low.

Then Saturday we all went to Charlie's for housewarming games. We played 3 games of munchkin with all the expansions, then a frustrating game of super dungeon explore, then a game of super munchkin.

I've played a lot of munchkin, but never the base set, always the weird "other" sets like munchkin Cthulhu. It was pretty rad. At one point I realized I was playing a high, dark Orc warrior on a wolf with a flaming, blessed sledgehammer. That was rad.



Super dungeon explore is a board game with cool miniatures that seeks to emulate the video game Guantlet. There are monster generators that spawn critters endlessly while the heroes attempt to kill the generators and get treasure. I know, it seems like a home run!

However, the game is incredibly difficult for the players, and I've never seen the Consul/GM lose. The monsters inevitably swarm the players and crush them. It's super super super hard.



So after playing that for a while we just gave up and played more munchkin.

Overall a good week for games. I'm jonesing for more arkham horror honestly. I love that game.

-Merlin out


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Ketchup post

I've played a lot of games of late, but I haven't been writing about it.

I went to a war machine "random list" tournament and went 2-2, though one of those games was in-hand when I lost it to a Hail Mary. It was okay.

Ray came out and my nemo3 murdered his testament of menoth. It was a good game. On my last turn I was about to NOT win when ray suggested I just kill his caster and I did. My dice tried to fuck me but in the end they got it done.

I then played a game of Space Hulk with Ray, and my gene stealers managed to get sergeant Gideon in the end, though it was close. He would have done better if brother Leon had not rolled trip-6s to self destruct on overwatch.



At Robb's wedding we played a game of VTES and I lost quite badly, as my predator had little pressure early and made me play a 1-minion game. It was rough. My deck seems good on paper but rarely performs well.



Then we played even more VTES, with Robb, devin, and the eskimatt meeting me at Robb's for two more games. I won the first with a ventrue breed/boon deck, mainly through being a bully and back ousting Matt.

Then Robb handily stomped us with a silly imbued deck, as he cannot help himself and continues to build imbued decks from a set of 60 cards on spite of the enormity of this game.

His deck seemed fine, but his victory rested some in the play of the rest of us, who all played bad combat decks and blew each other up around him. The mortals calmly stepped over the carcasses of the fallen, and Robb got his last two VP on the back of Devin (his PREDATOR) playing a dragonbound that would NEVER HURT HIS PREY, only himself (ha!) and me, his predator.

Ah well.

I'm not bitter about that or anything. That game was in the tank already.

Then we roped Alayna into playing 5-player Arkham Horror, and in spite of drawing the dread Cthulhu (who is a complete asshole) we kicked that game in the nuts over the next 3 hours, placing a 6th seal on the board with only 6 doom counters on Cthulhu and a terror level of 1. The town didn't even care. "Dread Cthulhu, you say? Ah well, life goes on."

Charlie is coming out tonight for more warm achine, and then he's having a games night at his place Saturday as a housewarming. What an awesome few weeks its been for games!

-Merlin out


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Thursday game w new stormnoun

Played a 50 pt game of process of elimination v Charlie.

I wanted to test the new storm blade solo. My list was:

War Room Army

Cygnar - Constanxe Storm

56 / 56 (50+6) Warcaster(s) : 1/1 Warjack(s) : 1 Battle Engines : 0 Solos : 7 Units : 4

Constance Blaize, Knight of the Prophet - WJ: +6
- Squire
- Gallant - PC: 9

Journeyman Warcaster - PC: 3
Anastasia di Bray - PC: 2
Harlan Versh, Illuminated One - PC: 2
Stormblade Captain - PC: 2
Stormblade Captain - PC: 2
Lanyssa Ryssyl, Nyss Sorceress - PC: 2
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord - PC: 2

Storm Lances - Leader & 4 Grunts: 11
Stormguard - Leader & 9 Grunts: 9
Rangers - Leader & Grunts: 5
Rangers - Leader & Grunts: 5

---

GENERATED : 06/13/2013 23:50:21

Charlie played
Reznik
Hierophant
Reckoner
Guardian
Avatar
Min choir
Vassal
Mechanic
Saxon
Rupert
Knights exemplar
Knights errant w UA and seneschal

I won the die roll and went first. My rangers on left got banishing ward and ran up a bit (out of errant aiming range), the ones on the right took a forest. Lanyssa ran behind them.

My stormguard ran up the middle and my lances split, half behind and half in front of the guard. Everything else hung back a bit.

Constance put up banishing ward and jr put arc shield on the ponies.

Charlie moved his errants up and they shot a couple rangers, but he missed a lot of 8s. He put ignite on the errants and iron aggression on the avatar.

My alpha was great. Despite tough on his errants my rangers killed 4 and my lances did ride-by attacks to reposition and kill 5 more, leaving him the UA and one errant to hang with the seneschal. The stormguard ran through the storm lances with tough from piper. Constance got arcane shield and feated over everything but two rangers. Anastasia ambushed in but just for positioning.

Charlie was jammed and low on attacks without the errants. He managed to kill 4 rangers (failed their command check), a handful of stormguard, and a storm lance. His reckoner failed to kill a pony on a boosted gun shot under feat, which brought me joy.



I counter attacked by cleaning out the left-hand zone and breaking the objective in it. Gallant managed to scrap the guardian (one stormguard got an assist with a 6-6-4 charge damage roll). I moved Constance back to keep her safe and one storm lance managed an assault on reznik himself, doing 9 damage.

Reznik wracked a storm lance and cleaved another. The exemplars missed a ranger and finished a stormguard. The avatar rolled minimum focus, took two free strikes and failed to kill gallant (17 damage across a charge and two additionals at dice+2? Bad dice). The reckoner killed a ranger and tied up my remaining rangers. Charlie said he was worried about their guns bc reznik was empty. In hindsight that wasn't the best use of 3 focus on a reckoner. Saxon managed to roll the hard 9 and hard 9 to kill Anastasia (boo!).



I assess my options, realize that I might be able to win on scenario if Gallant can mug the avatar and my rangers can kill super-men knights exemplar. In that scenario Constance has to also kill an objective, maybe without flank. Seems bad.

I have a reckoner in the other zone and not much to kill it with. Ooooooor I can try to assassinate reznik, who's up in the mix and camping zero. I move Constance up, cast crusaders call, and cast transference. My rangers move up for potshots but don't do much. My lone stormguard moves up and slaps reznik for 1. Then my final storm lance assaults reznik and I boost the charge attack with transference, killing him.

I also had a stormblade captain ready to charge in as well, and a focus left to boost that attack.

Charlie's a bit rusty, so the game was looser than we'd like, but overall I'm happy with the list. It works well and it should be able to put some hurt on larger targets.

I think a similar list with rowdy instead of gallant would work well with stryker1 as well. Maybe the same with Stryker2.

-Merlin out


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Memorial Day Games

I forgot to take pics of my two games last night, but they were good learning experiences. I played Ray in two games of cygnar v cryx.

Game 1 was Kraye tier 4 v Mortenebra tier 4. I lost the go first roll and ray went first. The scenario was outflank.

Basically I was doing well on attrition and I gave him an opportunity on Kraye which I didn't need to do. I re-read my feat and realized I could feat and then move away. Which is what I should have done. Morty's desecrator got to Kraye with focus and all Morty's buffs.

Game 2 was haley2 tier 4 storm bringers v lich3.

I was up on scenario by 2 CPs in this one, but ray managed to get his arc node/mook Vociferon close enough to arc two boosted bone shakers at Haley. Which I could have avoided, again with better caster placement.

Both were games I felt I was making good choices tactically but my war caster was just too exposed.

So those are good lessons learned.

-Merlin out


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Tournament games

I was planning on playing Cygnar at a local 50 pt event, but my skorne is so pretty I couldn't stop myself from playing them. I quite like my Hexeris2 list but makeda1 was my second and I'm not sure it's very good.

War Room Army

Skorne - Hexy

56 / 56 (50+6) Warlock(s) : 1/1 Warbeast(s) : 5 Battle Engines : 0 Solos : 4 Units : 3

Lord Arbiter Hexeris - WB: +6
- Basilisk Krea - PC: 4
- Titan Gladiator - PC: 8
- Molik Karn - PC: 11
- Razor Worm - PC: 4
- Bronzeback Titan - PC: 10

Agonizer - PC: 2
Extoller Soulward - PC: 2
Mortitheurge Willbreaker - PC: 2
Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor - PC: 2

Nihilators - Leader & 9 Grunts: 8
Paingiver Beast Handlers - Leader & 3 Grunts: 2
Swamp Gobbers Bellows Crew - Leader & 1 Grunt: 1


War Room Army

Skorne - PMak

55 / 55 (50+5) Warlock(s) : 1/1 Warbeast(s) : 4 Battle Engines : 0 Solos : 3 Units : 3

Archdomina Makeda - WB: +5
- Aptimus Marketh
- Archidon - PC: 7
- Titan Gladiator - PC: 8
- Bronzeback Titan - PC: 10
- Cyclops Brute - PC: 5

Agonizer - PC: 2
Mortitheurge Willbreaker - PC: 2
Saxon Orrik - PC: 2

Nihilators - Leader & 9 Grunts: 8
Paingiver Beast Handlers - Leader & 3 Grunts: 2
Cataphract Incindiarii - Leader & 3 Grunts: 6



I'm glad I had the makeda list with Saxon bc I needed pathfinder two rounds, but I'm not sure this list is her best.

The hexy list ran well, tho the extoller, goblins and Orin may become a shaman. I want full PGBH but points are tight.

Round 1 I played against circle in a winnable scenario. My opponent played morvanna1 with zombified regrowing blood trackers. It was a good list. The blood trackers preyed the wrong thing, and my Nihilators under makeda's defenders ward crashed against them. We stuck there a while. My inexperience with skorne caused me to time out one turn without moving my archidon to contest a flag and he wins handily on scenario.

His army looked sweet too.



Round 2 I play local press hanger and ringer Stokes and his vyros theme force v my hexeris "your troops are life for my beasts". The scenario was process of eliminaton.

His dice crap on him and sentinels fail to kill a monolith. My Bronzeback gets it next turn. Turn after he clears zone and dominates. I clear other zone and dominate. He dominates to get to 4-4 while going for a run on hexy (who I'd left hanging while timing out like a fool again) but his dice don't give it to him.



Hexy manages to kill the aspis contesting my zone and molik runs 14" with rush through a wreck marker to contest his zone. I win on scenario 6-4.



Game 3 I played a local with cryx. I'm not sure either of my lists likes the matchup but there was a huge river running through the center of the board deployment edge to deployment edge. So Saxon got tagged in, which meant makeda.





The game played out oddly. Skarre feated defensively on top of 2 to jam arm 17 mcthralls into my defender's warded Nihilators. I counter feated and the Nihilators berserked through all the mcthralls save one or two anyway. My incindiarii lit 8 banes on fire with good deviations, but the scenario was incursion and the middle flag had dropped. I had incindiarii and a gladiator v max bane thralls w ua, min knights, and BLT. I was going to lose that side. I focused on the other. Somehow my archidon lived through a scrap thrall charge and kraken attacks.

I got an enraged Bronzeback on kraken but failed to kill it at dice missing zero attacks (sadness). Archidon killed Gorman. I cleaned up mcthralls and scored a point while gladiator contested other flag.



My last two turns consisted of makeda casting carnage while wading through a river and hiding behind a bridge and healing the archidon.

Somehow opponents dice failed him again and kraken failed to kill Bronzeback missing twice under dark guidance. He missed the dinosaur too. Skarre failed to hit archidon several times and left it on two boxes.

He did manage to kill my scoring will breaker with an attack spell and murder the gladiator to score on the other side.

Skarre was next to the archidon, and with carnage and heal it hit her (no crit), did some damage, bought, boosted, threw her into adjacent bone chicken, did a ton of collateral and wrecked chicken, then bought and killed skarre with auto hitting bite.

I probably would have murdered the kraken and a bunch of banes as well had the assassination failed. Opponent might have been able to push scenario.

Defenders warded Nihilators were amazing in both my games.

Game 4 I played hexy2 against a newer player who had sorcha2 in tier with 2 min WGI, widowmaker solo, yuri, beast 09 bonded, 2 kodiaks, and max shock troopers min bombardiers. I may have won the game in deployment.

He deployed super wide and I was able to toe my Bronzeback into my zone and push molik at the shock troopers in his. He forgot to feat the turn he had a chance to kill molik and left him with 8 boxes, which healed up a bunch due to vampiric harvest. Molik scored me two points, then sorcha charged him under her feat and failed to kill (bad dice) ending her turn by casting iron flesh.

Molik managed to hit the hard 12 to hit her once and did a ton of damage while scooting around to set up a slam. Orin bounced lightning off a pain giver to do 2 more damage, and then my razor Wurm missed her twice. The krea got puppet strings and slammed Wurm over sorcha. I rerolled a poor collateral damage roll with puppet strings to finish her and score 2 more points.

I failed to take a picture of the last game.

It was a good day and I had 4 awesome opponents. Tons of fun up in Saginaw.

-Merlin out

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Makeda3 proxied

I proxied makeda3 for two games v Charlie's menoth. Both were over on turn 2. Game one he triggered battle driven and then left feora 10" away from makeda but behind a forest. I ran my exalted court so that makeda could charge one of them, then makeda mauled feora.




Game 2 I rampaged all over reznik's forces but then makeda got crit-pitched by a guardian while trying to lightning strike away. That ended the game early.

Both fun games but I need to play her more conservatively.


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