Battle Box Tourney

Kinda late getting this on here, but I played in a battle box tourney at the Gopher last Saturday, 7-9. No pictures sadly as we didn't have much time during the rounds and I'd rather be fighting than taking pics.

First game was against Menoth. That box is super strong. Between the Castigator getting ignite to go to P+S 18 to the revenger and it's shield to Malakus' feat, it's a pretty put together box. Ended up losing this one on time as the round ended before I could take my turn.

Game 2 was a mirror match. Ended up with a Ragnor v. Ragnor battle and I left him on 4 health. Next turn he finished me off.

Game 3 was against Khador. This one was an interesting one. He was way to willing to accept free strikes from me instead of sticking in and killing me with his heavys. This led to his caster death when he decided it was worth taking free strikes from the Axer and the bouncer to pull off an unlikely assassination.

So, finished 1-2 for the day and don't really feel like I just got beat up on. I also won best sportsman and that's always nice to be recognized as someone people like playing against.

Journeyman week 1

So. Got some action in with the new Journeyman League at the Gopher. Two games in and I'm 1-1. Here's a quick rundown since there's not much to report with these low point games.

Game 1
Ragnor
Bouncer
Axer
Impaler

vs.

Tanith
Pureblood Warpwolf
Wild Argus
Gorax Rager

So my new strategy with this box is to stand back, put pulverizer on the impaler and let him snipe from 12" away. It makes my opponent either hang back and keep taking POW 15 shots (granted only 1 per turn) or run up to engage me. Thanks to pre-measure, I don't have to step foot inside their threat range and nothing at this level can charge far enough to hurt me. Throw in Earth's sanctuary to make me DEF 16 against ranged and I'll be fine.

The circle player was fairly new and I was able to play this out really well and got her to expose her caster. Axer charging in at even dice and Tanith went down.

Preparing to take on those pesky druids

Trying my hardest to stay away from the Purebloods charge

Took everything I had, but the Wolf bites the dust

Gorax and the Argus try to eat Ragnors face. Feat turn saved me. 

Tanith exposed, Axer and bouncer go to work. 

Good, fun game and I got the win.

Game 2
vs. Khador

Kozlov
Decimator
Juggernaut

Well, I for sure have a higher model count, but those two heavy's are gonna hurt. Not to mention his caster has a spell that negates my knockdown tricks. I played out my strategy from earlier and it worked fairly well. I stayed out of his threat range and got a pretty solid hit on the Juggernaut. He then feated and ran up to engage my guys. Swings from my Axer (put 10 damage on him from one swing) and the Impaler took out the cortex and arm of the Jug. I feat. His next turn, Kozlov decided to jump in the fray and took Ragnor down to 7 health. Now I'm base to base with his caster and here's where I went stupid. Instead of just using my 6 fury to try and kill him (I was only dice-3) I decided to get cute and hex blast him to get rid of chosen ground so I could potentially knock him down. Well, 4 whiffs later and I hadn't done any damage to him and he then killed me. It was sad and totally my fault for not being smart.

Next week I'll be adding in either a swamp troll or a slag troll, I just haven't made my mind up yet.

Batrep 06-22-16

Ok. Second game with MK III and it was an interesting one. Here was my list:

Ragnar
Dire Troll Mauler
Earthborn Dire Troll
Troll Axer
Runebearer

Runeshapers x2

Fennblades w/ officer and drummer
Troll Sorcerer
Fennblade Kithkar

Krielstone bearers w/stone scribe elder

Janessa Stonetide

And here is the mega list my opponent brought.
Karchev
War Dog
Mad Dog
Drago
2x Rager
7x Berserkers

Battle Mechaniks

So yeah. Let's just put 11 'jacks on the table. My list was not built to handle that, not sure I have any list that is. Scenario was Outlast. Two 12" zones in the middle, control for one, dominate for two, no kill box. Terrain was spread out fairly evenly with two linear obstacles around the bottom of the two zones one on the right hand top of the zone, a hill in the middle of the upper deployment zone and two structures that really didn't come into play. I won the roll off and took first turn. I put my fenns and their buddies on the right side with the Mauler for support, Ragnar and his buddy went in the middle along with Janessa. EBDT and Axer went on the left side and the runeshapers go on each flank. He deployed everything in a straight line as much as he could in order to remain in Karchev's control area.

MK III is GO!

Well, MK III is upon us. The rules are now available for free. You can pick up either the Prime or Primal versions of the rules, though each contains the other. I played my first game under the new edition last night and to be honest it doesn't feel that much different. If you're curious as to the main changes then I'll point you here as a user on the privateer press forums has done a great job of summing that up. As for the game, here's what I took:

Ragnar Skysplitter
Runebearer
Dire Troll Mauler
Earthborn Dire Troll
Troll Axer

Fennblades w/officer and drummer
Fennblade kithkar

Krielstone bearer and stone scribes
Stone scribe Elder

My opponent was

Kaelyssa
Manticore
Hydra

Dawnguard Scyir
Manticore

Mage Hunter Assassain

Arcanist Mechanik x3

Dawnguard Sentinels w/ officer and standard

My opponent won the roll off and took first turn.

Top of 1.
Not a lot of action, as per the usual. Seems not even a new edition can change that. He hands out focus to the Hydra from the mechaniks in addition to it's free power up points. And everything else ran to get into position.

Bottom of 1
Ragnar dumps all his fury into the stone, the Fennblade mass runs up and to the right of the table near the flag. The earthborn runs (14" thanks to his abilities) and sits there, the mauler runs up with a pathfinder assist from the axer, axer moves up, runebearer runs, and finally the KSB uses their protective aura and runs. Lot's of positioning going on here.

Top of 2
Again, not much. The Hydra moves up and takes a shot at the EBDT and softens him up just a bit, the manticores advance and use covering fire to make life difficult for my fennblades to move (POW 12 vs ARM 16 is not good) The sentinels advance and get into position for next turn and Kaelyssa feats to keep me from charging and gives her forces stealth.

Bottom of 2 EBDT runs again, trying to get to his flag and hopefully score a point. Mauler hangs back a little since I don't want to lose him this early and it sadly was going to be my Earthborn or my mauler that left the table. Fenns advance in the only direction they could, and surround the flag. However, they're now kinda trapped from the covering fire and the building to their right. Runebearer moves up and casts Earths Sanctuary on the Fenns, making them dug in and giving them cover. The KSB advances again and uses their aura, the elder hands out stone strength. Ragnar goes, tops off the KSB and feats. This is where I made a pretty big mistake, I should have cast pulverizer now instead of waiting till the next turn. Axer advances and bides his time till the next round.

Top of 3
He moved the dawnguard up and surrounded my EBDT and took him out. Both Manticores laid down covering fire and trapped my Fenns in the corner yet again.

Bottom of 3
Ok. Getting a little desperate to get some action in this game. KSB activates first, protective aura and stone strength. Next, Ragnar activates and does two rages on the axer and mauler and puts the rest on the stone to top it off. Axer charges into the grouped up Dawnguard and uses Thresher. POW 18 hits all around and most of the dawn guard are dead. Then they run away!! Except no, no they didn't since there are no more command checks. Runebearer activates and uses his spell slave ability to cast shockwave at one of the manticores, knocking him down and giving the Mauler a nice juicy 'jack to kill. One little problem with that, when I pre-measured, I added in his melee range twice, so since I was going to be an inch short, I charged the remaining Dawnguard instead and took all but one of them out. Then, since I had a 'jack laying on the ground I decided to go ahead and charge my Fenns through the covering fire. Bad idea. I ended up having to make 8 tough rolls and I failed 7. Not much left to do but pass the turn.

Top of 4
Again, not much moving from him. He knew I didn't have enough to out last him, so he held back and just took shots at me. His Hydra landed a good hit against Ragnar and took 9 health off him. The last two Dawnguard and the Scyir moved over to engage the mauler and failed. They did no damage to him at all. More covering fire from the manticores, since that's been effective all damn game thanks to my mispositioning them. Magehunter assassian moves over and takes a swing at Ragnar and misses.

Bottom of 4
Ragnar casts shockwave and knocks the Mage hunter down, then charges him to finish him off. Mauler rages and finishes off the Dawnguard and the Scyir while using beatback from Pulverizer to get closer to the flag, he ended up just a hair away from touching it. This had the bonus effect of causing one of the Manticores to go inert since it's 'jack marshall had been killed. Fenns stayed put, and the runebearer shockwaved the hydra this time. Still no scenario points scored on either side.

Top of 5
Seeing that the end is near, my opponent makes an assassination run on Ragnar. Between Kaelyssa's shots, the Manticores shots, and my opponents dice betraying him, Ragnar was left on one health and Kaelyssa was in a terrible position.

Bottom of 5
Not much to do now. Ragnar moves over and Shockwaves Kaelyssa and knocks her to the ground. Mauler walks over and takes his swings at dice +2, 3 hits later and she's dead. Trollblood win!

So, what did we learn from this? Well, MKIII isn't nearly the doom and gloom the internet made it out to be (I knew that already). The point values have made it a little bit smaller of a game if you can believe that. 50 point games are small. Both my opponent and I couldn't believe how few models were in our armies. The Earthborn has the potential to be a speed demon. His +2 speed from being near rough terrain, combined with the +2 from the Axer makes him SPD 9 and running 18. The combination between Ragnar and the Runebearer gives you two 4" POW 14 AOE's that have knock down. Throw those out there before charging the Fennblades in with cleave and you have a whole lot of dead models. It's going to be interesting to see what lists come out of this.

Testing....Testing I, II, III

Well, it happened. As per the usual, a gigantic leak happened and showed all the cards for the upcoming MK III faction decks. Now, as with any leak, this info is highly suspect and should be taken with a massive grain of salt. I don't believe it was a total forgery, but some of the cards do contradict the confirmed stuff we have from PP and some of the cards match dead on. It's more than likely an early playtest version of the new rules. So, what to do with this info. Well, I took what I did know to be true and built an army with that info and played a game of "early MK III" Here's what I took:

Gunnbjorn
Bomber
Dozer and Smigg
Pyre Troll
Storm Troll
Rune bearer

Trollkin sluggers
Dhunian knot

This was a 50pt MK III game which is the new 35.

Some of the changes to the trolls have been huge, both good and bad. They were particularly good to Gunny who got an actual feat now which makes friendly faction members in his control range immune to ranged damage, immune to knock down, and gives them all cover. He also now has Field marshal: Kill Shot which lets you shoot at something after you've boxed a model in melee. Now, I'm not a huge fan of my gun line beasts getting into melee, but it's cool to know it's there. The bomber stayed about the same, he changed out his animus for the new Far Strike which costs 1 and is range self now. Dozer changed very little, going up a point in MAT, STR and AOE 4 on his gun now. Sluggers now no longer need to stand still to get their d3 shots and under snipe from Gunny, RNG 14 POW 13 shots are pretty strong. Especially when you can get up to 15 of them. I always thought they were cool, just didn't work well. Now they work well and will be finding a place in my lists. The elemental trolls changed as well. They gained a point of RAT and 2" of RNG but their animi are now all RNG self. All that info was confirmed by privateer press in the troll insider and the official answers in the forums. They were identical to the leaked cards.

My opponent brought Menoth
Harbinger of Menoth
Vassal
Templar
Avatar of Menoth
Choir of Menoth
Holy Zealots
Wracks

I'll spare you most of the boring details, but here are the highlights as they pertain to the new rules. Pre-measuring, is awesome and a blessing to someone like me who can't judge distance to save their life. I was able to skirt around control ranges, correct what would have been a failed charge, and measure optimal distance for my guys to shoot and not get charged. We were not on the clock however, and I don't know how much it slowed me down. The Power Up rule for 'jacks works really well. The spirit bond rule for beasts, eh, not as good. The rule that really got me (and the one that won me the game) is the change to overboosting on warcasters who camp their focus. Before you could just add the amount camped to your armor and it never went away. Now, you spend a focus point and it prevents 5 damage. He had Harby on full focus which would have made her ARM 24, under the new rules she was at ARM 14. I shot once with the bomber at POW 16 and rolled 13pts of damage. He took off 5 and that let 8 get through. Under the old way, it's only 3 pts getting through. I roll the second shot and do 15 and he can only take off 5. Harby dies from 2 shots. Before hand, she would have only taken 10 points total, not 18. It's going to make a huge difference in the game IMO.

So, there ya have it. Game one of MK III (kind of) in the bag and it's a win for Gunnbjorn. Can't wait till June 12th to start playing actual games in this new era of Warmahordes.

Tourney number 3 and painting problems

Pretty quick turnaround on this tourney. Just 2 weeks after the last one, the Gopher hosted a casual, off-schedule tourney. The format was 35 points, single list, and it had to be a current ADR caster so you got to bring 20 points of specialists. Since Gunnbjorn is now on the ADR, I thought it was the perfect time to bust out my trolls to the tourney scene. Here was my list:

Gunnbjorn
Dire Troll Mauler
Slag Troll
Storm Troll
Runebearer
Pyg Burrowers (max)
Croak Raiders (max)
Northkin Fire Eaters

Specialists
Storm troll
Kriel Stone bearer and Stone Scribes
Dire Troll Bomber

There were 8 people and we were going to do three rounds. First round I hit the same guy I started with last time and the reigning store champ. He brought a Ret assassination list and used it like a scalpel. I went down at the top of turn 3. I'm not sure I'll ever beat this guy. I could have subbed in the Storm troll for the slag and the bomber for the mauler, but honestly, I'm not sure it would have made much difference.

Game 2 was against a new Khador player. He brought Sorscha to the party with Beast-09, a Devastator, some winterguard, Kovnik Joe, and some snipers. Not sure what his plan was, but I had him from the first turn. I took first turn, and ran everything up and sent the dygmies under ground. He moved his stuff up and put up some defensive things. I put snipe on the croaks and laid waste to half the winter guard and moved the fire eaters up behind his lines and took out his mortar and Joe. The dygmies pop up and charge both his jacks and surround both their bases. I didn't have any hope to damage them, just wanted to tie them up. Runebearer put snipe on the storm troll and I electrocuted his snipers off the board. His turn 2 he tried to free himself of the dygmies by spraying them with the winter guard, that only took out one. Next his Devastator trampled over them and his dice failed him amazingly and he only took out two. Beast had to go next and was able to clear his own base, but basically wasted his turn doing it. 20 points of 'jacks to kill 6pts of Digmys, I'll take that. Lastly he moved Sorscha up (into what would become a terrible position) and feated which froze most everyone in their tracks. I say most since the fire eaters that he ignored were immune to cold. Top of three, I move my fire eaters around and put a few wounds (less than I'd like) on Sorscha, Gunny activates, places snipe on the slag troll (the croak raiders were all frozen) and guided fire. He lit Sorscha up with a bazooka shot and then the slag troll finished her off. I don't blame my opponent for moving her like he did, he had no way of knowing the fire eaters were immune (he didn't ask and I didn't tell) he was simply making the best move he thought he had. Honestly though, the digmys tying up both his jacks for a turn made a huge difference.

Game 3 was against yet another Khador player, though with an entirely different list. He had Vlad1, the Great bears unit and 7 Berserkers. Holy shit that's a lot of jacks. This game actually played out a lot better than I thought it would. It ended up being a grind and had it not been for a couple of bad fire rolls on my part, Vlad would have died before the beserker took Gunny's head off. In the end, I took out 4 of the 7 and had the other 3 hurt badly.

So, I finished the day 1-2 and I'll take that. No prize for best painted this time since half of my stuff still isn't done.

That leads me to my next little issue. I've put myself in a position I swore I'd never do again. I went and bought my entire army without painting it. Now I'm suffering from major painting ADD and nothing is getting finished. Especially when I look at my transports and see all those primed and unpainted models. It's just a bit overwhelming. Nothing to do but barrel through it I guess, it's just going to be a while. Going to tackle the beasts first (in fact I've already got the mauler done and the bomber isn't far behind) then move on to the more tedious units and all 20 friggin croak raiders.  

Flat Con wrap up

Finished up my first Warmahordes tourney and feel pretty good about it. It showed me some tricks that I need to work on and showed me some of where the strengths of this army lie. It also showed me that there are just some lists out there that are bitches to beat and I'm gonna have to figure out how to get around them since I'll probably see them again. I ended up going 1-2 but could have gone 2-1 if it hadn't been for a couple of mistakes by me and some cheating by my opponent.

Group shot before the battle.

Game one:

Doom Reavers everywhere!!

I had no idea what to do against this. My Lucant list didn't have the bodies to hold him off and my Syntherion list didn't really have the firepower to deal with all those spread out models. I dropped Synth anyway and ended up losing on scenario. I would have lost by assassination as well, but he chose to win on scenario. This is one list I'm going to have to figure out a drop against as I'm sure I'll see it again. Maybe an Aurora list can do it.

Game two:

You can't shoot Cygnar, we shoot you!

My missed drop of the evening, but also my only win. I saw he was playing infantry heavy Cygnar and chose Synth due to the massive amounts of removal I can do. Wrong. My Lucant list would have been much better suited to this game. He was playing Stryker2 and just about everything I could shoot at him was negated or his armor was so high that I couldn't do anything. So, how did I win this one? Well, my opponent was an honest and straight up guy. He placed a template a good 6 inches further out than it should have been, completely screwing over my movement and changing the game significantly. The next turn he noticed what he did and what that caused and gave me the game by concession. Didn't want to win that way, but I'll take it. Also, thanks for being a up and up player.

Game three:

If I bring a colossal I win right?

Closest game of the night. If we hadn't decided to extend the round times to 90 minutes from 70 I would have timed him out. He brought a very nicely painted Mercs list that featured a Galleon as the centerpiece. I decided to drop my Lucant list as there were three flags to grab and my Synth list just couldn't do that. The game was pretty fun. I blew putting positive charge on my Inverter and that kept me from removing that one last Nyss hunter that was contesting the objective. In the end he killed my caster. There was a couple of moments of rampant cheating going on here though. I didn't have enough to call him on it, but he didn't take away his focus when he trampled with the Galleon and that cost me my TEP. Then later I swear he used too much focus to boost when he shouldn't have been able to. He was determined he was going to beat my list no matter what because he didn't like the way I was playing. Instead of asking what a unit did, or asking to see my cards, he just expected me to fully lay out what my army did. I have no problem asking what someones unit does how what effects it has, and if I don't know, I'll ask before I do anything to it. I also have no problem when people ask me those same questions, I'll gladly tell you. But don't get mad at me when you try to knock down a jack that is immune, but not ask before hand. That's not my job at the table. I'm not going to with hold info, but if you don't ask, I'm not telling.

So, there ya have it. Tourney one in the books. Overall it was a positive. I did walk away with the best in faction award for Convergence, so the night wasn't a total loss. I gotta learn to trust Lucant more since seeing wave after wave of models break over my guys was oddly satisfying. I'll for sure be looking at different angles in the game now too.

Warmahordes BatRep INCOMING!

Dusted off the mini's and headed to the Gopher to play some warmachine. I was not disappointed.

Ended up playing against Trollbloods and the Miserable Meat Mountain list. I had heard really bad things about how hard this list was to play against and was a touch worried. I can't remember everything he had, but there were the standard issue Warders with a krielstone unit, Mulg the ancient an axer and eGrissel. Looking at the list there was just a ton of high armor and a lot of wounds.

My list:
Syntherion
Corollary
Assimilator
Cipher
Prime Axiom
Galvanizer
Diffuser
T.E.P.
OD
ADO
Attunement servitors

He lost the roll to go first, but I let him have first turn since I had decided to play more defensively.

He set up his warders and the stone unit in the middle, caster, mulg, Axer and rune bearer (aka Troll Moses) on my right side.

I tried to keep everything very centered as I already had the axiom and the TEP in the center of the board.

First turn.
Top: eGrissel uses dash and all of a sudden there are trolls all up in my space. Everything ran and he was coming fast.

Bottom: I move everything forward but did not run. Took a pot shot with the axiom but was out of range.

Second turn.
Top: Again with the dash and again with the running and also eGrissel popped her feat. Now he's literally on top of me. I have no space to charge and no way to not get sucked into a long drawn out slugg fest that I'm not sure I can win. That's why I did......

Bottom: I ran away. Or if you want to get fancy, I executed a tactical retreat. I could have killed somethings on this turn, but it would have left me in an awkward position and poised to get the brunt of a counter charge. So, I ran everything backward and hoped that he wouldn't have enough charge range to catch me.

Third turn:
Top: He did exactly what I needed him to. He moved his trolls in between two pieces of terrain and that clumped them up nicely. He didn't get the charge off and now he just had to wait to receive what I was going to give him.

Bottom: Swinging into action. TEP moves forward, drops out +2 damage dice and +1 shot for his servitor config. He loses 3 warders and 2 out of the stone unit. Damn theses things are tough. Speaking of tough, he would have lost more if he hadn't had that. Assimilator goes next and with hot shot up he takes out a couple more, totally wiping out one unit. Really starting to chew through the fat now. Syntherion is next and he blows his feat and recasts hot shot on the cipher.  Cipher charges Mulg and takes a shot at the warders. Yeah, that was a wasted shot. POW 6 just isn't going to hurt these guys even on 3 dice. So he punches Mulg a couple of times to no real effect. Axiom activates and drops 3 more warders due to the fact he's awesome.

Fourth turn:
Top: Everything he has left moves up and begins swinging at my forces. Assimilator takes some heavy damage, the corollary almost dies, and Mulg leaves me only one box on the cipher. Most importantly eGrissel has moved up closer to the fray. He runs some guys to surround Syntherion and forces me to consider what I'm going to do next turn.

Bottom: Ok. So two of my heavies are hurt bad, I have a fresh Prime Axiom and a fairly fresh TEP. And a Warlock who is dangerously close to me with an open lane in front of her. My plan was simple. It was either going to be me or her. I dole out focus to the Axiom with the corollary since Synth is camping all of his in case he has to clear off the two guys on him. Declare my target, measure for range, and... she's in. Boost to hit with the tow cables and do my best Scorpion impression "Get over here!" and now have his warlock in my grasp. Take my free melee attack and put about half her damage on one hit. Take my accelespiker shots and finish the job. He rolls his tough check and passes. Take my extra melee attacks, kill her again, and passes tough. Spawn a reflex servitor, kill her again, passes tough. Move my diffusor over, shot hits, kill her again, passes tough. Move my TEP, flame the little bitch, passes tough. Second shot with the TEP, kill her again. This time it sticks. He made five tough rolls in a row on a model who shouldn't have lived through more than two of those attacks. Heres a couple of pics of the end.

It was one hell of a fight.

Warmahordes batrep and post number 100!

We now interrupt these painting posts to bring you a battle report.

Yup, been a while since I've done one of these. I kinda laid one out when I played my first two games, but that didn't really count.

I had, what I consider, my first fully fledged game of warmachine last Wednesday. I played against the nasty dragons of the Legion of Everblight at 35 points.

My list:
Syntherion - The Great Machine Tier 4
Monitor
Assimilator
Cipher
Corollary
Mitigator
Diffuser
Galvanizer
Attunement Servitors
ADO x2
Optifex Directive

This is pretty much going to be my standard set up for now, until I can get more games in and see if something works better.

Her list:

Absylonia
Carnivean
Nephilim Protector
Shredder x2
Spell Martyrs
Blighted Nyss Hex Hunters - max unit
Bayal
Blighted Nyss Swordsmen - max unit

I knew some about Legion going in, like that the carnivean was nasty, but didn't know a whole lot about the infantry or light warbeasts.

We decide to play an assassination scenario and she gave me the first deployment.
I deployed my assimilator on my left, the monitor in the middle and the cipher on my right, spreading the servitors out at far left, middle and far right. The ADO's had advance deployment and I placed them both toward the middle of the field. The galvanizer, diffuser and mitigator made up the front line and were positioned to where I could (hopefully) get them where I needed them quickly. Syntherion and his corollary were naturally dead center in the back of the deployment.

My opponent deployed the Hex hunters with Bayal on her right, the swordsmen on her left and everything else in a pile in the middle.

So, looking at deployment, I was going to take the assimilator into the hex hunters and the cipher was going to try and remove the swordsmen. The monitor was going to try and hold down the carnivean until help arrived for it.

Turn 1:
CoC: Not much happening here. I through out one focus and use that to run all my vectors forward and I try to get the ADO's and servitors into better positions.  I cast synergy on myself and threw hot shot on the cipher to hopefully help break the swordsmen.

LoE: Again, not much in the way of anything going on. Running and re-positioning. Pretty much everything moved straight forward from it's starting location.

Turn 2:
CoC: Focus allocation was one to the assimilator, one to the monitor and that was it from Syntherion. I planned on using the corollary to power the right side of the board while Syntherion powered the left. My plan was to use mag hold on the carnivean to prevent a charge and use the assimilator and the cipher to thin out the infantry. Activate the servitor on the left, and hit the hex hunters, catching 4 in the AOE. Right side servitor was too far away to hit and deviated badly away from the swordsmen. The OD's activate and give the monitor pathfinder and that's about it. Activated the corollary and gave one focus to the Cipher, and one to the Monitor and inducted one to the Cipher. The Cipher activated and moved up toward the swordsmen and..... came up out of range of the bombard shot. Deviation didn't go my way and the shot fell short. Decided to try my luck with the second shot, inducting the focus back to the corollary, and as before, deviation just sucked. Activated the monitor and ran up into the forest inducting it's focus back to the corollary. The assimilator activates, moves up and lays ground pounder on the hex hunters covering 5 in the AOE. Rolls to hit against each one and I only end up hitting and killing one of them despite four of them having been flared. Galvanizer, diffusor and mitigator activate and move up to get into position for next turn. The ADO's activate and move up to get into a better position. Finally Syntherion activates, moves up and tries to sling mag hold one the carnivean and.... comes up short. So in a round where I should have been able to remove a good amount of infantry and cripple her heavy, I killed one hex hunter and that was it.

LoE: Gonna be real honest here, I don't remember exactly the order she did things in and I still don't understand the fury mechanic all that well so this is going to seem a little brief.
Her hex hunters move up and engage the left side servitor, the assimilator and the galvanizer. After all the swings are taken, the assimilator is hit, but still very functional, the servitor is gone and the galvanizer is slightly scratched. Could have been much worse. The swordsmen try to charge the cipher and are just out of range (that would turn out to be costly). The carnivean moves up, charges the monitor and lays waste to it after breathing fire on it and punching it for what seemed like forever. The rest of the army just moved up and generally re-positioned.

Turn 3:
CoC: Ok. So I have a carnivean out in the open and a cipher within charge range. My plan was simple. Kill the carnivean. So, two focus to the assimilator, one to the diffuser. Auto repair rolls were less than stellar, one point to the assimilator and two to the galvanizer. Corollary activates first and hands out it's three focus to the cipher and inducts one to the mitigator. Middle servitor moves up and flares the carnivean. The diffuser goes next and lights the heavy beast up with beacon. Next the mitigator goes and knocks it down, killing 3 swordsmen in the AOE. The OD's move up and repair the assimilator for 4 and give the cipher pathfinder. Syntherion moves up, casts magnetic hold on the knocked down carnivean, just to give that little bit of extra charge distance if I needed it and he also feats. Now the heavy wades in. The Cipher charges the carnivean for free, thanks to the diffuser and thanks to the mitigator knocking it down, it auto hits. Sadly though, I rolled like total shit even though I was only dice-3 the whole time and it managed to live through the whole thing. The ciphers shots from Syntherions feat went into Absolonia and her protector and didn't really do much of anything. So, now I have a still alive carnivean and no other way to kill it. So I make the tough decision to take some free strikes against my assimilator and charge the carnivean. Free strike damage was negligible, the damage I did to the beast however, was not. Two strikes with a P+S weapon master claw and he was down. Took his shots at Absolonia and her little group and managed 7 damage on her and 4 or 5 on the protector.

LoE: Mop up time for the legion. She moves her hex hunters into combat with one of my ADO's and the diffuser, swings on them and the galvanizer do little more that light wounds. The protector moves up and swings at the assimilator and puts a hurt on it. Shredders move up and hit the assimilator and nearly take it down. The swordsmen charge up and swing at the cipher, doing some damage, but not a terrible amount. Finally, deciding the assimilator just has to die, Absolonia herself gets into the fray after giving herself flight, warp strength and reach. She then charges the assimilator and it goes down. She also feated this turn so now I'm fighting a renewed protector and she only has one point of damage instead of 7.

Turn 4:
CoC: Ok. So, I'm left with one heavy, 3 lights (2 of which are tied up) and a smattering of support units. First things first, auto-repair checks. Not stellar results again. The galvanizer gets a couple, the diffuser gets one and the cipher gets 3. Focus sees me give 3 to the galvanizer, 2 to the diffuser, and one to the corollary. I activate the OD's first and give the cipher pathfinder so it can charge through the collection of rubble where my other two heavies were and I also repair it for 6. It's now back to almost full health. I activated the mitigator and moved over so that I could shoot my cipher with the razor bola in order to clear out the swordsmen around it. A direct hit and the swordsmen disappear. Corollary activates next and gives two focus to the cipher and inducts one. Here's where I finally remembered the synergy spell I had on Syntherion since the beginning of the game. The galavanizer activates and takes out the hex hunter UA, giving me +1 on synergy, then the diffuser connects and kills a hex hunter, +2. Now the cipher charges the protector with P+S 20, yeah, it died.

LoE: Tough decisions to be made here. Stick Absolonia in and try and take out the cipher or, go for the assassination attempt. She chose the assassination. Meanwhile the hex hunters manage to kill the galvanizer, diffuser and ADO they were engaged with. Absolonia charges Syntherion........and leaves him alive with 5 boxes left. Thanks to her dice turning against her at the worst time.

Turn 5: Not much happening here. Syntherion gives out no focus, and auto repairs the cipher for 2 and himself for 3. The OD's repair the cipher for 5, bringing it back to full health. Really, all we were worried about was the caster fight. It took nearly all his focus, but in the end the P+S 14 hits were just too much.

Win for Convergence.

It was a close match and one that could have gone either way due to a couple of bad turns on both sides.

Also of note, this is my 100th post. It's only taken me 3 years to get there, but hey, I have wargames to play and shit to paint. Thanks for reading and I look forward to 100+ in the future.

And so it begins..

Well, played my first two official Warmachine games against a good friend of mine. Things did not go well. Lost both games. I learned a lot though and that's the important thing.

We kept it simple since both of us were just learning the game. Very little terrain, straight forward deployment zones and simple kill the caster missions. The lists were

Me: Convergence of Cyriss
Forgemaster Syntherion
Cypher
Monitor
Diffusor
Algorithmic Dispersion Optifex

May not be the most synergistic list, but hey, I'm figuring this stuff out. 

My Opponent: Khador
Kommander Sorscha
Juggernaut
Destroyer
5 Winter guard Infantry and Leader

Game one

Ok, I know Khador is tough so my idea was to get to Sorscha as quick as possible.
First turn for him, threw a focus on the two jacks and ran them and cast fog of war to give concealment.
My first turn, I put a focus on the cypher and the monitor (didn't really need to do that) and cast hot shot on the monitor and reconstruct on the cypher. My plan at this point was to use the monitors range and "true sight" ability to snipe his caster.

Turn 2: He again moves up and not much else happens.
My turn 2: Upkeep my two spells for free (thanks Resourceful) and place a focus on all three jacks. I move the monitor over and try to take a shot at his squad. Out of range. Damn. 13 inches is shorter than I expected. I moved the diffusor over and shot at the destroyer. Hit. That gave me an extra 2" of charge range, awesome. I then moved my ADO to get him in position to cast Magnetic hold through. Synth's activation, I move up and try to cast Magnetic hold through the ADO, out of range. Fail. Cyphers activation, I attempt to charge the Destroyer anyway. I get to charge for free thanks to the diffusor's hit. Still end up a hair short. I really needed Magnetic hold to go off.

Turn 3: Another move up from him, luckilly he doesn't really have a charge lane yet. The juggernaut moves up to position for next turn, the squad moves up and takes aim at the Monitor and put decent damage on it. The destroyer moves over to hit the cypher and hit him he does. Those things really hurt.
My turn 3: Upkeep hotshot and reconstruct. Put two focus on the monitor and two on the cypher. Roll a d3 for auto-repair, 1. Well, that's not gonna be useful. By this time Sorscha is in range so I take my shot. Monitor moves up and boosts to hit, Hit with a critical. Sweet, now I get an additional d6. Boost damage, so no I'm rolling 4d6 plus my POW 13. I leave her with 6 health. Well, that ain't gonna do it. Cyper activates and does like two damage to the destroyer. ADO and the diffusor are pretty much worthless at this point.

Turn 4: The beginning of the end. Juggernaut and destroyer get focus. Sorscha casts boundless charge on the Juggernaut and comes crashing into the Monitor. That thing really hits like a Mack truck. A couple of boosted attacks later and my Monitor is all but totally crippled. Cypher is punched into oblivion, but reconstruct gives him new life (kinda). Infantry moves around and blasts the ADO off the table.
My turn 4: Last chance to make something happen. Syntherion repairs the monitor for 1 point again, cause I can't roll for shit. The cypher gets a repair of 1 as well. They both get 3 focus cause at this point there's no use camping any. Syntherion pops his feat giving everyone weapon platform, then I made a huge mistake, I forgot to fire his weapon. He has a decent range, decent POW gun and I didn't shoot her with it. Major fail on my part. He has no more focus so his activation ended. Go time. Monitor activates and takes a shot at Sorscha, boost to hit, miss! Well, that sucked. Cypher charged into the Destroyer and didn't really damage him much (not nearly as much as two POW 18 spikes should do)

Turn 5. Sorscha pops her feat and that was that. Everything I have is frozen in place. He finishes off my two heavies, blasts the diffusor off the table. Synth is all thats left verses his entire army and I concede.

A quick reset to our respective deployment zones and we begin game 2. I went first in this one. I'll summarize this one since it went almost like the first. Applied some of the lessons from the first game and made some adjustments. Got my ADO in better positions this time, got the charge off with the cypher (what a difference that makes), made better use of the focus induction trick the Convergence can do. End result was still the same however with me losing in the end. This time at least I did wreck his destroyer and engaged Sorscha in melee and should have killed her but again, rolled like shit.

So. What did I learn? A few things actually
1. This ain't 40k
2. This ain't 40k
3. Ranges are almost laughably short compared to what I'm use to.
4. Activation order is everything. Activate the wrong thing at the wrong time and you just screwed your battle plan.
5. I have to get A LOT better at estimating ranges.
6. Charges are awesome, except when they fail.

So, there it is. Two games down, many more to go. It's gonna be a huge learning curve, but I'm actually excited about playing games again.

League Update

Damn I'm lazy. Here's what's went down the last three games of league.

Game 2 at 500 points saw me draw with Eldar cause #*$@ing pathfinders kept stunning my land speeders and a Warlock with a spear blew them up *sigh*.

Game 3 was at 1000 pts. I added to my list from 500 by adding 5 Thunderwolves 3 with storm shields, two regular, a Wolf Priest, and in a break from my heavy selection I took an Autocannon Pred with layzcannon sponsons. I like that config. It seemed to work well. I ended up losing to Grey Knights in what could be one of the saddest games played. 5 full turns I had 1 kill point and he had 2.

Game 4 again 1000 pts. I changed my list again adding my standard Rune Priest instead of the Wolf Priest. Kept the T-Wolves and the Pred. Once again I tied. Playing against Ravenwing. The Wolves made their points back by taking a full bike squad, an attack bike and Sammeal out. Game ended before I could get them back across the table to take out the last two bikes he had. I only had two wolves, one of my troop squads and the pred left at the end. It was brutal.

That brings me up to date right now I'm 0-1-3 giving me a -1 score.

Painting wise, I'm working on the thunderpuppies and I'm not posting pics till they're done. I finally got the bases for them and I am still impressed how well these look on the field. The riders are primed and ready for paint but I'm gonna finish the puppies first. I don't want to leave yall empty handed so here's a couple of pics of my finished and converted Razorback that I never did post up. Enjoy.

League Game One

The first couple weeks of league are going to be quick. 500 points ain't a lot and doesn't take a whole lot of time to play. We've kind of been left to our own descression as to who we play. I had plans later on Monday so I needed to get an early game in. Luckilly pchappell was there to oblige. Less than an hour later it was a tie. I only had one guy left out of my army, the rest having been eaten by Thunder wolf cav or shot by wolf scouts. Neither of us held objectives in the end since in my cowardace I ran to the second floor of a ruin to avoid getting eaten totally. I'll take a tie. Don't know who or what I'll be up against next week, but I'm considering dropping one of the razorbacks and the speeders and bringing some t-wolf cav. They're just so hard to break and just eat whatever they want.

40k batrep week 6 (game 5)

6 weeks down and only 2 to go. Had my quickest match to date. Played against one of the Blood Angels players at the Gopher. I was a little worried at first because BA's tear me up usually, we rolled for mission and I got "Hold Fast" which meant I had to hold my two objectives as my primary and my secondary was have more of my units in my deployment zone then he did. My opponent rolled and got the same exact thing. Wow. So basically neither of us were going anywhere because to move anything would cost us our primary and nothing short of an all out assault with the entire list would get us off the objectives. Looking at how the board was set up I could keep both units of wraithguard in Fortune range AND keep both objectives and still have the Wraithlords to sit back and take pot shots. My opponent did have some mobility options, but anything he brought over would pretty much die the next turn, thus costing him and I the match causing a draw. After talking it over for about 10 minutes we just decided to call the whole thing a draw and never fire a shot. It was either this or play what would have been the most boring game of 40k ever. Turn 1-5 Player 1: I'm not moving, your turn, Player 2: I'm not moving, your turn. Yeah, not fun. So we played a second game outside of league just because. That one was interesting and it's sad that I can't remember everything but here are some of the highlights (well, at least for me)

2 Warwalkers tied up an assault squad for 3 or 4 assault rounds
A ramming wave serpent blew up a rhino and was its self destroyed by the return hit
My Autarch bravely stood in front of a land raider (I shoulda got a pic of this it was really cool looking) and immobilized it with his fusion gun.
2 10 man squads of Dire Avengers blade stormed a 5 man Tac squad

This Saturday is the 1500 point tourney. I'm hoping to actually win a game this time around as last tourney I was in I didn't win a single game. I'll post up a tourney report over the weekend when I can.

40k batrep week 5 (game 4)

Ok, got snowed in last week and couldn't play the second game at 1000pts so this is technically week 5 of the league but only game 4 for me. I took the 1250 list I posted about earlier. My opponent was AGG's resident  Dark Eldar player. I knew going in that if I played him, I should make another list instead of the one I had. Guardian spam with war walker back up seems to be effective against DE. But, the time came, he got chosen as my opponent and I said "Eh, to hell with it" and played my wraith list anyway. It was going to be interesting. He had massed volume of fire but I had re-rollable saves IF I got first turn. I didn't. I'll spare you the whole battle report cause it's kinda boring. Pretty much, first turn he took out half a wraithguard squad and all I killed in return was one Ravager. Yeah, it was pretty much that one sided the whole game. The only highlight for me was watching his Haemonculus and squad of Wracks charge into a full 10 man (11 with the warlock) with their feel no pain and furious charge and do nothing. I took no wounds from that at all. I returned and killed three only to have two get back up, he lost combat by one and promptly ran away. Next turn I shot all I had and made the entire squad dissappear putting an insta-kill on his Haemonculus with a wraith gun. That's pretty much it. I gave him the massacre at the end of turn 4. Oh, well. Lesson learned. Next week I plan on throwing my "Wraith of the Ancients" at someone again, hey, it's gotta work one of these times right?

40k batrep week 3

Welcome to another edition of my 40k batreps. This week saw me go up against the "Blob for One and One for Blob" guard player.

40k batrep week 2

40K league week two saw me play against one of my Ork playing buddies. I used the same list from last week.

40k batrep week 1

I'll make this short and sweet. I don't batrep the way others do. I don't take pics during the game as I'm too busy figuring out what I'm doing to stop and snap off a pic. I don't do narration cause I don't have that kind of time, and I don't publish my opponents list cause quite frankly, I don't remember them and don't make an effort to.  So with that in mind, here we go.

First up was a deathwing termie list, played by the toughest player in the store.

First turn was easy enough, as he deployed only a single dread and left the rest of his army to come in from reserve. I in turn, did my usual strategy (which no one is surprised by anymore) of leaving my entire force in reserve. So, in essence, not a damn thing happened first turn.

Second turn saw half his army come in (he only had two troops) and deep strike on his objective. I chose to not use my Autarch bonus and try to keep my guys off the table for another turn and give him less chance to kill me. It worked........almost. One stubborn  squad of warwalkers decided to come in on their own, and took a potshot at the termie squad he had just dropped in.

Third turn saw the other half of his force drop in on his second objective (thus giving him completion of his primary), and the taking out of one of my warwalkers. My turn, I turn on the bonus and bring the rest of my army screaming in. Ok, so maybe it was more like whimpering in. Here's where I made a pretty large blunder, instead of hiding my two fast skimmers to block LOS and keep them alive (all I had to do was get two vehicles in his deployment zone) I chose to go for the win on turn 3. Not a good idea. Shooting sees my walkers fail again against his dread and one of his termie squads.

Turn four things took a turn for the worst. With nothing left to do but hold his objective, he turns, drops one squad of walkers, and uses his dread to down one of my wave serpents. My turn four sees little action from me as I realize the error of my way and back my remaining serpent behind a wall.

Turn five saw the loss of my other walker ensuring that I could not complete my objective. I made a last ditch attempt to contest one of his objectives, but was way too far away. Roll for turn 6 and get a 1. Sadly that was seemed to be the theme for me for the night, "oh, something important needs to happen, eh, here's a 1".

Reflecting on the game, I could have done it a little different. If I had hid my skimmers behind the wall, not only could I have made a late turn charge to his deployment zone, but I could have landed them near enough his objective to possibly contest thus denying him any points at all. Oh well, live and learn.

Looking forward to next week and my next game though, cause win or lose, it's all about the fun.