I wanted to be....A lumber 'jack

Oh, I'm a lumber 'jack and I'm ok.

Ok, so maybe that was a bit much. Here's my finished Galvanizer. The Galvanizer is a light vector that has a saw blade attached to it's face. It's not really good in combat and it's not particularly durable. So why take it? Well, it can repair a d6 when in base to base with my repairable units. That's a huge asset to have when most of your army, including 3 of the warcasters, are able to be repaired. So, yeah, I'll be taking 2.

What's that buzzing noise?

Quick. What's cooler than a robot throwing saw blades at people? Trick question. There's nothing cooler than a robot throwing saw blades at people.

Here's my first finished heavy vector for Convergence. I love the way this model looks. I decided to go with a bit darker paint scheme than the "official" one.

So, that gives me one heavy and my caster painted. I still have two light vectors, another heavy and a solo unit to do. That will be it though until I can sell my Space Wolf army to get some cash to pay for my new obsession.

Master of the Forge

Or, rather, the Forgemaster.

Got my warcaster for warmachine painted. I'm not gonna mince words here. I hate this model. The stupid Swiss army knife arms just annoy me to no end and the lack of detail bugs me too. I usually like to make my HQ/Leader/Warcaster stand out from my base troops and I can't really do that with him.  I only use it cause he's a really useful caster. I have to say though, it was a very easy model to paint, mainly due to the lack of detail on him.

 

Overall, I'm happy with the paint job, still very unhappy with the model.

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.

40k and the Future of My Wargaming

In my last post I talk about the recent changes to the Warhammer 40k 7th edition. I didn't, however, talk about it's changes on me. It seems I've kind of hit a saturation point with the game. I'm not really buying more models (sorry Gopher Dave) and I'm not really interested in painting the models I have. So where does that leave me? Well, I've started exploring other game systems. In particular Privateer Press Warmachine.

There have been several people try to get me to start this game as an alternative to 40k for a while now and it seems I'm finally ready. I've chosen my starting army The Convergence of Cyriss. Supposedly a very hard army to start learning the game with. That doesn't really bother me though. I started Eldar in 40k 4th edition and they were hardly the push button army they are today. Then, you had to support every piece of the army or you lost. This Warmachine army seems very similar to that. So, yeah, I'm going to be stepping away from 40k, slowly. This is by no means a quick transition. I have to first sell off my beloved Space Wolves (I will NEVER get rid of my Eldar) to start buying a new army. Then it will take some time to get the new models painted and ready to play.

Of course, none of this matters compared to the life changing event I have coming up this year. This fall, my beautiful wife will be giving birth to twin daughters. Yup. That's right, twins. She is gonna need all the help I can give and so, I'll be giving up the world of gaming totally for a while seeing how there are way more important things to focus on.

As for this blog, well, I'm going to keep trying to update things. Updates on the Warmachine painting, the games of 7th ed 40k that I get to play and other things like that. Not to fear though, I won't turn this into a parenting blog lol.

7th editon at a quick glance

Well, the rumors were true and GW did indeed release a new rule set. A scant two years after the last one. So, is it worth it? I'll go through the changes in depth later on, but I want to do a quick and dirty look first.

Kill Team Returns!!!

Over the holiday season GW treated us to an advent calender style release of some data slates and rule sets. Now, while I consider this to be a colissal money grab, it did yeild some very cool results. The biggest of which, to me anyway, was the return of kill team. 

For those of you not familiar with it, kill team is GW's rule set for low point "skirmish" games. I love it. It  actually makes the game somewhat tactical and makes you think about what you are doing since you probably have very little personel to work with. Here's the basics

200 points total

No 4 or higher wound models

No 2+ save models 

No vehicles with AV over 33 (F+S+R)

No flyers

There are a couple more I think, but those are the big ones. A major change from the last edition of Kill Team is that you must designate one non-vehicle model to be the leader. In last edition, you could have a vehicle out there at LD 10 and never be run off the table. It was the one major flaw in an otherwise interesting format. 

Much like the old edition you assign 3 of your KT members as specialist. These are chosen from the list in the kill team book. There are several categories and you can only chose one from each category. And just like everything else in 6th edition, there are warlord traits for your leader. Which are of course chosen at random, cause hey, who doesn't love a bunch of random rolls. Oh wait, me and just about everyone I know that plays the game. There are also kill team specific missions. They're played on a 4x4 board and are quite entertaining. 

The MAJOR drawback here, is that it's a digital only download. So unless you are playing all your games with a tablet by your side you can't use it. What, you don't have a tablet? You mean you can't afford an expensive piece of electronics to suppliment the already expensive game you play? This is what I feel GW is saying to it's fans. They are taking things that formerly would have been published in White Dwarf and expecting us to pay for them in a format that not everyone has access to and I'm not a fan of that at all. 

So where does that leave this. Well, Kill Team is a very fun way to play 40K. I just wish GW hadn't locked it down to a digital format.