Little bit of Give and Take

So I'm finally done painting my armies for the FlatCon Steamroller event on the 24th and I've got time to post again since I'm not picking a brush up again anytime soon.

First up, my Reciprocators. These guys are the second stop on the Convergence clockwork body train. Only after being an Obstructor do you get to move up the ranks so to speak. They're good solid models with a nice stat line. 8 boxes, DEF 12 and ARM 16. They also have Shield wall which bumps them up to ARM 20 and a variable weapon that's either Set Defense (which effectively puts them at ARM 22 on a charge) or empowered which makes their weapons P+S 14. These guys were built to hold a zone. Under Lucant's feat they become even better at ARM 24 (26 against the charge and ranged weapons). I really like these guys and would like to take more if I ever step Lucant up to 50. Anyway, here's the unit.

 

I didn't take the normal 4 pose pics that I usually do since these guys are pretty boring in the back. Most of the important stuff is the shield and axe/polearm. 

Tourney prep Game 2

So my tourney journey continues. Got another game in at the Gopher this past Wednesday. This time against the evil of the Skorne Empire.

My list:
Syntherion
Assimilator
Cipher
Diffuser
Mitigator
Corollary
Galvanizer
TEP
Attunement Servitors
ADO
Optifex Directive

His list:
eMakeda and the Exalted Court
Molik Karn
Tyrant Zaadesh
2x Cyclops Brute
2x Paingivers
Gatorman Posse

I dropped Syntherion since I think he has the better matchup vs Skorne. After the game, I don't think my Lucant list would have done as well.

Again, not going to assail you with a full batrep since this one went pretty quick. He lost the roll off and I went second as is my custom with Synth (Lucant likes to go first) First turn consisted of a bunch of running from both sides. Second turn he moved up his warlock into the zone on my right and moved his gatorman posse into the zone on my left. A few attacks later and my attunement servitors were gone. My second turn was a lot more interesting. He had left himself in a vulnerable position because of the mandatory kill box positioning. So, I had a choice. Go for the assassination on turn 2, or play out the scenario and try to win that way. If you've read this blog enough or know me in person you can guess what I did. I had to activate Synth first and use his feat. Assimilator charges and hits Makeda with his ranged attack doing a few, Cipher charges and again shoots her for a few, then the TEP activates and drops her even more. By the time all was said and done she was left with only 9 boxes left. The bad news? I had left myself highly over extended and that would cost me. His turn three saw the TEP, my Cipher and the Assimilator all die. The Assimilator did have reconstruct though and was able to stick around. My turn three, the Assimilator gets healed to almost full again and Synth casts hotshot on him. I move over, take the shot and BOOM! Makeda is gone. He couldn't transfer damage on account of Karn being full of fury or something like that. It was a good win.

What did I learn from this one? Well, like I had feared, Syntherion is MUCH harder on the clock than Lucant. I needed the 5 minute extension on turn 2 just to get the TEP's firing done. Second, it's going to be really tough on me choosing the right list. I'm use to having just one from playing 40k and if you had a bad matchup, well, then you took your lumps and that was that. Having dual lists and specialists to boot changes the dynamic in a huge way. Third, I may be switching out my attunement servitors for reflex servitors. Flare is good when it works, but more often than not people go right after them and I may get one use out of them. It's much more point cost effective to have a bomb that's gonna blow up in their faces than a flare gun I may or may not get to use. It's looking like that's all the play testing I'm going to get in before the tourney so we'll see how it goes. The clock seems to be a great equalizer in the way the game is played and it all comes down to mistakes.

Painting wise, I'm almost done! All the obstructors are done, both Enigma foundries are done and my converted Inverter is done. All that's left is my second Inverter and hopefully that'll be here Tuesday and I can get it finished before Saturday. Gonna try and get pics of the new stuff up later tonight.

Tourney prep Game 1

Decided to throw my inexperienced hat into the tourney scene and enter in the FlatCon steamroller event at the end of October. Working to that end, I decided to throw down a test game last night. Here's a re-cap

My list
Lucant
Corollary
Invertor
Invertor
Max Reciprocators
Min Obstructors
Optifex Directive
2x Enigma Foundry
Objective: Arcane Wonder

His list
eVyros
4x Griffon
Imperatus 
2x Arcanist
Min Dawnguard Sentinels with Sentinel officer and Standard
Lanyssa Ryssyl
Objective: Fuel Dump

We played the Recon scenario and he won to go first. I deployed knowing that I was going to try and jam the zone in the middle and then shift Lucant and his battle group over to the right hand flag to dominate it. He had deployed heavier to his right and that helped determine the direction I would go.

I don't really feel like giving a full battle report but let's just say seven minutes, is not as long as you might think. I made a couple of huge mistakes but the most costly was not activating watcher at the right time. Had I done that, I could have saved one of my Invertors and killed Imperatus quicker than I did (stupid Phoenix protocol) I then could have shifted over to the center zone and either jammed it up or helped to clear it.

It definitely taught me a lot even though it was a loss. I figure I can get two more games in before the big show and then we'll see how it goes.

On the painting front, I'm finishing up my Obstructors and then all I'll have left is my other Enigma Foundry and a couple of Invertors. So no worries here about finishing the painting before the tourney. I'll try to get some pics up of the Reciprocators too.

Mystery Forge?

Ok. So some of these names are just getting silly. Here's my latest finished model for Convergence, the Enigma Foundry.

The foundry is a repository for Convergence souls lost on the battlefield. It holds them, repairs the bodies and places the soul back in to fight again. It's a pretty damn good recursion mechanic. In game this lets you either bring back 3 small or 1 medium based infantry model per turn. It also can just straight up repair models, but that's a secondary function only. It has decent stats for a large based solo, but that large base also works against it since it will almost always be visible in the lists it gets put into.

It was a surprisingly fun model to paint. Part of that though could be that I just finished the Axiom and anything compared to that was going to be easier. Here are the pretties.

......That's all folks!

No. I'm not going to stop writing shitty blog posts. That's not what this is about. Just wanted to take a second and show off my completed 50pt Syntherion T4 list.

So, now that's done, what's next? Well, I've started test playing a Lucant list at 35 points and it did fairly well last Wednesday. Lucant's feat makes him a very tough scenario caster and the sooner you jam a zone with infantry the better and more your opponent has to try and dig you out. It's a totally different play style from the Syntherion Vector wall, but I'll get use to it.

Looking even further into the future, I would like to finish up an Iron Mother and Axis list. Also looking at doing a Hordes army, just not sure what. Right now Circle, Trollbloods and Skorne are all viable candidates. Just have to wait and see what jumps out at me.

Primed and Ready!

Finally finished my Prime Axiom for Convergence. This is the big boy of the faction, their colossal and he brings the hurt in a big way. First up he has two tow cables that do an automatic point of damage. You may be thinking that one damage isn't a lot, well, when you consider it's tied to a drag move, it sounds a bit better. It hits with the cable and then drags you to within melee range and then punched you with a P+S 20 fist. That fist just happens to have sustained attack, so now I hit you for free. On full focus he can shell out as many as 7 melee attacks. He also has an Accelaspiker that is POW 11 and autofire 3 with a ROF of 2. Add Hot Shot from Syntherion and watch the infantry go bye-bye. He also has the ability to launch any of the Convergence servitors. I've mainly been using the reflex servitors so far since they seem to give the most bang for the buck so to speak.

I have to say this was one of the most difficult models I've ever put together. I have around 19 pins in it to try and make up for PP's poor model construction. I also had to find another way to mount it to the base since the rock he comes with makes for a better poop prop than a pile of rocks. Anyway, enough of the talk, here are the pretties.

That's it for now. My painting table is kinda cleared off for now. I'm sure it won't take long till it's full again.

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.