2012 in Review

2012 was a really fun year for my gaming habit. It was my second year playing Warmachine, and my first year playing competitively. It was also the first year in a while that I hardly played any Warhammer 40K all year. Ironically, this blog started as a 40K blog dedicated to a Harlequin army that, thanks to 6th ed 40K, isn't even a usable force now.

I thought it would be fun on the last day of the year to take a look at this last year from a gaming perspective.

Caster Pairings.

For any given Steamroller event, I probably spend as much time building lists and figuring out caster pairings as I do actually playing games. Of course I don't spend that much time planning lists every time I play in a Steamroller, sometimes I use a two-list combo that I've had some success with in the past. but I put in that time at some point, planning ahead for a competitive event.

Recently, I got an email from a reader (I know, shocking! someone other than my wife actually reads my stuff after all) asking about list composition for a competitive event. Do I take two generic, all comers lists? one for scenario and one for assassination? one for alpha strike and one for grind? I thought it was an interesting question that deserved its own article.

As a side note, this article is going to focus on Skorne. I'm still so new to Retribution that I'm barely figuring out casters right now and am nowhere near being able to give advise on playing them in events. Even though I'll be focused on Skorne, the ideas presented should apply to any given faction. the examples will just have to shift to whatever your chosen faction may be.

Oh, and as a warning, this is going to be a long one.

Expand Your Horizons

The Steamroller format continues to be the primary tournament setting for WM/H, but it is not the only way to play. could playing non-steamroller events actually help your game?


I want to start off by saying that I consider myself a competitive Warmachine player. I may be a complete unknown in the National meta, but I've got a few wins under my belt. I play in every tournament I can get to, and I've done well in a few of those events. But Steamroller events aren't the only way to play. In this article, I want to look at a few of the advantages to playing in some of the extra events that Privateer Press puts on for their players.

Every year, Privateer Press puts on a number of special events. Some of these events are to promote a new book release (Domination/Wrath release events, Collosals release events, etc). There are ongoing events like the Journeyman league and this year's War Torn Alliances seasonal leagues. There are some one-off events like the Summer Rampage or the Longest Night event. I think these events are one of the things Privateer really has going for them. Not only do they make a great game, but they support the community through these cool events. But why play in these events instead of just playing all Steamroller, all the time?

Zombies!!

So recently someone posted a challenge on the Privateer Forums. The challenge was to make a 50 point list that could handle a 150 point list consisting of nothing but Mechanithralls. That's 300 mechanithralls. Obviously this was meant as a thought experiment, but I took it a step further and put it together on Vassal.

I won't give a step by step "battle report", but I did take screenshots of the vassal game as it progressed. I think just the pictures and some captions will be enough to get a feel for how the game went down. 

A few spoilers

It's been a while since my last post. a rough deadline at work, assassins' creed 3, and a painting kick have kept me from having much time to spend on blogging or even thinking about articles to write. It's also been a slow couple of months for Skorne, with no new releases, and very few spoilers about the upcoming book. To top it all off, my last big event for the year was a bit of a bust. I only won 2 games all weekend at clash for a cure, which was a pretty disappointing end to a year that was generally pretty good.

With the holidays coming up, it's likely that I won't be writing a whole lot. Schedules tend to be a little crazy this time of year, with work end of year deadlines, family visiting, etc. I'm hoping to get a few articles done just to keep from totally losing interest in writing my blog, which would be a shame considering how well I've done keeping it going so far.

Skorne Tiers - eHexeris

Let's talk about Tier forces. When I started playing Warmachine, tier forces sounded really neat. As you know if you've followed my blog at all, I used to be a 40K player. "Fluffy" armies always had a strange appeal to me. They might not be as powerful as a spammy netlist, but they were unique and interesting. Other than personal satisfaction, though, 40K didn't offer any benefits to playing fluffy armies. Warmachine, on the other hand has these neat theme forces that reward you for taking things that fit well with a certain caster.

I've always wanted to play a theme force. Unfortunately, most theme forces are really difficult to make, or they just don't do much. Some armies have some really strong tiers (butcher + doom reavers, Jake's eVayl T4, eKreoss infantry swarm, Mortenebra with tons of jacks) or theme forces that open up some cool options (reznik with steelheads, eSkarre with a ton of Satyxis, etc). Unfortunately, I've been pretty discouraged by Skorne's tier lists.

It's not that we don't have any good tiers, they're just hard to build. I'm not commited enough to playing tier forces that I'm going to get multiple units of karax or bloodrunners or swordsmen. I could do Rasheth, but I just don't like his sculpt. I could do Mordikaar, but I would need 2 more void spirits and 2 feralgeists, and not use paingivers. Surely there has to be a theme force I can run when I feel like playing something different, but won't require buying a ton of models that will only be played in that theme force.

My answer (along with answers to a lot of Skorne's problems) came with Domination. Probably the second best thing to come from that book is eHexeris (I pretty firmly believe that eVayl was the single best thing in Domination). Recently I started playing with his theme force, Practical Magic, and have been loving it. It's a bit of a strange theme, but it's deceptively good. And easy to build, which is great for me. Let's take a look at the requirements and my Tier 4 list.

Retribution Project

 I haven't exactly been updating my blog a whole lot lately. Between a trip to Africa and then moving to a new house as soon as we got back, I haven't had a whole lot of time for hobby stuff. This week I finally got my new painting desk set up and started working on my next project.

I've gotten a handful of games in with my new Retribution army, I think I've had 2 games each with Rahn, Ravyn, Ossyan and Kaelyssa plus a speedmachine tournament with a mean little Ossyan list. Now that this year's leagues are finished I'll be focusing more on my Ret. I'm not completely shelving my Skorne of course, but I want to spend the time to really learn my new faction. We have one more major event this year with Clash for the Cure coming up in 2 weeks, which will probably be my last outing with Skorne for the year.

Dark Secrets Cave Terrain

This week is week 2 of the Dark Secrets league at our FLGS. The leagues this year have been a ton of fun so far. the alliances and season models have been really interesting on the whole (except when you can't find the right ally to play with...), and the patches this year look really sweet on a battlefoam bag. This month, the only badge that is difficult to get is the Hobby badge. To get the hobby badge, you have to create and paint a piece of cave-themed terrain. I have honsetly never made terrain before. I have some bits and pieces in my closet that I have been wanting to use, but just haven't gotten around to it.

This challenge got me to finally go and create some terrain. I really like how it turned out, and want to share how I made it with others, since it was super quick and easy, and perfect for people like me who don't want to spend a lot of time on making terrain just for a patch.

Mammoth Spoilers!

UPDATE: Now that the Mammoth is more completely spoiled, some of the information below is incorrect. The post below was based on stats that were spoiled incompletely, and includes some guesses made by me and others in the Skorne community. Now that the full spoilers are out I am seeing a ton of hits to this page (somehow my page is in the top 5 on google for "skorne mammoth"), and getting comments about how the stats are incomplete. 

Here are the currently spoiled stats:

SPD:4 STR:15 MAT:6 RAT:3 DEF:?? ARM:20 FURY:5
2 P+S 19 fists, 1 P+S 18 Tusks, crit pitch
gun is Pow 15, RoF 3, AOE 4
Animus is Counterblast (see gun boar)
Bulldoze and Assault

That's the meat of the rumor. The stats should be out in the NQ later this month, at which point I'm sure no one will be coming here for their stats. I appologize for the out-dated stats, I really had no idea people would still be running into this page so long after I posted it originally! 

In Privateer's latest video update, the studio design team talks about the upcoming Gargantuans book. There are a number of spoilers (some have already been spoiled, but other than some concept art from lock and load, this is the first official leak for the new book). Most of the gargantuans themselves have already been spoiled to some degree. The cards for the mountain king and wold wrath have been out for a little while, and are available in War Room, so no surprises there. We already knew that the Archangel would have ride by attacks and consume, so there was very little new info there. The big one was the Mammoth preview!

A mammoth plowing through everblight lines

Skorne: Picking Your Team

Character Restrictions in tournaments look to be here to stay. Let's break down Skorne's characters and where they fit.

Steamroller 2012 introduced Character Restrictions across the board. There was of course some whining and moaning when the rules were first released, but I think on the whole these changes have been very well received. I would be very surprised if these restrictions didn't carry on into steamroller 2013. I for one have really enjoyed the new character restrictions. It means I see a whole lot less of certain solos (though I still seem to fight armies with Gorman, Eiryss, Janessa, etc), and it also challenges me to use some new models.

Hordes generally got hit less with character restrictions than Warmachine. we really don't have as many characters to start with, and without access to merc solos we don't have those tempting options like Rhupert and Gorman (yes, I am going to drop Gorman's name a lot. I really hate that guy). When I was starting out with Skorne, I often built lists with zero character models (aside from the warlock of course). We just don't need them in every list.

War Room - What Happened?

Oh War Room. I want so badly to like you. I remember how excited I was when PP first announced the upcoming app, and all the cool things it would do. Then the release got pushed (in increments) from April to yesterday (August). During that time, PP lost a lot of steam with the product. All the hype they built up petered off well before the app came out. The first few weeks after the initial announcement, there were numerous threads full of people talking about how awesome it was going to be, and how they would buy the full $60 bundle as soon as possible. Today, the forum is full of threads complaining about errors, poor functionality (or no functionality), and disappointments. Seems like very few people are actually going to shell out for the big bundle.

So what happened?

eMorghoul Review

Continuing my theme of looking at Skorne's "bad" models, today we look at Skorne's "worst" caster, eMorghoul.

People just seem to have something against the Lord Assassin. In fact, I don't think there is any other mdoel in the Skorne range that gets as much hate as eMorghoul. Well, the Siege Animantarax might come close, but he is the only thing that even give eMorghoul a run for his money as the "most hated" Skorne model. Just take a look at the Skorne PP forum. There are countless threads ranking the Skorne casters. they generally follow the form:

eMakeda
everyone else
...
eMorghoul

Chain Attack (a podcast that has gone about the huge task of ranking every caster in the game), has ranked eMorghoul as an "F". There are only 3 other casters that share this less-than-desirable title with eMorghoul - Dr. Arkadius, Gunnbjorn and Zerkova.

Skorne - show the Animantarax some love!

Domination was very kind to Skorne. we got several nice beasts, an interesting unit, and two fantastic casters. In the midst of all these awesome additions, we got one model that no one seems to like. The Siege Animantarax hadn't even been released and already it was completely written off. So what is our battle engine good for? is it really that terrible?

Priorities

As with any hobby, gaming can take up as much time as you're willing to spend on it. Some people are able to spend some time every night on the hobby, either painting or playing. Some people have told me they play on average 10+ games a week. Unfortunately, for many of us that's just not entirely possible. We have other events and people that fight for our attention, and so the time we can spend on table top games is somewhat limited.

I've started feeling this crunch a little more lately. Things at home have gotten busier this year. for most of last year, my wife and I had evening classes we had to attend every Monday/wednesday night, which meant we couldn't even game on the club's normal night. I'm lucky if I get to the store once a week, which means I have to choose what to spend that one day on.

I think this is one of the main reasons I haven't been playing 40K much at all lately. I have multiple painted armies. I have competitive armies (in the 10 games I played this year, all 10 were in tournaments, and 6 of them led to 2 second place awards in local tourneys). and I still have many friends playing. So why haven't I been showing up?

Honestly, I think I may be done with 40K. I have nothing against the new ruleset, in fact it sounds like they did a pretty decent job this time around. But every time I tell myself I should get down tot he store to play my first game of 6th edition, part of me says that's some time I could be spending playing in the Thornwood league for Warmachine, or practicing that next caster for a tournament next month. To learn a new edition, I mean to really learn it, I would need at least 50 games with the new rules. only getting about 2 games a week in, it would take me until the end of the year (playing 40K every single week) to reach that goal. And when you start looking at it like that, it just doesn't sound like much fun anymore.

In fact, I've been enjoying Warmachine so much lately, I haven't wanted to give up a single week to play 40K, much less 25 or so. I was way more excited today that Tiberion came out than I was when the 40K rulebook finally hit the shelves. and I already knew everything there was to know about tibbers.

To top things off, my wife has started playing Warmachine with me. She was there for Adepticon and Wargamescon, and we're going to Dallas for another event this weekend. Wargaming night has started to be something that we do together, so any night I go and play Warhammer is a night that we don't go gaming together. She's had absolutely zero interest in 40K, but she loves warmachine.  

Tonight, I'm selling my Space Wolves. If you've never done it before, it's a weird feeling selling an army. You put days and days of work into designing lists, buying and building models and painting them up with your own hint of character. You spend weeks playign the army and trying all sorts of things with it. you go back to buying and building models. and then you sell them off, and it feels like you lost all that time. this is the third time I've sold an army, and it's still a hard decision to make. It will probably be a long time before I convince myself that I'm truly finished with 40K and sell off my Harlequins and Orks.

So what's next? I'm going to be digging in even more to Warmachine now. I am now officially writing for BoLS (I've got 3 articles up now!). I will continue to focus on my Skorne, and trying to get better with them. Now that I had the smallest taste of success in a big 'Con, I want to find ways to make myself a more competitive player. I'm hoping that eventually I'll be able to hold my own against national players like I could do in 40K.I'll also be starting Retribution for something a little different. I'm turning right around after selling my Wolves and buying a large set of Retribution models that should be a pretty decent start to a collection. I'll post more on that as I get things built.

Sorry for the long rambling post. But if you're still reading, thank you! Today my little blog hit 10,000 pageviews! being new to the blogging community, this feels like a big accomplishment. So thanks for reading all of my random posts these last 2 years

Wargamescon: Hardcore Tourney Report

stick 'em with the pointy end!

This last weekend I played three days straight of warmachine at Wargamescon. This was the first year I played Warmachine at WGC, having played 40k the last few years. The highlight of the weekend (for me) was the Old School Hardcore tournament. It was a 50-point, single list event. There was no scenario, just caster kill with Killbox in effect. we had 7 minute turns with no extension, and if the round time was called before a caster died, both players got a loss for the round.

Having never played in this sort of format before, I decided to try something totally different. I went back and forth on caster choices leading up to the event. Skorne likes to play the attrition game in general, with few casters that are good at going for the quick kill. I considered going with eMakeda and trying to use the Molik Missile, but I found I had a lot of trouble getting everything done in 7 minutes with her, especially with Vengeance on the swordsmen. also, with no time extension the feat turn took too long to be effective.

Not having a real good answer, I decided I was just going to have some fun. I've been messing around with eMorghoul lately, and have found him to be very fun to play. For a caster that is generally considered "bottom tier", he is a fun caster. in fact, I was 5-0 with him going in to this event. to top it all off, he is one of the coolest models in-faction.

Wargamescon Wrap-Up

This past weekend was the third wargamescon/bolscon I have been to, and the first one where I didn't play a single game of 40k. The con was a ton of fun, as always, and one of the events I look forward to every year. Even though WGC isn't a big Warmachine event (yet) I still wanted to talk a bit about my experience there. I'm hoping in the next few years that the event will continue to grow and get some wider attention.

Skorne - Revisiting "Bad" models

When I first started playing Skorne, I spent days looking through forums and blog posts, trying to nail down my first wave of purchases and possible army lists. I started to notice that the online community was (for the most part) pretty set in their ways. Some models were considered "must have", and others were considered garbage. Lately I've been trying a few of those models that have been thought of as "sub-par" by many, and wanted to share my results.

Upcoming Projects

It's been a while since I've posted here. I've been busy with too many projects in the hobby and in real life to sit down and blog as much as I like to. I don't have any interesting tactics or list-building stuff this time. I've got some fun things coming up and I wanted to mention them here on my blog.

Wargaming: And Here We Go

Memorial Day is traditionally considered the start of summer. This summer is going to be a very interesting one on the Wargaming front, so I figured that this week would be a good time to talk about the coming storm. I've been spending a lot of time looking around at rumors, and I think the big picture is looking very interesting indeed. Today I want to make a few predictions and talk about my own personal plans.

Skorne Battle Report - eMorghoul vs Damiano

This report is a little later than I had planned. As I talked about in my last post, I wanted to try out an eMorghoul list using a very defensive army list designed to let Morghoul poke things with his sword. I planned on using the list last week, but last week was the final week for the PP league, and several of us wanted our team game patches, so I ended up playing some team games with pMorghoul.

This week I managed to get in a solid 50 point game with my new eMorghoul list (fully painted too! as of last night). I was playing against a Highborn Covenant army led by Captain Damiano. the scenario was Guidons

Games Workshop Editions - The Good, Bad and Ugly

It's no secret that Games Workshop is about to drop 6th edition 40K on us. The rumors are pouring in now, a month or two away from release day. Some people are super happy about the changes, some are panicking, everyone else is somewhere in the middle. There are definitely some interesting rumors out there. If nothing else, it seems pretty clear that this is going to be a large change to the way the game is played. None of the rumors seem to point to a small fix.

This is not going to be another article talking about the rumored rules, either good or bad. it is not going to be another wish-listing blog post about all the things I think are broken and how I would fix them. If you want an article like that, it won't take you more than 5 minutes browsing through your favorite blogroll. Here's the thing. we can talk about rumors all day, but we'll end up getting all worked up over nothing. you can pull out all the rumors and try to talk about how it affects your favorite army, but if you miss a single rules change, or one of the changes don't end up in the final document, the entire picture changes.

The bottom line is that people get worked up every time a new edition of their game comes out. people start complaining and saying they will just keep on playing the previous edition forever. in the end, we'll all be playing the new rule-set, and will probably get used to it within a year. A few years from now we'll all be worked up about how 7th edition is going to mess up our game. so with that in mind, this article will be about something a little different. I want to talk about previous edition changes GW made and how they affected my experience. Disclaimer: I realize that my experience is not the same as many other players'. Feel free to argue with my reasoning, but I am merely talking about my own experience and thoughts on this issue of updating core rules.

Skorne Tactics - Protecting Your Caster

One of the first lessons a new player learns when playing Warmachine is to protect your caster. it doesn't matter what the rest of your army does, if your caster is out of position for one round it can be a quick game over. Even if your opponent only has a few models left, sometimes your caster will still die. "Protect your caster" sounds basic, but every faction and even every caster has a different way of doing this.

In general, it is a little bit harder to protect a Hordes caster than a warmachine caster. generally our Warlocks have lower stats, and the way the Fury mechanic works (combined with the emphasis on beasts) makes Hordes casters fight further forward on the battlefield. This is especially true for Skorne, IMO, because of our aggressive nature. many of our warlocks (not all, but many) want to be up front hitting things. which of course puts them in danger.

Luckily, Skorne comes with a good number of defensive tricks. In this article, I am going to talk about a few of these little tricks and how they can work together to help protect your caster. I will then be looking at a slightly extreme case in the form of a fun list that I am going to be playing in the next few weeks. Note: this post is somewhat intended for newer skorne players. it could also be useful if you don't play against Skorne much and want to hear about some of their tricks. Veteran Skorne players probably know all of these tricks well, so they probably won't get a lot out of this article, except maybe for the army list at the end.

Adepticon Masters Tourney Report

Here are my brief reports for the Masters from this last weekend at Adepticon. I have some pictures of the early rounds, then those petered off. I know I always enjoy reading battle reports from big 'cons, hopefully these are helpful for someone.


My lists can be found Here:

Morghoul

eMakeda

eHexeris

(the actual lists are near the bottom of each of those articles. still easier to link than fill up space with all three lists here)

Adepticon Hardcore tourney report

This will be the first of 3 write-ups, one for each of the events I played in at Adepticon this year. they won't be full-out battle reports, but will at least have the lists, general flow of the game, how the round ended, and thoughts. First up is the hardcore tournament. this was the first time I've ever played with Hardcore time limits, and man that 37 minute clock was rough!

I was playing pMorghoul for this event, with the following list:
pMorghoul
* Bronzeback
* Titan Gladiator
* Titan Cannoneer
* Cyclops Shaman
* Cyclops Brute
* Rhinodon
Agonizer
Orin Midwinter
Master tormentor
Extoller soulward
Max Beasthandlers
Min Beasthandlers

Muffinman's Skorne at Adepticon

Another year at Adepticon has come to an end. After a delayed flight, we got back to Austin around 1:00 AM, and I spent most of the day yesterday recouping. I was planning on writing a recap of the event yesterday, but that obviously didn't happen.

This year was an absolute blast. This was my second year at Adepticon, and my first major tournament of any kind with Warmachine. 3 days and 15 games of warmachine later, and I can say it was the best wargaming experience of my limited career. The Warmachine side of Adepticon was so much fun, and has made me decide that (at least for now) I will be sticking to Warmachine for competitive play. It was that good.

This article is just going to be a brief rundown of the event itself. I am hoping to get some brief write-ups for my games, probably posted over a couple of articles for each event. with all the games, I didn't take as many notes as I had planned, so there won't be complete battle reports. I will post some notes from each game, and whatever pictures I managed to take. For now, though, here are my initial thoughts on the weekend

Adepticon Team Tournament - Circle + Skorne

This is my last article before Adepticon! in fact, when this posts, we will be on our way to Adepticon already! After the event, I hope to write at least a brief report for each game and take a picture of each army I face. Hopefully that will go better than last year, where I took one picture the whole first day because I was so into my rounds...

I have also decided on some personal goals for this year's Adepticon. Since I am a pretty new player (less than a year in warmachine!), I know I have no hope of winning my events. so instead I need some more donw-to-earth goals for my tournament experience. read on for my goals and the lists my wife and I will be running for the team event

Adepticon Masters - eHexeris

Three days until we fly out to Chicago! I'm getting seriously excited. Reservations have been double-checked, armies painted, lists made... Nothing to do now but randomly blog about the trip to keep me occupied.

This is the thrid and fianl list discussion for my Open Masters lists. the last article can be found HERE. My final caster is also Skorne's newest kid on the block, eHexeris. pHexeris was one of the casters that got me started with Skorne, and his epic incarnation did not disappoint! Because he is so new, I have less play experience with him than with my other two lists. But his raw power and fun play style made me pick him over casters I might be more comfortable with.

Adepticon Masters - eMakeda

Adepticon is in less than a week! this time next week I will be half way through the Hardcore event at Adepticon. And as a welcome change from last year, I'm actually ready a week before the event! No staying up late painting one last squad this year (I was painting wyches the night before we left last year). I put the final touches on the very last model on Tuesday. I even had enough extra time to go ahead and base all of my models, not just Morghoul's hardcore list. sweet!

Continuing with my set of articles leading up to the big event, I am going to discuss my second list for the Open Masters event at Adepticon. My first list can be found here. My second caster is eMakeda. I have found her to be a good counterpart to pMorghoul, offering a strong infantry element and a fast army as opposed to Morghouls slower and more beast-focused list. Read on for the list and a brief discussion of the caster and her support

Road to Adepticon - Open Masters

The second event I will be playing in at Adepticon is the Open Masters. Adepticon is a little different than a lot of the big cons in that the Masters event isn't an invitational. In most of these big tournaments, you have to place in one of the other events (steamroller, hardcore, sometimes a special tournament) in order to compete in the Masters. Luckily for people like me who have little to no shot at placing in an event, Adepticon still lets us play in the masters.

The event is a 6-round 3-list event. All of the scenarios for 2012 are fair game, which means we will be playing one of each type of mission. The three lists each have to be used exactly twice, so I have to be careful not to rely too heavily on a single list.

in this article, I will go over my basic strategy for the event, and talk about which casters I will be using. I'll have a few more articles leading up to Adepticon talking about my other lists for the Masters, and talking about the team event.

Road To Adepticon - Skorne Hardcore

It's April, and for many of us gamers, that means one thing. Adepticon. This will be my second year making the trip up to Adepticon with the BOLS crew. While I don't actually post articles on BOLS, I like to claim alleigence to the group since most of the main contributors are members of our local gaming club and regular opponents of mine. Last year I went for 40k, for the maiden voyage of my Harlequin army. This year 40k sold out in about 12 hours, so I decided instead of trying to get on a waiting list I would just go for Warmachine.

Last year's Adepticon was awesome. I played great games with great new opponents, got a really nice bag of swag, saw Chicago, and met all of my goals for the event (win half of my games, play someone famous on the Internets, get my army photographed one someone else's blog/site). I have high hopes for this year, even though it will be my first large event for warmachine. I haven't made goals yet for this event, but I still have a month.

I did reach one milestone this week. I am now 100% painted! that's right, 3 50 point armies, completely painted to a standard that I like (I would rate myself as high tabletop quality. nothing more, but it's not embarrasing at least). I'll post some pictures in the next day or two, as I have been slacking on the hobby update threads. Now that everything is painted, I'm pretty locked in to what I will be running. I might swap some models around, but it should be basically the same going in.

This article will be the first of several leading up to Adepticon where I talk about my choices of lists and what I am planning to do. I'm not nearly competitive enough to worry about "giving away my secrets" or anything like that, and writing things out help me process my plan and army. Today we'll start with Hardcore, since that will be the first event of the weekend for me.

Warmachine vs Warhammer 40,000 - A Comparison

I have been playing tabletop war games for years. I painted my first model at a library event back home when I was 12 years old. It was an Ork archer from Warhammer Fantasy. I then ended up playing GW's Lord of the Rings tabletop game for a year or two with some friends on our dining room table. Then I discovered 40K, which in my mind was superior to LOTR in every possible way. I jumped into that, quickly building up 3 armies in about 4 years. I sold one of them, and added two more in the next few years. then I dabbled in Fantasy in 7th and 8th editions, but it never really took. Last year I tried out Warmachine after getting a free starter set in my Adepticon swag bag (great move by PP there!), and have been playing that more and more in the last few months.

Why mention all of that? I have dabbled in several tabletop games (and dozens of board games) over the past few years. I'm a gamer at heart, and will play anything at least once. But once you've played several games of a similar nature, some of them will tend to capture more of your attention. why is that? what makes one game better (in one player's mind) than another? I'm sure every player has their own reasons, but I thought I would share my own reasons with players who may be debating starting a new game.

The two games I have played most extensively have been 40K and Warmachine. I find Fantasy to be incredibly dull (sorry to the fantasy guys... that's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it), and LOTR is just no contest when compared to the other systems. So today I would like to go through what I find to be the pros and cons of these two systems. this will be more helpful if you are playing one of the two systems and are thinking about dabbling in the other. Hopefully, even if you're not looking at expanding to a new game, this article will help you to think about your own pros and cons for your games, and how best to explain differences in systems to new players.

Who Would Win - final round!

Today we are finally at the end of the Who Would Win contest. units from every army in Warmachine and Hordes battled it out in simulated battles to see which unit would be crowned the Best Melee unit in the game. we've narrowed it down to two finalists, one from each system. on the warmachine side, we have the Searforge Commission's Forge Guard. on the Hordes side, it's the Gatorman Posse from the Blindwater Congregation.

Today's match will be a little bit different. to get a more accurate final result for the final round, we'll be doing best 2 out of 3. Wouldn't want the entire game decided by one bad dice roll!

With that in mind, let's kick it off with round 1

Who would win - warmachine championship

Sorry for the long delay in posting to the blog. I was out of town all of last week, and didn't have time to post anything while I was out. this week, I'm back in full swing, starting out today with the final round on the Warmachine side of the game. two Warmachine factions have beat every opponent that has come their way, fighting for the title of the best melee unit in Warmachine, and a chance to fight the Gatorman Posse for the title of the best melee unit in Warmahordes.

This time we have the Forgeguard from the Searforge comm. fighting the Flameguard of the Protectorate of Menoth. both units boast very good defensive stats. the Flameguard have set defense, shield wall and terror. the forge guard have a higher natural ARM stat and defensive line, giving them one more point of ARM, even on turns when they charge or run. on the offensive side, the Flameguard have cont. fire on all of their spear attacks, along with CMA and reach. the Forge guard have reach, weapon master, and crit smite.

Looking at this match-up, I would give the advantage to the dwarves. weapon master will be a huge help against the high armor of the Flameguard, while the Flameguard have fewer options for dealing with ARM 18 forge guard. the Flameguard definitely have a chance of pulling out a win, but my bets are on the Forgeguard.

Petition to Fix Shield Guard

Before I begin this blog post, I want to say that I really love the way Privateer Press has gone about dealing with rules issues. Coming from years of playing nothing but Warhammer 40K, it's a breath of fresh air to play a game from a company who not only writes a tighter rule set, but has a plan in place for dealing with the inevitable rules issues that come up when you play a game as complex as Warmachine. In fact, if this was a GW game, there would be no point in writing this article, because nothing would ever be done by the game company.

In this article, I am going to be writing about something that has been bothering me for the last several weeks. There was a ruling made on the PP forums several months ago that I have only recently found out about. The discussion and infernal ruling can be found here: (LINK). The issue being discussed is whether a model with the shield guard rule can intercept a shot when it is not in LOS of the attacker. the thread basically boiled down to the fact that there is a "tactical tip" on several models with shield guard saying "Shield Guard - If this model cannot become the target of the attack for some reason, it cannot use this ability."

is it time to toss the Brute?

This one statement has caused quite a few questions and references back to the infernal ruling in the link above. The problem is, it seriously harms the Shield guard rule. in my opinion, this is beyond a nerf to an over-the-top ability. I believe the ruling was meant to clear up one issue without fully examining other situations that might be affected. This has led to a "trick" that a canny player can use to completely eliminate shield guard as a usable ability. Only players who happen to see the infernal ruling will know to use it, and will have an advantage over anyone who happens to bring a shield guard model.

In this article I will be examining the rules in question, along with other similar rules. I will explain and demonstrate the "trick" that has shown up in our gaming circle, and will show why this trick needs to be dealt with. I am doing this to try to convince someone at PP to errata the shield guard rule ASAP. If you're interested in this argument, read on

Who Would Win - Hordes Semi-Final

Today we have the first Semi final game of the competition. the winner of this match wins the title of the best melee unit on the hordes side of the game. Through many rounds of combat, two units have made it this far. the Skorne Praetorian Swordsmen and the Gatorman Posse. As much as it pains me to admit, the Gators have a huge advantage in this match. Praetorians are designed to take out swarms of single-wound infantry with their 2 attacks and mini-feat. they don't do so well against 8-wound, arm 18 monsters. with a charge and combo-strikes they might stand a chance, but without the charge there is not much they can do.

First turn roll-off

the Gators have the advantage in this roll, with reach and pathfinder (using one of their prayers for pathfinder). the gators roll a 3. Skorne rolls a 2. Gators get the charge.

Turn 1

the gators move into combat. with reach, each one is able to reach 2 swordsmen, leaving the officer and standard unengaged. with their high MAT, they only need 6s to hit, and pow 13 will kill a swordsman every time they connect with a blow.

the Gators go down the line, rolling very well. the first 4 gators kill off two swordsmen each. finally the last gator misses with one of his attacks. after all is said and done, the swordsmen are left with only one grunt and the UA/banner. they easily pass their cmd check, but it isn't looking good

The swordsmen try to fight back, each choosing to use a combo strike to do as much as possible. the grunt misses his attack. so much for that chance. the officer hits and rolls an 11 on damage! but, with arm 18, that still only does 5 boxes of damage and doesn't remove any gators.

Turn 2

the Gators choose to pray for re-rolls. The swordsmen grunt and Officer each have 2 gators facing them, and the banner has 1. the first gator kills the grunt easily. the second one hits with his first attack but only causes 1 damage. his second attack misses. but his prayer provides a reroll and allows him to hit, and then do 8 damage, removing the officer. the banner goes down to one re-rolled attack.

Victory goes to the Gatormen!

There's a reason so many Skorne players use the Gatorman Posse in their armies. I refuse to because of the way the models look, but you can't deny the hitting power of one of those units! The gators have proven that they are the best melee unit in Hordes. this is quite possible realistic, as many players on the PP forum claim the same thing.

Now the real question remains... are the Gators the best unit in the game, or will they be runner-up to either the Forge guard or temple flameguard?

Crack the WIP 3/5/12

So I got real busy last week and never got around to posting a hobby update. And then I went out of town this last weekend to see family up in PA (definitely a change in scenery from Central Texas...). So my hobby time has been somewhat limited lately. I have, however been working on getting my models ready for Adepticon. So far I'm right on track, and should be done in time. assuming I don't go and buy more models and add them in at the last minute. Not that I would ever do that..

Wait. He can charge how far?

so let's take a look at what I've been working on lately:

My Battlefoam Experience

my new bag, complete with journeyman league patches

I finally did it. I finally broke down and bought myself a brand new Battlefoam bag. There are a few guys in our gaming club who say all kinds of nice things about Battlefoam, but I never decided that I needed one. Part of me felt like they were saying good things about Battlefoam because they had to (the guys in our local gaming club happen to run Bell Of Lost Souls. Sponsored by Battlefoam. And Wargamescon. also sponsored by battlefoam). But soon, almost every "serious" player in the club was toting these things around and talking about how much they loved them.

Well, about 6 months ago or so, I finally got my wife into wargaming (hmm. maybe I should do an article about that sometime... maybe after Adepticon). She now has a decently sized Circle Orboros army. for a while, she just carried her stuff in a single foam sheet from my Sabol bag (rather, one sheet from my excessively large collection of foam sheets that go in my standard-sized army transport). then she needed a second sheet, and several Space wolf rhinos got displaced from their foam. when we started making 50 point lists for her army, it was clear she would need a better way of moving her models.

Turns out, she was more than happy to take my Sabol Army Transport if it meant she would have a good way of transporting her stuff (especially when we fly to Chicago in April!). When I finally sold my old Xbox, I ran out of reasons not to buy myself a new bag. Now, about a month later, I just received my Battlefoam GO pack in the mail. So here are my first thoughts on this new bag.

Who would win, quarterfinal round 4

This is the last of the Quarterfinal rounds. The winner will face the gatorman posse for the Hordes championship, and then we'll see the flameguard taking on the searforge commision forgeguard in a battle of the shield walls. the winners of each of those matches will face off for the final round, to determine (once and for all... haha) what infantry unit is the best in the game! ok, not really, but it sounds better that way.

Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves though. we still have the Skorne Praetorians against the wolves of orboros. these two units faced off in the demo round while I was figuring out the rules and showing an example of how this all would work out. The swordsmen won that match-up, we'll see if they can repeat that round here.

Who Would Win, Quarterfinal Round 3

This week we will try to finish up the quarterfinals. we've already had the first two rounds of quarterfinals, with searforge and blindwater advancing. Today we will be bringing in the Protectorate flameguard vs Retribution's Dawnguard Sentinals.

First Turn Roll

for once, no one has the advantage on the first turn. both sides have reach and no other bonuses. the first roll is a tie. the second roll... a tie. finally on the third roll, the flameguard get the first turn and the charge! No shieldwall for the flameguard this round, but it might not matter for long.

Turn 1

the flameguard have a numbers advantage with three extra fighting models (fighting models means not including the banner bearer). They will be using three two-man CMAs, and the rest will be one on one. the Sentinals pass their terror check for being charged by flameguard.

all three CMAs are successful, taking down 3 sentinels. the next two flameguard miss their attacks, one model kills a grunt, and one kills the banner. the last man hits the Unit Attachment, but fails to kill him. the UA does take 2 boxes of damage and is set on fire, however.

The sentinels pass a cmd check and continue on. the fire does not go out on the sentinel UA and kills him. I wasn't sure on the timing on this one, so I went ahead and gave the two remaining Sentinels their vengeance moves. one of them killed a flameguard. during their normal activation, both sentinels connected and killed flameguard.

Turn 2

The flameguard still have most of a unit left. they split into two four-man CMAs against the two last Sentinels.

mat 10 pow 14 attacks easily cut through the last two models, as no snake-eyes get rolled.

Victory for the Protectorate!

Another short battle today. as we get down to the last several matches, that first turn charge is even more important. it is hard to stand up to one of these good melee units when they get the jump on you... Sentinels are a great unit, but without support or a charge they die as easily as the next unit.

Join us later this week for the last Quarterfinal round - Skorne vs Circle Orboros!

Who would Win Quarterfinal double-header

Because of my slow posting last week, I decided to speed the process up a little bit. There are still two factions that haven't played yet, because of the first round byes. So I decided I would go ahead and do both of those rounds together. It ended up working out well, as both rounds ended pretty quickly...

So today we have a double-header. Khador vs Searforge followed by Blindwater vs Legion. These are the last factions to play, so after today the voting for the contest will be finished.

Who Would Win - Round 6

Sorry for the delay, we're finally getting back to the Who Would win contest. The end of last week was a bit busy for me, and then I got carried away with my painting projects and never got around to rolling out the final preliminary round for this contest.

This week we have Trollblood Kriel Warriors taking on the Gatorman Posse. Trollbloods are known for having some of the best melee units in the game. Usually this is in reference to the Trollkin champions or Fennblades, but even the humble kriel warrior can be a -tough- fight. They will be facing the Gatorman Posse, which is widely considered one of the best melee units in the game. they are certainly one of the most common minion units, up there with nyss hunters.

Enough set up, let's dive in

Crack the WIP 2/20 - Archidon!

Big hobby update this week! Adepticon is in 2 months, and that has given me a fresh surge of motivation to paint.

First model to get finished was the Archidon! This is very rare for me, not only did I get a model on release day, but I built and painted it before playing a single game with it. normally my models kind of sit around in line waiting to be painted. I don't know if other people do this, but a lot of times I paint a model that "deserves" to be painted. but this model looked so cool and got such a unanimous positive response in the online Skorne community that I couldn't resist painting him up.

Here are a few pictures:

painted archidon itching for battle

Who Would Win - Round 5

Welcome back to another preliminary round of Who Would Win. This week we have the feared Khador Doom Reavers taking on Cygnars Stormblades. Doom Reavers are going to be scary in melee with their combination of tough, reach, weapon master, and berserk. The Storm Blades bring CMA and assault to the table, but will have to get first turn to have any use from assault.

The Doom Reavers seem to have the advantage to start with, we'll see if they can hold on to that advantage as the round progresses.

Crack the WIP 2/13/12

I finally got some more work done this week on the Hobby side of the game. I'll need tor amp it up a bit if I'm going to have everything painted in time for Adepticon... I can't believe how soon that is coming up.

anyways, this week I finished up my Extoller Soulward and built a few new models. not a very inspired week for gaming, but it's something.

Who Would Win round 4

Another round of "who would win" today! this time, we have Skorne's praetorians facing off with Mr. Walls and the sea dog crew. The sea dogs have the unfortunate reputation of being one of the worst units in the game, but can actually be somewhat dangerous with all of their solo support. unfortunately for them, there aren't any solos to help them out today!

Starting roll
the sea dogs use Mr. Walls' mini feat to get pathfinder and +2 speed, giving them a +2 on the starting roll. Skorne rolls a 2, so the sea dogs get the charge!

Turn 1
 The Praetorians easily pass their terror check caused by Walls' feat. Each sea dog has 2 attacks, but a poor MAT. they will need 8s to hit. in a show of exceptionally poor rolling, only 4 sea dogs hit anything. all four killed swordsmen, but it wasn't a good showing for a charge turn.

The Swordsmen swing back, each with 2 attacks needing 7s to hit. they went ahead and popped the mini feat to guarantee kills with each hit. it wouldn't make much difference, but they have a mini feat so they used it. there were an even number of swordsmen and sea dogs, so they lined up one on one, with the UAs facing off. each swordsman managed to hit with one of his 2 attacks and killed their sea dog targets. the UA had -2MAT from the monkey on Mr. Walls' shoulder, but managed to connect with his second attack and killed Walls with one hit. the banner was the only one who didn't kill someone, as he has no weapon...

Turn 2

since the banner couldn't attack, there was still one sea dog remaining, the one carrying the rifle. he decided he wasn't going down without a fight and shot down one more Skorne swordsman.

the second attack from the praetorians hit, and ended the last sea dog


Skorne Wins!

this one was pretty one-sided. poor rolls from the sea dogs and this one was over before it got started. Sea dogs just don't do much without a bunch of solos stacking silly buffs on top of each other.

This one wasn't much of a challenge, but next time the praetorians will be facing a bigger challenge when they get a rematch with the wolves of orboros.

Before we get to that, we still have 2 more preliminary rounds to go through! next week we will kick it off with doom reavers and stormblades, followed by kriel warriors taking on the gatormen posse. there are still 6 factions that can recieve votes, so if you haven't voted yet go drop a comment in the original post!

who would win, round 3

this week's rounds started a little bit late. Real life (work) suddenly got very busy, and I haven't had time to blog much. so no hobby update this week, and this week's two rounds of the contest might be on back to back days. I was hoping to space things out a bit more, but when your project team goes from 3 guys to 1 guy overnight, there's only so much you can do.

Today's matchup is pretty even. we have Cryx's bane thralls taking on the Retribution's Sentinels. the two units have very similar stat lines, including weaponmaster on their attacks. the Dawnguard have the advantage for first turn by having reach weapons, and will have a nice boost in the combat with vengeance from the UA. the Banes make up for it with Tough from the UA and free standing up when tough knocks them down. with 2 weapon master units going at it, the first roll is going to be critical. the winner of that roll has a very good chance of winning the match.

let's get to it

Who Would Win - Round 2

today we will be continuing the "Who would win" contest. today's match-up is the wolves of orboros facing off against a unit of farrow brigands. at first glance, it looks like the brigands are going to have a tough time in this one, unless they can get the first turn. a round of shooting before combat will really help them out. otherwise they will struggle against a decent melee unit. the wolves will have the advantage in the first turn roll-off, taking advantage of their pathfinder and reach.

And once again as a reminder, go and vote for the remaining factions! you can find the original thread here. even if a faction already has votes, you can still vote for them. if more than one player votes for the winning faction, I'll have a tiebreaker. there are also still several factions with no votes.

Let's get to today's match-up

Who Would Win? Round 1

Today we will be kicking off the who would win contest! unfortunately, we only have 3 votes for the winning faction. even worse, 2 of these unit face each other in round 1! Which means the odds of someone winning are looking a little too slim... so before we dive into round 1, I wanted to let everyone know I will be allowing votes past the original deadline. hopefully as I start posting rounds people will see this contest and start voting. so the new rule is that you can continue to vote for any faction that has not played in a round yet. So after today we will still have 12 factions you can vote for! vote here
With that in mind, let's look at today's matchup. after completely random pairings (just a random number generator), we ended up with the highborn covenant's steelheads going against the Protectorate's temple flameguard (with UA). both units have a number of special abilities that could help them out in today's game. the steelheads have both powerful charge and set defense, meaning they will get a bonus no matter who ends up winning the charge. on the other side of the ring, the flameguard also have set defense (which would just cancel out with powerful charge) and shield-wall. the UA gives them continuous fire and terror.

so who will win the first round of the tournament? read on to find out!

Who Would Win? - Teaser Round

this round won't count for the tournament, this is just to show the format that the rounds will follow. follow this LINK to see the complete rules and to vote on your favorite team. so far we have only three votes. voting will close this weekend, so get your votes in!

Now to kick off the tournament, we'll be starting with two armies that regularly fight each other. My Skorne and my wife's Circle Orboros. Both units have the same number of models, and the stat lines are almost identical (Skorne has a slight advantage in armor, but will it be enough?). The interesting part is the units' special abilities. each unit has a UA that will be giving them a very useful perk during this battle. In addition, the wolves have several built-in abilities that could sway the battle early.


With that said, let's jump in!

Crack The WIP 1/24/12

I'm a day late with this one, but I wanted to post a hobby update. This will be a short post to make up for the stupidly long battle report post I made yesterday. Here's what I've been working on this week:

Praetorian Swordsmen UA:

He doesn't need two swords to tell his guys to Side Step

I finished up my swordsmen ua right before the tournament in San Antonio. I think they turned out decently. the photos aren't great, I think I need to find a better spot to take my pictures. the lighting is just dim enough that it looks bad with no flash, but the flash looks bad too. I'll need to keep experimenting with that I think.

looks cool, but completely worthless on the table

I also built my new rhinodon. I'm going to be giving him a try, regardless of the comments on different forums about it being too pillow-fisted. it's not there for killing heavies, we already have plenty of that with the bronzeback and other titans. this guy looks like a great anti-infantry beast, with a 2" 360 degree thresher with all boosted attack rolls. I got to try him out in San Antonio, and he got a caster kill, but I really need some more work with him before I decide how much table time he'll be getting

He has to earn his paint

Domination Release Event - Battle Reports

This weekend I went down to San Antonio with a few other austinites for a Domination release event. Actually ended up being a lot of people from austin, but I did get to play some new opponents as well. it was an interesting tournament, using one scenario all day and cramming in as many rounds as possible during the day. you got points for playing, more points for winning, with bonus points for playing against new factions and players. and then there was a whole list of other bonuses you could get once per tournament. so in the end winning the games wasn't worth a whole lot compared to all the other points you could get, which made things interesting (in a good way).

I'm reconstructing my rounds from memory, some bits might be missing. Warning, this is going to be a rather large post, so if you're not really interested in a bunch of random battle reports, you might want to just skip over this one. I enjoy writing reports, though, as it helps me process my games and think about what went well and what I need work on.

Who Would Win? - Warmachine edition

NOTE! a slight change to the post below, voting will remain open for a faction until they participate in their first round. as of right now, there are still 10 factions left to choose from! after a faction has played, I'll mark them off in this thread, in case you didn't track down the latest round before voting...

It seems like a lot of blogs out there have been running random contests. A lot of them are really interesting. there was one in particular that I thought was a really neat idea. the writer at A Plague Spreads ran a contest last year for 40K that was designed to pick out the "best" unit in 40k. "best" of course being a relative and not all-too-scientific. but it made for a very cool contest.

I figured that something like that could be really fun for the other game I play. So, I am here to announce the first warmachine/hordes "who would win?" contest. I have gone through each faction in the game (except for four star syndicate, they made the bracket not work), and selected one unit to participate. these units aren't necessarily the best unit in the faction. these are the frontline troopers of each faction. the grunts, the meatshields, the real hard workers of an army. every army in the game (well almost) has a unit that falls into the same bucket of cheap frontline infantry in the same price range.

read on for details

Skorne Tactics - Domination

Domination has been out for a few months now. even though most of the models haven't been released yet (and probably won't be out for a while), we have been playing with proxies for a number of the new models. In my opinion, domination was a very mixed bag. some new releases really stand out as soon-to-be powerhouses (I know my wife is very excited about the Gallows Grove dropping next month) along with some really "meh" choices.

Of all of the Hordes factions, however, I feel like Skorne really came out in the black. I will probably be collecting every one of the skorne releases. there's nothing in there that I look at and don't want to try out. I haven't put all of these models to the test just yet. but while domination is still relatively fresh, and with a few games under my belt with new models, I wanted to give my first impressions of Domination. Like some other blogs have done, I will look at the new casters first, and do a follow-up post with some thoughts on other models.

Crack the WIP, 1/16

Happy Monday everyone!

I'm trying out a new segment today, as part of my plans to expand my use of the blogosphere. In the last week or so I have suddenly found myself in a burst of motivation to paint models. Brought on no doubt by the looming deadline of Adepticon.

Yes, Adepticon isn't until April. Yes, last year I built, converted, painted and based an entire 2000 point army in this same time frame for Adepticon (and wrote a blog about it!). So it's a more comfortable deadline than last year. But if I don't start now, I'll regret it later.

I wanted to start some sort of painting progress piece for my blog. I went back and forth on a few names, and finally settled on this one. it made me laugh, and if it makes one person chuckle on a Monday, my mission will be a success. I don't claim to be a great painter, but I enjoy painting. if you're looking for amazing, awe-inspiring paint jobs, go look at Coolminiornot.

Friday the 13th Edition: the luck factor

I've been wanting to do a post on luck and strategy for a while now. But like a lot of my ideas, haven't gotten around to it yet. Today is a new day, in a new year! And it being Friday the 13th gave me as good a reason as any to pull out this article.

Wargames in general walk a fine line. you want a game that takes strategy and thought, but at the same time we desire randomness and chance. if you didn't want a game with luck or chance involved, you would play chess. Some people really like chess. but it doesn't give you the same kind of game as one where a perfect plan can turn into a terrible loss with a single roll of a die.

On the other hand, there needs to be strategy involved. otherwise, why would all of us be blogging about it, or reading blogs about it? if you don't want a game with strategy and want all randomness, go play Uno Attack (seriously, that game messes with you). so today I'm going to write a little bit about the strategy of mitigating risks that are inherent in a tabletop game, be it warhammer, warmachine, or any other game involving plastic dudes and dice.

A New Year, a New Blog...

It's been a while since my last post. As in months. I could make some excuses, like being too busy with real life, but no one really cares to hear excuses. I'm pretty sure no one would be reading my excuses anyways. but here I am, drawn back to the keyboard by the lure of the idea that someone out there might eventually read my posts and get something out of it. if nothing else, it gives me something to do while waiting for the database admins at work to get their act together and let us actually do work.

So we've made it to 2012. possibly the end of the world, if you're one of those people. For me it just means that all the annual events I enjoy are coming right back around the bend. Adepticon is in 3 months! wargamescon already has pre-registration! maybe I'll go to some of the other GTs in the area this year. The Broncos are in the playoffs! (yeah, that will probably change this weekend, but a guy can dream. we made it further than the Cowpokes at least).