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).