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.

This year was my first serious venture into competitive Warmachine. I played at Wargamescon, Adepticon, and several smaller Texas conventions, like Coal and Claw, The Alamo GT, and Clash for the Cure. I saw just how much I have left to learn about this game, facing some of the toughest opponents in Texas and the country.

Adepticon kicked it off, where I did better than I thought I would, but also saw my first taste of really high level play. The most memorable game from the weekend was playing in the team tournament and getting tabled on turn 3 by Jake Van Meter and Hollywood.

The next big event was Wargamescon. I had my brief ten seconds of fame when I won the Old School Hardcore with eMorghoul, but then got knocked out of the Masters very quickly when I went up against Mike Puryear.

I played in a few other cons in Texas, not really doing anything of note. I ended up middle of the field in each of them, never losing all my games, but only getting into the Masters once, and losing round 2 due to some dumb moves. I didn't end up playing a ton of local tournaments due to our store's Sunday-only tourney schedule, but the ones I did play in were a ton of fun.

Outside of the tournament scene, I ended up starting a whole new faction. Ret has been fun, but the playstyle is still eluding me. they play so different from my Skorne that I am having some trouble settling into a pattern or really getting the hang of how a game should unfold. so far I have only 3 or 4 'jacks, one unit and 2 solos painted. My Skorne is finally nearing 100% painted, with only a few models left to go.

Blogging has been a surprising success for me this year. and by success, I mean I've stuck with it. I managed to put out several posts a month all year. I don't tend to keep up with these things very well. I also started writing for BoLS, becoming the Skorne writer for them. I'm looking forward to writing more for them, especially as new stuff comes out.

Something you might not know about me is that I really like numbers. As a gamer, it's fun to keep track of certain statistics as the year goes by. This last year I've been keeping track of my win/loss record through the year, along with keeping track of every caster kill, either for or against me.

Some interesting numbers from this:
* Over the course of 2012, I played exactly 100 games with my Skorne, compared to 24 games with Retribution. My retribution had a worse record this year, winning only 40% of my games.
* Over the year, three models tied for earning the most caster kills. eHexeris, Molik Karn and the Bronzeback Titan each got 8 kills.
* On the Retribution side, Dawnguard Sentinals got the most caster kills with 4, which is pretty good for a unit that most people don't take very often.
* On the other side of the coin, I didn't lose my caster to the same thing more than once the whole year. This isn't really surprising given the large number of ways to lose a game of warmachine, but I thought it was interesting. 6 of those kills were other warcasters/warlocks finishing me off personally
* Worst caster kill of the year - pMorghoul got killed by a Vassal of Menoth. Only time I've ever seen one use its magic missile.
* Best caster kill of the year - a Titan Cannoneer beat down Karchev in melee to finish one of my games at Adepticon.

Next Year

Looking forward to next year, I'm really excited. Now that I have a year of competitive gaming under my belt, I'm hoping to do a bit better this time around. I'm hoping to hit 2 major events this year, along with as many of the growing Texas events as possible. I'll likely only be competing with my Skorne, but I may bring Ret to some later events.

My goal is to be 100% painted by the end of the year for my Skorne, and maybe even my Ret. that will be hard with all the new toys coming out for Skorne, but we'll see how that goes.

For statistics, I'm not planning on keeping track of wins and losses on my blog anymore. I've started using a new app called Iron Grudge that tracks games. If you haven't checked it out yet, you should. you can look at your game history and sort by opponent, opponent's faction, your caster, their caster, event, etc,etc. pretty much anything you want to sort by or get numbers for, you can do. It gives me a lot more info than just tracking one number on my sidebar. Somehow I doubt anyone but me really thought that was interesting, so it might as well not be on my blog, especially now that I'm getting more regular viewers.

Iron Grudge screenshot from their web page. seriously, go check them out

Thank you all for reading my blog this year. I enjoy putting down my thoughts, and I hope some of you have enjoyed reading them. if you have any thoughts, tips, criticisms, etc, feel free to send them my way. Hope you have a great year of gaming ahead of you.