Looking Ahead: Despoiler

I don't know if I'm just not looking in the right places or what, but I have not seen a whole lot of hype or discussion on Despoiler. I myself have not looked at him a whole lot since his rules were released, mostly because there were just so many things to look at in that book, and all of them came out way before Despoiler. There wasn't much urgency to test him when we didn't even have a sculpt for him yet, just the art in the book and one pencil sketch from PP online.

We still don't have a release date for him, but he has finally been spotted! like the Incindiarii last year, one of the PP staffers snuck in a painted Despoiler into Warmachine Weekend where some pictures were snapped of him. the complete thread I am stealing this from can be found here

Journeyman League Upcoming

Starting this week my local club is going to be starting a new Journeyman league. I think we've had one at some point in the past, but I'm pretty sure i missed some or all of it. In any case, I am actually really looking forward to playing in it this time around. I think the concept of the Journeyman league is really good. we have done slow-grow leagues for just about every game I know of at our local store, and they're a great way to get people playing. having a standard ruleset for slow grow leagues makes things so much better.

Our league is going to be starting this Wednesday and going for 6 weeks. I'm hoping that this time i will be able to come every week during the course of the league. Not that I am really planning on trying to win the league, but it would be nice to get the max participation points. I don't have the time or motivation at this point in the year to try hard enough to get the points to win either in games or painting, and certainly not for overall. I can only focus on so many things at once, and right now I'm on a video game kick (Assassin's Creed: Black Flag is awesome, BTW) which always limits my painting time.

The Top Ten - Highlights from Clash for a Cure

Clash for the Cure was a blast! Four of us from Austin (me, my wife and two of our friends from our local club) made the trek up to Waco last weekend for the last big event of the year (for those of us too poor or too strapped for vacation time to make it out to Warmachine Weekend this year). We weren't the only ones from Austin up there, but the showing from our club was definitely less than it has been in other years.

I ended up playing in a ton of games. it was a whole lot of fun, and unlike my back-to-back L&L/Wargamescon adventure this one didn't leave me totally burned out on playing the game. Between the 4 events I played in, I ended with a total 12-2 record. Not bad for the caliber of opponents in the pool this year! While it's tempting to write up some battle reports for the games I played, I don't think it's going to happen this time. I have zero pictures from the event, and don't have all the details in my mind on some of my games. there were also a few games that would make for some pretty boring/short battle reports.

So, I decided instead I would go for a top 10. My top 10 favorite moments from Clash for a Cure.

Clash for the Cure, Third Time's a Charm

This weekend is one of my favorite Texas events, Clash for a Cure. This is their third annual event, and will be the third time I attend. It's pretty cool to see how much the event has been growing in just 3 attempts. The first year was a single-caster event on an afternoon in a local gaming store. it was a very fun event,even though I lost quite badly. I was trying out Naaresh for the very first time (he had been out for a bout 2 weeks), and had not really dipped my head into the Texas competitive scene. The event has now grown into a full con-length event with 3 days of gaming!

High Command First Impressions

I was unfortunately not one of those lucky enough to get High Command pre-release, so I've only had it in hand for about a week now. Still, now that the game has been out for a little while, the forums are starting to pick up some noise about the game, and BoLS just released a first impression article that made me want to talk a bit about what I've liked about the game so far.

I'm not going to go deep into "how to play the game", as that is one thing that is very well covered elsewhere if you want to read more about it. Privateer Press published the entire rulebook as a free pdf, so if you haven't read that yet you'll get more out of going to the High Command downloads page on their site instead of me trying to explain the game. No disrespect to my fellow BoLS writer Relasine, but with such accessible rules it feels like a waste of space to give a game-play/rules overview as part of a first impressions article.

Self-Inflicted pain - thinking about tiers

Tier lists (or theme forces if you want to use the correct term...) are an interesting thing in Warmachine. The vast majority of tier lists are not exactly game-changing. Most tier lists give you a few small buffs to your force if you take a restricted subset of models for your chosen caster. some of these benefits are pretty worthless, like letting a warbeast cast its animus for free on turn 1. lots of theme forces give +1 to the starting roll, free focus to jacks, extra deployment space or point discounts on specific models.

The price of getting these nice little buffs is that you have to forgo some of the models you may normally have to choose from, and to get to the higher tiers you have to bring specific models or units. Some theme forces are never even considered because of some of these restrictions. For example, what Menoth player would willingly restrict him or herself to not bringing the Choir? Or who wants to bring multiple light artillery models in a single list? On the other hand there are a few theme lists that are quite popular because they let you take all the models you normally would want with a given caster and then add some benefits. the best example of this is eVayl. You almost never see eVayl (even at low point levels) without a tier 4 list. there are a few other popular theme lists like eHaley, pDoomshaper, Borka, eKreoss, eVyros, etc.

is Butcher3 the New Makeda3?

So GenCon is this weekend, and while I of course didn't attend, there was still plenty to talk about with the pre-release models that have given us stat cards for models that were played surprising close to the chest by Privateer Press. As an aside, I like how PP handles their spoilers and pre-releases. they give you just enough info to keep you interested, but hold back enough that you don't know all the stats of all the models before a release. take Gargantuans for example. before the book came out we had rules for 80% of the book. but that last 20% that got dropped on us the day the book released had some very very tasty stuff in it.

Anyways, back on topic. several models are now out and in the wild that we had no info on before this weekend. Eiryss3 is pretty cool, but I don't have much to say about her. she's what you want from Eiryss (upkeep removal) plus AD, reform and fearless. very good model, very easy to see her applications. she's going to be with infiltrators 99% of the time. I might write something about her in the future, for now that's all I have to say about her.

The really interesting one is Butcher 3. As always, a caster release will dominate any discussion just because of how much your caster affects everything in your game. And this guy looks crazy. I mean Butcher has always been talked about as a one-man wrecking crew, but as you look at his cards he has slowly been losing more and more of his marbles and any desire to support his army. from pButcher who really just used iron flesh a lot and went Xerxis for a turn to eButcher who could go crazy berserk but often left that to Fenris or his Eliminators, we now have possibly the most insane super-solo yet to be released.

I'm not Dead Yet!

I'm back! finally after about 2 months of no activity, I've decided to come back to my blog. June took it out of me more than I expected. First up was Lock and Load, which my wife and I decided to drive to. the drive from Austin TX to Seattle is no small feat. we took our time on the way up, taking 5 days total to get in to Seattle.

Once there, I played in a tournament every day of the 'Con. It was probably not the best plan, but i had fun. I did worse than I had hoped, going 2-2 on day one (losing to a Rasheth Skorne army and a 30 Bane Knight Skarre list) and 1-3 in the 3 commanders tournament (turns out Xerxis + Mammoth at 35 points is not all that awesome).

On the other end of the spectrum, the middle day was awesome! I finally got to play in a Who's The Boss format, and I brought a fun list for it. at 35 points it was essentially a Mammoth + support (support including a Gladiator and Krea of course). the day started off hard when I drew constance blaize (you know, with my 4 warrior models...) against eHaley. The only saving grace was that it was eHaley with Gators, and the Mammoth is fine without much help from his caster. I then followed that with 3 amazing casters, getting Siege Brisbane (brutal with skorne... I mean holy crap it was a one-sided game), eSkarre, and eLylyth. I won all 4 of my games and managed to hit a whole bunch of the bonus things (turns out it's not hard to get all the power attacks when using a Mammoth and gladiator). At the end of the day, Will Hungerford got up and announced the winner: Me! I went up front help the trophy over my head and got a picture snapped. 5 minutes later they pulled me aside and told me that someone had "forgotten" to turn in their score sheet and had beat me by 3 points. so I was not the boss after all...

So after that long weekend of gaming, it was back into the car, driving 3 more days back to Austin. we got back in town late Wednesday night. Friday morning it was back to gaming, with Wargamescon Hardcore. I brought eMakeda, figuring she was simple enough to play and might get out Mage Hunter. instead my sleep-deprived and over-gamed brain left her wide open against Doomshaper and she died horribly. I also lost against an eMorvhanna player, but it was a closer game. I did manage a Mage Hunter score of 0, 1 with my other 2 games, but Mage Hunter was one by one guy who got 0, 0.

Next up was the team tournament. it was me, a local Ret player and a local Menoth player. we won our first round easily, then had a real hard matchup against 3 of the big names from Houston. I got matched against Eric, who won the hardcore the day before (and more recently won the Mayhem Cup). I managed to squeek out a victory, and in the process won an Archangel that had been put up as a bounty on beating Eric. unfortunately, both of my teammates lost. we pulled out a win on our last round, even though one of our guys lost his round. we ended up in 4th place. For the masters, the top 2 teams got to continue on. one whole team had already qualified, though, and the second place team had one guy who already qualified. so it went to the third place team, who also had one guy qualified. that left 2 more spots open, which went to my team. they did it solely based on position in the team, and since dice had put me as the 2nd lt, I was the short straw who didn't go to masters. Oh well.

I did play in the consolation flanks tournament, which was fun. I haven't played flanks in a while. but by this point I was pretty burned out on playing Warmachine. I went 3-1, losing to my regular Cryx opponent who is the one local who consistently beats me. I got 4th place, and won a sweet Convergence concept art print. One of my teammates from the previous day also won a really nice Makeda3 art print which he gave to me since I had barely missed getting into Masters.

I had fully expected to be a bit tired of gaming after those 2 weeks, and kind of figured I wouldn't show up in the shop for at least a few weeks. Between Wargamescon and now, I went into the shop a total of 3 times, and two of those for for Infinity. I'm finally to the point where I want to play Warmachine again, writing in my blog again, painting models and reading stuff online. I have some ideas for articles in the near future, and am looking forward to playing again.

I am going to do an article on Infinity in the near future. I just started playing it as a side game since you only need 10 models to play. it's dynamic, fast paced and totally different than my main game. it makes for a nice side game to pull out every once in a while. And man, it taught me something being back on the learning curve for a tabletop game. It's been a while since I got stomped as bad as I have in Infinity. I forget how far I've come since starting Warmachine, especially after 2 weekends of getting beat around like a newb.

I am also planning on writing some posts about some of our less-used warlocks. After spending so much time with the top tier casters in full tourney-prep mode I really want to go and play with some of the casters who have sat in my bag lately. I am wanting to get in a bunch of games with my "fun" casters: Makeda3, eMorghoul, Mordikaar and pHexeris. Look for some articles on them soon!

And as always, if there is something Warmachine or even general gaming related you want to hear about, I am always looking for ideas for this blog. I really enjoy hearing from people who read my blog.

'Till next time

Skorne - Building the Mammoth

Skorne's Gargantuan hits the tables this month! For part 3 of my ongoing series on the Mammoth, I want to talk about building and painting this massive model.

Intro to the Mammoth

Another one of my model reviews for Bell of Lost Souls. I am working on a series of articles including a painting/assembly article and a write-up on the use of the mammoth with various casters. Any thoughts on the Mammoth or it's tactical applications would be very helpful in crafting a good end to my series of articles.

Hopefully people have enjoyed my write-ups so far. I am looking forward to finally getting a real Mammoth on the table instead of the Animantarax stand-in. I apologize to anyone who has already read and commented on the article on BoLS, if you've already seen this one there's nothing new to see.

Makeda 3 and the Exalted Court

This is a write-up on Makeda3 that I did for Bell of Lost Souls. I've been writing a lot of articles for BoLS lately for all of the new models that came out with Gargantuans and haven't been writing much for my own blog. I'm going to cross-post a few of the articles from BoLS  over the next few weeks.

By the way, if you haven't checked out BoLS lately, you should give them a try. It has traditionally been a 40k-centric site, but we are trying to change that. we have a lot of good Warmachine/Hordes players posting regular articles, along with some spoilers that get sent directly to Bell of Lost Souls.

Lock and Load prep, part 2 - with lists!

Lock and Load is coming up in a little over a month, and I've been so busy playing around with the new toys from Gargantuans that I haven't really devoted much time to prepping for 'Con season. It's probably a good thing I didn't end up doing Adepticon this year, since I would have gone without really knowing what I was going to do. To make things worse, I went and played the Mammoth with every Skorne caster and reminded myself how fun some of the less common ones are.

I've finally started cutting down the lists and picking out what casters and lists I want to use at Lock and Load. It's hard to pick in a faction like Skorne with a ton of caster styles without really having a top 3 that are just flat out better than others (Haley, Haley, Caine? Again?). I have a lot of casters I like, and most of them are competitive, if not top tier. After talking myself in circles over the course of 2 or 3 weeks, building lists, playing random casters and hammering out tons of theories, I finally decided I just needed to stop, pick 3 casters and run with it. So for the next 6 weeks, I will approaching casual games like steamroller games. I have my three lists, and depending on opponent faction I will pick the one I think will work best. that way, if I do find holes in my lists I can possibly change my mind, but otherwise I'm locking in.

Mammoth batreps, Part 12 - Makeda 3

We've finally reached the end of the Skorne lineup. If you've been following this blog, I went down the list of Skorne casters, taking a list with each of them that included a Mammoth. In my last post I covered a game using Mordikaar, who was the last of the released warlocks. But of course the Mammoth wasn't the only cool thing that Skorne got in the recent release. I wanted to get in a bunch of Makeda3 test games in the next few weeks, and what better way to start than to use her with the Mammoth to finish out my series?

Normally I don't think I'll be using a Mammoth with Makeda (at least not her third version). She really wants Karn and a bronzeback, or other beasts that can really capitalize on her feat. However, if you're willing to give up some of the more obvious models you might want to bring with Makeda3, her tier list looks interesting. I figured I should go ahead and use her tier if I was going to do a Mammoth test. then to round out the proxies for this game, I tossed in my unit of Cetrati who would be standing in for a unit of Incindiarri.


My List

Makeda and the Exalted Court (tier 4)
* Mammoth
* Krea
* Gladiator
* Shaman
* Marketh

min paingivers
max Incindiarii
Ancestral Guardian

Her tier list gives her a few neat perks. for tier 1, Makeda and her bodyguards get Advance Move. tier 2 gives Marketh and the AG a soul token when the game starts. Tier 3 gives me +1 to the starting roll, and tier 4 makes the Mammoth cost 2 points less.

This game was again against my regular Legion opponent and fellow BoLS writer Caldera. He wanted to proxy something from Gargantuans as well, and was going back and forth between playing with the BloodSeer with Vayl or the Beast Mistress with Thagrosh. since I play against Vayl all the time, and already have a game against her for this blog series, I convinced him to run with Thagrosh. 

Thagrosh the Messiah
* Carnivean
* Scythean
* 4 X Shredders
* Stinger

Beast Mistress
* Stinger
* Shredder
* Harrier

max Legionnaires
spawning vessel
Shepherd
2 X Forsaken

This is kind of a silly list, but could be really strong on attrition. Basically the list brings as many little lesser beasts as possible. Thagrosh himself was bringing 5 lessers (plus the one that pops out when he takes damage), plus 3 on the beast mistress, plus whatever gets tossed out of the pot each turn as it gets fueled by a cheap unit of legionnaires. all that is backed up with 2 nice heavy hitters and thagrosh himself.

The scenario we pulled was Chemical Reaction. this scenario is one of my favorites, as most of the action is pretty central on the table, but there are 3 different ways to score during the game. I don't remember where much of the terrain was, but I know there was a forest on the far side of my friendly zone, a hill on his side of his friendly zone, and a house opposite the hill. I believe there was a wall between the two zones. Even with the +1 to the roll I lost the roll and would be going second.

He deployed the beast mistress and her herd of lessers on my far left, behind the forest. next came the Carnivean and Thagrosh, then the Scythean, then the pot and legionnaires taking up my right flank. the lessers that belonged to Thagrosh were spread around, with three shredders more towards my right side, and the remaining shredders and stinger a little bit left. the shepherd went centrally and the forsaken went behind the bigger beasts.

I deployed with the Mammoth slightly offset to the right (pre-deployed there) with the Krea and Makeda to its left with her court, followed by the shaman and Gladiator on my left side going into my friendly zone. the incindiarri deployed pretty packed in right in front of the gladiator and shaman. the AG went behind the Incindiarri. beast handlers went in the back.

Turn 1

he started with the Beast Mistress, who used Energizer and moved up (I think she charged to get more distance). her beasts ran in front of her, part way into my zone on turn 1. Thagrosh put Dragon's Blood on the Carnivean and spread some Spiny Growth. everything else ran. the scythean ended up slightly in front of the carnviean, both more or less cenrtally located. three shredders made their way towards the Mammoth, and some Legionairres started into his friendly zone.

My turn had a ton of running. makeda put up Vortex and counter blast and ran/charged her unit. everything else ran or charged, with the shaman and gladiator touching my zone with some Incindiarri in front of them. one Exatled Court member was pretty far forward hoping to draw a little bit of fire (not that there was much shooting on the other side of the table). the Mammoth put up counter Blast and charged up to almost toeing the zone.

Turn 2

the Beast Mistress started things off, moving up into my zone and casting Energizer for 3. her beasts moved up and started charging. the Harrier went first, charging into my Exalted Court and killing it, sprinting into the Shaman's melee range. the Stinger killed an Incindiarri. the shredder just ran, I think, adding to the little jam on the edge of my zone. on the other side of the table, the legionnaires ran further into the zone, right in front of the Mammoth. the Mammoth fired off a counterblast shot and scattered, killing one legionnaire, who was out of cookpot range. the pot moved up next, getting into the back of the zone.

Thagrosh moved up and feated, putting Spiny Growth on the Scythean and casting Manifest Destiny. the mass of lessers all ran to get into good feat positions. one shredder ran into Makeda's melee range and she swung at it with counterblast, missing. the Scythean ran towards Makeda, the carnivean just moved to the middle of the board in from of Thagrosh. the feat kicked in, and things moved again. 3 shredders attacked the mammoth, doing 10 or so damage total. a stinger joined in, doing another couple points. the one shredder attacked Makeda, doing 3 damage (that's what she gets for missing!). the other shredder did something, I think he might have just tried to get in the way somewhere. the carnivean moved to protect thagrosh and to counter anything that might move up. the scythean advanced to Makeda and attacked, but missed.

Bottom of 2

I was jammed in good now, with almost everything in my army engaged but still well on my side of the table. sounds like a good feat turn. Marketh upkept Vortex with his free soul. I started with the Mammoth, figuring it was ok if not everything was effected by the feat. he wiggled a bit forward, bulldozing the shredders towards Makeda and advancing into the zone. he fired a shot at the cookpot which was in range and boosted damage. it was left on one or two boxes, and 3 lunch ladies were killed. the second shot killed the pot and it popped out another Stinger before being removed. the final shot went into the objective, doing 6 damage but failing to kill the shepherd that was right behind it. the Mammoth then put up counterblast.

Makeda issued a run/charge order and charged the Scythean (not getting a full 3", but vortex makes that not matter). the court charged the shredder and killed it (Makeda is now at 7). Makeda spent 3 fury to kill the Scythean (bringing her to 5) then blood-booned an eliminator into one of the bulldozed shredders. Boosted hit and damage killing one and hurting another (now at 4). Makeda moved 2" and was in melee with another shredder. somehow it took her all 4 fury to finally kill it (and finished with 1 fury due to feat).

On the other side, I needed to clear out the 4 lessers in my way (three from mistress, one from Thagrosh). the Ancestral Guardian moved up and killed the Harrier with 2 swings and damaged one of the other lessers down to one box. the gladiator pushed one of the two lessers near him and advanced so he was in melee with both. it took him all of his fury, but he managed to kill both, using the last one to add a fury to Makeda (now at 2). Marketh advanced up to the damaged stinger and hit it with an eliminator and killed it, letting Makeda advance 2" back to safety. the Shaman advanced, using a fully boosted shot to kill a forsaken, putting Makeda up to 3. the Incindiarri advanced and lit a bunch of stuff on fire. one lit the beast mistress on fire, one lit the objective on fire and killed the shepherd, one caught thagrosh on fire, and one advanced behind the mammoth and killed a legionnaire and set 2 more on fire. the last one set a shredder on fire. the paingivers cleared all my beasts. finally the krea went and hit the carnivean, keeping it from charging for a turn.

Turn 3

Fire damage killed the Beast Mistress, one legionnaire, damaged the shredder a bit and did 2 or 3 points to the objective. He was in a much weaker spot now, with one heavy down and most of his lessers gone. the Carnivean would have done a lot of work this turn, but he didn't have the distance without a charge. the carnivean started anyways, walking tot he Shaman and easily killing it with 2 initials. He put Spiny Growth on himself. Thagrosh got into the zone right behind the Carnivean and put up manifest destiny and spiny growth on himself. the Legionnaires all charged the mammoth (except one who charged the Incindiarri that had lit him on fire). between their charges and 2 or 3 that had hit with vengeance, they did another 12 damage or so. the stinger from the pot charged and I used counterblast and missed again. it did another few damage. a forsaken moved up and filled up on Fury near the zone with thagrosh and the carnivean.

Makeda upkept Vortex again. I started with the Mammoth who kind of gyrated around the zone, bumping things around and knocked a number of legionnaires out of the zone. he then easily killed the remaining legionnaires in the zone and the stinger. the Incindiarri went again, killing a few legionnaires, lit the forsaken on fire and did a 3 man CRA into Thagrosh doing 3 damage. Makeda charged the Carnivean, but didn't have battle driven this turn and it was Arm 22. she did very little damage and decided to camp the remaining 3. the ancestral guardian did a little more damage and tried to keep Makeda covered with Defensive Strike. the Krea shot Thagrosh and paralyzed him. the gladiator got enraged (and everything else got cleared) and charged the Carnivean. Vortex made it pretty easy to kill the Carnivean even with the armor buffs. other stuff ran to get in the way a bit. I scored 3 points (dominating my zone and controlling his)

Turn 4

the Forsaken died in a fire, thagrosh took 3 more damage. some stuff got into the zone with the Mammoth to contest. Thagrosh advanced and found a spot where he could reach Makeda, but wasn't hit by defensive strike. Manifest Destiny went up and he swung at Makeda and did 8 or so damage. it all got transferred tot he gladiator. he swung his fist at the Exalted Court member but failed to damage arm 20. now he was dice -1 on Makeda. he swung a few more times but didn't get through her transfers. a shredder riled and ran and died to a free strike that I probably shouldn't have taken giving Thagrosh 2 more fury.

The Krea moved up and did her animus catching Thagrosh. Makeda took 4 swings to do it with crappy dice but managed to kill thagrosh.

Afterthoughts

I really really enjoyed my first attempt with Makeda3. I can see why she's getting some hype on the forums. She didn't look all that impressive on paper, but putting her on the table definitely helps me see how the pieces fit together. I will of course need a lot more test games with her to come to a final verdict, but she definitely seems like a playable caster, even if she doesn't end up being a tournament regular.

This game was an interesting one for Makeda. Being legion, there weren't many infantry models to get a lot of eliminators and blood boons off of. there were legionnaires, but they stayed off to the flank where I didn't really want to send Makeda. even so, eliminators killing one lesser managed to do a good bit of work on feat turn. 2" is a lot in this game. I imagine that it will be much stronger against players that bring more infantry to mulch through.

The feat was just as powerful as I expected. Makeda was able to personally plow through 3 shredders and a full health Scythean and then fill back up to 3 fury for transfers. her beasts didn't get a whole lot from this one, since only the gladiator and shaman went after the feat was popped. had I activated the Mammoth after Makeda, I could have killed a few more free models with it, but I really needed to get that pot dealt with and push some shredders over to Makeda to maximize her activation.

Overall, this game let me try out several of the big things people have been talking about with Makeda3. her feat, her ability to personally plant a heavy on feat turn, her ability to take a few hits, and her ability to maximize damage from her beasts using vortex. Next time I'm hoping to get a bit more from her list, moving away from the tier restrictions to get Molik and a Bronzeback, along with an agonizer and willbreaker.

Thoughts on the Mammoth

the Mammoth did well in this game, basically holding a flank all by himself. he personally killed 2 or 3 lessers, most of a unit of legionnaires and the cook pot. point wise that's not a ton, but he wasn't needed to deal with heavies this game.

Counterblast was uncharacteristically bad this time around. I missed 3 melee counterblasts between Makeda and the Mammoth, and only killed 1 model with a AOE counterblast. normally it does more for me. Makeda seems like one of the few casters that can make good use of counterblast, dishing out a Mat 8 pow 17 with boosted damage. had she hit the shredder that came after her, it would have likely died.

Even with that, I'm not totally sold on bringing a Mammoth with Makeda3. I like the idea of using a bronzeback + karn on feat turn to mow things down. the added benefit of that combo is fate walker, which was sorely missing in this game. Fate walker would let Makeda move up to help kill off the Carnivean without being in range of Thagrosh at the end of the turn. Since playign this game, I got one more game in with a different non-tier list using molik + bronzeback, and fatewalker was a huge deal in that game.

The one nice thing about the Mammoth with Makeda is the huge amount of pressure you can put on zones. Makeda has proven to be able to clear a zone by herself, or with limited help from her army. the Mammoth likewise can really clear out a zone in a turn or two. the two of them together can really push that scenario win. in this game, the mammoth handled the enemy zone all by himself, and Makeda enabled taking my own zone from the rushing lessers + Carnivean. adding this to Makeda's strong assassination potential could be really strong. I do think if I run her with the Mammoth, I really want to add in an Archidon at least, so I don't have to leave her too forward.

Well, that's the end of it. I have now run a Mammoth with every Skorne caster. If you've made it this far, thank you for reading. Hopefully these reports were enjoyable, or at least informative. Now that the series is over, I probably won't be doing as many battle reports. I did enjoy writing them, and I know a lot of people like reading battle reports, so i will try to keep some of them coming. but I won't be writing down every game anymore. I might do some full battle reports with pictures later on since I'll have more time to do a good job with a single report that doesn't have a (self-imposed) deadline. 

Also, keep an eye out for a full summary article on the Mammoth, looking at some more tactics and lessons learned, along with ranking the casters to use with the Mammoth. I won't be posting it on here, it will be for Bell of Lost Souls, so look for it there! 

Mammoth batreps, Part 11 - Mordikaar

Down to the last 2 casters! This week I managed to get in games with both of the remaining casters with the Mammoth. So after weeks of play-testing  I have now played the Mammoth with every caster in Skorne! The last two casters I played were Mordikaar and Makeda3. We'll start with Mordikaar to close out the released casters, and I'll post my Makeda3 report later on this week once I get it written up.

The list I took was a bit different this time. I think I was mostly just getting tired of running the same list every time with different casters. That and Mordikaar just plays differently than anything else in the faction. That's one of the main reasons I love playing Mordikaar, but it also means I will need many more games with him before I get real good with his playstyle. Unfortunately, by taking a different setup I didn't end up liking my list very much. it's not an ideal Mordikaar list or an ideal Mammoth list. On the plus side, I got to play with some Incindiarii this week!


My List

Mordikaar
* Mammoth
* Krea

Agonizer
Willbreaker
Void Spirit
max Incindiarii
max Nihilators
max Swordsmen + UA

Lock and Load prep - Part 1

We're going to take a break from your regularly scheduled blogging this week. Unfortunately, I wasn't actually able to get down to the gaming store this week to continue my Mammoth battle reports. So I guess you'll just have to wait until next week to see if I can manage to essence blast a Mammoth all over an enemy caster.

With all these fun new releases coming out, and all my playing with proxied models, I haven't been focusing very much on my competitive lists. I've been dabbling with Ret, and playing a lot of my casters that are more fun to play, but not really the ones I reach for in tournaments. Unfortunately, that got me a bit rusty with my standard casters (as evidenced by my pMorghoul and eMakeda battle reports...). And with Lock and Load coming up in a mere two months, I need to start focusing a bit.

Over the next two months, I will be trying to nail down some choices on what casters and lists I want to use for Lock and Load (and WarGamesCon the very next weekend). And of course once I get my casters picked, I need some serious practice with them. I'll be talking about my lists and prep on my blog as I go.

Mammoth batreps, Part 10 - Xerxis

For the secnd game this week I pulled out Xerxis, hoping to make up for the dissapointing game with eMakeda. Xerxis seems like a pretty obvious choice with the Mammoth. he can get it up to stupid levels of melee power if needed and then helps its survivability with Defender's Ward and the defensive side of his feat. I think that going into this year's Con season, Xerxis + Mammoth is going to be my go-to third list for any 3 list events.

This list is one I'm actually pretty excited about. the normal package works really nicely with Xerxis and leaves 9 points. Xerxis obviously has no trouble with taking down single high arm targets, so I figure he needed a bit of help against infantry. to deal with this I added a rhinodon and Master Tormentor.

For this battle, Xerxis and the Mammoth would be going up against their big test. Can the best armor cracking list in Skorne, and possibly in the game, handle the new fad in high armor?


My List

Xerxis
* Mammoth
* Krea
* Gladiator
* Rhinodon

Master Tormentor
Agonizer
Willbreaker
Max Nihilators
min paingivers

Mammoth batreps, Part 9 - eMakeda

Or, the day I realized how much I still need to learn about playing Skorne. This week I played another 2 games with the Mammoth, and with 2 of the casters I was most looking forward to using it with: eMakeda and Xerxis. Unfortunately, I was having one of those days where for one reason or another I just wasn't able to concentrate on my games like I normally can.

How bad was it? well, bad enough that I considered for a moment just scrapping this game and trying again next week with the same caster. But I already decided I was going to do a write-up for each game I played while play-testing the Mammoth, so I'm going to write it up anyways. There were a few interesting things that came up in this game, so hopefully it's still worth a read even if it makes me look like a terrible Skorne player.

for this game I brought eMakeda with the same package I've been using. I really like the Mammoth package, and when I do have a mammoth, it will likely always be run with this same group of models. they just work together really well. eMakeda has 9 points left after the Package, so she took and Archdidon and a Soulward. My opponent this time was our group's main Cryx player (known as SpiderBite on the forums), and one of our top 3 or 4 players in the group. He was running a slightly different version of the Mortenebra Tier 4 list (has anyone reading this ever played against Mortenebra outside of her tier? I sure haven't)


My List 

Gargantuans: Hordes Initial Thoughts

Gargantuans: Hordes Initial Thoughts

Looks like Christmas came early this year! Legion got the Sleigh, and Skorne got the presents. As I'm sure everyone knows, Gargantuans came out this week, and with it a bunch of new goodies for all of the Hordes factions. Flipping through the new entries, it looks like everyone got some really useful new models.

Of course, as a Skorne player I have very little room to talk about anything that other factions got. and I'm too giddy about all my new stuff to care much about what other people got! I'm going to try to go through each of the new entries and give a first impression on how useful I think they will be in Skorne. Of course, take all of this with a grain or two of salt, as we'll need a lot more playtesting before we can say anything for sure on these new models.

Mammoth batreps, Part 8 - Zaal

Part 2 of my catching up on reports from last week. We're nearing the end of the list of casters, and it seems like most of the casters that I have been playing the most are at the bottom of the stack. This report is using Supreme Aptimus Zaal, who has quickly become one of my favorite casters. I didn't start him right away, once again due to listening too much to rankings on the forums. you only really hear about Zaal as a counter to Terminus (which he's fine at) or as a way for people to dust of Ancestral Guardians and Immortals (which he supports better than anyone).

I finally got around to playing him and was (pleasantly) surprised by him. not only is he incredibly powerful, but he's a blast to play. I've never played a caster that actually WANTS you to kill all his dudes. I throw infantry at my opponent and just smile and start handing out soul tokens when they die. then I started getting good at the Kovass. probably 80-90% of my Zaal games have ended with a Last Stand Kovass eating a caster. Zaal quickly found a spot in my tournament lists as a second caster to eMakeda. Heading in to the 2013 'con season, he's moving on to become my go-to caster.

I'm not entirely sure how to view Zaal with the Mammoth. at first glance, he honestly doesn't do anything spectacular. the Mammoth doesn't need the feat to kill almost anything, and last stand seems like a bad idea on 20 points of raw overkill. Zaal does offer a nice Armor buff, or the ability to load my mammoth up and still use counter-blast via awakened spirit. But is an infantry-based caster going to actually want a 20-point beatstick beast?

I ran him a bit different than my other mammoth games. Zaal doesn't want too many beasts, and he really doesn't come into his own without a few Ancestral Guardians. So I decided to try out the ranged Mammoth package again, dropping the Gladiator for a Raider and soulward. I then used the last 10 points for 2 Ancestral Guardians (AGs) and Hakaar.

My List 

Zaal
* Mammoth
* Krea
* Raider

Hakaar
2 AGs
Soulward
Agonizer
Willbreaker
Max nihilators
min paingivers

Mammoth batreps, Part 7 - pMorghoul

Due to a very busy week/weekend, I'm a little late writing up reports from this past week. I played 2 games, one with pMorghoul and one with Zaal. Hopefully I can remember enough detail to make a decent report out of those two games, though the second battle probably won't get posted until at least Wednesday (which is of course the day I'll be playing the next game on the list). I may also be writing an article on ym reactions to the new releases that come out on Wednesday, though that topic is being beaten to death across the internet right now. I'll probably at least cover my thoughts on Skorne releases.

Back on topic, my first game last week was using Master Tormentor Morghoul. As always, I brought the "mammoth package" that I've been playing with. Morghoul of course comes with a whopping 7 beast points, which gives a nice neat 11 points on top of the standard package. normally there are certain models I would take with Morghoul, but tossing in Tiberion with the Mammoth was too tempting. I ended up playing one of our local Ret players who was running a Tier 4 Rahn list, using the Fires From on High tier list from NQ.

My List 

pMorghoul
* Mammoth
* Krea
* Gladiator
* Tiberion

Agonizer
Willbreaker
Max nihilators
min paingivers

Mammoth batreps, Part 6 - Naaresh

This week I actually played 2 games with the same Naaresh list. For the first game, my opponent was trying out Lylyth3 for the first time, along with an Archangel. The Mammoth ended up doing almost nothing during the game, killing 3 striders then getting death chilled for a turn. he didn't have enough shooting to death chill other big targets, though, and Naaresh's feat cost him his Archangel and Angelius without the Mammoth doing anything. I decided that game wasn't going to be a very good representation of the Mammoth with Naaresh, especially considering it was the first time my opponent had even proxied Lylyth3.

So as soon as that game was over, I got a game with the same list, table and scenario against one of our local Circle players. for this game, he ended up going with epic Kaya and a full contingent of Warpwolves.

My List 

Naaresh
* Mammoth
* Krea
* Gladiator
* Cyclops Brute

Agonizer
Willbreaker
Max nihilators
min paingivers
min paingivers
Totem Hunter

Mammoth batreps, Part 5 - pHexeris

This is part two of last week's Mammoth games. I managed to squeeze in two test games with the Mammoth, trying him with 2 different casters. Following the Lord Assassin, we have Lord Tyrant Hexeris. pHexeris is a neat caster, and one I feel like I haven't been using enough lately. He was my second caster right after pMorghoul battlebox games, and was a favorite for a long time. eHex kind of stole the spotlight for a while, but pHex has some awesome answers to some hard matchups, particularly eGaspy.

This game was against one of our local Menoth players, though lately he's been playing around with Retribution, along with a bit of Skorne on the side. This week he had his Ret, and was playing with an interesting Garryth list. Since we both at least own models from both Skorne and Ret, we both knew each others tricks and stats... for the most part

My List 

pHexeris
* Mammoth
* Krea
* Gladiator
* Razor Worm
Marketh

Agonizer
Willbreaker
Max swordsmen + ua
paingivers
Totem Hunter

Mammoth batreps, Part 4 - eMorghoul

Another week, another Mammoth battle report! so far I've used several of the casters that people have been talking a lot about with the Mammoth. pMakeda, eHexeris and even Rasheth all have something to offer the Mammoth. This week I finally got to a caster that might not be amazing with the new shiny toy. eMorghoul was the next caster on the list (his title of "Lord Assassin" sticks him right between the Hexerises), and probably the caster I was least excited about running with the Gargantuan.

This week I once again played against the Legion opponent from last week, this time running Saeryn. He used to play Saeryn against me fairly regularly, but I haven't actually seen her on the table in a while. Saeryn is definitely a warlock to watch out for, especially for a faction that relies so much on melee attacks to get things done.

My List

eMorghoul
* Mammoth
* Krea
* Gladiator
* Brute
* Archidon

Willbreaker
Nihilators
paingivers

And my opponent's list:

Saeryn
* Angelius
* Angelius
* Ravagore
* Scythean
* Shredder
* Raek

Succubus
2 X Shepherds
2 X Forsaken
2 X Deathstalkers

Mammoth batreps, Part 3 - eHexeris

Another Mammoth battle report this week! the third caster in the alphabetical lineup is Lord Aribiter Hexeris. This is one of the casters that looks really really good with the Mammoth on paper. he's already a really strong answer to high def infantry swarms, so adding a Mammoth in for even more infantry domination seems good. also, black spot with a giant ROF 3 cannon is too good to pass up.

Of course, going through every caster in order doesn't let me pick my match-ups at all, so I wasn't necessarily going to get to try out an infantry heavy match like Khador, ret, or cryx. instead I played against an eVayl Tier 4 (when's the last time anyone's played against a non-tier eVayl? her tier is stupid good) list with a lot of heavies.

My List 

eHexeris
* Mammoth
* Raider
* Krea
* Gladiator

Marketh
Soulward
Agonizer
Willbreaker
Max swordsmen + UA
min paingivers

Mammoth batreps, Part 2 - Rasheth

The Mammoth battle reports continue. this week I got one more game in with the Mammoth, this time using something completely different. Continuing working through every Skorne caster, the second to appear alphabetically is Dominar Rasheth. Not only would this game be my first time ever using the obese dominar, but I decided it was a perfect time to try out the new theme force presented in the latest No Quarter. This week I would be pitting my Mammoth proxy against the Mountain King, led by eDoomshaper.

My List (Rasheth T4)

Rasheth
* Mammoth
* Raider
* Krea

Animantarax
Agonizer
Tyrant Rhadeim
Max swordsmen
venator catapult crew
paingivers

Tier benefits:
1 point discount on huge bases
advance move on catapult
3 rage tokens on animantarax
2 dice for starting game roll, take highest

Mammoth Batreps, Part 1 - pMakeda

I finally picked up a copy of the new No Quarter magazine at our game store last night. Of course, as soon as I did I got the update to warroom as well. in any case, I now have the stats for the Mammoth in a fully usable format, and it's time for some play-testing!

My goal is to run the Mammoth with every one of our casters between now and the end of March when the Mammoth is released. I'll be posting battle reports here, focused on the performance of the Mammoth. Last night I got my first Mammoth test game in. Of course, if I'm going to play every caster, might as well play them in alphabetical order. First up is Archdomina Makeda (or pMakeda if you're not familiar with our titles!)

Game 1 was against my usual Cryx opponent, but this time he was trying out his new Gator army with Rask.
my list:
pMakeda
* Mammoth
* Gladiator
* Krea
Marketh
Agonizer
Willbreaker
Hakaar
Master Tormentor
Max Nihilators
min paingivers

Road to Adepticon 2013

For the last couple of years, Adepticon has been one of my favorite events of the year. in 2011, it was my first con out of the state. That Adepticon was actually what inspired me to create a blog. I built and painted an 1850 point Harlequin army between January 1st and Adepticon in mid-April. Somehow I got it all done and showed my progress on this blog. Of course, in the end that Adepticon also marked the end of my 40K days when they handed out free battleboxes to every con attendee. 2 months later I had my first 15 point Skorne army.

Last year, Adepticon was my first large event for Warmachine. Before that I had played in maybe 3 local steamrollers and one release event. I got to meet (and get stomped by) some of the bigger names in the national meta, like Jake Van Meter, Hollywood and Kieth. Once again, the fully painted rules at Adepticon forced me to paint frantically for a month or two before the event, getting multiple 50 point lists completed and my hardcore army fully based with my first green-stuff sculpting (very basic, but still a first).

Unfortunately, this year I will not be able to attend Adepticon. Schedules just didn't work out this year. As much as I love Adepticon, I think that might actually turn out to be a good thing. I was planning on hitting 2 out of state events this year (plus as many Texas events as possible), and one of those was going to be Adepticon. Not going frees me up to go to some more Warmachine-centric events. This year, the plan is to hit Lock and Load in May and Warmachine Weekend in November. So instead of going to a mainly 40K convention, I'm going to have a chance to see both of the "main" events for Warmachine in the country.

Of course, this also means that my "con season" doesn't start until the end of May. Once May hits, things will pick up quickly, with Lock and Load and Wargamescon on back-to-back weekends. Then the assortment of Texas mini-cons starts up with events like Coal and Claw, the Alamo, Clash for the Cure, and any other events that come up this year. So what am I doing in the meantime?

Those Last 2 Points

Skorne is a bit spoiled for choices when it comes to cheap solos. Once you've filled out your battlegroup with our awesome beasts, and brought along your screening infantry unit and paingivers, what choices do you take to fill out your roster? Between in-faction models and various minions, Skorne has plenty of options for filling those last 1-6 points.

This article is going to focus on the wealth of 2 point solos we can take. There are of course other options for filling lists, like taking another unit of paingivers, or bringing 3 point solos. there are really too many options to cover in one article. In my opinion, the 2 point solos are where most of my decisions are made. I'm going to roughly list the models in order from the most used to the least used, based on lists I see people posting on the Privateer forums