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