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.