Slow Grow League Announced @ Connection Games

Local Press Ganger PG_Geist (aka Geist) has announced a slow grow league at Connection Games on Renfrew.  His announcement is posted on vancouvergamers.com and is re-posted here for those who are not wanting to click through.

Geist sez:

Shattered Grounds game report – Strakhov vs Bethayne in King of the Hill

Having missed an opportunity to play on Wednesday, I headed out to Connections on Renfrew intent on finding an opponent. When I arrived there was a game being set up between Ryan and Ben.  Ben has been on a bit of a tear with “Darth” Stryker (aka Lord Commander Stryker), so Ryan was predicting doom for whichever of his merc casters he was sending off to the gallows. Right next to them was Stephen, with his Legion arrayed before him, who jumped at the chance to kill some poor defenceless Khadorans. We threw down some terrain and ended up with a large rectangular hill (with obstructions on either end) in the middle.  Each player had a small 4″x6″ forest on his left and an obstruction on his right.  The obstruction near my end was a small thatch roofed hut.  My opponent had a small fountain on his side.

The lists:

I had decided I wanted to play Strakhov earlier this week, but had not actually gotten around to building a list with him.  I frantically started pulling models out of my case, burrowing down until I hit Assault Kommandos at the bottom.  Here is what I ended up with:

• Kommander Strakhov (-6 pts)
• * Torch 10 pts
• * Destroyer 9 pts
• * War Dog 1 pt
• Assault Kommandos, full, 8 pts
• * 2 x Flame Throwers 2 pts
• Greylord Ternion 4 pts
• Kossite Woodsmen, min, 4pts
• Man-o-war Demo Corps, min, 6pts
• Man-o-war Shocktroopers, min, 6pts
• Widowmakers 4pts
• Widowmaker Marksmen 2pts
• Total 56 pts

I’d like to lie and say that I had a totally awesome reason for choosing each and every model, but I was literally plunking down models until I ran out of points.

My opponent had a bunch of magic-enabled legion models, leaving me to ponder just how bad Bethayne’s feat turn would end up being.  Here is his list:

• Bethayne (-3 pts)
• * Belphagor 0 pts
• * Carnivean 11 pts
• * Seraph 8 pts ** league model
• 2 x Shredder @ 2 pts ea = 4 pts
• Stinger 2 pts
• Blackfrost Shard 5 pts
• Blighted Nyss Hex Hunters, full, 8 pts
• * Bayal, Hound of Everblight 3 pts
• Blighted Nyss Raptors, full, 10 pts
• The Foresaken 2 pts
• Total 53 pts

(more…)

Strategies announces league action starting March 27th

Steel Rabbit, one of the fine folks over at Strategies Games in Vancouver, has announced the dates and times for the next Shattered Grounds league.  Take it away, Steel Rabbit:

Hey all!

Every Sunday from the 27th of March to the 24th of April (5 weeks) Strategies will be holding a Warmachine/Hordes ladder campaign. There will be prizes, and glory to be had.

Some details:
+ Models must be fully painted.
+ You’ll need to have your own rulebook(s), templates, dice, etc.
+ Week one will be 15pts. After that, games will be from 25pts. to 35pts.
+ Games will generally start around noon.

Play as many or as few games as you want. New players are welcome.

Hope to see a bunch of you there!

This announcement was stolen from Vancouver Gamers, and was also distributed in Strategies’ monthly email newsletter, which you can sign up for on the bottom left of Strategies’ home page.  There are some very skilled painters around Strategies, so even dropping by to ogle the armies would be worth it.  Time to start prepping your lists!

Shattered Grounds: Windless Wastes Final Standings @ One Stop Shop

The Warmachiners (and Hordes..ers…  Hordesists?) have wrapped up their Windless Wastes league after the Thursday game day at One Stop Shop.

And the winner is: Drum roll please….

Will (aka: Will), with 28 league points.  Well done Will, for bringing glory to the coldly calculating sell-sword, half-sized Rhulic Mercenaries!  Apparently, getting paid massive sums of money to fill all and sundry full of holes then hacking up and burning the remains is a good game plan.

Second place went to Trent, with 27 points.  Trent is no doubt sobbing quietly into his beer over the missed opportunity.  His last game was a ground out match against Karchev in the dreaded Shot Clock scenario, where the half-man, half-machine had a huge advantage.  Think of the prestigious contracts he could have garnered with his mercenaries had he been willing to cut corners and sell out for one more measly point.  Ah well, he can still hold his head up high.  Second is better than third, right?

Speaking of third, Ben (aka: bwafer) ranked third!  Strangely enough, the current holder of the whipping boy trophy is the one doing the whipping lately, with a strong showing at the helm of his impressive Cygnar force.

Dan, with whom I am sadly not acquainted to online, took 4th place.  He had to watch sullenly from the sidelines as the podium finishers were paraded around One Stop Shop in a chariot gilded with gold and drawn by jet black stallions.

The OSS league had 10 participants this time around, many of whom are newer players.  If I can shark up a more complete list of points, names and factions I will post it here.

Spectating at Connection Games

I went down to Connection Games after work today to try and find an opponent for a league game, but I ended up the odd man out just when I arrived.  I got into spectating a game between Lawless Monk and a new player who had recently picked up some Skorne. As I got wrapped up in their game, I let a few opportunities to find an opponent slip by, so I was obviously content where I was.

The lists were a Skorne warpack (Morghoul, Titan Gladiator and twin Cyclops Savage), a Cyclops Brute and a unit of Immortals vs  Lawless Monk’s Borka, a Dire Troll Mauler, an Axer, a unit of Fennblades with attachment, Fell caller and a scribe-guy.

Lawless Monk very kindly put up with my repeated coaching of the new player (Craig…?  Crap – I got him to tell me his name twice and still forgot.  We’ll call him Mr. C), as he was having a few issues with the order of things.  Even though I wasn’t playing, it was actually pretty cool to watch someone pick up the mechanics and even some of the subtleties pretty well in just his second game.  Obviously Mr. C was no rookie gamer, but still, he was directing order of operations pretty well mid-way through the second turn.  Lawless Monk played pretty loose, such as popping Borka’s feat early when he was pretty sure things were at the limit of his range and just generally running models into the middle to make it a big hairy mess without worrying too much about getting the most out of his surprisingly nasty list.  Side note: Holy crap!  If I end up facing Fennblades, I’m going to remember they are crazy-go-nuts fast.  Particularly with Borka’s feat.

Watching (and coaching – sorry Lawless Monk!) also reminded me that while I’ve been frustrated with playing Hordes, Morghoul with a whole whack of beasts is pretty awesome. The game was a lot of back and forth, plenty of tough rolls were made – I think the trolls were running about 60% success near the end… Even with two units with vengeance on the table, there were plenty of whiffs, knockdowns etc.  A highlight was when the mauler charged from outside Morghoul’s feat area into it, hit the Gladiator with both attacks and the chain attack and successfully heaved the hephalump at Morghoul who was chilling by a rock column.  Another was when two cyclops with three fury each still made their frenzy checks despite Morghoul screaming at them to get angry.  Lots of chills, thrills and spills.

As I didn’t get a game in, I ended up leaving the store a little early and getting home in time to put a little work in on the Man-o-war shocktroopers.  I have the two grunts almost fully basecoated with just black trim on the shoulder pads and cleanup to do, then I can get to the red overcoat.  The leader needs a bit more work to get up to the same state as the others, but the unit is progressing all right.  The models will end up being pretty rough in some areas, but any colour on the models is better than none, right?  I mave a lot of bare metal to cover before I worry too much about the quality of my workmanship.  However, I have convinced myself to paint my second unit of Shocktroopers while they are still in pieces.

I’m thinking I will try and get a game in on Saturday. My itch to roll dice has not yet been scratched this week and the urge to order soldiers and warjacks to die for the motherland is rising.

Shattered Grounds game report – Butcher vs Borka in Fight Club

After work this Wednesday, I high-tailed it across town to Connection Games on Renfrew.  As I arrived a little late, most of the tables were in action but there was one precious spot left… Without mercy or regret I pounced on the open table, claiming it with my Battlefoam bag.  To my surprise and pleasure, an old friend known around some parts as Lawless Monk, against whom I had not played a game of any sort for probably over a decade was looking for an opponent. We grabbed some terrain at random and I threw it mostly haphazardly over the table, then rolled scenario while we were talking about which of our 50 point lists we were going to deploy against each other.

With a clatter of a die, all our plans were laid to glorious ruin.  Fight Club was the scenario.  For those not in the know, you must take loads of beasts and jacks and the win condition for the scenario is having all your warnouns destroyed.  Caster-kill results in the beasties or jacksies going autonomous (though we skipped that detail at first, thankfully recovering that info in time to play things right-ish). Frantically, we pulled jacks and beast out of our cases. The clattering of our mental adding machines was audible clear across the street as we wrapped our heads around the requirements of needing 10 full points of awesome warnoun to allow for a mere 5 points of warriors.  Soon, we had arrived at our lists. (more…)

Quick mid-week update

I haven’t made much time for warmachine-related painting this week.  I have been spending my hobby time basing my Blood Bowl elf team in preparation for the Rat City Rumble tournament being organized by a buddy of mine down in Everett.  There will be members of the RCR league, some folks from Oregon (I think they are Ordo Fanaticus) as well as at least a handful of Thunder Bowl players.  Already over 30 coaches pre-registered, so it should be an awesome time.  It is being hosted at the AFK Tavern, which looks like an awesome place to get your game on.  Food, beer and Blood Bowl?  Yes please.

Attending that tournament will also keep me away from and Shattered Grounds league action this weekend, so I have made plans to get down to Connections on Renfrew and get in a game this evening.  Hopefully I will have my wits about me sufficiently to write up a battle report on the proceedings.  Stay tuned!

Shattered Grounds game report – Butcher vs Magnus

I trekked my Khador models across town to Connection Games Renfrew store and got in a league game today.  I played a 50pt game against Smiles mercenary force.  The Butcher of Khardov ended up facing off against Magnus the traitor.  Both of us were playing theme lists.  I used my 50pt Tier 3 Butcher list described here.  My opponent had a tier 4 Magnus the Traitor Most Wanted list, comprised of the following:

• Magnus the Traitor ( -6 pts )
• * Renegade 6 pts – 1 tier bonus
• * Renegade 6 pts -1 tier bonus
• * Mangler 8 pts
• * Vanguard 5 pts
• Steelhead Halberdiers, full, 6 pts
• Steelhead Riflemen, full, 9pts
• Stannis Brocker 4 pts
• Idrian Skirmishers, min, 6 pts
• * Skirmisher UA 3 pts
• Kell Bailoch 2 pts

If forwardkommander is not lying to me, this list actually totals up to 55 – 6 = 49pts, but I guess there are no one point options available to poor old Magnus.  I guess there are downsides to betraying the kingdom of Cygnar.

We rolled for scenario and got Supply Line.  For those not in the know, three large based objectives are placed 12 inches apart on the centre line of the map.  You control an objective if you are the only player with a model base to base with the objective.  Jacks starting their activations within 3 inches of the objectives get a free focus (beasts can remove one fury).  Scoring begins at the end of the first player’s third turn, first to 5 points wins.  I had thrown some terrain down, and with the addition of the objectives and Magnus’ tier-bonus wreck markers, with a map close to this:

I deployed first and took the first turn.  Butcher, War Dog, the Spriggan and the Decimator were all deployed at the 10″ mark, behind the sandbag wall.  The Shocktroopers were on the left, between the obstruction and the sandbag, with the Demolition Corps to the right, between the sandbag and the forest.  The Kovnik and the Marauder were off to my right, aligned with the edge of the forest.  The Widowmakers hunkered down immediately behind the sandbag wall.  The Widowmaker Marksman was in the open between the forest and the sandbag.  The manhunter was parked in the forest, no doubt trying to catch lunch.  My Kossites, always late to the battle, were lost in the forest somewhere.

My opponent lined up all four of his jacks, plus Magnus and Orin Midwinter, to the right (his left) of the forest near his lines, facing off against the Butcher’s battle group.  The Steelheads, halberdiers up front and riflemen behind, and Brocker behind them, were aligned with the sandbags on his side of the map (with their advance move, the halberdiers moved ahead of the wall with the riflemen hunkered down behind it).  The idrians were hanging out near the obstructions, and declared the Demo Corps as their prey.  Kell Bailoch was deployed at the edge of the forest.  Magnus’ spells went up due to his tier bonus.  Snipe on the lead Renegade.  Temper Metal on the Vanguard, buffing the little jack’s ARM up impressively.  Iron Aggression was on the Mangler.

My first turn was simple:  The Shocktroopers ran up in a diagonal line abreast, spaced out a little, next to the Khador gun emplacement that was serving as our large obstruction.  The widowmakers sprinted from the cover of the sandbags off to the edge of the forest, half of them making it into the cover.  The Decimator and Spriggan stormed across the freshly vacated sandbag wall.  The Decimator ended up near the last Shocktrooper, with the Spriggan an inch over to its right.  Butcher cast Fury on the Demo Corps, then advanced to the edge of the sandbags and cast Iron Flesh on the Shocktroops, with the dog trailing along behind him.  The manhunter made a bee-line past the right objective point to nestle in the obstructions and wait to see what popped up to play.  The Marksmen cautiously advanced a few inches and blew away one of the advance moved halberdiers, then used swift hunter to retreat a little.  The Demo Corps rushed up towards the central hill, with two flanking the objective, one behind it and two more off the hill further back.

The mercs first turn saw a run from the Mangler and a cautious advance from a Renegade and the Vanguard behind it.  Stannis Brocker moved up to get all the steelheads in his command. The halberdiers advanced to form a line between the central wreck marker and the wreck marker near the triple obstruction.  They were eyeing the Demo corps and wanting to stay out of charge range.  The riflemen advanced behind the halberdiers, forming a huge clump of models in base to base between the wreck markers.  They took a couple of combined shots at one of the lead demo corps soldiers, but did little damage.  Kell Bailoch, from his position in the forest, double-tapped at a Demo Corps soldier, mildly wounding him to death.  The idrians advanced to the edge of the obstructions, two of them peeking around the corner to smoke the poor innocent manhunter. The final Renegade, with Snipe already on him from Magnus’ tier bonus, waltzed up and targeted the furthest Shocktrooper.  With a focus spent to boost the shot, the jack bull-eyed the trooper, evaporating him in a huge explosion.  No damage was done to the other shocktrooper, but both he and the Decimator were knocked to the ground.  Orin Midwinter ran through the battlegroup to huddle behind the light wreck marker at aligned at mid-field, on the edge of the Steelhead formation.

My turn coming up. I realised that Orin would be a problem that close to my lines. The huge formation of Steelheads also provided a tempting target for my Spriggan’s grenades. The spriggan got a couple of focus, one on the Decimator to shake the knockdown effect. One went to upkeep Iron Flesh on the Shocktroopers and Butcher kept two. The Kossites ambushed on the high right flank, in the back arcs of a bunch of the idrians. They charged and killed a couple of the idrians, tying up a couple more. I ran one of them around the formation to block off easy access to the objective point. The Marauder ran into contact with the right objective marker under the watchful eye of the kovnik, who was off to his right. Butcher activated, shuffled over the sandbag wall and cast Iron Flesh on the Demo Corps. For those of you keeping score at home there are a couple of errors here… Lets list them (or I’ll never learn)!

1. I upkept Iron Flesh on the Shocktroopers, wasting a focus there.
2. I cast Iron Flesh on the Demo Corps before they activated, so… they cannot charge!  Two of them were likely on the edge of their threat range to the halberdiers, getting 4 attacks with backswing.  No more. :(
3. The Butcher is on the wrong side of the sandbag wall and there is a Renegade with an obliterator rocket out there.  Note this for later.
4. I think the Butcher dropped his wallet on the way over the linear obstacle.

PS:  The wardog followed the Butcher, but left a little space between the big guy and him, because he doesn’t want to get “all blown up.”  Realising I’d screwed the pooch with the Demo Corps, they crawled forward three inches, two reaching the far edge of the hill, another just behind the objective with the last trailer lagging behind.  The Shocktroopers issued the shieldwall order, the knocked down member sacrificing action, and they advanced to the corner of the obstacle within striking distance of the left objective.  The Spriggan advanced and launched a grenade in order to try and catch Orin Midwinter with a grenade, boosting to hit.  Due to cover from the wreck marker, the grenade sailed wide of Orin, but caught 5 steelheads, two of which perished.  I launched a flare with the second shot, bullseyeing Orin and cancelling his stealth.  The Marksman took a shot at Orin but missed due to the cover of a wreck marker.  The Decimator advanced and took a hail mary at Orin, but missed.  Crap.  The widowmakers made four steelhead widows.

Smiles gathered his focus, dropping two on the still armed Renegade (uhoh).  Not sure where the rest went, I think Magnus held the rest.  Kell tried to kill another Demo Corps, but only wounded one lightly.  The Mangler charged the shocktroops and threshered, killing one outright but whiffing on the other.  Whew!  The riflemen put a couple of CRAs against the Demo Corps, but they were defence 16 due to Iron Flesh and elevation, evading damage.  The halberdiers charged in on the Demo Corps, killing one but missing the wounded one on the left flank.  The Vanguard advanced and attacked over the halberdiers to target the wounded demo corps, but he again was saved by Iron Flesh.  The idrians issued the assault and battery order, taking shots at the Kossites, killing two, and running four unit members around to contest the right objective.  Didn’t see that feint coming!  But at least the marauder and kovnik are all in their business.  Stannis Brocker advanced behind the halberdiers and looked angry.  The loaded renegade advanced and fired at the Butcher, landing a boosted Obliterator on his head for nine damage.  Magnus advanced and arced an arcantrik bolt at the decimator but caused no damage, so no stationary effect.  Magnus popped his feat, causing his Mangler to shift away from the Shocktroopers and engage the Decimator and the Spriggan.  A renegade came with the big boy.  The second renegade engaged the remaining shocktrooper and stayed in B2B with the left objective.  The Vanguard remained where he was.  Orin walked around the Vanguard and popped his no-fun aura.

My turn.  The Spriggan got a free focus from the middle ground objective, and the Marauder got one from the objective he was parked on.  The Butcher dropped three focus on the Decimator and kept three for himself.  With a bunch of jacks all in my grill, I decided it was feat time, but I needed to kill Orin first.  The Demo corps, three man strong, needed to go first…  One of them died to a free strike due to ranked attacks, but the remaining two moved up, one of whom got Orin engaged.  The other was parked on the middle objective, which would score me a point as no one else was in B2B.  Orin died to a giant hammer, as did two halberdiers.  Butcher advanced to the open space to the right of the near sandbag wall, cast Full Throttle and popped his feat.  His feat would miss the lone shocktrooper, the marauder and the kovnik, but got everything else.  The Kovnik triggered his drive and seriously missed an idrian with his giant axe.  The Kossites killed two more idrians.  The marauder slammed one poor idrian through the chieftain, killing both, but bought a second attack with jack marshal and boosted the hit with his focus… and missed!  Two idrians remained, one in B2B with the objective, one engaged by the kovnik.  It took two widowmakers to kill the idrian, securing a second objective point.  The other two widowmakers, with boosted damage, widowed Mrs. Brocker.  The Decimator, with his extra damage and three focus, ripsawed his way through the mangler.  The Spriggan charged across the newly made wreck to tag the Vanguard, putting two solid spear hits on him, leaving him about two-thirds wrecked, but with all systems go.  A shield blow hit the Renegade in front of the Decimator.  The Widowmaker Marksman killed a rifleman.  The lonely shocktrooper whacked the fresh Renegade in front of him, moving around it to rest in B2B with the left objective.  I finished my turn with two control points in hand, the right objective sewn up tight, the middle in heavy contention with two undamaged heavies, and the left weakly contested with a single Man-o-war.

With my opponent missing his heavy-hitting jack, things were getting close.  The riflemen flowed around the halberdiers and tried a large CRA against the Butcher, but ended up with only three of them in range, dropping the Butcher down to six health.  The two remaining demo corps were cleaned off the field, but the Renegade did not manage to kill the Shocktrooper despite a free focus from the objective point.  Considering his options and measuring his threat range, my opponent moved Magnus just within ten inches of the Butcher and dropped a boosted Obliteration on his head. A good damage roll later and the Butcher was blasted to pieces.

Another loss for me, but an entertaining match against a friendly opponent.  Well done Smiles on your win for the mercenaries in Shattered Grounds, I’m sure I’ll see you on the other side of the table some time soon.

Painting update – Shocktroopers

I had a busy start to this week, but I did manage to get some time Thursday to get a little painting in.  I sat down for an hour and put some red undercoat on two of the three Man-o-War Shocktroopers.  When I was at GottaCon I had two of the three Shocktroopers weapon arms come loose…  I wish I had waited to glue them back on.  Painting the crevices under the shoulder pads is tricky.  I also changed my mind on what colour I wanted to do the ends of the shoulder pads in between model 1 and 2.  It should be easy enough to fix though, as the colours I want to paint on are darker than the GW foundation red that went down yesterday.

On a mildly related note – I had something happen to me that has not ever happened before.  Hours after I had put the brushes down and seen to dinner, I was finally settling in on the couch with my PS3 controller in hand.  Despite having done some painting earlier in the evening, I still had that itch to do more.  I may have finally caught the painting bug for real…  We’ll see if it lasts. :)

This weekend I’m hoping to get some shattered grounds league games in at Connection Games.  I’m not sure if I’ll aim for Saturday or Sunday (maybe both???).  Hopefully I will also find time to put the red undercoat on the leader of the Man-o-War unit and fix up the colours on the other two, then snap some more work in progress shots of them.  While I am looking forward to getting the Shocktroopers done, I’m also eyeing my partially assembled Devastator and itching to get some colours on it.

Painting Update – Llama the Ramma finished, Shocktroop still in progress

As promised, I put in the few finishing touches on my marauder, “Llama the Ramma”.  I was experimenting with the macro close-up on my digital camera, there may be some pics that are a little strange, with a really shallow depth of field.  Also, I don’t have a light box, so the lighting is less than ideal.  But who cares!  I finished a jack!  Here’s what I did to finish up Llama.

• P3 Pig iron on the ram pistons wedge surfaces.
• P3 Quicksilver on the ram piston wedge leading edge.
• P3 Quicksilver on the rest of the rivets on the legs and shoulders.
• P3 Menoth white base then P3 Morrow White for the direct facing indicator and name.  Needed a couple of coats because of the purple underneath.
• Ash waste flock in patches on the base.

The shocktroopers just got pig iron on their feet, and I did the stacks, arms and piping of the third unit member.  I should also note that I picked up a second unit of Shocktroopers from Strategies Games.  Strategies was featured in a Groupon deal on Saturday, so I used the coupon I picked up on a new unit.  I’ll have to figure out how to differentiate the units visually.  I don’t want anything drastic, as I’d like to be able to run a full unit without the two extra grunts looking out of place, but if I’m running two minimum units with Butcher it would be good for my opponent to be able to easily tell the two apart. I suppose I should concentrate on finishing painting the first unit, though.  I’m getting ahead of myself.  ;)

Anyway, enjoy the pics.

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