Dreaming of Lock and Load – First Hardcore Kill Box Game

I headed down to One Stop Shop in Tinseltown mall after work today and who did I find, but Ben, with his freshly painted Cygnar. Ben graciously agreed to play a kill box scenario under the hardcore rules, something that neither of us had ever done. We pulled out 50 point lists and ended up with a tier 4 epic Nemo list against a tier 4 Butcher list. These lists are from memory, but hopefully Ben will chime in if I got something grossly wrong…

• Butcher of Khardov (-6 pts)
• * Sharkie the Devastator 9 pts
• * Llama the Marauder 7 pts
• * Kodiak 8 pts
• * War Dog 1 pt
• Kossite Woodsmen, minimum, 4 pts
• Man-o-war Demolition Corps, full, 9 pts
• Man-o-war Shocktroopers, min, 6 pts -1 tier discount
• Widowmakers 4 pts
• Widowmaker Marksman 2 pts
• 2 x Manhunter 2 x 2 = 4 pts
• Yuri the Axe 3 pts

Opposite me on the far side of the table was old man Nemo and his zappityzapzap mczappity squad.

• General Adept Nemo (-6 pts)
• * Thunderhead 12 pts
• * Hammersmith 8 pts
• * 2 x Firefly 5 x 2 = 10 pts
• * Squire 2 pts
• Storm Tower – zero – zip -nada – free as in beer!
• 2 x Storm Guard, minimum, 6 x 2 = 12 pts
• Journeyman Warcaster 3 pts
• * Charger 4 pts
• 5 x Stormsmith Stormcaller 5 x 1 = … wait… what? I mean 5 pts. Really?

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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

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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…)

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.

GottaCon 2011 – Steamroller Report from Subhedgehog

As mentioned previously, I have three casters in my Khador collection.  I knew I wanted to bring the Butcher of Khardov, as I have the makings of a tier 3 list with what I have assembled. I suppose I could have gone for a tier 4 list, but I wanted to have some ranged threats on the jacks, as the Butcher doesn’t really speed them up. Here is the list I put together for Axey McButcherAxe

• Butcher of Khardov (-6 pts)
• * Decimator 9 pts
• * Spriggan 10 pts
• * War Dog 1 pt
• Kossite Woodsmen, minimum, 4 pts
• Man-o-war Demolition Corps, full, 9 pts
• Man-o-war Shocktroopers, min, 6 pts -1 tier discount
• Man-o-war Kovnik 3 pts
• * Marauder 7 pts
• Widowmakers 4 pts
• Widowmaker Marksman 2 pts
• Manhunter 2 pts

As with any Butcher list, the whole idea is to make a Butcher Delivery System ™.  The Widowmakers are to help thin out any single-wound melee troops threatening objectives, with the Marksmen there to hunt opposing solos.  The Kovnik and his marshalled marauder are to make directly for a secondary objective target on the weak flank, hoping to knock, slam or kill anyone threatening a flag or some such point of interest.  The rest is a big brick up the middle.  Demo Corps to provide wide area threat, and the Shocktroops as an honour guard until Butcher does his thing.

• Zevanna Agha, the Old Witch (-3 pts)
• * Scrapjack 0 pts
• * Decimator 9 pts
• * Destroyer 9 pts
• Battle Mechanics, min 2 pts
• Doom Reavers 6 pts
• * Greylord Escort 2 pts
• Greylord Ternion 4pts
• Kossite Woodsmen, minimum 4 pts
• Winter Guard Rifle Corps, full 8 pts
• Kovnik Jozef 2 pts
• 2 x Manhunters, 2 x 2 = 4 pts
• Yuri the Axe 3 pts

This list I really threw things in without much thought.  I wanted to try out the Doom Reavers with the escort as the vanguard, and the rifle corps with Jozef is to provide anti-infantry fire around main objectives.  This list wasn’t as well thought out, nor really well understood how it should all work together.

Round 1 I played Phillipe and his Xerxis army of Ferox, Rhadeim and Arcuari.  A Bronzeback, Gladiator and Sentry were the heavy muscle to back up the cavalry.  I joked that I knew the Skorne army much better than I knew my own (hint: not actually a joke).  Even right after deploying, I knew I was in trouble as I didn’t really have a plan, but was very aware that I might not have the tools to take out the heavies.  We were playing Outfight, Outflank and Outlast.  His Sentry parked itself in the left objective across from my frightened rifle corp.  The Ferox and Rhadeim were all over the right objective.  A missed shot at Rhadeim caused him to move out of one of the scenario points  via evasion, and I actually managed to clear out the remaining ferox with the few doom reavers left, to score my only control point of the tournament.  I knew it was coming, but couldn’t do enough to prevent it:  Rhadeim ended up killing the Old Witch pretty easily.

The other rounds are all jumbled in my head at the moment so they are presented in no particular order:

Against Trent (aka Trent) and his epic Krueger list, I took the Butcher.  We had a big terrain feature, sort of a town square fountain with a big menofix in the middle of the board and were playing Sacrifice.  Tharn, Widowmakers, Kovnik, Lord of the Feast, Kossites and a Marauder were all at one point disputing the sacrifice patented explodo-flag, but the circle forces were getting the upper hand.  The rest of the army went to contest the objective zone, flowing around the big fountain.  Krueger and his druids advanced behind Cylena and the Nyss hunters, sending a warpwolf stalker and gorax as vanguard.  There were some constructs lumbering around.  Trent had Butcher hit with his sustained attack  lightning zap and a boatload of fury, but ran out of time on his second to last turn (that’s a hint at what’s coming up).  I had a chance to clear the zone and set off a blast-o-doom on my besieged marauder, so I put some focus on the Decimator and Spriggan, keeping 4 for Butcher himself.  The Marauder buzz-sawed his way through what was left of the Gorax and the Spriggan bulldozed his way into a couple of druids, pushing one out of the zone and leaving his charge target in…  Whiff, whiff and no points for me, so I decided to go for the assassination.  I use Obliteration to nuke a hole through a stonewarden and a couple of druids, leaving Krueger open for a charge.  The Butcher almost killed him, leaving him with a couple health, but no focus for a followup attack.  Three desperate shield-cannon shots from the Shock troops could not tag Krueger, and he quickly electro-fried the big psychopath for the win.  My main mistake was splitting my focus between scenario points and assassination.  Had Butcher had one more focus Krueger may have been ended.  Lesson learned about resource allocation and prioritization.

I played one of the chaotic order folks (I forget his real name, but on the internets they call him Azzurro) and his epic Hoarluk troll squad.  The scenario was Incursion.  Butcher and Hoarluk’s forces smashed together.  I weathered the storm of the feat pretty well and popped Butcher’s feat in return, but missed some key rolls from a demolition corpsman against Mulg.  Whelps actually made me miss three or four attacks, including one with the Butcher against a mauler!  Leaving Mulg near your caster and healthy is a bad plan:  Butcher was soon smashed in half.  Totally fun game though, just raw beating without much subtlety, though Azzurro did manage to get a control point from one of the flags.

My worst performance was against Neil from the Your Go Games crew in Whiterock.  I lost in the top of turn 2 against Neil’s Mage Hunter Strike Force sniper squad and Ravyn’s feat.  The Old Witch was the third least-advanced model in my army, but I was still too close.  I think it took about 12 minutes from the first model being moved to the crying and the gnashing of the teeth.  As we had so much time, however, Neil graciously accepted an immediate rematch (though not for tournament standings, obviously).  We  just set up again to play for fun.  Forewarned being forearmed, the result was different.  The scenario was gaining ground, though that didn’t end up affecting the results.  Kossites were actually the stars of the show in this match – they ambushed Narn (?) to death and tied up and eventually killed two or three members of the Stormfall archers, as well as prevented a couple of members of the Mage Hunters from getting shots away on multiple turns.  The Stormfall archers did manage to set the Old Witch on fire, which lasted some three turns before the end of the match.  Eventually, Ravyn moved up too far and ended up getting shot to death by the Destroyer and Kovnik Jozef from opposite flanks.  At least I was able to avenge my terrible gaffe from before.

My last match was against the snakebitten and voodoo-hexed Ryan and his Magnus the Warlord list.  We had played a game of Magnus vs Butcher (actually, my first with Khador) some time previously, so luckily I ended up with the Old Witch to oppose him this time, in a capture the flag scenario.  Croe’s cuthroats and some idrians advanced cagily against the rifle corp defending my flag, whilst Yuri and the Manhunters, the Doom Reavers, along with some Kossites (but I forgot about them the whole match…) harassed his long gunners and idrians defending his flag.  The jacks kind of met in the middle, with me managing to weather the two obliterator rockets without too much damage.  The game ended when Ryan ran out of time on one of his turns and forgot to pop Magnus’ feat, which left him vulnerable.  Though engaged by a Mangler, my Decimator got fully loaded with focus.  Greylords advanced into combat with the Mangler to have an easier time ice cageing it.  I managed to make the jack stationary, so the Decimator revved up the buzz-saw, broke away from its ice-encrusted adversary and went screaming after Magnus.  The results were not pretty.  And with that win, I took myself out of contention for the Whipping Boy trophy (see Ben’s post for more on the whipping boy scoring).

All in all, four great games, one confused loss against a well prepared opponent and one incredible face-palm (thankfully immediately followed by one of the great games).  My game against Trent could have easily gone either way, had he had more time or had I better managed my focus.  I learned a good deal about my Khador forces in a short period of time and even better, got to meet and play against some fantastic folks.

GottaCon 2011 – Steamroller Report from Bwafer

The intrepid Ben, aka bwafer, well known among the Vancouver scene for his affinity for speaking the unknowable (except to him) language of Swans, was among the attendees of GottaCon’s Steamroller event.  He originally posted his overview and summary in the forum at www.vancouvergamers.com, but I have stolen it from under his nose to repost here for those of you who might not frequent that particular part of the internet.  Without further introduction, I cede the floor.

Bwafer sez:

It was a very well-run tournament that went off without a hitch (at least, if there were any hitches or glitches, I was unaware of them), so I have to give props to Rida and Darren for ensuring that things went smoothly.

I only ended up facing one person who I’ve played before (Will), which was nice, because one of the reasons I wanted to go was to play against new people. The Vancouver crowd is great, but it’s always fun to play against fresh faces every now and then. I must say, I met some very friendly people who were lots of fun to play against.

When I arrived in Victoria on Friday evening, several things went wrong for me, including the fact that I realized that I had left a fairly important element of my Caine army at home – Caine himself. On Saturday morning I tried to buy a new Caine from a vendor there, in order to quickly glue him together so that I wouldn’t be stuck with just the one list. Unfortunately, it turned out that the vendor had already sold the only Caine that he had had in stock. Fortunately, he happened to have an already-assembled and undercoated Caine lying around that he was kind enough to let me borrow for the tournament. I was very impressed – this guy didn’t know me from Adam, and had no way of knowing whether I would walk off with the miniature, but he heard my plight and jumped in to rescue me. I made sure to give him my thanks and buy some stuff from him to reward his good karma before returning the mini.

The most tense and suspenseful moments for me came after the end of my last game. Going into that game, I knew that Paul (ed: that’s me!) had lost all of his previous games (ed: that’s not quite how I remember it…  who let this guy post this?), while there were four or five of us who had won only one game so far. If Paul lost his last game, he would take the coveted Whipping Boy title. If he won, there would be a number of us with the same win-loss record, and it would go to a tiebreaker. I lost my last game against an opponent who would have been in the running if he hadn’t beat me. Uehen had also lost his last game, giving him the same win-loss record as me. We both anxiously waited to see who would win between Paul and Ryan, to see if we still had a chance at the title and trophy. Paul won! We had a chance!

Uehen and I asked the others who had only won a single game whether they had won any control points – the first tiebreaker. It quickly became apparent that this was down to Uehen and myself, as we were the only ones who hadn’t won a single control point all tourney. It would be down to the second tiebreaker – points killed.

The scores were tallied, and it was announced that Uehen had taken it by a narrow margin. My heart fell, and I cursed him emphatically! In the heat of the moment, I might have even cast aspersions on his parentage – I was blinded by despair, so I can’t really be certain. Almost immediately, however, it was announced that a mistake had been made in the tally! Uehen’s total was actually higher than mine by a narrow margin, not lower! I leaped in the air in triumph, and gloated unrepentantly! Sorry for being such a poor sport about it Uehen, I got caught up in the moment. Maybe next year you’ll be able to take the title from me. Maybe next year.

It should be said that the local Vancouver Whipping Boy trophy is indeed coveted.  One of the fantastic local painters, Chad, did up a Skorne Paingiver Beasthandler plying his trade against an innocuous looking agonizer,  mounted on a base of a dark wood.  Take a look!

There are a couple more shots of the trophy here.  I wouldn’t have minded too much had I gotten to take that piece home.  Erh, I mean, lies!  Damn lies and falsehoods, I was never in the running for whipping boy!  I recall winning seven games out of the five played, and I rode across the water back to Vancouver on a unicorn, borne up by victory and the adulation of my peers.  cough.  I mean, thanks for the write-up, Ben!  Also, another round of thanks to the vendor who loaned the Caine model!  I would hazard a guess and say it was someone from Dice Bag Games, as they had HordesMachine stock at the convention.

If you are interested in seeing a small selection of Chad’s other work, check out his blog:  http://chadspaint.wordpress.com/ Therein you will find some shots of his work and information on how you too can commission something from him.  There are many instances of his work out in the wilds of Vancouver, as well as further afield.  I’m a big fan of his work, it is second to none.

GottaCon 2011 – Friday Night Mega Battle

Over the weekend of February 4th to the 6th, GottaCon rocked out in Victoria.  Among the festivities, including PC LAN gaming, console gaming, RPGs, boardgames, Warhammer and 40k, Rida (aka: jack froide/frost, formerly of Connection Games) decided to put together a Steamroller event for us HordesMachiners.  The Steamroller was to run Saturday and Sunday, but there was gaming space and time on Friday!  In order to break the ice a Mega Battle was arranged.  The rules were pretty simple:

• 15+ point force for each player.
• You score points equal to the cost of a model you destroy/remove from play, etc.
• Warcasters are worth nothing.
• When your warcaster dies, all your remaining models are removed from the game and no one gets points for them.

We ended up with 8 players, so we got crammed all together on one large 8′ x 4′ table and randomly assigned positions and one of two sides.  No one was deployed on the short table edges.  There were some additional rules for this first big battle:

• You cannot target any model belonging to a player on the same table edge as you, but if you “accidentally” caused some casualties, you got the points.
• All players on the same table edge act simultaneously.
• In cases where attack / charge timing would come into question, the player with the closest model to the target would act first.

As my lists for the Steamroller event used Butcher and the Old Witch, I pulled out the following models:

• Kommander Strakhov (-6 pts)
• Torch 10 pts
• Decimator 9 pts
• Manhunter 2 pts

With Rida screaming at us that there is no thinking in HordesMachine (and other zen-like pronouncements), we all slapped our models down and got to it.  The whole thing turned into a giant awesome mess.  The far side of the table (my left to right) had legion (Thagrosh?), Menoth (Reznik), Legion (directly across from me) with eThagrosh and Menoth with the Harbinger.  On my side was (again my left to right) dwarven mercs (run by Ryan), Skorne (2x bronzebacks + Morghoul and paingivers), Khador (myself) and Retribution (Ravyn + MHSF and a Manticore, I believe).  As we were all activating at the same time, it was hard to keep track of what was going on.  The Thagrosh player and I basically ran screaming across the middle of the field and obliterated our armies against each other, leaving Strakhov running off behind Morghoul and Thagrosh hanging about mid-board blowing kisses at the oncoming Retribution Mage Hunter Strike Force.  The Retribution player never really moved fast enough to engage the Menoth player opposite him because he was afraid Harby would murder his single-wounders, allowing the Harbinger’s forces to flow into the void left by epic Thagrosh’s meat-brigade.  Morghoul managed to get way upfield to engage Reznik’s forces, but apparently whiffed with both bronzebacks a whole lot.  The Skorne were basically in the opposite deployment line when everything died.  Ryan and the Legion player across from him tied each other up in a heavy-metal slapfight until Reznik’s forces came in to clean up the dwarven stragglers.  The whole morass was wicked – not having a reason to go after casters was actually mind-bending, but it got worse in the one on ones.  I ended up having given up a whole lot of points, but I had also gotten a good boatload myself (19 I think), setting myself up for a good run in the one-v-one matchups.  Or so I thought.

After the mega battle (which took a surprisingly small amount of time), we split off into one on ones with our same lists.  My first game was against the Reznik force, composed (from memory and completely ignorant of Menoth tiers) of the following:

• Whatshisname Reznik (-6 pts)
• 2 x Reckoner (8 pts each)
• Vassal of Mentos Menoth (2 pts)
• Choir – max unit ??  (3 pts)

This is where the strangeness of not being able to go for casters became very apparent.  Reznik ran ahead (!) of his army.   The Menoth first turn was pretty standard run forward, as was mine.  After my first turn, Reznik loaded up Engine of Destructuion and flew in to kill my manhunter, getting 2 points. He was easily within my murder range (particularly considering Strakhov’s feat), but the jacks were protected from the Decimator’s Dozer gun by the Choir.  If I killed Rezzy right then and there, I got no points…  So I advanced and protected myself from the flame cannons with occultation on the Decimator – Torch and Strakhov being immune to fire meant the two Reckoners would not shoot them.  Reznik charged in and wrecked the Decimator, and the army stayed back…  Full focus on Torch and Strakhov’s feat later, and I …. hadn’t wrecked a jack because of stupid enliven moving his jack away from my Sustained Attack death-saw (of death!).  Damn. The flamethrower cooked the now exposed Vassal.  Torch then died to twin tetsubo-beatings by the Reckoners, leaving Strakhov alone against everything.  The only target I could reach worth points was the damaged jack, but Strakhov died to a free-strike by Reznik as he charged by.  2 points for the Vassal – though I’m pretty sure I wrote down 1 point, as I assumed that a solo as awesome as the Vassal would basically be free.

My second match was… ALSO AGAINST MENOTH!  Woo!  See if you can spot some similarities to the previous list here:

• Harbinger of Menoth (+5 pts)
• 2 x Reckoner (8 pts each)
• 2 x Vassals (2 pts each)

Two Vassals?  KHAN!  This match I was again snakebitten by Enliven, but there was now twice as much of it.  I would charge a rip-saw bearing Decimator or Torchie McFlameyPants in, then they would dance out of the reach of my sustained attacks.  And every time I killed a Vassal, Harby would martyr herself to save them.  My opponent even killed Harby with Martydom to stop me from getting a single point.  It was pretty hilarious, we were laughing the whole game.  I think he got the Decimator and the manhunter, but not Torch or Strakie.  At the end of the game I told my opponent that the Harbinger had convinced Strakhov to convert so he could at least get to kill something with fire.  The Kommander was sent off to break rocks with his head in the depths of my case.

The event on Friday night was a perfect way to break the ice and get everyone playing.  The atmosphere was friendly, and there was much head scratching and laughter about the inversion of the normal “gun for their caster at all costs” game play.  Thumbs up for a great ice breaker!  The overall winner of the introduction event was the Reznik player, whose name escapes me now (Brook?).  I believe he took home a box of Exemplar Cinerators, but I’m not sure which entity provided that specific prize, so I’ll plug the ones I know supported the Steamroller event:  Connection Games of Vancouver, Dice Bag Games of Duncan and GottaCon.

50pt Farrow v. Legion game notes

Chad dropped by today for a 50pt Hordes battle pitting his Lord Carver Farrow force against Thagrosh and some of his Legion minions.
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Legion game notes

Ryan came over today with his Privateers to try to give my Legion force a thumping in their inaugural match. We played a 35 point game
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A strange thing happened…

Ben ‘Whipping Boy’ Wafer came over yesterday for an impromptu game of Warmchaine. Ben brought Caine and 50pts of Cygnar and I used Deneghra and built a 50pt Tier 4 list with an incredible number of Bonejacks. I say that the game was impromptu because Ben’s intended opponent didn’t show up (a recent injury kept him away) and so Ben played my hastily assembled Cryx force.

Not that the time available was an impediment to building the list since the Deneghra Tier list is fairly prohibitive in what you can take and emphasises the use of a lot of Bonejacks. So creating an army from this themed list is actually quite simple since a lot of the options are basically made for you in advance.

Sadly there are no pictures of this game.
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