Goaliejack Luongo! aka Go Canucks Go!

This is the tale of how one unassuming little warjack grew up to be one of the best goalies in the world. Warning: this post contains conversions, sculpting, hockey talk, and may contain traces of Canucks fanaticism.

As well as being a miniatures enthusiast, I’ve been a Vancouver Canucks fan for 18 years now – as long as I’ve been watching hockey. Shortly after I started following the Canucks, they came within spitting distance of the holy grail of hockey: the legendary Stanley Cup.

They were exciting times in the city of Vancouver, as it was only the second time the Canucks had ever gotten as far as the finals. When the Canucks lost by 1 goal in game 7, it was devastating.

Thousands of ‘fans ‘ jumped off the bandwagon, but I stayed true. Through 17 years of more disappointments than victories, I stayed true. Now, at long last, the Canucks are in the Stanley Cup finals once more. For the first time ever, the Canucks are the favorites to win it all. I decided that I must honor this achievement in my own way, by creating my own personal mascot for my team. (more…)

Halberdiers finished

I took a few to moments today to finish assembly of the last four Steelhead Halberdier figures. they have been sitting on my desk for over a week now waiting for me to put them together. Sadly the fiddly nature of the figs meant that I wasn’t in much of a hurry to sit down and finish them.

Funnily enough, I was able to get them put together quite quickly this time. I am not sure why I was so successful this time.

In any case, I now have 20 of them and I will begin work on getting the first unit of ten painted.

Steelhead Riflemen thoughts

I picked up a unit of Steelhead Riflemen for my Magnus Agenda army. The Magnus the Traitor themed list requires two Steelhead units and while I want to get some cavalry I thought it would be simpler to get a unit of Riflemen and this also means that I have a second small-based Steelhead unit to take advantage of the Advance Move they will get as part of the list.

My aim is to get a 4th tier Magnus list with a 35pt army and the Steelhead Riflemen allow me to do that and also add some more firepower to the list.

The figures actually assembled quite easily. All of the figures have a sword and bedroll that fits into a small peg on their back. five of the models were single piece (except for the sword and bedroll) and the other figures had rifles with hands attached which had pegs that fit into an indentation on the model. Assembly was a breeze.

When the preview for the figures was published in NQ 29 there was a lot of commentary on why you would want to take them in a list that could take Long Gunners or Trenchers. There are several reasons to my mind:

• You can only take Trenchers or Long Gunners. If you want more firepower in a list then these are your best bet
• They give you a second small-based Steelhead unit to take advantage of the benefit of the Magnus the Traitor theme list without requiring that you build more Halberdiers
• Their ability to re-roll failed CRA attack rolls makes them quite powerful

It is this last point that sent me to Numbers to crunch some data and engage in a little bit of Statmachine. The Riflemen have a RAT of 5 which means that they need above-average rolls to hit DEF 13 which most infantry tend to have. This is about a 28% chance to hit and a unit of 10 Riflemen firing at DEF 13 will only, on average, generate three hits.

Clearly these are not models that are going to be accurate on their own and Magnus the Traitor provides no real way to increase their accuracy. All that is left, at least without knowing what is available in the upcoming Mercenary book, then is for the models in the unit to combine fire to increase their effective RAT. The downside is that immediately cuts down on the number of shots the unit fires but, and this is the important thing to remember, with their base RAT they are hitting an abysmal number of times anyway.

So the question is when do we want to use the CRA and just how effective is the ability to re-roll misses?

As we can see, the re-roll is what really powers this unit. The CRA on itself is only marginally more effective than straight shooting. In fact, with the reduced number of shots the CRA on its own is not any more effective than single shots. The re-roll adds an additional hit, on average, to the units fire and this continues as the target’s DEF increases allowing the Riflemen to theoretically hit and damage DEF 17 and 18 models.

On DEF 13 infantry models a Riflemen on its own has a 28% chance of hitting. Using the CRA this increases to 58% and with the re-roll it jumps to an amazing 83%. On infantry with DEF 12, like Exemplar Errants, the re-roll on the CRA means that the shots will hit an incredible 94%.

I’ll be trying the unit out this Friday so we’ll see how this statistical exercise works out.

I hate Halberdiers

I picked up four more Steelhead Halberdiers to expand the unit to a full ten and spent a very frustrating 20 minutes trying to get the arms and halberds to line up. No fun. I’ve never really found a successful way to accomplish this and I may actually pin the arms and halberd together as a way to try to make them easier to attach.

Thanks goodness I don’t need them for the game on Friday.