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.

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.

The funny thing about Skorne

Now taking what I said earlier about the Skorne, its funny that their troops and Warbeasts appear to bore me and yet after reading through their Warlocks I am quite fascinated by them. Funny. Great Warlocks but, to me at least, uninspiring troops.

Skorne leave me cold

I finally broke down and picked up the Forces of Hordes: Skorne book. Unlike every other Force book released I wasn’t all that keen on this book. And after reading through it I finally realised that out of all of the factions in Warmachine and Hordes, Skorne really don’t do anything for me. I don’t know what it is but there is really nothing about the faction, their models, their background or their characters that stirs my imagination. I have the book for reference (so I can read up on the models that Dave routinely smacks me around with) but I’m even finding it difficult to stir up the interest to read it from that perspective.

Warmachine @ Strategies

Today was the first gaming day, at Strategies, for the Warmachine Blasted Heath League. Strategies is one of the only stores in the city that has an “all painted” policy and so I had to make sure that my Satyxis Raiders were finished so I would be able to field an all-painted army or two.
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Easter Weekend Gaming at Connections – part 2

This post is more than a little late, so I will keep it brief. The start of the Shattered Grounds league as well as other types of gaming (and work too) kept me from finishing this post up in a timely manner. The group of six or so that showed up on the Friday holiday was outdone by the larger group that showed up on Saturday, April 3rd.  There were gamers there that I had not seen in quite a long while, as well as some I had never met.  Connection Games 2 filled up throughout the day, which was cool to see.  I took a few notes on other games but am not sure the results of most, so I’ll stick to the games I played.
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Easter Weekend Gaming at Connections – report part 1

As promised, I have just taken place in a couple of solid days of Warmachine and Hordes gaming.  This post will focus on the game I played on Friday, April 2nd, with a couple of mentions to other action that went down.

Friday saw a middlin’ size group of us show up to throw down.  Old stalwarts Dylan and Trolland showed up ready for battle.  A few players new to Warmachine also ventured forth:  rancidtwinkie, gds23 and lorenz.  If there was anyone else that showed up for a game, I must have been distracted by the carnage on the table in front of me. (more…)

Lord Assassin Morghoul’s Runners and Gunners at One Stop Shop

On March 25th, I wanted to head down to One Stop Shop and get a game in during the regular Thursday night Warmachine meet-up.  But what to bring to the table?  The buzz on the Skorne forums after the “Final” field test update has mostly surround epic Morghoul.  Between the January 29th update and final update, Morghoul was the most transformed Skorne warlock, which led to a lot of discussion (and even some impassioned ranting) surrounding the Lord Assassin.  What better way to solidify my thoughts on his new incarnation than to ask him, very politely, if he wouldn’t mind leading some troops into battle for me? (more…)

Subhedgehog’s Salute 2010 Steamroller Report – part 2

So in the first part of my tournament battle reports I managed a couple of quick wins due to the always impertinent Titan Gladiator and some poor positioning on the part of my opponents.  This put me ahead of the curve in the swiss pairing system – my next opponent had also won his first two matches.  His two lists, he explained to me, were exactly the same with the exception of the caster.  As he spent a few moments refreshing my memory as to how bad epic Sorscha’s feat was going to hurt me, I figured (correctly, it would turn out) that this would be his caster of choice.  I considered my options.  I thought that the Cetrati brick would be quickly shattered under eSorscha’s feat, so I went with my titan herd, hoping the three heavies would weather the icy assault and that Morghoul’s higher defense would give me a chance to do some damage.
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Subhedgehog’s Salute 2010 Steamroller report – part 1

I’d like to start off this post by re-iterating what a good time I had at the Trumpeter Salute WarmaHordesMachine event.  I had such a good time that the finer details of what happened in some of my games may have escaped my recollection and subsequent documentation.  So, if any of my opponents would like to speak up and correct me I will edit this post to contain the correct information I will have been right all along. Nothing to see here.  Move along.

From the conversations I had with the various other upstanding citizens who participated in the tournament there was one idea that was unanimously expressed:  Mark II makes everything move along more smoothly.  Obviously paying attention to the online conversations surrounding the new rules for Warmachine and Hordes, recently reading Warmachine Prime and obsessively poring over the Hordes field test cards will have helped my comprehension of the rules, but still…  It seemed to me that a lot of the messiness, for lack of a better term, from the previous incarnation of the rules had been cleaned up.  I could quickly understand interactions of abilities I had not previously seen in relation to others, particularly with respect to timing.  So, thumbs up from the Vanmachine crowd.
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