Steamroller tourney and next slow grow league @ Connection Games

Press Ganger Geist has been rallying the troops during a slow grow league at Connection Games on Renfrew. As a wrap-up for the league, a steamroller tourney is being run this weekend, Saturday, March 26th!

All are welcome, even if you did not participate in the league. Details can be found here: http://www.vancouvergamers.com/index.php?topic=2789.0

Click on through for the whole skinny, but here are the highlights:

• SR 2011 rules, 35 points, 2 lists
• 3 rounds
• $5 entry fee
• Prizes! Certificates for 1-3, 1st and 2nd will receive gift certificates and there will be a door prize as well, so anyone can come away with something, regardless of placement

Sadly, I already have plans for Saturday otherwise I would be all over this. I will bug Geist to take some pictures of the action and will also bother him for the results! Good luck to all the participants!

Geist also announced the next phase of the slow-grow league, up to 25 points. It will run from March 28th to April 17th. I’m going to get in on this one, I think. Details here: http://www.vancouvergamers.com/index.php?topic=2792.0

See you on the other side of the table!

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 – Steamroller Gallery

These photos come courtesy of the dapper and dashing Uehen, who was Johnny-on-the-spot with the snappity-snap.

Your Go Games Steamroller tourney

Dan at Your Go Games held a Steamroller event on April 10th, 2010 and I took my Cryx figs down to test them out.

I took two army lists, using Skarre and Deneghra, that represented the painted figures that I had and not necessarily the best armies I could build with the minis I had. You can see all the photos from the event in this gallery.
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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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25pt tournament Army Building

The next tournament that I will be attending is a 25pt Steamroller event at Your Go Games on April 10th. Sadly this is at the beginning of the Shattered Ground Nightfall league so I’ll be missing a week of games to be attending.

Part of the challenge for this event is trying to build a competitive set of lists that will be able to capture objectives as well as threaten my opponent’s ability to do so.
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New Steamroller variant rules posted

Privateer Press have uploaded a PDF with variant rules to allow TOs to customize Steamroller events.

Subhedgehog’s Salute 2010 Steamroller report – Army Lists

Hello.  My name is Paul and I play Skorne. *whew*  Now that I’ve got that admission off my chest, I feel better already. :)  I go by the name Subhedgehog on most of the public forums I frequent, including the Privateer Press forum and Vancouver Gamers , so I’ll be posting under than moniker to keep it clear in everyone’s mind who I am.  Until they meet me in person and forget whom I am online.

I participated in the Trumpeter Salute 2010 tournament run by PG Geist.  This was my second time at this particular con, last year being my first Warmachine / Hordes tourney ever.  At twenty players, this was the largest event I have participated in and it was a blast.  I was also pleasantly surprised by my performance in the standings.  That’s me in 4th, or as I like to put it, first place in the no-trophy-competition.
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Zac’s Salute 2010 Steamroller report part 2

This is a follow-up to part 1 of my report from the Trumpeter Salute 2010 Steamroller tournament.

Game 4

As fate would have it, the Whipping Boy trophy would be decided in the fourth round of the tournament as Ben Wafer (20th overall) and I were picked to play against one another. This fit quite well into the narrative that Ben and I had spun around the event and both of us were quite excited about the game.
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