Post mortem, round 3

Wrapping this up with the third, and final, loss of the day.

Round 3

Opponent: Aaron, playing Khador

Army: 2Vlad
Behemoth
Juggernaut
Spriggan
Doom Reavers
Kovnik Joe
max unit of Winterguard Infantry
5 Man O'War Shocktroopers

Reinforcements: Don't know, as they were not placed on the table.

My army: Blindwater

Bloody Barnabas
x2 Blackhide Wrastler
Bull Snapper
Swamp Horror
x3 max Gatormen Posse

Reinforcements: Wrong-Eye and Snapjaw

(Technically, I was a point down, as I was for my Thornfall.  I could have put in my Swamp Gobbers -  just didn't think of it at the time.)

Scenario: A flag too far

Yeah, we were going to kill each other on this one too.  Melee-centric armies, meeting toward the center?  This would be bloody.  I won the roll, and had him deploy first.  He set his up pretty close to the center, as did I.  First turn, he advanced, with the Doom Reavers running forward, and the Behemoth taking some ranging shots, which did nothing.

Bloody Barnabas Swamp Pits 3 times, then charges forward.  I run gators up, chanting for the +1 Def and Terror.  Wrastlers run up, Snapper runs up along the flank, and the swamp horror runs up as well.  The end of my first turn looks like this:

Anyone see the mistake here?  I sure didn't.  Not at the time. 

On Aaron's turn, the Behemoth advances, takes a couple pot shots, doing next to nothing.  Spriggan moves up, winterguard move up.  2Vlad moves up a bit, feats.  Doom Reavers charge, including Barnabas, who is caught with no fury on him for transfers.  Doh!  (Cue Mr. Rogers voice: "Can you say, 'That was dumb', boys and girls?  Sure, I knew you could.")

Doom Reavers tear huge gaping holes in my front line.  Barnabas survives, but with only 4 health remaining.  Several doom reavers fall to other doom reavers - occupational hazard, and a small price to pay for the number of gators that they killed.

It comes to my turn.  Board position is terrible.  I go ahead and place Wrong-Eye and Snapjaw, and activate them first.  That way, I got to use them.  Wrong-Eye advances, takes over a couple of winterguard, manages to kill one of them that way.  Snapjaw charges up, and eats a couple of the troopers.  No big deal, really.  Bull snapper charges over and eats one of the doom reavers, then goes torpid. One unit of gatormen activates, tries to eliminate the rest of the doom reavers, and does so.

It's time to go big, or go home.  Yep - gator tossing is where it is at.  Wrastler grabs the other, in an effort to 2-handed throw it toward 2Vlad.  I can still pull this off, but now I pretty much have to do an assassination.  I hit.  I fail the throw.  Yep, I can roll lower on 2d6 than 1d6 when I need to.  (Looking back, I may have tied.  If so, I could have thrown - the target need to beat the roll, not tie it.  More on that below!)  At any rate, a failed gator toss is not good.

I look for a few minutes.  I have more than 35 minutes on the clock still, and really, if I can't pull off the assassination, it's doubtful that I will be able to win.  The armor on the Khador jacks is too high for my poor pillow-fisted gators.

Ah-ha!  I see a possibility.  One of my gators is in the way, so I activate another posse, and charge it, killing it.  Huzzah?  The second wrastler activates, moves up, and throws Barnabas at 2Vlad, then casts Rise on Barnabas.  Risky, since Barnabas could have been hurt by the throw.  Fortunately, he isn't.

Barnabas feats, knocking 2Vlad down.  I charge in, and start doing some damage.  The bonus to Def from Might of Kings doesn't matter.  Unfortunately, I fail to kill 2Vlad, leaving him with 3 boxes.  He stands up, and kills Bloody Barnabas.

(Several models are out of place, because we had started to pick up before I took this pic.)

Lessons learned: Know the throwing rules better.  Really. 

Lesson #2 - Don't leave Barnabas exposed like that.  Losing some gators hurt, but having Barnabas take a hit like that was risky, since he could have been killed outright, and it also put me in a really tight spot. 

Great game, again, and a lot of fun.  Aaron really wanted to see me pull off the flying gator trick, and I wanted to see him assassinate Barnabas, since I left him wide open.  I think with a little more careful placement of his Doom Reavers, he could have managed it, too.

Not much painting tonight

I did some painting tonight.  I did not finish anything, but I worked on a wardog and a unit of widowmakers.  I had hoped to get in a game on Vassal, but for various and sundry reasons, it just didn't happen - too much stuff on my end.  It's also why I did not paint much - a bunch of interruptions made it such that I only painted in 5-10 minute bursts.  Hard to get anything done in that kind of time frame.

I also got distracted.  See, I am a man of many hobbies.  Well, several, anyway.  There is a reasonable chance that this weekend will give me a chance to indulge in one of them.  And what hobby is this, you ask?  I like to build and launch model rockets, and this weekend, there is a launch about 90 miles away.

Now, I can launch pretty much any day of the week, but there are some fairly significant restrictions.  I can't launch anything that will fly higher than 1,000 feet (without FAA clearance), and, at the moment, I don't feel comfortable launching anything that will go over 750 feet or so, just because I do not have access to a field that will reasonably accommodate that kind of altitude.  I like to have 1 foot of horizontal clearance for every foot of projected altitude - so anything going up 750 feet means I want to have an area roughly equal to a circle 1,500 feet in diameter.  That's bigger than it seems.  So, until now, I have been launching tiny little rockets with nothing larger than a C motor.

Anyway, the launch this weekend has a standing waiver for 12,000 feet of clearance.  I'm not certified to any motor strong enough to launch a rocket anywhere close to that distance, but I do have a couple of kits that should blast past the 1k mark.  Unfortunately, they are not built - or rather, were not, since I am in the process of building three of them.  I just need to have them built by Wednesday night, so that I can paint them on Thursday.

(Then, Friday I can drive for a couple hours, so that I can run a marathon on Saturday, and then drive home.  Sunday, I can then go and launch some rockets with my son.)

Random painting/model update

So, last night, I continued work on [REDACTED]. It's an exchange fig, due by the end of the month. I have a bonus fig that I am trying to get done - it's not as far along, but it is mostly armor, so it is catching up fast.

I also put together a plastic Marauder - I decided that I really did not need another Juggernaut, so I took the parts I had left when I made the Decimator, and made a marauder. (I was planning on magnetizing, but there were issues, and I eventually decided that simply gluing up the decimator was a better idea.)

The new jack and a full unit of winterguard riflemen should be primed sometime this morning, and a couple of old figs are going into the dip sometime today. A couple of previously dipper figs (gun mages and a journeyman warcaster, I believe) should also get the priming treatment soon; I just want to check them again for any paint that I missed in the stripping process.

ETA - Marauder and Winterguard rifles are now primed. Had to go to basement to look for some old paperwork, stayed down there long enough to prime some figs and get something accomplished.

Update

Gotta download pics off the camera, but so far today, all I have done is started assembling the stuff from the 2-player starter. And moved 6 cubic yards of dirt. Yeah, that was fun.

Probably won't be priming the full units from the starter until tomorrow night, but I am thinking about trying out Khador this weekend. Especially since a trade arrived today: a unit of widowmakers, greylords, minimum WG (yay - infantry spam!) and berserker. Plus a heirophant for my Menite scum. Between the trade and the starter, I just about doubled my khador collection.

A pseduo-battle report

So, I got to play two games on Saturday, and I managed to win one of them.

The first game, I was trying out a eNemo list. I was light on jacks (only two - Thunderhead and Firefly), but has the Storm Strider, and lots of lightning goodness. My opponent was running Zherkova, some Doom Reavers, a couple warjacks and some widowmakers (and a couple other models - Greylords, maybe?)

The scenario was out of prime, and we were basically contesting the middle of the board. I made several key mistakes early on, and wound up almost losing on scenario alone - instead, I lost to a very well-done warcaster assassination, and the game was over before I took my third turn. I think, from army selection to end of game, it was less than 45 minutes - it certainly was under an hour.

Since we had time to kill, we each chose another list. He switched to eButcher, kept the Doom reavers, added Fenris, and made some other changes. I switched to Cryx, so I could try out Terminus, plus a couple slayers, a seether, some bane thralls, the revenant crew, and a bloat thrall. (Quick aside - I can usually recall my lists fairly well, but not always those of my opponents. I need to work on that, for real battle reports.)

Anyway, with both armies being comprised of incredibly aggressive casters, we met in the middle, and it was a virtual bloodbath. I drew first blood, and took out the doom reavers, and did some other damage, but it put things in grand position for eButcher's feat. He popped feat, charged up, and, by the time his turn was done, I had only a couple of the revenant crew remaining, plus two slayers (one fairly damaged), and the bloat thrall, and Terminus was down 9 points. Terminus was engaged, but only by Fenris, although he was less than 1/4" of being engaged by one of the Khador jacks. I chanced the free strike (which fortunately failed to do anything), and flew over my intervening models to get to eButcher. Terminus only got to melee with his giant sword o' death, but that was all it took (though it took multiple strikes to do so).

Both games were a lot of fun (for both of us), and I think I will use both lists again, albeit with some tweaking.

Hah! I accomplished something!

Okay, it wasn't much, but in addition to unpacking all the stuff I had taken with me when I was out of town, I managed to get the Wardog assembled and primed, primed the HRT (which, since I bought used, was thoughtfully preassembled) and fixed Durgen and Thor for my Rhulic. My goal for the week (and weekend) is to do some cleaning in the basement, and take a "beginning of year" shot of each faction, pact or contract. I'll try to take another one sometime in the summer, and then another about the end of the year. With any luck, there will be some progress, beyond adding more models.

Another update

So, I am still about on track for the 2,500 words/day that I wanted to be (I think I fell behind by 300 words or something yesterday, which I will make up easily today), but on Saturday, I at least managed to get some painting done.

And started some assembly, too. I have my gun carriage together, but not the horses. I glued them on Saturday, but they have some pretty bad gaps (almost reminiscent of the huge gap that the original Khador 'jacks have, actually), and I will need to do some serious GS work on them before they can be primed.

I have a tentative schedule of events for my FLGS through the spring, now I just need to print it up and take it in, as well as a sign-up sheet and a demo flyer.

Publish or perish?

OKay, I haven't posted anything in over a week, and I haven't said much this month at all. That whole pesky real life thing has been getting in the way, so I haven't gotten much painting or playing time in the last few days. I really need to start playing games on Vassal or something, just to remind myself of how the rules work. (Kidding, but my mediocre skills certainly won't be sharpened by disuse.)

Anyway, as proof that I have been working on that big box of product which graced my doorstep a few weeks back, I present the following:





The background looks a little cluttered because I was painting those earlier tonight, and didn't feel like moving them off the disaster that is my painting table:





It's actually overdue for a good clearing off, which I do every month or two, but I really wanted to paint tonight, instead of doing stuff that needs to be done, but isn't as much fun/frustrating.

And this is the table of shame:



It's probably no more than half of what I have, and, as you can see, there are a lot of figs that are either bare metal or primed, but nothing beyond that. I am moderately pleased to say that a lot of the primed figs are fairly recent acquisitions, but still, I need to get more of those done.

Really need to start taking pics

Since I don't generally sit down to paint with a plan in mind (other than, "Okay, I have an hour or so, so I'd better get something accomplished"), I can't really take before and after pics. But I am thinking that maybe I should start taking a pic of what I have been working on lately, because that way, I can (1) prove to my readers that I am getting things painted; and (2) prove to myself that I am getting things painted.

Tonight, I worked on the Winter Guard units. And put base colors on the harriers and the raek. Did some assembly work on eThag. Got the gun carriage assembled and primed, except for the horses. Greenstuffed the last two slaughterhousers, the nephilim, and the seraph. And worked on a couple of other things. Visually, it actually would have been a nice before and after series, since going from bare metal to base colors is a pretty big change, whereas nights where I do detail work, it can be very hard to see any signs of progress at the end of the evening.

Well, that was stupid of me.

Got in a small game at the FLGS today. I was running Irusk, some Winter Guard + Joe, and a couple of jacks, against the Menoth battlebox, a min choir, knights, and a paladin. It did not go well. Part of it was simply bad luck - you would expect that 2d6-7, repeated 6 times, would have half the rolls do nothing, and the other half do a fairly minimum amount of damage. Instead, 5 of the 6 did nothing, and I don't think they even rolled as high as a 6.

Of course, messing up the order of activation, and charging a menoth jack seemed like a good idea - until I wanted to shoot the other jack (which I had also inadvertently engaged). I did quite a bit of damage there, shooting my own jack in the back. Oh well - you live, you lose, you learn.

Haven't done too much painting the last few days. Both units of Winter Guard (normal and rifles) are now assembled and primed, and some have paint. The raek is primed, and once I sit down with some green stuff, I should finish up the nephilim, the seraph, and the farrow slaughterhousers.

Darn batteries

Still not charged. Had the recipe correct, Stingers are progressing nicely, and the Harriers are primed and started. Raek is assembled, as is Kovnik Joe. eThag is started in the assembly pipeline, as is the Blighted Sorceress, and the Nephilim Soldier. They probably won't be more than assembled before the weekend, but that's okay.

No word yet on my store order - I'm hoping that my 2-player starter is in, as well as my NQ and a couple of other things. The order was kind of a beta test - the store is hoping to get stuff in, so I placed an order, and now it's just a waiting game.

Once the store starts getting stuff in, it's time to start advertising leagues, and maybe organize a Foodmachine tourney for sometime next month.

Harriers are built

And I started laying down the base colors on the Winter Guard units. The camera batteries are charging, but I'm basically using the Vallejo colors for Soviet WW II infantry. pButcher and Harkevich have a lot more green than khaki on them, since they have a lot heavier armor.

I also found out that I did not write down the basecoat recipe for my easy Legion beasts. Fortunately, one shredder was still at the base color stage, so I am keeping it in that state while I try to replicate it on the stingers. I think I am pretty close - I'll know later tonight.

Haven't painted in a few days

But I have been working on stuff. The AFG is now primed, although I haven't touched the three battle mage guys that surround it yet. Half of the winter guard rifles have been trimmed, assembled and primed, as well as pIrusk. I have started assembly on the raek and the gun carriage, and done some trimming on the nephilim and the angelius.

I plan on starting some painting tonight, but I also want to keep working on the assembly and priming process. I also want to sort stuff out a bit better, so that I have a couple 35-pt armies to take with me, as well as the various battlebox armies.

And, while it is not progress per se, I have been soliciting suggestions on the forum for a 35-pt Shae or Bart army, so that I can field any faction, any contract. Once I can field Talion at 35 points, I plan on going back and bulking up my mercs with some steelheads, another jack or two, getting a couple of beasts and another two units for circle, and then going back to my Cryx for a while, because the forces of evil need some lovin' too.

No painting tonight, but still productive

(Okay, I did paint something - a terrain piece that I don't plan on keeping. I'll take pics tomorrow.)

So, I did not paint anything tonight, but it was still productive. The min unit of Winter Guard is now primed, as are the stingers, Harkevich, and the alt manhunter. The AFG is mostly assembled, and is actually ready for priming tomorrow, once I check the final dry fit of the upper and lower carapace pieces.

My goal for tomorrow is to work on the gun carriage, and the full unit of Winter Guard rifles. And Kovnik Joe. I am planning on heading over to the FLGS this weekend, and the owner wants another game. I would like to take all three battle engines, even though they are still in the process of assembly and painting. I really need to get in on a GW night, and drop a couple of the battle engines onto a table.

Progress of a sort

Quick note - I forgot Harkevich in the Christmas post. Slightly more Khador goodness.

Last night, I got the mechanics trimmed and onto bases, and they were primed this morning. This afternoon, while the kids played in the basement, I got two of the Winter Guard trimmed and on bases, as well as Harkevich. I plan on getting more done later tonight, although some of these models won't see paint for quite some time. (Although if I try and put paint on everything in November, they will at least have something done then, right?)

It's almost like Christmas

Provided either I bought the stuff for me, or Santa followed my wishlist, instead of getting me more socks. Either way, I got this today:



Now, I confess, that I did expect the box to be at least a little bit bigger. Fortunately, it was full, with no need for filler. Look at all that blistered and boxed goodness.



Once separated by type, my Khador collection gained a gun carriage, a min unit of winterguard, a max unit of winterguard rifles, Irusk, Kovnik Joe, a unit of mechanics and the variant manhunter.



My Cygnar was not neglected - I picked up a hunter. Kraye needs at least another, but it's a start.



Lord Carver gained some friends - a razorback crew and a unit of slaughterhousers.



And, Everblight gained Typhon, eThag, a blister of harriers, a seraph, a min unit of striders, a nephilim soldier, a raek, Absylonia, a scythean, a blister of stingers, and the Nyss sorceress.



I have more happy news, but I'll put it in its own post later tonight. For now, it's off for some painting time - or maybe assembly and priming.

My collection is growing again

Got word that my order is on its way. In a couple of days, my Khador and Everblight forces move from battlebox to actual (bad) armies. IIRC, the order included a gun carriage, winterguard, winterguard riflemen, Kovnik Joe, a raek, Typhon, a scythean, eThag, slaughterhousers, a hunter. . . and then quite a bit more.

Sadly, there were some things that I wanted (widowmakers, Khador heavy jack kit, etc) that were out of stock, so I guess I have to start working on my next wishlist.

Pics from the PG app

Realized that I never did post these. Poor quality, but should be good enough, right? I really need to invest in a lightbox or something.

Anyway, I have been working on some other figs - a unit of gun mages is currently soaking in Pine Sol to get them ready for repainting, a Squire, magnetized Cygnar heavy and a Firefly are coming along, and I should be about ready to finish the basing on those poor Gators.

No pics, but they are done.

OKay, technically, not quite done. I need to finish up the bases, and then seal them, but my Khador and Cygnar battleboxes are done. Finished. Painted. Completely. Not as well as I would like, but well enough for hardcore standards, and, more importantly, well enough for me to snap some pics of tomorrow and put in an application. With any luck, my area of Michigan will have a press ganger soon. Well, soon-ish, since it is con season and all.

I think tomorrow I will start on a couple of the Hordes warpacks. Probably trolls and either Everblight or Circle. Nothing against Skorne, but I would have to fix two of the savages, or assemble two savages (yes, I have four of them - my Skorne army is unpainted, but unbound material nonetheless), and then get my gladiator back together. Fixing a couple damaged figs doesn't seem as easy as putting either a warpwolf or a carnivean together, although that may be famous last words.

Oh yeah - getting those 5 models finished (the entire Cygnar group plus Sorscha) will bring my total number of painted models to 14. Only 588 to go. (But see another post about that.)

Battleboxes are almost done

They're almost there. Close, so close. With any luck, and a bit of work, tomorrow night, I can wrap these up, with everything done except for the clear coat. The Khador jacks are already done, of course, but the Cygnar jacks are down to detail work and touchups, and both casters are actually pretty close to being done to tabletop standard. It's not my best work, but they're not something I'm planning on stripping down as soon as possible either.