Post-mortem, Round 2

Continuing in the same vein. 

Round 2

Opponent: Chuck Ocenasek, playing Cygnar

Army: eHaley
Stormwall
Old Rowdy
Squire

Archduke Runewood
Black 13th
Precursor Knights
Stormblades

His army is a little off - I didn't take note of it, and I think there is a UA that I am missing, or something.

My army: Thornfall

Sturm & Drang
x2 Road Hogs
x3 War Hogs
Targ

4 Bone Grinders
6 Brigands
Slaughterhousers


We had to have two lists, but we did not have to play both.  We were also told that two rounds would have reinforcements.  Since this one did not, I chose my pigs.  (I wanted to try out the reinforcements in my other list, so I left it for then.)


Scenario: Restoration.


Since he had a Stormwall, he had to predeploy it.  I won the roll again, and had him place his whole army, before placing mine.  We did forget to start the clock for deployment, but time was not an issue at all in this game.


First round, he advances, and lays down covering fire.  I advance as well.  While we are both looking to score points, we have also both come to the conclusion that caster kill is how this one is likely to end.


Round two, he advances, shoots a lot of things, really hurts one of the war hogs.  I retaliate by charging the stormwall with two of them.  I don't tear it apart - I should have, but I did not double check my cards, and forgot to aggression dial one of them, and the extra damage would have really helped.  I think I popped feat, mainly to prevent the Stormwall and Old Rowdy from getting a load of focus and beating the tar out of my poor war hogs.

Next turn, the Black 13th come up and do a number on the brigands, though some survive.  Stormblades come up and unload on the road hogs, and I think the precursor knights ran up to base the road hogs and slow them down a bit.  eHaley pops feat.


Having your order of activation forced on you stinks.  And, having to chose between moving and attacking just rubs some salt in the wound.  Astonishingly, I manage to still do some damage this turn - Targ can give ancillary attack, and I manage to do some damage to the stormblades and the precursor knights.  Rowdy gets hurt, and (IIRC), I manage to cripple the hammer. 


His next turn hurts me, but the damage on Rowdy and on the Stormwall has been adding up, and I weather the storm.  On my turn, my remaining warhog scraps Old Rowdy.  And here is where I lose the game.

Put simply, I got greedy.  I really wanted to finish killing the Stormwall.  I should have waited a turn - I had the better position on the board, and it was nearly dead.  Old Rowdy was down.  The precursor knights were almost wiped from the board, and the Stormblades were gone.  The squire is no threat, and I can deal with Black 13th and eHaley over the next turn or two.

S&D, under the Drang aspect, charges up and starts laying the smackdown on the Stormwall.  It takes a couple of swings, but I drop it.  (Yay - another angle, from early next turn)

Unfortunately, this leave S&D out in the (relative) open, with no fury on him.  Between the Black 13th, the Journeyman, and eHaley, they manage to kill him.  Barely.

So - officially, this was a loss.  But, I claimed moral victory, for having dropped the Stormwall.  And, unfortunately, after the tourney was over, we found out that Chuck had accidentally been running the Stormwall incorrectly, and so was DQ'ed.  I'm still calling this a loss, however - I lost it fair and square, and really, hanging my warlock out there was a pretty stupid move.

So, what did I learn from this one?

First, collosals aren't as scary as they first seemed.  I have faced three now, and while they are tough, I won one of the games against them, lost one (though I took out half the collosal in the process), and could have won this one, if I had not gotten too greedy at the end. 

Second - getting greedy cost me the game.  I could see victory, and managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  Again, my fault, not his. 

So, the second game was a lot of fun, and it turned out to be a great game, with lots of good natured trash talking, and some happy BSing once the game was done. 

Post-mortem, Round 1

So, I'm going to split up the tourney into three posts.  First, that way, I can try to do each battle on its own.  Second, it's a blatant attempt to pad my post count. Third, this way I can get something out, instead of sitting here, with 95% of an unfinished batrep, and having it stay that way for days.

So, Round 1, of the 50pt SR at Dragon's Refuge, in Peotone, IL.

Opponent: Ben Lang, playing Skorne

Army: eHexeris
Bronzeback
Gladiator
Cyclops Savage
Molik Karn
Aptimus Marketh

Extoller Soulward
6 Paingiver Beast Handlers
10 Praetorian Swordsmen, plus Officer & Std Bearer
10 Venator slingers

Reinforcements: Tyrant Rhadeim
x2 Venator Flayer
Feralgeist

My army: Thornfall

Sturm & Drang
x2 Road Hogs
x3 War Hogs
Targ

4 Bone Grinders
6 Brigands
Slaughterhousers

Reinforcements: Rorsch & Brine

Scenario: Outflank, Outfight, Outlast.

(NB - always take the opposing army and scenario with a grain of salt.  I forgot to write those down on Saturday, so it's only as good as my memory. )

Setup was fairly standard.  We both deployed most of our armies toward the middle, but more toward one table edge.  (MISTAKE!)  Turn 1 was fairly uneventful, as we both hurried toward the middle to start contesting control zones.

Turn 2 was where things started to go south.  We were closer to his reinforcement edge, and out popped the two flayers, which turned the brigands into swiss cheese.  Without fearless & tough, they would have all died.  As it was, they just became ineffective, which was not much better.  Molik runs up, and thanks to Black Spot (and him being Molik Karn), smacks around the slaughterhousers.  (This pic is before he does that.)

The swordsmen have run up and based a lot of things, but not attacked.  They're blocking charge lanes, mainly, I think.

On my turn, I try to clear some things up, and contest the zones.  Rorsch & Brine appear, and I manage to get a charge off on Molik, but fail to kill him.  The remaining slaughterhousers don't seal the deal either.  I start trying to move my stuff out of the way of the flayers, but at the end of the turn, it isn't much better.

I think I popped my feat at the end of turn 2.  S&Ds feat is basically a "screw you!" to Hordes armies - it reduces FURY to 1, warjacks can only get 1 focus, and no enemy channeling spells. 

IIRC, Ben used his third turn to eliminate Brine, some slaughterhousers, and consolidate his position.  My third turn was an attempt to kill as much as possible, because the game was over - I was pretty weakened, and almost all of my beasts were dead.  I looked for an assassination vector, and did not see it.  I think the end of my turn 3 looked about like this:

Long story made short - he tabled me.  I had nothing left at the end.  Wiped it clean (except for one beast), and then went for the caster kill. 

Lessons learned:
This is the most important part of the post-mortem.  If I don't learn from the mistakes, I will repeat them.  Avoiding stupid mistakes will help me be a better player.

Mistake #1 - pay attention to the reinforcements and where they will be popping up.  I had him set up first, and I could have put a lot of my stuff on my right.  It would have made his reinforcements a lot less effective - I would have been able to avoid the artillery, instead of running right up to it, and turning that flank into a turkey shoot.

Mistake #2 - Remember power attacks. I think a trample would have helped clear out the swordsmen, and made my life a lot easier.

Mistake #3 - Know your models!  I had just picked up the road hogs, and I wanted to use them.  Ditto for Rorsch & Brine.  I don't regret either choice, but I wasn't as familiar with them or their capabilities.  I did not realize until earlier today that a road hog has an effective threat of 20" with the spray.  Oops.  Should have charged something far off, and sprayed it. 

Mistake #3b - In addition to being careful with new models, make sure you are aware of the old ones.  I wasn't thinking, and chose the wrong personality of S&D at the beginning of the game.  Completely my fault.

Final thoughts - yes, I would love to blame my dice for this one.  I had some terrible damage rolls, and Ben had some truly phenomenal ones.  But the reality is that excuse will only carry to much water - I got outplayed here, pure and simple.  It was a great game, and I had a lot of fun, even though I lost.  I'm hoping that I learned something from it, however.

A quick post-mortem

Well, that went about as I expected.  I went 0-3 (though apparently that got changed to 1-2, which I dispute.  I lost that match fair and square, dangnabit!)

I'll do a longer recap later, but I lost R1 to skorne.  Yes, he had good dice, and yes, I had bad dice, but my initial set-up was poor, and I paid for it.  I'd like to blame it on the dice, but I got outplayed.

R2 was the one that got changed.  There was some confusion on the rules for colossals.  I lost, and I am going to keep it as a loss, because I did not know the rules on them well enough to correct the other player.  I wear the black, I should know the rules.  Besides, I claim moral victory - I killed the stormwall.

R3 - lost that one too.  I made a mistake, and while it did not kill me, it did force my hand to take a risky move.  I could have pulled it off, but I could not get out of the way of my own dice.  Average rolls should have actually given me the game.  Didn't, but should have.

I don't want anyone reading this to get the impression that I am bitter or upset.  I'm not.  Warmachine has a steep learning curve, and yeah, I have to lose a lot more matches than I have been playing if I want to get better.  But, as I keep telling me kids - the most important thing is to have fun.  And I had a lot of fun, pushing my little metal gators and pigs around the table, groaning at the bad dice, and cheering on the good.

Tourney is coming

So, there is a tourney this weekend.  And I am planning on attending.  Yay!  It's a 50 point, 2 army list required event. Oh.  Uh-oh.  Hrm.

I have several factions that I could take, without a problem.  Hell, I could almost take any of them, although Mercs would be one hell of a stretch.  Some are easier than others - 50 pts of Skorne or Trollbloods?  No problem.  50 points of Cryx?  No problem, but they're not going to be great armies - too many holes in my Cryx at the moment.

So, I chose a faction.  Minions.  Hooray!  The hard part is done.

I made some army lists.  Okay, that was a bit harder.  I had plenty of choice, but it's sticking too it, that's the problem.  I can overcome that.  I may dither a lot between now and Saturday, but eventually, I will have to make a choice.

But I need to finish assembling my models.  For various reasons, I did not have everything on hand and assembled, so models had to be ordered.  I have them (all save one, which I should have tomorrow - talk about cutting it close!), but I need to get them assembled.  And I want to have them at least primed, so that I can also have the bases marked properly,  I'll miss out on the fully-painted army raffle, which kind of stinks, but it is no one's fault save my own.

I'm getting close.  After tonight, Rorsch, Wrong-Eye, the posse, the last two farrow, Orrik and Ashley are all ready for priming.  (I may strip the posse instead of painting them later - I am thinking about converting them for a Maelok list - zombification is a Good Thing, right?)  Brine, Snapjaw, a war hog, two road hogs, and Pendrake all need to be finished.  Tomorrow should be fun, but I might actually get them all finished.

And, what kind of night would it be, without some sort of self-inflicted hobby injury?  I was applying a very thin superglue.  It ran.  More than I thought.  Onto my fingers.  I did not notice this before spraying the model with the accelerant.  Did you know that accelerant plus superglue is an exothermic reaction?  In other words, the superglue that ran onto my fingers suddenly got very hot as it dried.  And yes, hot enough that my finger is raw and burned.  Consider this your cautionary note for the day - forget the carcinogenic warnings on the accelerant - that stuff makes superglue burn!

0-2 for the day

Well, that's not going to bode well for next week.  I did not have much luck today with either Bloody Barnabas or with Carver.  Some of it was bad dice, and some of it (most of it, actually) was me making some really bad choices, or forgetting to cast animi,

I need to spend some time over the next few days putting some figs together, and poring over the cards so that most of the relevant stats are pretty close to the front of my brain.  I don't have to have to keep looking over, wasting time, to remember that my Brigands are Def 12, Arm 14, and that they chanted to get Fearless and Tough.  I should know that kind of stuff, consarn it.

I was pleased with the Swamp Horror - most pleased than last time.  I'm trying to think of some movement shenanigans that I can use with it, most involving the reach & pull aspect.  And, on its initial road test, I was fairly pleased with the road hog.  It wasn't strong enough to crack a Cetrati wall, but setting things on fire is always nice.

Lord Carver, the beatstick

So, I got in two games tonight with Lord Carver, and managed to win one of them.  It's a little late for a report, but a quick recap of each may suffice.

Game 1: Khador
3Vlad, a Conquest, doom reavers, cavalry - it was a fun game, but it did not look good for me for a good chunk of the game.  Fortunately, 3Vlad came charging in, and failed to kill a badly wounded gun boar - which kept him in charge range of Carver.  I pretty much ignored the Conquest for the entire game, and while it did some damage to my pigs, it did not decimate them as badly as I had feared.

Game 2: Cygnar
pStryker, Stormwall, Boomhowler, Black 13th - long, hard slog of a game.  My dice pretty much crapped out on me, but I was outplayed, pure and simple.  Better dice might have made a difference - it seems to me that, once I start trying to kill something, when bad dice occur, rather than continue with my plan, I commit extra resources to kill one piece, even when it is not as crucial to the game as something else.  At the end, Carver charged the Stormwall, and took out one side on his ownsome.  But too little, too late - and the Stormwall turned him into a small bloody smear of bacon on the next turn.

I feel more confident with Carver now - I need to get in some games with Barnabas, and more games with Carver once I have a Road Hog to play around with.

No pics to record my loss.

Pity, too - it was a good game.

For various and sundry reasons, it was a light crowd at the FLGS.  (Side note - I am hoping that there are a lot more people there next weekend, although a turnout as low as eight would still have me plenty happy!)  I managed to get in a game - my Pigs versus Jake's Skorne.  The order of battle, as I recall, was as follows:

Skorne
eMakeda
Molik Karn
Gladiator
Cyclops Savage
Full unit Nihilators
Full unit Swordsmen
Min unit of paingivers

Pigs
Lord Carver
2 War Hogs
Min & Max unit of Brigands
Razorback
Slaughterhousers
Full unit of bone grinders

Skorne set up first, but with no advance deployment, the little thrill of every farrow unit being advance deploy was lessened.  Both of us headed for each other at a quick pace, although the forward-placed razorback took a potshot at Molik, who was 14.diddly inches away.  No matter, as the lucky deviation dropped the AoE onto two swordsmen, killing them.

I did not take detailed (read: any) notes, but Molik zipped forward, put a god-awful amount of hurt on a war hog, and bounced back, while the nihilators came forward on the flank and started tearing into the larger unit of brigands.  The brigands nearly died to a pig, but they were avenged by the slaughterhousers, who were not far behind.  The nearly crippled war hog, thanks to Carver's feat, tore through a good chunk of the swordsmen, and the brigands took out most of the rest.  The razorback shot at things, but really did not do much after that first glorious turn.

Molik placed himself in the middle of the slaughterhousers, denying them the charge.  It turned out to be an incredibly safe move, since they barely hurt him.  He responded by unleashing a whirling blade of Nerfiness onto the slaughterhousers - they made 4 out of 5 tough rolls!  On their turn, they would stand back up, and finally finish him off.

On the other side of the table, the gladiator tried an assassination run on Carver, but the free strike from the War Hog put the stops on that idea.  It looked grim for the Skorne - at the beginning of the final turn, it was eMakeda and 2 paingivers, versus Carver, the slaughterhousers, the razorback, a war hog, and the last two remnants of the brigands - one of whom was in base with eMakeda.

Fortunately, a paingiver killed the brigand, she moved around a building, and killed Carver.  Skorne wins in a nail-biter of a finish.  It was a great game, and we both had a lot of fun. 

Quick painting post

According to iBodger, my GenCon painting list is 88 models.  (It will almost certainly go up, but it will not hit more than 100 models in total.)  Thanks to some painting time last night, I am at 13.6% painted!

Now, that's cheating a bit.  Two units of gatorman posse, a boneswarm and a bull snapper is nice, but barely a start, and those are the easiest figures to paint.  I have a lot of pigs to paint - although most have at least something on them, so I am not starting from bare metal in most cases.

Still, stuff is moving along on my painting bench, so there is a feeling of progress.  I still spend too much time goofing off instead of painting when I am sitting at the bench, which does not help, but I am trying to establish painting as a frequent routine, instead of some sort of aberration. 

On an unrelated note - I am going to miss a day of gaming at the FLGS, so that I can drive several hours to go play in a tourney.  It's a little far out of the way, but I know some of the guys going, and I really ought to start getting some tourney experience.  I figure that I will probably go 0-4, but I'm okay with that.

The sorting hat.

OKay, I did not wear a hat of any type when I was making my decision.  And I barely had anything alcoholic to drink, so it was a fairly sober, reflective decision.  Basically, last night, and this morning, I start sorting through everything that I had.  Sure, I have a fairly current list in iBodger, and while it is not too far off in terms of how many figures I have, it is wildly inaccurate when it comes to determining how far along most of my figures are.  If I wanted to play Cygnar at GenCon, for example, it would be good to know that I would have to do some assembly work before I could really begin to paint much beyond the 35 point level.

I didn't get everything sorted out before I made my decision.  800 or so figs takes a while to go through, but pretty early on, it became clear that Minions would be something that I could actually finish.  I won't have enough to field a 100 pt army (since my Gators and my Pigs both top out at about 70 points, less warlock points, so 60ish in terms of actual gameplay), but I will be able to field 50 points with any of the 3 Gator or Pig casters. 

This means that I would have six armies (more or less), and they will all have different play styles, but there is a fairly small number of miniatures to paint, and a small number of cards to know, and know well.  Iron Arena may not be a tourney environment, but that does not mean that I should not be familiar with whatever I happen to take with me.

Thus, my painting queue stands as follows (roughly):

• Dr Arkadius
• Lord Carver
• Sturm & Drang
• Bloody Barnabus
• Caliban
• Mealok
• 2 Blackhide Wrastlers
• Bull Snapper
• Ironback Spitter
• Boneswarm
• 2 Warhogs
• 2 Gun Boars
• 20 Farrow brigands
• 6 Bone grinders
• 6 Slaughterhousers
• 1 Razorback crew
• Targ
• 16 Bog Trogs
• 10 Gatormen
• 2 Swamp Gobbers
• Alten Ashley
• Croak Hunter
• Saxon Orrik
• Totem Hunter

I have some other items that I want to pick up in the next month or so - at least one Road Hog, one Swamp Horror, another unit of Gatormen, and so forth.  It's a fairly small amount of addition (model-wise - the dollar amount is something else!), so this might just happen.

Tonight, I finished up one of the Gatormen leaders, worked on another four of the gators (two are done, and three are being stripped), and started on the swamp gobbers.  I also did some other work on a few more of the models above, although not much.  The four gators should be done before the end of the month, and possibly all of them will be.  Once they are done, I will move on to the slaughterhousers and the bone grinders, although I will probably do a color test for the bog trogs too.

A short reprieve

I need to post a short batrep of the weekend (short version - played two games, won both, though I did not deserve to win the first), but won't get to it until later today. In the meantime, I found out that I have a one day reprieve - some figures that I was expecting today won't be in until tomorrow, so tonight's painting will not be distracted by Shiney New Object (SNO) syndrome.

The pigs continue, and yes, I need to take pics. In the meantime, they show at least some progress from day to day, and I hope enough that it would obvious to most people at least from week to week. Still thinking that I might need to have a backup plan, in case I do not finish at least 5 pts of infantry before the 22nd or so - I have a couple of models (a solo and some lights) that I could take care of this weekend, if the slaughterhousers and bone grinders are still giving me fits.

Forward and back again

As usual, no pics tonight. I spent some time working on my pigs, but also doing repairs to stuff that had either fallen apart long ago, or assembled incorrectly/weakly and needed to be fixed. But tonight was definitely a two steps forward, one step back sort of night.

See, so far for the year, I have painted a whopping 4 models. A basher, a gunner, a feral warpwolf and a woldwyrd. And today, I ordered Amon Ad-raza, a Dervish, 2 Winterguard rocketeer, and a [REDACTED]. So, I ordered 5, and have only painted 4. And, in the next week or so, I should be getting some Talion figs in a trade, and hopefully another 10-15 figs as part of another trade. Until today, however, I think I had only gained one fig for the year (Kara Sloan).

Oh well. The slaughterhousers are coming along, and I am making some inroads on the bone grinders. I need to spend a bit more time on the brigands, which I plan on doing tomorrow or Sunday. If I do enough infantry, then I can get on the positive side of things, and get a lot of points done. Plus, painted piggies would just make me feel better about taking them to GenCon. If I am wearing the black, then I should have more stuff painted, right?

Painting piggies

I really need to take the camera with me when I head down to the basement. It's not that it is this huge distance, I mean, from the computer I am using now to my painting desk is only 30 feet or so, but it's just enough that I am not really willing to head down there again, turn on the lights, and take some bad pics.

Anyway, though there is no proof of it, you can take my word that the piggies are coming along, albeit slowly. This week has had a lot of real-life distractions, and the week isn't done yet, so they'll just keep coming along. But, the Slaughterhousers and the Bone Grinders have been the primary beneficiaries so far, but the smaller units are letting me test skin tones, armor schemes, etc without much worry. (And, since the Bone Grinders are single-piece figs, I can strip them a lot easier than other stuff, since I won't have to worry about reassembly afterward.)

One slaughterhouser and two bone grinders are actually approaching the point (and may pass it by Sunday) where they might be mistaken for fully painted models. Once I know how I like the armor on one slaughterhouser, I then repeat the process (much more quickly, since I am not deliberating on colors or anything) on the rest of the unit.

The brigands are still stuck mainly on skin tones. Not because I do not know where I am going with them, but simply because there are 20 brigands, and that's a lot of models to paint. One war hog is undergoing repairs and a slight modification to make it fit on the base better, and one gun boar is more than half done, I think.

My other project is basically done, but I need to take pics of it. And, I need to plan an event or four between now and GenCon, because I have the feeling that I am going to want a lot of PG points in the next few months. So, it means I need more terrain, and I need to reread the SR 2012 rules.

The pigs go marching in

March-ing, right? So yeah, I am working on Minions this month. I think it was the Road Hog preview, but it may also have been because I have some low-hanging fruit that I want to keep around until later in the year, when time is short, and I need an easy 5 points for the month.

So, this month, I am trying to get as much of the following done as possible:

2 max units of brigands
max unit of bone grinders
unit of slaughterhousers
2 war hogs
2 gun boars
1 razorback
and all 3 warlocks.

Now, how much of that will get done? I don't know. It may well be that, come the 23rd or so, I will look at all the unfinished stuff, curse, and grab one of the low-hanging fruit and finish off a blackhide wrastler. But I really want to get some infantry done, too.

In the meantime, I will be playing my pigs this month. It's a pretty limited army list, but since I will probably be taking Minions to GenCon (mostly Iron Arena, since I am not yet up to tournament standards), I want to start getting some practice in. Next month might be gators, although I will chose a non-minions faction for my painting

Better than yesterday

I haven't bothered trying to put S&D back together again, but I did spend some quality time at the painting table tonight, listening to a podcast and working on some piggy goodness. I wasn't originally planning on working on my pigs this month, but since doing a couple of warbeasts (or jacks) per month will let me achieve the 5 pts/month for 2012, but make no dent whatsoever in my unpainted collection, I needed to do some infantry.

And seeing the Road Hog made me thinking about my pigs again. Over on Steam-Powered Gamer, there is a post about the Road Hog. I can't disagree too much with his conclusion - basically, that the Road Hog is really only going to see play in a Carver list. Of course, since the consensus is mainly that the only Farrow caster worth taking is Carver, that kind of went without saying.

I like the good doctor, but I have to admit that he is not a terribly effective warlock. S&D can be fun, and sure, Arkadius' feat turn can be a blast, but right now, Carver is pretty much the way to any sort of victory.

Doh!

Some nights it's not even worth sitting down at the painting table. Finished gluing Sturm & Drang, and dropped him. Guess I should have pinned him first, but it looked like I could get away without doing that. Meh. Now I have to dump him in the goop to get the superglue off him before I can fix him.

Did get some colors put on the brigands before that happened, so the evening won't be a total write-off, but right now, I don't feel like working on anything. Maybe I'll head down and paint again later tonight, but it just doesn't feel like fun tonight.

Road hog

Privateer put up a preview of the Road Hog today, and I have to say that I like it. Now, I already have some bacon goodness, and they are fun to play, but a spray-template, assaulting, crit knockdown piggie? That's just fun right there.

My wishlist needs to be changed - I had only 1 road hog on it. I think I want 2, plus another war hog - Dr. Arkadius has a fun tier list that uses lots of big pigs. The list already had plenty of brigands and razorback crew on it, of course.

Third time was not the charm

So, I got in yet another game tonight, this time at Unique Gifts & Games, up in Grayslake. It's not too far from the in-laws, which turned out to be rather fortunate. I got there a bit early, and browsed shelves for a bit until other people showed up and I could get a game in. I met my opponent, we agreed on points, set up the table, I pulled my figs, tokens, dice, etc. And then started looking for my cards. And looked. And looked. And came to the realization that I had left them back at the in-laws.

The fact that there were children present kept me from using the language that I wanted to use, but I begged out (missing an eCaine match-up), ran back, picked up the cards, and came back in time to get in a game.

My opponent (Chris) was running the Heavy Armor Battalion theme list from NQ #39. At 35 pts, he had:

• eIrusk
• Behemoth
• Juggernaut
• Gun Carriage (x2)
• min unit of mechanics (x2)

I was trying out Sturm & Drang, also a theme list, and had:

• Sturm & Drang
• Warhog (x2)
  
• Targ
• max units of Brigands (x2)
• Slaughterhousers

The game did not go well. I chose the wrong personality, and also chose to go second. I should have chosen Sturm and gone first. I would have fared better.

Without going into a long, drawn-out, and pictureless report - by my second turn, my slaughterhousers were dead, as was one of the war hogs. I did manage to kill a mechanic and one of the gun carriages, but I could not get to his caster. He wiped out my last warhog, and although I almost managed to take out the second gun carriage (literally, I left it on its last damage box), but there was nothing I could do to stop the Behemoth from stomping S&D into the ground.

Good game, and I had a lot of fun. S&D is definitely a tricky warlock to play - I will have to give him another try. I already have some modifications to the list that I want to try, and cannot wait until I get the chance to lose with him again.

Losing is fun too

So, my original plan was to drive down to Dice Dojo this evening and get a couple of games in. I forgot that the Edens can back up quite a bit, and forgot to budget some extra time for that. Add in some unfamiliarity with the area, some poor directions, and I got there somewhat later than originally planned.

I did mange to get a game, however. Dan (I think) was running pigs, and he had Carver, 2 War Hogs, a Gun Boar, Rorsch & Brine, a unit of slaughterhousers and a unit of brigands. On my side, I had Maelok, an Ironback, a Wrastler, a Bull Snapper, two full units of Gatormen, a Croak hunter, and swamp gobbos.

Long story short, I lost, and fairly badly. No complaints - I deserved to lose. It was the no-man's land scenario, and deft use of Quagmire pretty much kept one of my units of Gatormen out of the game. My only hope at the end was an assassination run, and it failed. I got close, but close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and 5" templates.

The important thing is that I had fun, and I hope to get in another game or two tomorrow.

Getting stuff ready for the holiday

Since I am on the road over Christmas, I'm taking some Warmahordes stuff with me. I'm trying to pack light; I'm taking only three armies (more or less - I'm not taking all I have of one faction, and pretty much limited to what I have for the other two anyway). I expect to lose some games, maybe win once or twice, and have a lot of fun.

I have very few readers (somewhere between 0 and 3, I think), but I am not going to post army lists. I will say that I am taking trolls, pigs and gators though.

Hooray, a shirt!

My pressganger shirt arrived yesterday. I guess that makes me all official and stuff.

Did little work tonight. Remembered that I had snapped a drill bit the last time I had magnetized a plastic jack, so I couldn't get too far on my menoth or khador heavies. Got Gorten assembled, as well as Jarl, but just did not really feel like doing much tonight. Got some time blocked off for some basement time in the next few days, and I need to start thinking about what I am going to take with me over the holidays.

While I would like to take a lot, its probably going to be gators, pigs and trolls. Want to get in some practice with each of those - I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I will probably be running Minions at GenCon - I have fun with them, even when I lose, which is probably the most important thing.

Also looking at running something at a local con at the end of Feb. Stay tuned, although my readership is low enough that it probably would not make any difference in the con attendance anyway.