Not much painting today (or recently)

So, my original plan was to get in a game or three over the holiday season, and get some painting done as well. I figured that, with the addition of a bunch of Blackbane's Raiders, I would finish up a full unit, add to my painted percentage, and generally round out the year on a good note.

So, today I headed down to Games Plus, a bit south of the in-laws, for some hobby time, and possibly a game.  I did not get nearly as much painting done as I had hoped, and I did not get in a game at all.  But the time was well-spent, since I helped talk a couple of guys into splitting the two-player starter for Hordes, and walking them through a rough outline of the rules.

So, Games Plus should be picking up a couple of new players - one Circle and one Legion.  IIRC, Games Plus plays on Saturday, and I told the guys that there are games played on Wednesday nights at Unique Gifts & Games, and on Thursdays down at the Dice Dojo.  And I told them about some of the groups that are out there, so hopefully they find a welcoming community here in the Windy City.

I did get some done - my Blackbanes are all assembled, I got some base colors onto the Revenant crew, and I did a little work on a very long-neglected unit of Bane Thralls.  As an added plus, I finally broke down and picked up a couple of nice brushes, instead of the cheapies that I have been using for all these years.  Hopefully, they will serve me well.

Adventures of the Ghost Fleet

So, my Terminus list (such as it is) has been just a general "I take Terminus, and some stuff from his tier list, and let's see what happens."  Tonight, I got to field a full unit of Blackbanes and two crabjacks, without resorting to proxies.  Yes, I lost, but it was fun, and it was darned close.

My T4 Terminus list went up against a T4 eVayl list:

eVayl
Angelius
Ravagore
Scythean
x2 Harriers

Full Legionnaires
Full Spawning Vessel
2 Spell Martyrs
1 Shepherd

The game was pretty straightforward - he did not want to be within 9" of Terminus, and I wanted him to be.  For a good chunk of the game, I had the upper hand - he came close to wiping out the Revenants, but could not seal the deal by killing the quartermaster.  He did some damage to Blackbanes, but I managed to bring the unit back to nearly full strength on the granted ability.  My feat did great - something like 7 or 8 souls on Terminus, which let me do a lot of damage on the following turn.

But, that huge cache of souls and focus let me get greedy, and Terminus wound up in an exposed position, and he managed to pile enough damage on him to kill him.  I made the first tough roll with the Lich Lord, but not the second. 

I like the Ghost Fleet list, but I definitely need some more practice with it.  And I need to start painting my figs, though I did work on putting some stuff together.  Now, it's off to read NQ 45, and read through some of the Urban Adventure for the IKRPG.

Not much lately.

That whole holiday season pretty much puts a crimp in my gaming.  I have gotten in another couple of games with Terminus (both losses, sadly, though both were also close games, and a lot of fun), and even a couple of games of Malifaux.

I'm wrapping up the year with a few more additions to my unpainted forces - I finally have a unit of Blackbanes Raiders, and I added another crabjack. I might add another pistol wraith, or possibly something else in the next couple of days - I like to support the local game stores when I travel, and it justifies my bringing some of my gaming stuff with me when I visit over the holidays.

Another go with Terminus

Still playing around with Terminus, mainly because he is big and stompy and generally fairly tough.  Plus, who doesn't like a flying lich lord who lives to eat souls?  So, on this occasion, I tried out the Terminus tier list I have been running:

Terminus
3 Slayers
Skarlock Thrall

full Blackbanes
full Revenant Crew
Rengrave

My opponent was running a Gators list:

Bloody Barnabas
Blackhide Wrastler
Bull Snapper
Ironback Spitter

Wrong-Eye and Snapjaw

Full gatorman posse
Totem Hunter

He won the the roll, and chose to deploy first - gators toward the center, Wrong-Eye and Snapjaw guarding his left flank.  The totem hunter held the right, and named the Revenant Crew as prey.

I set up fairly quickly, with the jacks guarding Terminus, the Blackbanes on my left, and the Revenant crew mostly on the right, with the quartermaster tucked safely away.

He advanced fairly cautiously, but in almost complete safety, thanks to Swamp Pit.  Granted, shooting is not a big part of my Terminus list, but having it shut down completely is a little annoying.  I advanced, but not quite as cautiously. Terminus cast Malediction on himself, and camped the rest of the focus.

Next turn, the Totem Hunter zipped up, and leapt into the middle of the Revenant crew, killing precisely zero of them.  I think he hit one, but I made the tough roll.  That left the Totem hunter in a bad position.  More gator advancing into swamp pits, and Wrong-Eye and Snapjaw kept rolling up on the flank. 

On my turn, I killed the Totem hunter by piling a whole bunch of undead pirates on him.  Terminus moved up, feated, and started trying to kill things, hellfiring the gators and trying to hit Wrong-Eye with his breath weapon.  The gator warcaster lived, so I piled on attacks from Blackbanes (who advanced through an obstacle to get to him), but I could not seal the deal.

That was the turn where I lost the game, too.  I over-extended myself, in my zeal to kill Wrong-Eye (and remove both him and Snapjaw from the flank, making my life ever so much easier.)  Barnabas moved up, feated, and put a serious hurt on Terminus and a jack.  I could not recover in time, and while I tried to salvage it on my turn (by killing the Blackhide, and some other stuff), I could not risk the free strikes to get to Barnabas, nor kill enough to stop him from clearing a path to Terminus and killing him with the Ironback on the following turn.

The good thing about losing is that you get to learn from your mistakes. 

That's right.  I can't leave Terminus right in the front, low on focus and souls, and in range of a wrastler and Barnabus' feat.  Bad Idea (tm). 

Goals, 2013.

So, in another blog, the question was posed, "What are your goals for 2013?"  It's generally a little early for me to think about goals for the next year - I like to enjoy a small period of inebriation and over-eating before I indulge in any introspection, so I typically post my goals in early January.

Now, the goals listed in that other blog are all good ones - grow the player base, run more events, paint more.  I plan on doing all of those.  But, last night, I decided on another one.

In 2012, I wanted to hit the point where I could play a legal, 35-pt (or higher) army for every faction, contract and compact.  No problem.  I think I can actually do 50, although some of them are some pretty nasty stretches to get to it.  (Shae should never have that many 'jacks.  Never.)

My 2013 is equally audacious.  I want to have one of every warlock and warcaster in the game.  (Not including alternate sculpts, though I may try to pick some of them up.)  That way, I can run a "Who's The Boss" tourney.  I have over half of the warlocks/warcasters already, so it's a doable goal.

Any progress yet?

AdeptiCon is now two days closer.  What have I gotten done so far?  Well, it turns out that not everything for Malifaux was assembled.  I have a Willie the demolitionist model that is still sitting in his box. I need to get him put together.  I have managed a test scheme on two of the metal gamin - I hope to have at least one of them finished later today, and possibly even based, if I can find some base elements that I bought some months ago for another project.

Not much has been done for Warmachine.  I had to strip a bunch of the models, and had to get them and onto their new bases.  It does mean that I will have to buy a new pack or two of blank bases, since I pretty much destroyed the old ones in the process.  They are almost stripped, and I hope to be reassembling and priming them later today or tomorrow, so that I can really get to work on them.

Drew some more concept sketches for the display board as well.  Need to finish my army lists and what not before I actually build too much of it, in order to make it look nice.  Hope to start on it before Christmas though, so I actually have a lot of time.

Time to get painting!

So, there is about 136 days until AdeptiCon.  I'm currently signed up for the Malifaux by Gaslight, Iron Arena, Wm/H Hardcore, and Blood, Sweat and Tiers.  I'm starting to look at lists, and making my painting queue, because otherwise, it is not going to get done.

For Malifaux, it looks like I need to paint about 20-30 models, tops.  And that would give me several different factions, and a fair choice of crews within those factions.  Not a problem.  Some of the models I want to use are already started, and unless I decide to build something around a man named Sue, I do not have to buy anything, so everything is already here, assembled, and primed.  Score!

For Warmchine - I have definitely settled on a faction.  I need to do some fairly serious painting, since virtually nothing for any of the lists that I am considering is painted.  (Actually, I think two of the 'jacks are done.  Not a big help, actually.)  Nor do I even own everything in at least one of the lists that I am looking at running.  I should have everything by the end of the month, or mid-January, at the latest.  I hope to have what I have on hand painted by then.

Oh, and I need to build a display board.  Not for a contest or anything, just for rule of cool.

Time to get cracking, I guess.

Terminus, take two

Another day, another test spin with Terminus.  This time, I tried Terminus at the FLGS, where I got to play against eThags and some shredder spam.  I was running:

Terminus
3 Slayers
Skarlock Thrall

full Blackbanes
full Revenant Crew
Rengrave

Kenny was running eThags and 19 shredders.  19 shredders!

He won the rolls, and basically ran as many toward me as he could, with eThags shedding fury in the process.  I advanced a tad more cautiously - 19 shredders is an awful lot of beasts, especially on feat turn. (As an odd note, this is the second time in a row using Terminus where his feat did basically no good - stupid soulless Legion beasts.)

eThags and the shredder rush slows down a little bit - a full run will put them at charge range, and he really, really, really wants to get the charge off.  The skarlock and Terminus immolate a few shredders, with an assist from Rengrave.  Lot of pirates and Blackbanes run up, and basically turn themselves into undead tough speedbumps.

The shredder rush begins in earnest, though a ridiculous number of my undead make their tough rolls.  One lucky pirate made something like three tough rolls in a row, as eThags tried to kill him.  Obviously, this is a turn when eThags pops feat, and, at the end, I am down almost all of the Blackbanes (lost incorporeal when making free strikes, and totally worth it), and more than half of the revenant crew.  On my turn, I get back my revenant crew, and decide to just go for the assassination, since eThags is within charge range.

Terminus charges over 5 shredders (man, do I love flight!), and, thanks to his big honking sword of death, combined with Malediction, drops the blighted ogrun with focus to spare.

This one could have gone very badly for me.  Kenny concentrated a bit too much on the undead, and I made a lot more tough rolls than I had any right to make.  And, to be honest, if Terminus had failed to kill eThags, it would not have mattered what else I did that turn - eThags would have eaten my giant undead killing machine.

Relic Knights update, AdeptiCon too

So, despite my initial misgivings, I went in on the Relic Knights kickstarter.  The kickstarter ended a while ago, but they finally have the full pledge manager up, and I put in my pledge.  I had made more than I had expected for some of my old gaming stuff, so I went in for more than I probably really needed to have in order to play the game.

The final tally is going to be the Black Diamond, Speed Circuit and Noh sets, plus a couple of the extra bells and whistles.  I thought about picking the Paladins or Corsairs, but went with Noh as a third choice because they have fewer figs. I think the total is only about 70 figs or so anyway, but for some reason, 70 seemed more reasonable than 75 or 80. 

In other news, I managed to register for AdeptiCon next year.  I registered for a couple of Warmachine events, and the Malifaux Gaslight league.  AdepticCon requires everything to be painted to at least 3 color standard, and fully based.  I have 155 days to get everything done.  I think that, since the Hardcore is 1 army list only, I will not be using my Minions - Carver can fare very poorly against Lylyth lists, and Barnabas, while it counters Lylyth pretty well, is too pillow-fisted to deal with Gargossals and certain heavies.  So, I have to choose another faction, make an army or two, test them and paint them.  Plenty of time.

And paint some Malifaux figs as well.  Hopefully, my painting queue is kept to 100 figs or less.  But I have a hard deadline, and I intend to make it.

That did not go well

Hooray, another Vassal batrep - because I am too lazy to go paint right now*.

Got in another Vassal game last night against Clexis again.  We went with battleboxes, mainly to keep the game short.  pDenny versus pKaya, and it wound up being a short game.

pKaya has some nice movement shenanigans available to her, and a really high Def.  pDenny has a lot of arc nodes, and an ungodly feat.  But it was an ugly game - I just could not hit the broad side of barn, even on the turn when I popped pDenny's feat.  You would think that, with boosted dice, I could hit a 9 at least half the time, right?  Naah.

I called it, when it got down to a crippled Slayer (with left arm remaining), a crippled Deathripper (movement left, nothing else), a crippled Defiler (just movement), and pDenny, versus a wounded (but not badly) pKaya, an Argus, and the Feral.  We tried a couple of theorymachining, just to see if I could survive another turn and win, and pretty much any victory condition for me relied on dice rolls that were much less likely than a horse winning the Kentucky Derby after dropping dead in the starting gate.

Fun game, as always.  I can't say that I learned much from it - I think my dice (well, Vassal dice) just were not on my side last night, and there is only so much you can do about that.  I did not bank on a lot of luck for anything that I was doing, just getting average dice rolls, and, for the most part, they were not forthcoming. 

I"m not blaming dice, per se, but when you have a couple of turns of "OKay, I have Focus 7, need to hit a 16 with the arced venom, I need 9s.  I boost, miss.  Buy another one, boosting.  Miss.  Okay then."  there is only so much you can do.  I got outplayed for part of it, and, I think, on average rolls, I still would have lost, but it would have been a much closer game.  As it was, he had me cold, and we both knew it.






* Actually, this is not true.  But I registered for AdeptiCon yesterday, and I want to spend a day or two thinking about army lists before I jump into a painting project, so I am not doing much painting until then.