Anyway…this game was my second for the Blasted Heath league. I won a 4 player King of the Hill game the previous week against Joel, Cory and Jim.

I won the roll, so I had him deploy first. His army looked something like this:

• Adeptis Rahn Shyeel
• Phoenix
• Dawnguard Sentinels (Leader and 9 Grunts)
• Dawnguard Sentinel Officer & Standard
• House Shyeel Battle Mages (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Mage Hunter Strikeforce (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Mage Hunter Commander
• Arcanist
• House Shyeel Magister
• Mage Hunter Assassin
• Narn, Mage Hunter of Ios

The board had two forests on either side of a river crossing the middle of the board horizontally and two hills on either side as well.

Phoenix was all the way to my right, then the Sentinels front and center, behind them were the Battle Mages, Arcanist, and Magister. To their left was Narn and the Assassin followed by the Mage Hunters. Of course, the Advance Deploy stuff was further forward.

My list looked like this:

• Kaya the Moonhunter & Laris
• Gorax
• Feral Warpwolf
• Pureblood Warpwolf
• Druids of Orboros (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Druid of Orboros Overseer
• Shifting Stones
• Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew (Leader and 1 Grunt)
• Lord of the Feast

I fear the Mage Hunters because I thought they could get around my stealthy tricks and forests (the latter turned out to be correct, but not the former), so I deployed most of my stuff (Kaya, Laris, Shifting Stones, Pureblood, Feral, Gorax and Swamp Gobbers) in or near a forest in my left corner. The Druids and Lord deployed in the forest on my far right.

Per the usual, I don’t remember what happened each turn (maybe I need to bring a notebook or something), so I’ll just go over the highlights. In the early parts of the game, the Assassin owned the Lord of the Feast without him having done anything. Narn cleaned house for most of the game, finishing off a Gorax and eventually (spoiler alert!), epic Kaya. At one point, Kaya made three separate attacks against the Magister, needing only 7s and rolled no better than 5. This was the theme of most of my die rolls in this game, except later in the game when the Feral Warpwolf trampled through some infantry to reach Rahn. All the free strikes against him missed thanks to Forced Evolution. He made two boosted attack rolls and didn’t boost damage, missing killing Rahn by 2 points. Kaya then fell the following turn after being chased around the previous turns by Narn and a few other models.

Cory ended up winning the game, and what an awesome game it was! It was a very close game in the end, but I still feel he had me on the ropes pretty early with Narn and the Assassin running around killing my models. Cory is a really good player who is not too competitive, but competitive enough to kick your ass when it counts.

Brian and I decided to play a 35-point refresher game (for him) with his brand new Menoth models. I changed my list up just a tad by bringing the Great Bears of Gallowswood and resisted the urge to bring the Behemoth instead of the Destroyer (and some other things).

His list:

My list:

We rolled off for terrain deployment and rolled off for who went first. I decided to have Brian go first.

First turn was just him moving his models forward. Templar was to my far left, next to the Bastions. The Deliverers and Feora were to the right of them, with Feora taking shelter partially behind the Bastions and Deliverers. The Daughters moved behind a high wall in the center of the table and were mostly out of line-of-sight, but across half the board. The Vanquisher and both Paladins of the Order of the Wall were on the right. The Deliverers tried to fire a few shots into my group and managed o kill a Widowmaker. Feora put up the wall of fire in the center in front of the Bastions. My turn, I moved everything forward, paying special attention to where the Daughters were. I moved the IFP forward, but did not use the “mini-feat” and placed the Old Witch in their midst to prevent the Daughters from getting in contact with her. Of course, I cast Iron Flesh on the IFP, as always. Widowmakers took a few pot-shots at the Deliverers and might have been in range of and killed one. The destroyer tried to shoot a Paladin and deviated into the Vanquisher, which took no damage. The other models merely moved forward.

Second turn, again most of his models just moved forward. The Daughters charged the one Widowmaker on the edge of the woods and did not kill her. Deliverers took a few shots and managed to do some damage to the Kodiak. The wall of fire was placed in front of my Manhunter and Great Bears, protecting the Bastions. In my turn the Manhunter tried charging through the wall of Fire to get to a Bastion, but caught on fire and died. Man, POW 12 hurts!! The Great Bears charged the Templar, barely missing the wall themselves. The two that got in contact did a lot of damage, taking out the cortex and nearly removing the right arm. The Widowmakers took a few shots at the Templar and finished off the arm. The Destroyer tried again to damage the Paladins and failed. The Kodaik trampled the lone Widowmaker in contact with the Daughters and a few of their number, only managing to kill the Widowmaker. The IFP charged the Daughters, killing only one of them. The IFP officer ordered the Defensive Formation and had a few members engage the Vanquisher and place all of them in Shield Wall. Scrapjack moved around to the right of this setup to get lined up with the Deliverers.

Third turn the Bastions charge the Kodiak and attack one of the Great Bears. The Kodiak gets hurt pretty badly, but the Great Bear survives. Paladins charge the Destroyer and one does a whopping 15 points of damage and the other does 10! Daughters leave combat with the IFP to engage The Old Witch. They do little to no damage. Feora attempts to burn all the IFP in front of the Vanquisher to get him disengaged by the IFP, but manages to kill all but one of them. Feora pops her feat, setting all but two Great Bears and The Old Witch on fire. I think the Deliverers fired into the Widowmakers, killing all of them. On my turn, I rolled for all my Fire continuous effects, thinking I was going to lose a lot on this. In the end, I lost three IFP and one of the Great Bears took a point or two of damage. Scrapjack charged into the Deliverers and killed one or two of them to clear a spot for Old Witch. Old Witch uses Unseen Path to teleport next to Scrapjack and attacks Feora with a boosted attack roll that hits. Boosted damage only does 3 points. I figured my goose was cooked at this point. Old Witch’s second attack is boosted to hit and does. Boosted damage rolls TRIPLE SIXES to barely finish Feora! Holy moly! How epic!!

I kinda felt bad beating Brian in a refresher game, but he was cool with it. As always, Brian is a great opponent and Warmachine is over and over, proving to be a great game!

Last Wednesday I finally had the opportunity to play Dave in a game of Warmachine. Up until then, I think we’d only played a couple of games of Legend of the Five Rings and a “demo” game of Uncharted Seas. We decided on 50 points for this game as I wanted to test out my Old Witch list that I made up and started painting over the last few weeks. This being my second ever game of Warmachine using Khador, I figured I’d probably lose badly. Dave has been playing Retribution over hte last little while and seems to be enjoying them and had yet to play against Khador with them.

His list went something like this:

• Adeptis Rahn Shyeel
• Gorgon
• Hydra
• Phoenix
• Dawnguard Invictors (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Dawnguard Invictor Officer & Standard
• House Shyeel Battle Mages (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Mage Hunter Strikeforce (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Mage Hunter Commander
• Stormfall Archers (Leader and 3 Grunts)
• Arcanist
• Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios
• Mage Hunter Assassin

My list:

• Zevanna Agha, the Old Witch of Khador
• Destroyer
• Kodiak
• War dog
• Greylord Ternion
• Iron Fang Pikemen (Leader and 9 Grunts)
• Iron Fang Pikemen Officer & Standard
• Kossite Woodsmen (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Widowmakers
• Man-o-war Kovnik
• Berserker
• Manhunter
• Widowmaker Marksman

Dave had the table already set up by the time I arrived. He used lots of terrain, which I like. The center was dominated by a ruined building with a forest inside, there were his on either side of the table with a forest or two near each deployment zone.

As usual, I don’t remember all the details, but here are some highlights. Manhunter does nothing as he leaves the safety of the forest and gets shot to death. The Greylords nearly wipe out a unit of Mage Hunters with sprays and the Ternion ends up losing one of the three to the Battle Mages. The Kodaik nearly gets wrecked by the Phoenix. Kovnik gets charged by the Mage Hunter Assassin and survives with 2 boxes left. The Widowmakers pick off a few Invictors. The IFP move up the center with Weald Secrets on them and get owned by the Stormfall Archers setting them on fire. The Widowmakers get in the way of the Berserker charging the Phoenix. The Kossite Woodsmen show up behind the Battle Mages and kill all but one of them. The Destroyer works on the Gorgon, but fails to do much. The Berserker gets charged by the Hydra. In the final turn, Scrapjack uses Avatar of Slaughter to go through a bunch of his troops to end up in front of Rahn. The Old Witch uses Unseen Path to be placed next to Rahn and proceeds to attack. She does some decent damage but fails to kill on rolling triple-ones for damage. In return, Rahn attacks the Old Witch, leaving her with 8 boxes prior to his last attack. Dave decides to boost the attack and then damage to kill her.

A really great game, where I felt like I did a pretty decent job of making him work for his victory. Dave is a really awesome opponent who is cool helping out people who may not know all the rules inherently.

Thursday I played another Warmachine game using the Old Witch. This time against Joel’s Mercenaries. We’d agreed on 35 points for this one.

His list:

• Fiona the Black
• Mangler
• Mariner
• Long Gunner Infantry (Leader and 9 Grunts)
• Sea Dog Crew (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• First Mate Hawk
• Lord Rockbottom
• Master Gunner Dougal MacNaile
• Rutger Shaw
• Taryn di la Rovissi

My list:

• Zevanna Agha, the Old Witch of Khador
• Destroyer
• Kodiak
• War dog
• Iron Fang Pikemen (Leader and 9 Grunts)
• * Iron Fang Pikemen Officer & Standard
• Kossite Woodsmen (Leader and 5 Grunts)
• Widowmakers
• Manhunter

The real action in this game didn’t happen until much later in the game where the Kodiak charged the Mariner standing toe-to-toe with my final IFP a few inches in from the two lines of Long Gunners. The thought was to do his Smash and Grab to throw the Mariner into the Long Gunners and hopefully kill a few. The first attack worked fine, the second whiffed when I didn’t boost to hit ( I was saving one in case I felt the need to boost damage on someone else). The following turn, the Kodiak managed to wreck the Mariner instead. In the final turn, the Scrapjack mowed through seven Long Gunners, opening things up for the Old Witch. The Old Witch used Unseen Path to teleport next to Fiona and kill her.

Another really fun game and I feel like I’m starting to learn my Khador army pretty well. I look forward to playing again, hopefully in the Shattered Grounds league up at the Game Preserve – Keystone.

I’ve been mostly working on getting a 50-point army for Khador in Mark II Warmachine painted, just so I can play a fully-painted army for once! I also picked up Wood Elves to more or less replace my Ogres as my Warhammer Fantasy army of choice. I even sculpted my own Treeman! This weekend I picked up the Blood Angels codex for Warhammer 40K to replace the Catachan army I started a few months ago. Something about painting a ton of those models really bothered me.

As for the Gallery, I have added the Warmachine models I’ve painted so far. Check them out here.

Two days prior to the tournament, I kinda had a thought that my only real option for coming out of the tournament with any real kind of recognition was to have a fully-painted army (since I play Ogres and would be playing against some tournament-level players), so I began painting my Butcher. I finished painting him the morning of the tournament. I think he came out pretty well.

In either case, the tournament was set to start at 11:30am, but we started at about 12 or 12:30pm since some people were supposed to be showing up.

Here is the army list I ran:

• Bruiser (Sword Gnoblar, Luck Gnoblar, Gnoblar Thiefstones x2, Great Weapon, Heavy Armor)
• Butcher (Bangstick, Dispel Scroll, Tooth Gnoblar x2)
• Bulls x3 (Additional Hand Weapon, Bellower)
• Bulls x3 (Additional Hand Weapon, Bellower)
• Ironguts x3 (Bellower)
• Ironguts x3 (Bellower)
• Gnoblar Trappers x8

997 points

The first round, I was paired versus Bill Favorite and his Orcs & Goblins. First turn saw my Bruiser + Ironguts unit shot at by bolt throwers, causing a Panic check, which they failed on an 11. One of his spell casters had a miscast and died as a result. My first turn, the Ironguts + Bruiser unit failed to rally and ran off the table. The game was not starting off well for me and I do admit to being a pretty bad sport about it. The rest of the game was my Ogres trying to make it across the table to engage his units. My second Ironguts unit was charged by Night Goblins three times and in most combats, my Ogres killed one or two in each round. Finally, the Ironguts + Butcher failed a Break test, ran, and were caught by the Goblins. In the end, he killed every model I had on the table while I managed to remove a bolt thrower or two and a Snotling Pump Wagon. Normally, I don’t like to blame losses on terrible die rolling, but in this case, it seemed the dice wanted to “put me in my place”.

Second round I got the “bye” and played Sean with his Tomb Kings. My luck had totally turned around for me in this game. The benefit of having his shooting being mostly nullified by my high-enough toughness and the fact that I felt like I was playing more tactically saw me wipe his whole army in the end. He spent several turns trying to kill off my Gnoblar Trappers with a full unit of 10 archers, but only managed to kill one or two a turn. The Chariots tried charging a unit of Bulls a few times, where I remembered that I have the option to flee. A flank charge from the Ironguts + Bruiser wiped them out. I ended up getting a pretty decent victory out of that one.

Third round, I played against one of the other players’ sister, Sarah. She was also playing Tomb Kings. I got the feeling from having watched the end of one of her games that she was a pretty new player, so I tried to make sure to be as open as possible about how the Ogres worked before we started playing. The main highlights of this game was her chariots charging some Ironguts + Butcher and having Righteous Smiting do no damage whatsoever as well as having their impact hits do very little. In the end, the Ironguts + Bitcher managed to remove the chariot from beneath the Tomb Prince, but the chariots ended up winning combat later anyway. The Bruiser + Ironguts moved down the flank along with some Bulls to wipe the unit of archers, Carrion and eventually the Screaming Skull Catapult. Another unit of Bulls wiped the second unit of archers and tried to catch the other two characters, but only managed to kill one of them.

After that, results were announced and I came in 6th place. Pretty respectable for the ol’ Ogres. I did end up winning for best painted and had 15 “points” to spend.

A very well-run and enjoyable tournament. Most everyone I played against was very friendly and I had fun playing them. I big thanks goes out to Sean for running the tournament and Games To Die For for hosting it.

The awesome thing was that Jim had shown up that morning to play 40K, which is what usually happens on Saturdays at the store. He saw we were setting up for a Warhammer Fantasy tournament and he decided to throw his Daemons in the mix. I believe he came in 8th.

His list:

• Sheik Araoui Ibn Khalid, Khaliman Diplomat
• Sorhna Oracle
• Malikh Jaraya
• Malikh Jaraya
• Suleman Ghulam
• Malikh Tuareg
• Malikh Meharist

My list:

• Tamel’Seh Far Eye
• Crow Thunder-Warrior
• Auroch Totem-Warrior
• Auroch Totem-Warrior
• Wolf Thunder-Warrior
• Toad Thunder-Warrior
• Toad Thunder-Warrior

Scenario: Jin posts.

Per the usual, I don’t remember all the details of the game, but for me it was mostly a refresher anyway. I did lose to Joel’s Khaliman and his superior tactics. The Meharist is one quick mutha and was able to take control of one of the Jin Posts very early and then come support the effort at the middle Jin post later on. We finished at 9pm rather than from playing a certain number of turns, unfortunately, as one of my Auroch Totem Warriors was in charge range of his Sheik.

I do still like Alkemy as a game, but the lack of releases makes it difficult to make it anywhere near the top of my gaming list. However, if anyone asks me to play, I’d be more than willing to do so.

His list:

• Fiona
• Press Gangers (min)
• Sea Dogs (max)
• Dirty Meg
• Mariner
• First Mate Hawk
• Lord Rockbottom
• Master Gunner Dougal MacNaile

My list:

• Sorscha
• Destroyer
• Juggernaut
• Kodiak
• Iron Fang Pikemen (max)
• Iron Fang Pikemen Officer & Standard Bearer
• Greylord Ternion
• Widowmakers

(looks like I went over by 2!)

I won deployment and had him go first. Not a whole lot happened on his turn. He moved most of his stuff down the middle, with the Mariner, Dougal and Meg moving more or less down my left flank. His Mangler seemed to be keeping to my right. My turn, I merely moved up and I think I tried firing the Destroyer’s bombard into the Sea Dogs, but it missed. Sorscha, Juggernaut and Kodiak moved around his right flank while the Destroyer, IFP and Greylords moved down the middle with the Widowmakers hiding in the woods on his left (after I realized they have Advance Deployment!).

His next turn he tried Influencing several of my IFP to attack each other and managed to kill just one. The Mariner fired on the Juggernaut, causing minor damage. Sorscha was on the edge of the woods on his right flank and took some pretty serious damage. The Juggernaut got Stalled by Meg. Fiona did her feat. The Widomakers managed to kill one or two Sea Dogs, the Ternion reduced the defense of the Mangler by 4, the IFP charged the Mangler and some Sea Dogs, damaging it pretty seriously and killing several of them. The Destroyer fired into the Sea Dogs, killing more of them and they fled. The Kodiak charged the Mariner, causing some damage.

The third turn, Joel set the Juggernaut on fire (while still Stalled) and moved some Press Gangers into the woods where Sorscha was hiding. He then used one of them as an arc node to kill Sorscha. Unfortunately, the wound roll on her was not enough to kill her. In my half of the turn, Sorscha moved up, did her feat and attempted to damage Fiona. The Kodiak left combat with the now-frozen Mariner and squished Fiona to finish the game.

Of course, there may be some places where I got things in the wrong order above, but that was the gist of what happened. As usual, it was a really good game and it was refreshing to play a different faction from Cryx.

Here’s what I’ve got now:

• Butcher (still in blister)
• Sorcha (variant; assembled)
• Sorcha (disassembled)
• Vlad (assembled)
• Karchev (still in box)
• Old Witch & Scrapjack (assembled and primed)
• Kodiak (assembled and primed)
• Kodiak (assembled)
• Kodiak (in the Simple Green vat)
• Juggernaut x2 (assembled)
• Destroyer (mostly assembled)
• Battle Mechaniks x4 (disassembled)
• Doom Reavers x6 (disassembled and need work)
• Greylord Ternion x3 (disassembled)
• Greylord Ternion x3 (assembled and primed)
• Iron Fang Pikemen x10 (assembled; spears replaced with brass rod)
• Iron Fang Pikemen x6 (disassembled)
• Iron Fang Pikemen Officer and Standard (assembled and primed)
• Iron Fang Pikemen Officer and Standard (disassembled)
• Kossite Woodsmen x6 (still in box)
• Man O War Demolition Corps x5 (disassembled and stripped)
• Man O War Shocktroopers x2 (disassembled)
• Widowmakers x4 (assembled)
• Winter Guard x6 (assembled)
• Man O War Kovnik (assembled and primed; missing flag)
• Man O War Kovnik (disassembled)

This all adds up to about 80 points, if I played it all at the same time. There are a few things I want to still get, like models to build up the Winter Guard to full and add the unit attachments and a War Dog, but those are low priority until I get more of this stuff assembled and painted and I play the game more. I also still need to pick up the MkII rulebook.

Here’s the list he used to my recollection:

• Vampire w/an item that lets him keep a dispel die from the previous turn to use as a power die
• 10 Skeletons w/full command and some banner that makes their unit strength twice their normal number
• 10 Grave Guard
• 10 Crypt Ghouls
• 3 Cairn Wraiths
• The Vampire had the spells Raise Dead and Invocation

My list:

• Bruiser w/great weapon, heavy armor, Gnoblar Thiefstone x2
• Bulls x4 w/additional hand weapon and bellower
• Ironguts x3 w/bellower
• Gnoblar Fighters x20
• Gnoblar Trappers x8
• Leadbelchers x2 w/bellower

Having played a partial game the previous week versus John and his VC, I knew he’d be raising units in front of me so I couldn’t charge his good units, which I thought would hinder me pretty badly. In this game, he did that three times and two of the three, I was able to overrun into another unit. The Leadbelchers did little except to distract his Grave Guard, which worked in my favor more than I though it would. In the end, the unit of Ironguts with my Bruiser managed to get into combat with the Vampire and his Skeletons. The Vampire, having higher initiative struck first and whiffed on all of his attacks. The 3 attacks from my Irongut in contact with him took him down. The other Ironguts managed to kill a bunch of Skeletons, but they didn’t go away. I thought the Cairn Wraiths would have been a big issue since I didn’t have any magic weapons, but I managed to hold them up enough to keep them out of the way until the very end. They did, however, run down the Bulls after winning combat. There were a couple of instances where I might have gotten a multi-charge on one of his units, but because my Ogre units were 4 wide, they would have run into other enemies beforehand. Oh well.

I will admit one thing, though: I forgot the Leadbelchers can’t fire every turn, so I might have killed a couple less Grave Guard than the 8 or so they did kill over the course of the game. What they did do, though, is keep the Grave Guard facing them instead of engaging one of my other units. I’ll be making a Reload counter or something to remember this rule.

It was a very good game and I’m feeling much better about the Ogres. I need to get better with them, which will be easier as the league gets bigger.

• Tyranid Hive Tyrant
• Tyranid Tyrant Guard
• Tyranid Warriors (improved!)
• Tyranid Genestealers
• Tyranid Zoanthrope
• Tyranid Lictor
• Ogre Kingdoms Bulls
• Ogre Kingdoms Ironguts

Enjoy!