Cory and I were waiting around for everyone else to show up last night, so we decided to play a 35 point game. I aplogize to Cory and Kevin for playing so slow since they had a game planned ahead of time. I didn’t think Kevin would be there as early as he was and I didn’t think the game would go on so long. Perhaps I should start trying to stick to the 7 – 10 minute turns in Hardcore or something.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
This week was supposed to be the “finale” for the first leg of the Shattered Grounds league. There was suppoed to be a drawing for a gift card and a coin given out for the winner of the league. Since Joel had played and won the most games, he was likely to be declared the winner, but Phil never showed up to present it to him. At the end of the night, Justin won the gift card. Joel and Justin had just finished playing a game with Fiona fighting Nemo. Fiona won through a pretty cool trick using the Togash Mark spell.
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). Read the rest of this entry »
Below are two battle reports for the game that is “The New, but Old Hotness”, Warmachine. I’m really enjoying playing this game again, like I did back in 2003 (or was it ’04?), which is pretty awesome considering I came to a point where I hated playing the 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.
Read the rest of this entry »
I know, I know, it’s been a long time since I posted here. Honestly, I’ve been working on a web site for gamers here in Central Indiana and have neglected this blog for a while.
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.
Well, this was my first game using the official MkII rules. Joel and I decided to play 35 points with him using Fiona. I think he thought I might bring the Cryx instead of Khador, but I had enough stuff ready to go (assembly-wise anyway).
A shipment from across the sea, which I assumed had gotten lost forever showed up at my door the other day, adding to the collection of Khador stuff I’d acquired to replace it. I spent a good part of the weekend replacing the spears on the Iron Fang Pikemen with brass rod, which is a lot more painstaking than it sounds. I also spent several hours stripping paint from many of the models I received over the last week or two.
Here’s what I’ve got now:
I don’t seem to do well with turn by turn battle reports, so I’ll just try to give the gist of what happened.
In my previous post, I listed the army list I was going to be using. Here is Joel’s list:
With a lack of much else to do on our weekly Thursday gaming, Joel and I decided to play Warmachine Mk II. The rules seem to be good so far, so there’s no real reason not to give them another go. This time, instead of 25 pts, we’re bumping the level up to 35 points. He’ll be playing Fiona, Alexia, a Mangler and some Pirate ‘jacks and units.
My list will look like this:
Now that I know what some of Magnus’ spells do and with the effectiveness of Orin (who I expect will get a lot of attention from Joel’s army due to last game’s results), I hope to do much better this time. I swapped out the Nomad for a Mule just to get some more ranged attack action since last time his Freebooter(?) kept lobbing AOEs into my troops.
To really make my army choices complete, I need 4 more Halberdiers and a full unit of Devil Dogs, but I am at a point right now that I’m not sure I want to invest more cash in Warmachine. We’ll see what happens the more I play.
Joel and I have both gotten pretty excited about the new Warmachine rules. I think it’s not so much that the rules are so much better, but just that it’s the “new hotness”. I’ve always felt like the enjoyment of all tabletop games is based on your opponent and his/her attitude. With Warmachine, for some odd reason, I’ve found this is particularly true maybe because of the Page 5 syndrome or maybe just that it’s very combo-based and caters to people who are very competitive. So, hearing that a lot of the really competitive players are leaving the game due to the new rules actually makes me want to play it more. In either case, I purchased a lot on eBay that included Magnus the Traitor and several ‘jacks and a couple of units of infantry solely for trying out the new rules.
Here’s the list I used:
Joel brought:
For the most part, I am ambivalent about the way points are done now. It sounds kinda silly saying, “Let’s play 25 points.”, but really it doesn’t seem to matter. At the same time, I think saying one ‘jack at 6 points is the same as another ‘jack at 6 points is a little weird.
Neither of us had played the MKI rules in quite some time, but I had played more often than Joel. I won the deployment roll and had him deploy and go first.
The first turn saw us each move our models forward, but no combat took place. Alexia created a Thrall Warrior. It turns out we forgot to make her roll a skill test to do that. Oh well.
The next turn, Joel moved his stuff forward more.He fired the Mariner’s AOE attack and killed a few Steelheads who passed their command check. On my second turn, the Nomad charged and killed the Thrall Warrior. After measuring, it turns out he could have reached the Mangler. Orin Midwinter cast his Lightning Stroke into the Sea Dogs, killing four of them (Nice!). The Renegade tried to take a long shot to hit Fiona on a hill with the Obliterator and failed to hit her or anyone else. Steelheads charged the Buccaneer and did little to no damage.
Third turn, the Mariner fired again using MacNaile’s Double Powder Ration and targeted the Mangler. He did some damage to the Mangler disabling his movement. His Mangler attempted to Slam the Nomad in an effort to take out Orin, but failed the to hit roll. The Buccaneer Netted my Mangler as well. Foina popped her feat making all my attack and damage rolls one less die – harsh!. The Nomad tried to do damage to his Mangler and failed for the most part. Orin took out the two Thrall Warriors attacking my Mangler.
On the fourth turn, Fiona attempted to assassinate Magnus, doing only 7 points of damage. My mangler died as did my Nomad. On my turn, Magnus kept all his focus, knocked Fiona down with the Mechanical Arm and sliced her up with Foehammer.
All in all, a very fun game. The new rules make things a little less confusing like how terrain affects charges and what happens when a ‘jack’s system is disabled, among other things. I like the game a little bit more now. I’ll definitely be playing it again.
Back when this season of the Warmachine league began, Phil asked the group if he could borrow someone’s army since he wanted to do something other than Menoth for a change. I offered up my Cryx since I play a lot less anymore. Last night, I had to play against my own army with my Skorne.
His List:
495 points
My List:
497 points
Now, to defend myself a little bit here, I haven’t played any Warmachine or Hordes in quite a while plus I’ve never used Zaal at all.
I really liked the potential Zaal had for working with infantry and, had I assembled my second unit of Praetorians, I would have used them instead of maybe the Gladiator or something. I also picked up the Agonizer to use in this game, but after reading his abilities and seeing they all have to do with enemy warbeasts (of which Phil had none), he allowed me to proxy a Drake as my second Ancestral Guardian (which is still in a blister at home).
The game was really good. I never really felt like it was too one-sided, which is what I expected going into this. Phil pretty much neutralized one of my Ancestral Guardians through the use of the Pistol Wraith’s chain attack. As was pointed out later that night, I should have just killed the Ancestral Guardian off myself to activate the Kovass. Never having played against the Pistol Wraiths myself, but having used them many times, I had no idea how to kill them. Now, though, I do have some ideas. Phil’s Seether seemed to do pretty well until the Titan charged it, disabled it, and then chucked it. The Mechanithralls held him down afterwards, though. I had thought it would be a good idea to cast Hollow on the Praetorians in order to keep them alive and to keep them from fleeing, but as Phil pointed out, the Ancestral Guardians then get no soul tokens. Good point. I learned a lot from that game both in better ways to use my Skorne and to see someone who knows the game well play the Cryx. In either case, I think my next game will go much better.
After all this I am now jonesing to paint my Skorne instead of my Bretonnians, especially since the yellow I’m wanting to use on the Brets is pissing me off.
