We arrived Thursday night and picked up our pre-registered badges. those who were among the first 1,000 received a random Warmachine plastic battle box in their swag bag. I think the best thing I got in mine was the painting magazines, which it seemed everyone got.

Friday we walked around the convention area to check out all the craziness. The 40K hall was packed and I saw a number of pretty awesome army displays. I went to check out the Forgeworld booth and discovered a line nearly out of the door. Later, we went to the Warhammer Fantasy area. They also had a number of display boards that clearly took a lot of work and talent to create. eventually, Dominic and I checked in at the Privateer Press area for the Eternal War (Iron Arena?) event. We played one game against each other wherein the Circle emerged victorious. Dominic then played against a Cygnar player from Texas (I believe) where he eventually lost. The original plan was to return from dinner and play more games, but we ended up just hanging out watching MenothJohn (from Lost Hemisphere Radio) go up against a Farrow army. Sometime during that day we also went to the Games Workshop Battle Bunker. Honestly, I was not that impressed. There were tons of tables they use for their events, but the store area was just like any other LGS that carries their products.

Saturday morning was the Warmachine Team Tournament. Matt “Cheaty” Beaty was my teammate with his Retribution army lead by ravyn. We checked in around 8:15am and began round 1 near 9:30am. Game #1 was against a Circle (eKaya)/Cryx (Mortenebra) team. The only eventful thing (other than both our casters getting killed) was Matt’s Mage Hunter Assassin coming from waaaaay downtown to assassinate Mortenebra. Oh, and my mistake in having the Feral attack the now inert Deathjack. Game #2 was aganst a Cygnar (Seige)/Cryx (Deneghra) team. Matt and I came close to winning by control points, but I ended up putting Kaya out too far, which got her killed. Ravyn got done in a bit later right before the turn we probably would have gotten our 3rd control point. Game #3 was against a Skorne combo army (Xerxes and Mordikaar). This one was lost from the word “go”. I don’t think we had enough anti-infantry to deal with all of them, especially resurrecting Eviscerators and Cetrati with Defender’s Ward. I did manage to get my Shadowhorn behind his lines to throw Molik Karn back toward their deployment zone to land on the Shaman. Game #4 was against a Khador (eVlad)/Cryx (Terminus) team. There was nothing eventful here other than the Mage Hunter Assassin surviving a number of attacks from Bane Thralls. All the games were good games and our opponents were all really very cool. THough I do have to say the number of Cryx players seemed a bit high. I know a Cryx army won the Hardcore tournament the day previous. Our friends on another team won their first two, but lost the last ones. Our team’s army was at least considered for best painted, but was beaten out by a Skorne/Legion army that did look pretty good. We eventually made it over to the bits trading area where Dominic was looking for some Trollblood models for a new army and teamup with me for Gen Con. Almost immediately he found someone and he purchased some models from him. The rest of the night was pretty much discussions about the Trollblood team for Gen Con.

Sunday we all got packed up and made one last visit to the different areas of the convention. I was finally able to hit the Forgeworld booth and pick up a con-only Chaos Dwarf for a friend in Canada. We passed through the Warmachine area and watched a game being played in the Championships (I believe); eDoomshaper vs. eThagrosh. The game ended up going to time and both sides had taken heavy losses. Before leaving, we saw something I don’t think I’ve ever seen: a guy on the verge of tears apparently as a result of something that happened in one of his games. One of the Privateer Press employees was trying to calm him down and Jen, the woman who runs the Press Ganger group walked away saying she’d never seen it before either. It was all very surreal.

The ride back was uneventful other than Dominic and I talking about doing the Trollblood teamup for Gen Con. Nothing concrete was decided for my side, but he’s set on a beast-heavy list with eDoomshaper.

Anyway, here are a few pics I took. More can be found in the Gallery.

Let’s see…I played Brian a few weeks ago where he played pKreoss versus my eKaya at 35 points. It was a good game, except I think I cheated him toward the end. I had used Kaya’s feat to get up close to Kreoss with most of my army. Kreoss popped his feat, knocking all my dudes down. Kreoss and others attempted to kill Kaya, but she kept transferring damage to a Stalker until he died. Where it turns out I cheated was reaving the fury from the Stalker, giving Kaya more fury to allow more transfers of damage.

I played Mike using Kromac since I wanted to try to even the odds since I don’t know Kromac all that well. He ran pVlad along with Widowmakers, a Manhunter, Kodiak, Berserker, a Destroyer and a War Dog. Mike’s dice were against him the whole game. Tharn Ravagers held up A Kodiak most of the game and the rest of my army had Vlad on the run fairly early. I ended up winning, but I still feel the biggest contributor to his loss was his dice.

This past Tuesday I played a team game with my Adepticon teammate, Matt (Retribution), versus Dominic (Protectorate) and Greg (Khador) in a Killbox scenario. We played where the team as a whole had 15 minutes to complete their turns and played their turns individually. The problem each team had was that the first player on each team usually took up more than half the time, leaving the second player a much shorter turn. The only player to lose their caster was Matt since he used Rayvn(?) to wipe out the Great Bears who were on the Retribution’s front lines. Kaya only had 4 hit points left when we broke up the game as a few of us had to take off. I have a feeling that since Feora nor Irusk had taken no damage at this point, Kaya was next to kick the bucket and give them the victory.

I am really enjoying playing Hordes with my fully painted eKaya army as it relieves the tension of feeling like I need to put more work into building up the models and get painting done. I’ll probably assemble and paint my Argus and War Wolf at the very least since they were birthday gifts from my awesome wife.

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.

Hordes Blackclad Wayfarer - Front

The other day while in my FLGS, I picked up the newest issue of No Quarter with the intent of checkng out the stats of one of the new Minion Warlock Rorsh and Brine. In the course of flipping through the pages, I noticed they had pictures from the Gen Con 2008 Privateer Press Grand Master Painting Competition. On the bottom right corner of the Warrior models Honorable Mentions is my Blackclad Wayfarer! I just about had a fit of joy over this. I immediately bought the magazine, which I wasn’t originally planning on doing so I could show my wife and friends.

It’s the first time I’ve had the joy of seeing my name in print on a national level. It’s a pretty awesome feeling, too!! It definitely makes me want to continue to participate in painting competitions like this in the future. I think next year I’ll submit an entry for Warlock/Beast using Rorsh and Brine.

His List:

• Warwitch Deneghra
• Seether
• Deathripper (x3)
• Pistol Wraith (x2)
• Mechanithralls (x7) + Brute Thrall
• Bile Thralls (x6)
• Skarlock

495 points

My List:

• Supreme Aptimus Zaal
• Ancestral Guardian (x2)
• Titan Gladiator
• Cyclops Savage (x2)
• Paingiver Beast Handlers (x6)
• Praetorian Swordsmen (x10)

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.

Warmachine: Basic Deneghra Assassin List:

• Warwitch Deneghra
• Deathripper x3
• Skarlock
• Pistol Wraith
• Bile Thralls x8
• Mechanithralls x9

349 points, 14 VPs

Hordes: Basic Morghoul List:

• Master Tormentor Morghoul
• Basilisk Drake
• Basilisk Krea
• Ancestral Guardian
• Paingiver Beast Handlers x5
• Praetorian Swordsmen x10

345 points, 14 VPs

I’m not real sure how I feel about the Hordes list; I just didn’t want to use the Starter box plus extras, I wanted it to be something different. The Warmachine list I’ve played something very similar many times. It’s fun for me and my opponent because I go for the Warcaster kill, but I’m not all that much of a tactical thinker, so my opponent has a chance to counter it.

Oh well. we’ll see how it goes.