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.

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.

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.