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.

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.

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.

In my previous post, I listed the army list I was going to be using. Here is Joel’s list:

• Fiona the Black
• Alexia Ciannor and 5x Risen
• Steelhead Halberdiers x6
• Sea Dogs x6
• Bucaneer
• Mariner
• Mangler
• Dougal MacNaile
• Bosun Grogspar
• Lady Aianna and Master Holt

I had originally thought Joel would try to focus on Orin Midwinter right from the start, but he really didn’t do that until later and when he did focus on him, he succeeded in killing him.

I lost the die roll for deployment so I ended up going first. He and I both just advanced our army on our first turn. Most things were doing a Run action. My strategy was to move forward to a certain point and stop waiting to see what Joel would do. I intentionally kept the Mangler back a bit with the intention of him becoming the hammer later in the game.

Probably the first combat was between our two units of Halberdiers. I think he killed a couple of mine, giving Alexia a couple of tokens to use for Risen his next turn. The Halberdier units each hung around for quite a while fighting each other and eventually my Mangler jumped into his unit and killed a few.

The Talon, guided by Meg, charged the Mangler and Stalled him a couple of times. The first time, he was able to get rid of it the following turn. The second time, however, he was unable to get rid of it. The Mangler did finally kill both the Talon and Dirty Meg. Luckily, they were able to distract the beast enough that it didn’t get into the bulk of my army.

I was trying my best to find a way to get a good shot off with the Mule, but that didn’t come until later. I ended up wasting my Obliterator shot from the Renegade on Alexia as I rolled two ones to hit. I should have at least boosted it.

The Vanguard charged and really put the hurt on the Mariner. The Mariner ended up with several disabled systems and didn’t do any damage to the Vanguard from that point forward.

The Renegade, after shooting his wad, so to speak, was trapped in a group of Risen so I ended up trampling through them and Alexia to clear the LOS for the Mule to take shots at Alexia.

The Mule did take some shots at Bosun Grogspar, who was base to base with Fiona and did end up dealing enough damage for him to need to make a Tough roll that Joel passed rolling a 6. the AOE did hit Fiona, but with a POW 8, it wasn’t going to be able to do much.

Twice in the game, Joel created and charged with Thrall Warriors into Magnus, doing little to no damage. Magnus killed off said Thrall pretty easily afterward.

In the end, Joel’s army had done 7 points of damage to Magnus and mine had done 0 damage to Fiona. Based on units and ‘jacks lost, I ended up losing the game. It was a good game that really could have ended up with a dead Magnus or a dead Fiona.

A few things I am finding with the game:

Alexia is still pretty powerful with enough infantry on the board. Just using them to screen or block LOS seems to be really good. She’s not near as bad as back in MK I, but still definitely worth taking and is a threat to the enemy.

AOEs, unless you are able to directly hit the thing you want dead, are pretty underpowered. Several times the POW 15 hit on models in base to base with Fiona would kill the one model it hit directly, but would fail to do any damage to anyone else.

Honestly, the more I play MK II the more I’m remembering why Warmachine is not my favorite game. For now, though, I’ll keep playing for fun when there’s not much else to do.

My list will look like this:

• Magnus, the Traitor
• Steelhead Halberdiers x6
• Stannis Brocker
• Mule
• Mangler
• Renegade
• Vanguard
• Dirty Meg with Talon Jack Marshalled
• Orin Midwinter

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.