Off to GenCon with the Legion of Everblight

Well, I've been painting like a maniac since the last post here, and I've not done too badly. First off, I simply finished my Warmongers, Raptors, Warmonger Warchief, Shepherds and a Forsaken. Then I built and painted a second Carnivean. Then I built and painted a third Carnivean. Then I built and painted Thagrosh the Messiah. I probably am not going to finish Absylonia, which is a shame, but I have to get up in 6 hours to fly to Indianapolis, so that's that I guess. Anyways, here are the pictures taken this afternoon in the backyard as I applied the Testors Dullcote to these fine fellows:










My GenCon shopping list is pretty small this year. The only must-have for me is Wyrd Miniature's new Nightmare and Lord Chompy Bits duo. I am also going to look at Cipher Studios releases for Hell Dorado, but mainly at the Augustinius Raimond figure for now. I'll be spending a bit of time at Cool Mini or Not and will probably pick up a couple of Enigma figures...well Dark Vlad for sure if they have it, and possibly Xargax before Loratham. Cool Mini or Not also has a giant eagle resin figure I want a closer look at...I can't tell from the picture what the rider looks like.

I'll be heading over to the Reaper booth as well. They are really a fine bunch over there, I must say, and I'll be looking to pick up a new Klocke Priestess sculpt called Tierdeleira.

Thunderbolt Mountain will be at GenCon (Yea!!!) and so I'll pop over to meet Tom Meier and John Kellner, and pick up a pack of Byzantine spearmen if they have them. I also am very interested in trying to get some news on where they are going with upcoming production. Such fine miniatures, just glorious!

I'll pop by the WarStore as well to say hi to Neal and his colleagues. I don't know what I'll be interested in picking up there but that's part of the fun of GenCon.

Last but not least, the Privateer Press booth. I'm signed up for three Warmachine/Hordes tournaments, so I won't have much time to buy swag. What I'd really like to do there this year is amble on over to watch Ron Kruzie and their other painters at work.

Practice Games - Practice List

Ah well, so much to do, so little time. Into St. John's for some pre-GenCon gaming with my list of many things, and I discovered I'll need medication (or perhaps electroshock) to play it in 7 minute turns. So it's back to the drawing board.

This is my initial deployment in my first game against an eDeneghra list played by Mark.

Things heated up on my right flank:


Then, things heated up on my left flank:


Then I lost. Mark is an excellent player, so losing to him is no great shock. But it has to be said that I was stupid and then I died.

Next game was against Mark again, this time (at my request) playing nSkarre. I decided to change my deployment strategy.


Mark changed his strategy as well...here are his full Satyxis Raiders with Witch attachment charging my jacks...oh, what fun. Is there a caster with overwatch neutron bomb strike available?


After the game I told Mark that playing his Skarre list felt like reading a Russian novel...I knew something bad was going to happen, especially if I got off the couch to do anything. Unfortunately, I got up off the couch. His first charge attack from a Satyxis Raider did 12 points of damage on my Spriggan! 12 points! + feedback. He hit both my jacks with another 5 charge attacks. And let me say that free strikes from Satyxis Raiders are not gentle taps either.

Initial conclusion - I must find my brain. Final conclusion - I need less models.

Here are Ken's heavy warbeasts...he is taking them to GenCon:

Another view of Ken's Circle army:


And here is Jason's gun line, ready to receive the attentions of their woodland foe.

Gen Con painting project

I painted the Widowmaker Marksman, an Ogrun Bokur and Reinholdt during a couple of sessions last week while I was vacationing down the coast. I haven't completely finished them...I'm going to put another flesh wash on the Ogrun, I've got to flock the bases and paint their edges black, and I will spray varnish them with Testors Dullcote on a dry day.

As far as problems go, the right ankle of the Widowmaker Marksman broke off when I was pushing it into the slotta base so I had to pin it back on. This is a design issue but no big deal as far as the modelling goes. The Ogrun Bokur is a fantastic model, one of the best in the entire Privateer Press range as far as I am concerned.

Here is the next iteration of my Gen Con Hardcore list. I am going to playtest it next week when I go into town for a week's vacation.

The Butcher of Khardov
Behemoth
Spriggan
War dog
Man-o-war Shocktroopers (Leader and 2 Grunts)
Man-o-war Shocktroopers (Leader and 2 Grunts)
Widowmakers (Leader and 3 Grunts)
Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios
Kell Bailoch
Man-o-war Drakhun (with dismount)
Ogrun Bokur
Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator
Widowmaker Marksman

The Soccer Wars

Holland, the dirtiest team to never win the World Cup.

It was clear what was going on. It was a coaching decision by the Dutchies to break up the Spanish verve by physical brutality. And it worked. By the second half many of the Spanish passes in the midfield were hurried and off target, giveaways they would never had made but for fear of injury. That's not to say they were cowards, but when you have a million euro professional salary there are limits to what you will sacrifice for your country in sport. And the Dutch coach, van Marwijk, knew his man in Webb. Those first two Spanish yellow cards were laughable equalizers for the much more serious Dutch misdemeanours that preceded them in turn.

Von Bommell was disgusting, a devil in orange. De Jong's foul on Alonso will be replayed for years and every controversial red card to come will be compared to the yellow he got.

After the match van Marwijk insisted his players stayed within the law. "It is not our style to commit horrible fouls, it is not our kind of football," he pleaded. He's obviously picking up where Tony Blair left off on Iraq's possession of WMD.

It would have been a scandal if the Dutch had won, but they played with such calculated violence it was a scandal they were there at all. Their defeat looks good on them.

Photograph: Daniel Ochoa de Olza/AP

A hero for our time

I have always admired Diego Maradona, the man who knows how to win - and how to tell his detractors that their arguments against him are arguments against God! Diego Maradona, long may your big jib draw.

Gaming weekend photographs

So here are a few more photographs, rescued from the waters of forgetfulness by Stu.

In the first two shots I am playing against Mark's Coven. Both pictures are taken at the high point of my game, say after my turn two. I have destroyed one of Mark's boneturkies with my Great Bears (isn't his Deathjack delovely?) and I have used the Spriggan's flares, followed by 3 Bombard shots and my Widowmakers doing their worst to kill over half of Mark's Satyxis Raiders, causing them to fail a morale check. It all went downhill from here for me, but I was happy for a moment, and what is life, after all, but the possibility of being happy for a moment or two?



Now this shot is the only one surviving from my Sorscha v. Kreugar game. First, let me say that I initially played Ken's Kreugar list using nVlad and that he assassinated me on turn two using a combination of a slam by a WarpWolf into one of my jacks, knocking Vlad down, followed by spell and shooting attacks to turn him into a crispy prince. It was a thing of beauty.

In the game against Sorscha Ken got a turn two attack in on me using his Lord of the Feast, which he warped into base contact with Sorscha using the Stones on the hill to the left. However, he then whiffed his rolls with the Lord of the Feast, so I breathed a sigh of relief, and then I in turn spent all of Sorscha's activation/focus the next turn whiffing my rolls before I finally killed the shagging thing. Finally, Ken tried another assassination run, which failed, leaving Kreugar open to Sorscha's Icy Gaze and a number of bombard shots, not to mention a charge from a Spriggan.


The next game was my nButcher versus Ken's nKreugar again. In the first photograph, we are reaching the point in time where someone must do something. I had already learned by this time that two handed throws, while not particularly damaging, were most inconvenient, and that Warpwolves could hardly fail with them, even against Strength 12 Khador Jacks. And yet, they do find it hard to get up close and personal.


This picture shows me trying to figure out what the hell to do next. I may even be going through the alphabet in my mind. Otherwise, black is very slimming, and I will wear it as often as possible if there is even the slightest chance that someone will attempt to photograph me.


I like this photograph (thanks Stu) as it shows me getting my Behemoth into combat. I did thereafter kill the Alpha with a couple of Armored Piercing attacks, but it has to be said that the best thing I could have done, which I did not, would have been to pick up the shagging Alpha wolf and throw it at Kreugar. Ah well, I am reminded of what Scottie MaCarthy used to say, that "If ifs and buts were candies and nuts, it would be Christmas all year round."

GenCon bound

As I've said above (and below) I'm off to GenCon this year. I travelled into St. John's a couple of weekends ago to play some games and finetune my Hardcore list (and my lists for the two other tournaments I am signed up for).

So my main and Hardcore caster is nButcher. My alternate is nSorscha. I played 5 games during the weekend, all at 50 points, starting with two with nButcher against, respectively, nNemo (win) and the Coven (loss). I then played three games against nKreugar, first with nVlad (loss), then nSorchsa (win), then nButcher (win). These last three games gave Ken (who is also going to GenCon) a chance to take a serious look at Kreugar.

I registered a total fail on the camera front, forgetting to bring my card for my Olympus C2100, then borrowing my mother's camera which resulted in a series of 29 photographs that looked like they were taken on the dark side of the moon. I have had to improvise. The pictures of the game versus Nemo are courtesy of Jason and many thanks for them, buddy.

In my initial two games against Nemo and the Coven I experimented with the Kossites. That experiment is now over. I think they would be alright fine with nVlad or the Old Witch and, of course, Yuri. With the Butcher they were probably more of a distraction for me than they were for my opponents. They can't hit the broad side of a barn door. They are good against low defence solos which, I suppose, will mean that opponents will place those kinds of models in the center of their deployment zones, which could be a good thing.

Here is my glorious advance against the old man, erm, Nemo.


Here are the Kossites after moving on my second turn. They killed the Cygnar chief mechaic bloke but not the GMCA. In a moment of hilarity that followed, Jason finished off the lass with a Chain Lightning directed at the Kossites. He won't do that again. I'm not sure if I was in command of all of these looking at the photograph now. I thought I measured it on the day, but 7" is no great thing.


My advance up the center continues. The Greatbears were much reduced at this point, despite Iron Flesh and the hill. They did destroy the Lancer however, a serious setback for Nemo. Jason's newly painted Ruins of Osgiliath, seen in the center of the table here, were very fine.



Here is the endgame. Nemo had crept up to within an inch of the Ruins. I advanced the Butcher and actually used blast damage from Obliteration plus blast damage from a Bombard shot to finish him off.


Here is my Hardcore army.

nButcher
Wardog
Behemoth
Spriggan
Destroyer
Destroyer
Great Bears
Widowmakers
Drakhun with Dismount

For other 50 point tournaments that require a second caster I will drop the Drakhun's dismount and use Sorscha and the Manhunter you see here.


Finally, I have three shots of of my Citadel modular gaming hill for Jason. As can be seen the hill did warp/came warped in one configuration (the Madonna bosomic variation). However, there are no such problems with the Battle of Hastings version.

I am not completely happy with the flocking. I think more of a mixture of the different flocks should have been attempted in places. As well, I think I may have overbrushed the outcrops a little too hard. That said I can probably rediscover definition there with a wash or two.