I did (not) goto a tournament.

I haven't updated in a while and was planning to do a nice big review of the 350 point mangled metal tournament my local store ran yesterday. The problem was I didn't get to take part beyond the first game due to time mismanagement. Some of the players are new or a bit suspect on the rules and play slow as hell, there was meant to be a turn time limit and... it was never enforced.

So I got in 1 tournament game then played a 35 point game of MKII against one of the best local players.

This is the tournament game, in perfect detail. My opponent was a new player who I kind of mentor since I am the local Skorne player as the other moved away (and had a huge fetish for Makeda and couldn't see how Molik made a Gladiator look like a joke). So I didn't want to smash him and such but er.. yea, read on.

my opponent goes first by my choice.
He runs his beasts forward, does something with Morghoul and moves him up to.
I move up my group having my army looking like it will engage his Bronzeback, Savage and Gladiator among a forest, with Kaelyssa and a Griffon hiding behind it and phantom hunter on Kaelyssa.
He moves his army round the forest ready to engage, casts unrelenting on his bronzeback, I measure control area and watch.
I upkeep Phantom hunter, put a focus on the Griffon to be safe (figure I can steal 2 giving me 8 focus and I need 2 to shoot and 6 to boost) and move Kaelyssa up. I put a shot in Morghoul, he transfers it to the savage, I put a shot in Morghoul, take his fury and hit him for about 10 damage, I needed 8 to kill on the next shot and I got it. Extend hand, feel like a jerk.

So I wait like 45 minutes for the new guys to finish playing and honestly I was quite frustrated. Pairings for round 2 were announced and I got the bye.. Which annoyed me quite a lot. I was the top of the tournament with 1 turn 2 kill and I get the bye because no one else could compare to that, so I get to sit out round 2, when I had gone to the tournament to win it. My mind was set on winning, I walked in that door and went "I am the best player, I have Kaelyssa and I can and will win this tourney without a doubt" and then I just get kicked in the nuts for doing exactly that. Round 3 didn't work because it was closing time when round 2 ended. So instead of a tournament I got to smash a guy's face and then play a 35 point of MKII.

I was against a Butcher list full of heavy armour and my list just doesn't deal with that, I couldn't really kill Butcher and I got drawn into attrition and just plain lost. I couldn't get to butcher and that sucked. I'm thinkng of getting the Sentinels and replacing the Invictors, they can break heavy armour. The Mage hunters are a very nice unit though, they are quite nasty.

On Sunday I have a rematch against Dave's Khador. Hopefully my health will recover since I'm still recovering from my hospital visit where I spent 6 hours being sedated and messed with. Next week I'm going to get in some extra games with other locals, Another Khador played I rarely gets to play wants to get some MKII so we're going to meet at the store and give it a couple of games. Then me and the local Press ganger are going to get some Hordes MKII games in. I want to test Krueger as I'm really unsure on his feat and I intend to playtest it a few times before I write feedback going "dude, WTF?"

Painting day.

Had a busy week and didn't get much done but my Mage hunters and UA arrived. So I've decided, I can't even open the boxes until my invictors and Vryos done. I need to paint 4 heads, mark 6 bases and just clean up the guns a bit here and there. Then varnish time and er.. yea. I will finish them today and post some bad pictures.

A while ago I suggested mini tournaments at the local game store on game night and they announced one next month away and it's a 350 mangled metal. I'm looking at Running Kaelyssa, but I'm not positive yet. I'm wondering if I can fit Kae, a phoniex, a hydra and a griffon. I am tempted to run Vryos just so I can walk my jacks up backwards and go "I punch you in the face, from my ass!"

On D&D news, I have totally found a group, I maybe posting a pic of my dwarf mini I will probably be using. I'm also working on some 40k minis to fit with the new playgroup and I may pick up a small amount of Flames of War, the only problem is I would want to play Japanese factions and I don't think they are out yet. I just want to correct people saying Kamikaze, cause I'm annoying like that.

I was listening to a podcast recently and there was something I noticed. Some of the "sportsmanship" discussions really stood out to me. I tend to "play the rules", never cheat but I'll stick to the rules and use minor loop holes to do things. Like firing at something out of range with a unit to "premeasure" for another unit and some people consider this to be abusive and not sportsman like. I may try to stop doing this and be more "sportsman like". I tend to take the opinion of "I play by the rules, what's wrong with that?" and I'm starting to ponder if I should be playing differently to this. I would be interested in your guy's opinions and feedback on this matter.

Chris Walton answers questions!

Okay, so I completely forgot to post this up thanks to getting Borderlands and Tekken 6, but I e-mailed Chris Walton some questions and he answered them. He's an awesome guy and my favourite privateer staff member, so I really enjoyed reading the answers and communicating with him. Without further a do here are the questions and answers.

#1 We know that the Retribution Warjack designs evolved to their current state, but where was the starting point? If you had to break them down into 3 stages, how would you describe each?

Three stages…hmmm…denial, bargaining and acceptance are stages, right? Just kidding. Its hard to break down the design process in general, and the Myrmidon process is even more difficult to do that with. In the early stages; we had settled on a general shape – Matt wanted to see these big looming shoulders and he liked an idea I’d been playing with where we moved the head to the front of a prow-shaped torso – so many of the basic shapes flowed from there. I explored a lot of motifs for the Iosan ‘jacks; some drawings had them looking very knightly (almost Protectorate in appearance), some were based on organic designs where I was looking at whales and dolphins for inspiration, some were just these weird glass energy projector constructs - there were just a lot of paths that were walked down. A lot of the final designs have their roots in those exploratory drawings, though; so it was a real evolutionary process.

#2 Have you ever had a design you were unhappy with that turned into a model you loved or vice versa?

I think Wolf Lord Morraig falls into that category. After I’d drawn him, Matt was happy with the design but I just wasn’t sure I was sold. Honestly, I thought I’d slaughtered the drawing and that whatever poor bastard had to sculpt him would curse my name forever. Thankfully Steve Saunders dug deep and pulled out an amazing figure. I was blown away by that fig. I really thought it was all going to end in a train wreck and that I was driving the locomotive. Its always good to be proven wrong in those situations.

#3 What faction is your favourite and least favourite to design for?

I get asked this every so often, and I always have the same answer – I can’t really say. Each faction is a ton of fun to draw, and having a good variety of stuff to do ensures that I don’t end up bored.

#4 Have you ever designed a character or unit you were really fond of that got canned and if so could you tell us about it/them?

Not so much. With the amount of drawing that needs to get done, I try to keep myself focused on what needs to be produced for a book so there’s a little less blue-sky type drawing than you’d think. Now, there are directions that I go that we may not end up using, and anything that doesn’t make the cut for one project may be held onto and used at a latter time. Because of that, I really don’t share what’s been canned simply because it may be exactly what we need at a later date and its no good showing my poker hand.

#5 If you could design a faction just for your own enjoyment, what would the faction be and how would they play?

Wow, this is a seriously loaded question – any answer I give could be interpreted as that I’m working on a new faction. But, if I had my way…

Giants. They would play by kicking serious amounts of ass; all the time, every time. Just three or four giants and me on the other side of the table with a big grin would comprise an army. Unfortunately, with the sizes I’d want they would be unconscionably expensive to produce. I’m betting I’ll be waiting a long, long time for giants.

#6 Outside of Privateer games what other tabletop games and related things do you enjoy?

I’ve been a tabletop wargamer for a long time… I think 23-24 years now, and that’s not counting when I played Dungeons & Dragons in grammar school. I still game and paint when I can, but sadly I don’t have the time to devote to the hobby that I used to. Sigh. It sucks getting old.

#7 Most artists and companies tend to regard their art as "intellectual property" rather than some cool pictures people might enjoy viewing. You tend to post your art on Deviant Art and interact with the community going in the complete opposite direction, why did you decide to do this?

Well, Privateer Press certainly views all of its badass dudes, hot ladies, monstrous beasts and unstoppable robots as its intellectual property – I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. But the nice part about working at a company founded by an artist is that Matt encourages people to be proud of their work and share it with the public. Letting the community see my concept art or talking about what we do helps fire people’s imaginations and love of our games. That can never be a bad thing.

#8 Is it true Doug Seacat eats puppies to fuel his writing powers?

Yes. I can smell him grilling one down the hall and chuckling about it as we speak. It smells better than you’d think.

#9 How do you tend to react to the community feedback on models you've designed? As a designer it seems difficult to take feedback from such a large group of people and not feel personally attacked in some cases.

Anytime you put your work out there for the world to see, you have to be prepared for the fact that its just not going to speak to some people. Some individuals will love what you’ve done, while others will loath it. It’s the nature of the beast. Mostly, I just try to design in a way that makes me think “yeah, I want to paint that” or “man, this model will be cool”; if I can do that there should be people willing to jump aboard.

Negative feedback isn’t too hard to take when its provided in a useful and respectful tone. Someone who says that they “don’t like the wide areas and lack of surface detail” is much easier to listen to and take seriously than the guy who says “OMG TEH AR SUXXORZ!” Unfortunately the second category tends to be more prolific with their critique at times.

#10 Many people are hoping for a 5th Hordes faction and after hearing the Retribution were always planned for Warmachine, it seems likely Privateer have something already planned out, but I'm sure you can't tell us about that. So instead could you tell us about any new Gobber art you have worked on and give us any hints as to what us Gobber fans can look forward to in the future?

The last gobber I drew was for our Bodgers! games, so right now there isn’t much gobber art to give that isn’t out there. Watch, Matt will now wander over to my desk and tell me about the hundreds of gobbers that I’ll be drawing. That’s just how these things seem to run.

And that concludes the questions. Chris is an awesome guy and I'm really thankful for him for answering the questions. I'm going to try and get some more questions answered by various staff members and poke them a bit since I've read/heard a lot of interviews and never felt like questions I wanted answered ever got asked, so look forward to more in the future or me utterly failing!

Goddamn it

No one else turned up to the tournament, so I went for a wander and found a whole new playgroup and a new press ganger. Some old friends were there and hopefully some new ones.

I found me a D&D group. So I'm working on a little Dwarf adventurer and I'm going to track down my old halfling pirate model.

As for WM/H I taught a kid to play Warmachine today, I played Retribution and tried to do cool things like throwing a ferox at some venators and just doing the cool demo game. I refused to assassinate Mordikar (pot shotted him just to act like I failed) and then killed Molik with Kaelyssa's fury stealing melee. Wasn't too bad.

I ordered the Malifaux rule book and I expect to pick up a few new games and see what pans out. Fantasy is back on the books, so I need to get my new carry case and things.