Long time no see

Hey folks, been quite a while since I posted. I'm still not really back into Warmachine but I felt like painting something so I've been painting up my metal Cygnar battlegroup in an olive green to try and improve my green and black painting skills. The Lancer is now finished and the Charger is half done, so I thought I'd post up some pics.





I shall post more when I've finished the Charger. I can't decide if I want to use the Ironclad or not. I know I'm replacing Stryker with Hailey as I think she looks more gritty in her original sculpt than Stryker does and I want the dirty infield look.

Vyros uses a Trackball mouse

Yesterday I finally got to play some Warmachine again for the first time in months.

I played with the following list

Vyros
-Hydra
-Hydra
10 Sentinels + UA
Stormfall archers
Eiryss
2 Mage hunter assassins

It's a list I use on Vassal and enjoy using, it's low model count but high quality and it can do a bit of everything. I knew my opponent would play Cygnar (probably Stryker) but I didn't build an anti Stryker list, I built what I wanted to play. My opponents list was thus

Stryker
-Old Rowdy
-Hunter
Squire
Stormblades + UA
Full Long gunners
Black 13th.

So he had a similar list to mine except I had another heavy and our unit sizes were switched around, then we both had a set of killer solos (even if 1 is a unit persay). We discussed his list while playing and I asked why he didn't include Jr. He had discussed it with another player and they had decided both Jr and Eiryss was "just because" and had no real point in the list and I pointed to my Eiryss on the right flank and went "Is Stryker ever going over that side of the table?" his response was "No" and then he finally got why 3 points was worth it, My Eiryss did nothing but kill 1 Stormblade all game, but she funneled Stryker into the side of the board I was controling. I only include Eiryss if I'm left with 3 points after I add the solos I want, she's not an auto include, but if I have the points I will take her as a tool box solo.

He decided to set up second, so I deployed my sentinels in the middle with hydras flanking either side, Vyros a bit back, Eiryss and the stormfalls on the right flank (hilly goodness) and my 2 MHA on the left flank.

He deployed Stryker, old Rowdy and the squire center, long gunners with the B13th mingled among them on the left flank and the Stormblades on the right with the hunter just ahead of them.

Turn 1 I moved everything up, Eiryss playing distance games with the Hunter and the stormfall taking a hill in range to attack it next turn with snipe rounds if it didn't move. The MHAs moved up and hid behind a tower.

His turn he just moved the Stormblades, Old Rowdy, Stryker, Hunter and the squire about a bit, nothing exciting.

Turn 2 the hunter gets wrecked, Stormfalls brutal shot it to death with the final shots coming from a hydra with 3 focus. I positioned my Sentinels in groups of 4 and figured he would kill 1 or 2 in the coming turn giving me vengenace and getting some face raping in. Everything else just moved up into higher ground positions or looked scary and shuffled a bit.

His turn 2 he pops feat and stormblades kill 4 sentinelss (arm 19 is a bitch to crack) and takes more shots with the long gunners but can't crack the arm on my dudes.

So my turn 3 I decided I wanted those storm blades gone and took my vengenace move my left bubble moved towards the long gunners and my right bubble took some swings at the stormblades, 2 were dead from the vengenace attacks (arm 23 VS weapon masters, yum yum). My opponent was just like "what the hell?" and I'm like "I did tell you everything is a weapon master". I use Eiryss, Stormfalls and the hydras to clear out some charge lanes in the stormblades to get my extra dice and then charge with the sentinels, they clean up the unit except for 1 or 2, they constantly pass command checks and hold though). The other sentinels run up to engage the B13th and long gunners, with the MHA moving forward ready to hit Stryker next turn. At this point I had Stryker staring down 2 fully loaded Hydras, 2 MHAs and other nothing but Old Rowdy to protect him.

So his turn is pretty much going "oh shit.." and trying to clear out the Sentinels in his long gunners, which he fails to do leaving 2 alive and just in command range of the officer on the hill. Some sentinels die and next turn I forget my free movement and swings, which I knew I would at some point. My sentinels are pretty much wiped out as are his stormblades.

So turn 3 hits and I know I can nail him to the wall, except my dice disagree. Sentinels miss, MHA misses, Stormfall miss, Eiryss misses, Hydras miss. I just can't hit that def 16 and had it been a tournament I would of been frustrated, but it was not so meh. Old Rowdy is all up in my face at this point and I have to wiggle around his 6" bubble of countercharge insanity. I put Vyros on a hill with the sentinel standard bearer blocking the charge lane (and Vyros is just a bit out of range incase) and pass turn.

His turn 4 is trying to work out how to get an assassination, but it just doesn't happen, the B13th can't clean out the Sentinels and the long gunners can't really kill Vyros, Old Rowdy turns up and engages Vyros and we decided turn 4 was the end since we had to leave soon after.

So my turn 4 involves everything shooting at Stryker with everything it has and doing absolutely nothing to drop him below 4 boxes. I always underestimate Def 16 and it's not like Stryker has low arm either. I was wishing I had Ravyn with me as I could have wrecked Stryker, but I think Vyros's +2 arm spell is so insane on sentinels that he played a good roll in the game and I really enjoyed that. He even got to cast Elimator on Stryker at the final attack of the game, boosted to hit and just got no where.

At this point we shook hands and called it a draw. We added up points of models lost and I had killed 16 points of his stuff and he had killed 15 of mine, but it was a draw as far as I'm concerned. Both armies were wrecked and it was all down to the dice as to who won on turn 5.

I think Vyros is a competitive 'caster and can not only support the 2 Hydras but his infantry at the same time. His 6 focus is the perfect point for him, he uses 1 to upkeep Resolve then 2 to cast mobility and has 3 to play with each turn or just camp, which is generally enough to restock your Hydras if they need it since they won't spend more than 2 a turn unless they are in melee at which point your other one should still hold his focus. He has insane mobility and can threaten people from miles away if you want him to. His feat is pretty lame but it's extra focus if you really need it, the problem with Hydras is that you can't load them up only restock them due to the focus on them counting for allocation purposes, but hey I'm a focus 12 'caster already so whats a narrow feat? Sure I'd love something insane, but it's not needed.

I think I will be playing Vyros for the near future, I really enjoyed the game and found he had more options than Kaelyssa did and while you lose the focus stealing your army becomes a real problem to deal with unlike with her who just can't support them beyond "No Magic plz, oki".

Hopefully I will get to make it again next week and play some D&D (I want to play a Dwarf based on the MMORPG fanbase), but as a back up plan I'll play Warmachine. My other Wargaming club is meeting Sunday, I may venture out to it if I'm up for it.

Moliktastic

Today I finally got to play with Molik. Yes, F'king please! Molik is absolutely insane and more than made his points back. The guy was a new guy and had never played Skorne before, so I didn't want to pull too many weird and dodgy models out and start bouncing around and ignoring everything. So I went with a list as follows (roughly)

Mordikar
Krea
Molik
Shaman
3 Ferox
6 Venators
Swamp Gobbers

500 points.

I played against a jack heavy Menoth list using Kreoss and the choir. First time I'd faced a lot of these models. A Crusader, Guardian, Dervish and the Bastions were all pretty new to me, but I still did pretty well until the last turn.

Molik cut a wave of destruction through the enemy army. On like turn 2 he wrecked the Crusader then proceeded to eat the Choir pretty soon after and was ready to threaten Kreoss the following turn. His animus is just sweet sweet awesome, he makes the Shaman into one hell of a trickster. you use the animus then charge and get some insane distances off most of your army. It's even useful on Warlocks to cast stuff then retreat.

The game ended with Mordikar getting hit in the face by a Paladin when he had no fury on him. Two reasons for this, we were being rushed for time (someone else had booked a table before I got there and the 40k players had stolen it, so we tried to get the game wrapped up asap for them). And I didn't measure my control range. I wanted to cast Void walker on the shaman and move him up to Kreoss to threaten him and force him to pop his feat, so I could send in Molik and smash him into a pulp. The problem was my opponent was holding his feat back and I didn't want to commit to any sort of attack that involved everything falling over in front of a Paladin. So I goto cast void walker (didn't pre-measure) and I'm out of range, so I move Mordikar in removing the 2 fury he should of had to transfer. Plus the Paladin pretty much rolled 4 6s on his dice and just 1 hit killed him.

I really enjoyed the game but I learnt a lot about my playing style. I look at the board and tend to want to keep things alive when I'm playing Mordikar or Hexeris, I put high value on every unit and don't want to sacrifice any of them, where as when I play E Morghoul I consider every model except Morghoul to be disposable. And that second attitude is so much more natural to me. I like playing high risk and putting off fancy tricks to win games. Dancing around the table with Morghoul makes me much happier than sitting back with Mordikar using Manifest void (which is insanely over rated IMO, it rarely does -anything-). So I think from now on when the chance for 750 comes up I'm going to be fielding E Morghoul, he fits me so much better than anyone else. A good example of this is earlier I had the perfect Morghoul charge lane set up from where Mordikar was. I charged in, stabbed the paladin, teleported to Kreoss, used the feat and fan to disable his focus and then I just plain killed him with the 3 following attacks. It felt so freaking natural to look at the board and see assassination runs, it's just how I see the battle. I've pretty much always thought this way in and out of tabletop though. I'm rarely the guy running in head first, I'm always the guy looking for a flank or a weak spot to exploit to rip the enemy apart from an angle it couldn't cover. So I think I'm going to play Mordi at 500 but Morghoul at anything higher. So sorry Mordikar fans but Morghoul is just my dude.

Before the game I also had an interesting conversation with the other Skorne player in store. He likes Makeda (cough Makeda fanboy cough) about Molik and Gladiators and comparing the two. I've never found a gladiator to work well for me, but Molik just feels so damn right. I would take Molik is he just had his animus and his weapons. That animus is freaking sweet, I can be half the board away one turn and right up in your face the next. The double move lets you resposition and bring him back into the battle where I've often found once a unit or beast is out of position there is no way I'm getting them back into the fight. As I said earlier Shaman and Molik make a nice little team, you can get them way up the field early on or move them where you need them to. While road to war makes Gladiators better, Molik's utility is just so freaking high that the extra power and such just doesn't do much for me. I'm thinking I may replace the Cannooneer in my 500 points list with Molik. I love my ranged element (always have venators and an extoller, they come with the Warcaster ;) ), but god damn is Molik sweet.

I'm thinking of doing some painting tutorials, but I'm not quite sure yet. I don't think I have enough readers to bother with something like that and I'd feel bad about posting the blog on the PP painting forum with just a link here. On the other hand I maybe posting some pictures of a WIP Lancer. I decided I wanted to do some Cygnar (my 2nd faction, although so are Legion technically, but I don't enjoy playing Legion and my Cygnar haven't been out in a while even though I like Stryker a lot) in a pink sheme for the Paint pink thingy ma jiggy. The problem was I suck at painting pink, it just shows brush strokes so bad that I thought I'd do something different. Battle damaged pink Cygnar! This lets me use a darker purpleish colour scheme and only using pink in limited ways, while still having it a pink army.

As the Lancer stands it has a broken shoulder that's been messed up to look like it got hit with a mace, I'll probably paint it to look like it was hit by a flaming mace when I get that far but it is quite a way off currently. I'm tempted to cut the hand off the shield arm and model it as if the shield is strapped to the arm and wirings and cogs are all that's left of the hand now. Make it look like a really roughed up Lancer. I think the key is going to be making it look worn not wrecked and this will apply to the entire army.

But that's enough of this for now. If I play some more this weekend (my Stores 2 year anniversary), then i will blog about it but if not hopefully I will on Tuesday or at least get my Drake painted up to table top.