Dat Assassination attempt. and why I hate Hordes

So between bouts of Bayonetta I managed to get some games in yesterday against Lofty. I felt like a jerk when I ganked him turn 2 with Kaelyssa, but hey it's a lesson all newbies must experience at some point, we all walked into it at some stage. So instead of ranting how awesome Bayonetta is (although at the end the cut scenes are a BIT excessive and need more crotch shots) I decided I would rant about Hordes and while I'm selling my Skorne stuff.

I need to point out I'm not a complete idiot (although some will disagree), but I find the fury mechanic is too complex for me to enjoy using. Now here is the thing, it's not that the system is complex but it's the options it gives you make the game slow to a crawl when you're a person like me. I look at the situation and consider every option I see for maybe 5-10 seconds then move onto the next, in Warmachine I have my limit of focus and as such I think my options through at the start of the turn/my opponent's turn and then I put it into action. Where as with Hordes every time I boost or use fury in any manner my situation has then changed and become a new set of options, which a control freak like me then has to take a minute or two considering. So lets take a scenario and play with it.

We'll have a generic Warlock and a heavy and a light example here.

I charge a Heavy beast in, I spend 2 fury on attacks and I'm left with 1 open. Now I have to spend a minute debating if I want to leave the heavy open for transfers and use the light to finish the enemy model, or do I want to use the light else where or even move it to a better position and let my heavy get hit a little? All those options come from a single charge and then whatever I decide I must then do something with my Warlock to get the fury off, which takes a couple of seconds to decide too.

Now when you spread this over even a battlebox game, the fury mechanic is not enjoyable to me. As a control freak who must consider everything giving me too many options doesn't make it harder (I can do it), but it makes it frustrating because I feel like an asshole because I'm spending so long thinking, but if I don't then I'd feel like an asshole for not playing my best.

I think focus also fits my balls to the wall style, with fury if I want something done I can always play around with fury and get it done, which leaves the risks a little more managable, and as such I'm less likely to take the big risks I pride myself on taking. If I'm completely in a corner than I will find a way out of it with focus, with fury I'm more likely to just go "HULK SMASH!" and miss chances. As I played Lofty yesterday I noticed this, I left Mordikar wide open because I was losing the attrition war and instead of trying to beat Stryker (I had a chance to Essence blast the Canoneer and Cyclops Savage right on top of him), I fell back on trying to beat an Ironclad with a very hurt Canoneer. I had so many options that instead of taking the risky one that could win me the game (as I should have) I tried to play it safe and let the fury mechanic pull me back into the game instead. I should point out that Lofty is new and I could of gotten away with it IF I hadn't of pointed out to Lofty his 'clad had Mordikar dead if he just walked over to him, but I feel like I'd rather be punished for screwing up than beating a new player due to his inexperience, plus it helped Lofty learn to look at the game a bit differently.

I love the ability to transfer, but I find fury just gives me too many options and due to my nature it slows the game to a crawl. So with this in mind I'm going to... dun dun dun, sell my Hordes stuff. I really have no interest in playing Skorne at this point and after thinking through the fury slow down I think I would rather put that money into Retribution. Yesterday I picked up a box of Sentinels, Nayl and another soulless for about 35% off from the closing store, so I now have everything I want except for a UA and a couple more heavies. Looking at Ebay right now it seems a lot of people are selling Warmachine stuff and I don't think models are earning their value. So I think I'm going to paint up an army to a really high quality and sell it when the final pdf is released. I'm looking at Mordikar, Molik Kahn, Savage, Gladiator, min Unit of Venators, min Ferox, Agonizer and a soul ward and then pad from there. I think a white and red colour scheme should look unique and hopefully sell well. Doing snow bases is always impressive and I'm pretty sure I can pull this all off and paint better then 90% of the "Pro painted" stuff on Ebay. The question is how do you value a Hordes army? Warhammer is pretty easy to value as you have a lot of references but none for Hordes. I think I may just put it up at retail -10% and free postage and let people bidding decide the value on the models.

Any way I have to go play in the snow and start Hard mode in Bayonetta. Forcing angels to orgasm here I come!

P.S. I'm trying to set up more interviews, but doing something different than Gday did, as in have decent guests ;)

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.

I ganked Lylyth!

Tonight I played 1 game and, pretty much played a second game by proxy. There was a new guy playing Skorne and since I know Skorne, I had to mentor him and be rules lawyer all at once. My community recently changed and some how I've become one of the veteran players.. but hey that's cool. So I mentored a guy on how to abuse Skorne then I played a battle box game against Legion.

The game went like this.

I move stuff, take a potshot at Lylyth with my Manticore. He slams the Manticore on his turn and I then move Kaelyssa up and tag Lylyth twice boosted. Extend hand.

Seriously, if you leave a 'caster open within 18 inches of Kaelyssa I am going to start taking pot shots. I don't need LoS to hit you, so I'm going to do so and do so a lot. If you don't run the hell away I'm going to keep doing it over and over. Isn't that fun folks!? I'm really starting to get Kaelyssa and she plays like Caine or E Morghoul, her army isn't as important as just getting that all mighty assassination attempt. I may even risk another Heavy kit to get her a hydra to do her shootie doom with. Either way digging the Ret.

I have some more stuff painted and I need to take pictures, but I picked up a lot of new stuff. Invictor UA, Ghost Sniper, Soulless Escort and a Chimera. I'm slowly working my way to 750 points. Which will be nice. I have a game against Circle/Khador on Tuesday, just hoping it's not Kruger, cause I'm still not sure how I deal with him, advices please?

I may also have found a D&D group..

Painting frogs and one eyed monsters!

I haven't updated for almost 2 weeks now, so I thought I should get down to it and well... update.

I've mostly been building and painting my Wood elves but I have been trying to push forward on my Warbeast painting too. I finish the two Basilisks and I've got the Shaman maybe 80% done. They're just tabletop but it's at least a step forward and I hope to get my full 750 point list fully painted. I did have E morghoul almost done but I decided to strip him and repaint him up because his pose is just so.. difficult to really get at, so I'm going to put pins in him and then paint him in sections. I'm tempted to buy a Primal Morghoul and put E Morghoul's torso and arms on him rather than have his weird "I'm falling off my epic base" pose he has now, but I don't want to wreck my Primal Morghoul in case I want to use him for tournies in the future.

Oh and this guy is getting painted up as best I can, I think he deserves it for running through half a Menoth army in his first game.



I need to find a new gold recipe for him though, my current gold just isn't suitable to larea areas and his shoulder plates are HUGE. Which is also why I'm going to be free handing a Skorne symbol on his shoulder and left the spike off to do so. He is a character Warbeast and will be up in my opponent's face every single game so he needs to look pretty.

On the Fantasy front, I hope to get my first game in on Thursday or Tuesday, but Tuesday will probably be me taking my Skorne to the local store instead. Either Hexeris or Mordikar will be played, probably with a list very much like the one I played last time. I like that style of army, although I may (GASP!) drop my 3rd beast and risk running 2. Maybe Molik and a Shaman or a Krea. We'll have to see how it goes.

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.

VS Khador 01

Blog time!

I got in a game today with Rory ad his Khador. Neither of us played serious lists and I was just wanting to try Mordikar out and see how he did with Beasts. I learnt quite a bit about Skorne by using the list I had and I doubt I will ever make another Skorne list without an Extoller.

Lists were as follows.

Rory
Old Witch + Scrap jack
2 Juggernaughts
Iron fang Pikemen
Doom Reavers
Alton Ashley

Me
Mordikar
Gladiator
Cannoneer
Savage
Shaman
5 Paingivers
Swamp Gobbers

Deployment.



Deployment was simple, Rory won the dice roll and decided to go 2nd. Skorne brick time! Since I was running so many beasts I couldn't do much else.

Round 1


I move forward edging away from his Doom Reavers flanking me and put up Gobber smoke to stop Alton pulling any of his anti beast crap. I load up the Agonizer and rile everything up for Mordikar to refuel for next turn.



Rory proceeded to move pretty much everything towards me, which is hardly shocking considering the armies. Casts Iron flesh on the Iron fangs and the world's most exciting turn ever ends!

Round 2


My pictures get a bit muddled here and I think this is Round 2. I moved a bit away from the Doom Reavers ready to use Gobber smoke to stop them getting first hit the next turn and just try to close space.



Rory moves his stuff more forward! Man this is such a crazy tactic, it's like he wants to kill my stuff or something! He puts the Iron fangs as a central wall and casts Massacre of crows.

Round 3

At this point I can't stop the Doom Reavers engaging my stuff, so I try to block them with the Gobber smoke and offer a few sacrifical Paingivers to take the shot for me and then I can Spirit in Amber them back and get some stabbing going. I did mess up this turn when I tried to use Mordikar's sacrifice to spray spell and couldn't target the doom reavers so ended up wasting a model to spray at a juggernaught and do diddly squat. Agonizer runs forward and starts to cry, Khador jacks aren't getting any focus and Scrap jack isn't arc noding either. I expect it to die this turn but it me control the damage the jacks are going to do when they hit my lines.

Cyclops gets poked by the paingivers and pulls off a Cyclops missle. Wailing on a Juggernaught it drops 1/3rd of it's boxes and is expecting to die next turn while sitting on 3 fury. I had meant to pop feat this turn but forgot to do so before I had finished with Mordikar.

Rory's Doom Reavers then proceed to eat some paingivers and the Swamp gobbers, which then flee and die the next turn to free strikes. But still they did an awesome job of just being in the way and stopping Alton molesting any of my stuff before I could get it into position.

Agonizer proves he's tough as hell and takes a beating from all sides but only goes down when the Old Witch finally spends some focus to take away his last wound. He ended up crippling a couple of jacks for a turn then wasted a turn of firepower to get rid of him. 30 points well spent.

Round 4

(The template isn't Gobber smoke, it was just difficult to remove it with 2 dudes on top of it)

This turn I moved up the hill and popped Mordikars feat, brought back a couple of Paingivers and started to pick apart the Doom Reavers. Rory had been trying to take out my Shaman for most of the game but due to Elevation and some bad dice on Rory's part (or so he says.. everyone else could roll his dice fine ;) ) it had been surviving quite nicely and would end up being a key piece in the game. So the Savage continues to beat on the Juggernaught, rips it's arm off and just generally acts like a badass that he is.

Rory's turn comes and he decides to start swinging and he ends up playing pinball with his models. Everything is going in every direction imaginable and he once again claims his dice hate him (Rolling 1 dice is rarely a positive thing either way..). He tries to pull the Shaman out with the Scrap jack and misses, Shaman makes a dash towards The Old Witch. I didn't have any plans for it at this point but my beasts were clustered together and it wasn't a good situation to be in. Old Witch pops feat and my next turn seems suddenly a lot less exciting.. Rory takes another shot at the Shaman and he casually wanders up to the Old Witch. I thought he was just out of range but he was in and the plan fell nicely into place, Shaman takes a nasty hit from the feat but

Round 5


My turn comes and any one who knows me knows I play assassination games. I have a bucket load of fury on the board and totally forgot to manage it less turn, so I start throwing some dice and everything passes. Gladiator is still full of fury and the Cannoneer has 1 on it, but both remain in control (I had wanted the Gladiator to go nuts as it was engaging a lot of stuff and a throw would of been sweet to knock down the Old witch). So any way Mordikar activates first. I move him so he has line of sight to Old Witch, She's Defense 19 so I have to boost and slap Deathmark on her. I didn't think the Shaman could kill her with 3 fury. I had to transfer off a free strike from a very angry Doom reaver as mordikar went to get LoS, but the Cannoneer took it and didn't lose anything for it. So Mordikar has 2 Fury left on him and is standing pretty damn close to some very angry Doom Reavers, I either get the assassination or he better have a get out of the abyss free card again. So I heal the Shaman's Mind and end Mordikars activation. Shaman starts swinging with 3 attack dice, hitting 3 of his 4 attacks, Dice -2 was damage, but apparently all I can roll is 4s. Old Witch lives with like 6 boxes left and I figure I'm screwed until I see the Cannoneer sitting on the hill with 3 fury open and a nice long ranged attack. So it wanders up, Defense 19 old witch, needing 15 on 4 dice. And it misses.. Roll the scatter dice and it still clips her, so I boost the damage and hope for the best. I roll exact and down she goes. Caster kill and I win while Rory tries to figure out how a cannonball fits through a gap in the bases far smaller than the cannon nozzle.

Things I learnt.
-I want an Extoller in every list I make. They bring so much utility and solve so many problems. I don't care what I have to sacrifice, Extollers are so freaking sweet!
-I want a Cannoneer next to the Extoller. I had considered dropping her but she is a really nice finisher and fury battery.
-Agonizers are worth the 30 points but they only work for 1 turn because they have a huge target painted on their heads.
-Mordikar is a very good troops caster and Paingivers and Bloodrunners will be insane with him. 1 Fury to kill a model with no way for an opponent to punish you for it is nuts. Scenario play is his sweet spot because 'void isn't so hot when both casters are half the table away behind a wall of big nasty things
-Shaman is a nice utility beast and worth running 1 of if only for the ability to bounce around.
-Cyclops missles are fun and including a Savage in lists just to wail on things is not a bad idea. I just need to remember to keep it in my caster's control area.
-Rolling 2 yellow dice is a bad idea, rolling 1 yellow and 1 pink dice gives much better results.
-Make sure you remember feats are in play when Rory goes "move stuff! Go on you pansy!" and figure you'll shut him up by sticking a knife in two Doom reavers..
-I like playing assassination lists. I struggle to care about units and fall into the school of "They take too much effort to kill, screw it". I had been considering switching to Mordikar and Hexeris for a few months but I think E Morghoul needs to return. He fits me so damn well and I enjoy using him a lot more then a board control caster. I can fit everything I want in a Morghoul list and I win games, so I think I should just suck it up paint his annoying figure and play him some more.
-Take notes when blogging about an event.