Meta Matters

This post is largely going to be a gripe. I'm one of those curmudgeonly types that is stickler for how language is used, e.g. you are not literally dead, though I wish you weren't wasting air. Granted, I get pretty loose with language at times, and enjoy the re-appropriate of colloquialisms and words into different contexts. So I'm a selective curmudgeon.

This brings me to the use of 'meta' within the context of Warmachine and Hordes, how I tense up and my ears bleed slightly when someone says it. Strictly speaking, the term 'meta' only indicates that something is being self-referential, describing a work that comments on the work itself.

So why is it used to describe gaming groups and trends? People will refer to how their "meta is different" from a "national meta", or the much maligned "shooting" and "all-jack metas". I can perceive a tenuous link that when describing a trend, it is a 'meta' because the discussion is about the trend that has arisen within the game and as I am typing this I am just going no this is not how the term works omg now I am cross eyed this is fucking dumb.

Potentially making any comment about the "meta-game" of Warmachine and Hordes, could conceivably refer to observing all trends that exist in context of one another. Or, by presenting other aspects of gaming the game, such as how discussion of list building is in itself a part of the game within the game.

But having a group of gamers out in the middle of bumfuck-nowhere does not a meta make.

I'm not even going to go into the hyperbolic statements of those saying the game is skewed towards a "shooting-meta" and a "jack-heavy", other than to say people need to step back from these statements and reassess what trends are actually existing. Because right now, these are comments on the game that continue to persist, and have at best situational supporting evidence. List construction is far more diverse than these statements may lead some to believe.

So yeah. Stop speak meta wrong.

Likely someone may have a differing point of view, an explanation for how meta is appropriate within the contexts its used on forums and in podcasts. Lay it on me.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I other news, I've wanted to make a brief comment on how my last post has been rendered irrelevant by the errata. Easy come easy go I guess. Its a pity PP sought to change this, because I actually thought allowing those charging options was quite elegant - an omission of information that allowed for unique moves and awarded inventive play, as well as allowing the rules to be simpler. Unfortunately simple seems to mean strangling the life out of in-game options, but games inherently require boundaries and rules to work within, so I can live with it.

Otherwise, I've been getting my festive fingers into Mercs, playing a lot of Gorten - so I've managed 4 games with him, and have had a range of outcomes; from getting absolutely pummeled by tricksy Ret, to showing how bat-shit dominant he can be on Incursion. Going to enjoy unlocking this guy the more I play him.

Charge angles, melee ranges and king hits

Just wanted to collate some brief thoughts about the changes on melee ranges and LOS and the like in relation to model placement and the opportunities to proc certain abilities.

Up until the ruling was made in October, I was adhering closely to Mk2 WMH conventions; ensuring models I charged into remained in line of sight, maintaining a tight eye on arcs, or at least accepting my opponent's correction when I would fuck this up, and pull models back to the appropriate position to make a 'legal' charge.

Initially, during my early days as a fledgling WMH player, I was getting whacky as heck charge angles, sending 2" reach models off in all sorts of directions to allow room to get more attacks in on a beast or warjack. That initial assumption, that seemed so natural at the time, has come back. Something seems to have been missing in my reading of the Mk3 ruleset, one of those cheeky re-wordings or omissions that I skipped over, because the clarification by Privateer Press was to confirm that the rules for melee ranges never actually were bound to a model's line-of-sight, and that several rules actually proc off the condition of the distance of a model's melee range, which seems to have been always intended to be applicable from any point on a model's base.

Now goofy charges and the like are opened up all over the show again. The implications of this was pretty apparent on the forums, with incorporeal models being able to charge through to reach opponents' back-arc. Other applications were noting effects such as Gang, Flank and Dark Shroud, all extend around the model's base. In my own games, lots of fun little interactions started to reveal themselves; playing Helga into Caine2 for example, I could charge a Slaughterhouser up past a Ranger to then slam it into Caine at the right angle.

boosh

The idea of Feralgeists charging through heavies to then slam them forward into my lines is another option I've been floating. In another game, it meant I could charge Gerlack past his target to position better for his overtake run, something that previously couldn't happen, particularly with his shorter melee range.

So in application, this wee rule clarification has opened up to me further options that would otherwise not be present, or at the very least be extremely limited. It is these sorts of changes and shifts in the game system that I've grown to enjoy in WMH, where some times the refining or adjusting of the rules opens up a slew of play options and experiences on the table

Cumquest

Another post, another tourney report; the past weekend was spent in Christchurch at the annual Conquest event. The title of this post is perhaps more disrespectful than intended, and simply reflects the level of maturity we're cultivating around these parts; the event itself was a smoothly managed 6-round steamroller, run by retiring PG Adam Oaky-Doaky Oakson. The pressures of working in the brutal Cantabrian salt-mines had got to the poor guy, and after years of battling chlorine allergies while scraping together a living for his wife and seven kids, he's decided its time to hang up his press-ganger shirt following this event, to focus on his other passion - macrame.

Glad I could attend Adam, its always been a pleasure having you Chch fellas up in Auckland events, so it was good to come down and see how you southern boys do it.

As for games themselves, I'll just run through some stray thoughts and observations I gleaned from my experience; I ran with Cryx due to my chronic faction ADD and desire to suss out what Scaverous could do. It was an exercise of dipping my toes back into the pool of the undead following the beating they took transitioning into MK3. With a 3-3 record, I think my toes got a bit chilly in said pool.

Going through a few dojo ideas, I concocted a couple of combos that I wanted to test out. This included recognising the interactions between Bloodgorgers, Gerlack, Telekinesis, Soul Harvester and Knowledge of the Damned. Theoretically, I could set up some decent soul-trains, hurtling either Gerlack or a single Bloodgorger a distance of 13" to pacman through units, gathering souls for Scaverous, and off-setting misses and fail damage rolls with KotD. In testing, this worked beautifully, where Gerlack whiffed his first attack (typical), landed the re-roll, and then promptly ate a unit of Sentinels and Lanyssa. I decided on a min unit of Bloodgorgers and Gerlack for pulling off these tricks, and managed to get it off a couple of times over the course of the tournament.

The other package was the jack-marshalled Seether - this little guy was so much fun, and always surprised people. Over the course of the weekend, he ate over half an Arcane Shielded Stormwall, two Drillers and a Gun bunny, and 1.5 Menoth jacks. He usually has to do this over the course of a turn, before opponents scramble to end this ridiculousness, but its fun.

I filled out the rest of the list with misc stuff - Satyxis Raiders, Deathjack, Withershadow, that sort of noise.

I paired this list with a Skarre1 concoction, with the idea I could potentially muscle through gunlines with a feated Kraken and choice models. I put the Aiakos1 and double Stalker package into  this, and had a great assassination package running around. Again filling out my points with Raiders and Soulhunters to taste. Playing the list, I think the Soulhunters were a wasted inclusion - they never seemed to have the opportunity to face against their ideal targets, and I found myself mis-using them as jam/interference. Would have prefered Blood Witches instead. I also left the Skarlock at home, determined to try and make Ritual Sacrifice work off the back of Skarre alone. It didn't. Or rather, I had to choose to cast the spell at times, which I suppose does not necessarily mean the lack of Skarlock is a mistake. It still feels a crime to spend points on something that casts one spell a turn, and often it wasn't that Skarre was particularly in danger anyway. Will mull this over some more.

Notable moments with this list, included assassinating Ossyan with a feated Stalker top of 2. Not bad. I also attempted a two-attack, 4-dice-to-hit Kraken assassination on Caine2 after I got ground out on attrition. Landed the first attack to put Caine to 2 boxes, whiffed the second attack by 1. Ouch.

Then there was this:

In that nice open space where Skarre is situated in front of is where a Mountain King used to be. My kraken isonly sitting on 4 boxes after getting its shit pushed in (completely blanked about the Axer and rush, when I was trying to gauge threat distances from a Mountain King). So Skarre up the front there just one-rounded the Mountain King on her lonesome. Pushing through that glass-ceiling. Toruk, equal-opportunities employer, making Immoren great again.

Following that I expected to be continuously ground out. However, my opponent David Cameron Sir Lord Reagent Duke of the United Kingdoms, attempted an assassination trying to leverage off a knockdown on Skarre, not realising the Raider Captain was just up there preventing this from happening. Assasination foiled, the Stalkers truffle-shuffled over to Ragnor and put him in the dirt with spikey dice. Ole.

Anyways, other things I learnt over the course of this tournament:

1. Don't engage with Constance Blaize's force on her feat turn. Or rather, identify the appropriate activation order of your stuff. I tried something new for me, where I marked out on tokens an order of activation, to try plan in a more efficient and timely manner. While this is cool, I got the order wrong, where I needed to get my Bloodgorgers with Soul Harvester going first, to give Scavs resources, and deny souls to Constance. Instead Gerlack and crew just bounced off the Percursor Knights like pinballs.
2. Properly identify unit match ups - against Scott who was running Ossrum, my Raiders would have been better off facing his Nyss and Deathjack, going into his heavies. While I wasn't deployed appropriately, my first turn could have been a big ol switcheroo, which I don't mind doing. I could also take this lesson to consider the importance of deploying certain units (Raiders) more centrally, to be able to respond better to their chosen match up.
3. Holy crap Cryx stuff is delicate. I had to coddle my pieces SO MUCH, to try and maintain threat, scenario relevance, and not just lose key pieces. This is a reason I see a lot of people not liking Deathjack, but it feels there's a lot of points that goes into building decent synergies and then something like a Charger can come along blow it the fuck away. I dunno, there's also space to just GIT GUD SCRUB, but sweet jeebus.
4. Minions look so grand right about now.

So that's it for my thoughts right now on Conquest. It was an enjoyable event with fantastic games all-round (including my losses, the games against Josh and Scott were definitely two of my favs), and mad thanks go out again to Adam for hosting me. My goals are firmly set around developing my skill with Minions, particularly in prep for Cancon next year, and this will mean focusing on getting some painting done adn seeing what the heck I can wrangle with a Minions ADR. Rask plus Helga is looking pretty gas at the mo.

Reflections, Rallpoint, Rask, and Rebalancing

Yay alliteration! Usually I struggle to title my posts, so I'm feeling overly proud of this one.

The title does hold relevance to what I want to write about too; I feel just reviewing my games at Rallypoint would be a tedious exercise, though the setting and games do provide the context for what I want to muse over, which is what playing Rask is like. Rask I think presents a particular example of how the game mechanics interact, so by extension, hopefully my experience lends itself to concepts I would like to apply to the game in general.

First of all, the list I was using;

Rask
- Targ
- Wrastler
- Ironback Spitter
Lanyssa
Mist Speaker
Dahlia & Skarrath
Rorsh & Brine
Wrongeye & Snapjaw
Bokor and Swamp Shamblers

This was by no means an original list, where it was hard to miss the general discussion on Rask running "all-the-lessers" and throwing snakes around etc. You have that basic concept in mind, and the list largely builds itself.

I paired this list with my own concoction of a Maelok list, which I was relatively proud of, because it felt largely a construction of my own design. I won't get into detail on it however, because I ended up only playing Rask all 6 rounds of Rallypoint; while I felt my Maelok list was decent and played a damn good game, Rask far out-stripped him.

Playing Rask also includes such benefits as;
finishing games early to goof around and pester teammates 

So what is it about Rask? Well, its obviously not just him, there's also the the multiple layers of play that the lesser warlocks now bring with them. But just focusing on him for a moment, one of my biggest lessons was that the damage swings he now brings easily mitigates one of the problems that tends to exist within the game today. The ease with which one can apply Rage & Fury to magically just add +6 meant most single heavy targets evaporated when I could get to them, and this has been discussed ad nauseum. Pointing this out though is to highlight that my in-game decisions then only had to focus on two things; making sure I could hit my targets, and how to deliver them.

Now Rask has solutions to both of these issues; with the afore-mentioned throw shenanigans (which I never got around to doing) and his paralysis shot gun on living targets to address the to-hit issue. His feat obviously helps deliver the army, as well as having Boundless Charge and Veil of Mists on his card. But its great that theses are mitigated due to his Fury stat, where his ability to hand out these abilities quickly becomes a matter of prioritising your resources. The damage-swings are exempt from this, due to the Wrastler being able to also hand out Rage itself, alleviating The pressure on Rasks's Fury.

Then the lessers and other elements of the list come to the foray; Wrongeye & Snapjaw present a package that can also deliver themselves due to Submerge, and them along with Rorsh & Brine also present their own solutions for threat-extension and delivery. Added to that, Dahlia & Skarrath also have in-built to-hit mitigation, and when it presents itself, Dahlia also serves as a control piece, denying infantry the charge, and essentially crippling certain units just by standing there (Iron Fang Uhlans are not happy about her). At times I was also able to use the Bokor and Swamp Shamblers as a control element, usually just to occupy board space and serve as blockers, but the cheeky stationary shot the Bokor can put out was sometimes clutch, where combined with a Disruptor shot from Rask, would switch off a warjack a turn. Even Lanyssa would get lucky, landing a crit-freeze on the occasional model (especially vs Legion, remember those double boosts).

Overall, playing the list 6 times was hugely rewarding, due to the continuous layers to explore in resolving the problems presented, when playing an attrition game. However, my initial statement about Rask solve for damage (combined with the feat to deliver pieces), also allows a pretty massive margin of error. As I explored the applications of Veil of Mists and Brine's movement tricks, I would often make mistakes in my games, but never felt that penalised for them. The ability to either mitigate mistakes, or even just ignore them, is what makes Rask and his list quite unfair. In one of my games I missed scoring opportunities on scenario that would have handily given me the game, yet I could shrug it off because I  YOLO-SMASH-FACE'd instead.

To me, there's something a bit off when that happens. This isn't to say I steam-rolled my opponents either; they played great-games, and I don't think there were too many instances where the game felt completely lop-sided. The layering of tools and options that Rask (plus lessers list) has makes for a fantastic play experience, and should stay that way. However being able to just negate armour the way he does tips things to a point I feel adjustment is required. For him, it may be to lose Fury. That can perhaps mean replacing it with an offensive debuff, where he needs to actually land the spell, and consider spending extra resources to secure it. Actually, just taking Fury off him may be fine too.

Rallypoint was a fun weekend spent with the boys in Hamilton. Shout-outs go to Casey for running the whole thing, and resolving last-minute technical hitches in a way that did not impede our play-time. Props also to him for running Rask, and killing my heavies by trampling through my feat. Cheers to my team-mates Pete and Dave, and thanks also to Dan for putting us up at his place, and providing sweet sleeping arrangements.

erotic

Rask is ok? I hear

Further to my faction hopping soiree, I got my hands on a bunch of Greg's Minions models. The idea was that I'd have a go at giving them a spin since people are raving on about them a bit, so with the existing minions I had bought for my Skorne, I could start adding the odd unit, beast or warlock to ease into yet another faction.

Instead I got handed all of Greg's pigs and gators and so I'm currently a kid in a candy shop full of options.

Naturally I start playing with Rask, because someone, somewhere, they mentioned, yeah, he's meant to be a thing. Playing around with lists, I went with the ideas that were bouncing around the interwebs with Rask running all the Lesser Warlocks, as he delivers them so damned well. I also thought Maximus would do great in there, being able to charge up under feat, standing at spitting distance from the opponent without fear of reprisal. It didn't quite work out that way though, and he got dropped for Targ, to bring some much needed healing and that juicy ancillary attack.

I also tried lists without Dahlia & Skarrath, lacking those models; I had a good time chucking the Swamp Horror around for a bit, beginning to learn how abusable the throwing rules are with him. But the control Dahlia could bring to the table was tempting me, and having run her now, I see how frustrating it can be to have her forced down the throat of a melee army, without any hope to respond. The accuracy of the snake also left me aghast.

Overall, I began to play with a list that felt all sorts of right. In it, I ran Rask with Targ, Wrastler and Ironback Spitter, with Wrongeye, Rorsh, and Dahlia bringing their respective beasts. As support I had the Bog Trog Mist Speaker, Lanyssa, and the Bog Trog Shamblers led by their Bokor.

The pic below shows me using an earlier iteration of the above list, where I still had Maximus durdling in the wings, missing his initial attacks. The pic also features Greg's stylish skull. Whomever it was, I'm sure they deserved it.

The game was against Caine2, and served to show how much flex the list had. I pretty much cleared out his army with ease, however Caine doesn't need an army to win, and has all the tech he needs to bypass Rask's defences so YOLO.

Still. Rask is stronk. I've loved playing this guy, and will write about my 6 games with him at a recent teams event, and probably muse some more about what I want to do next with Minions (probably something swine).

Tournament report dumpipost

Its been a few weeks since I attended Lords of Ruin in Wellington so I better collate my thoughts before the whole event becomes even more of a distant memory. I'll just drop some photos I took, along with my thoughts of my games. The event overall was a straight out hoot, with about 45 attendees, and faced by the ever-effervescent Sean Lincoln and Jimmy Braid. Big ups to those guys, and to the Wellington gaming crew, its always a good time in the capital.

Especially considering how close butts were during the rounds

Overall I felt I had made a sort of break-through during this event, in terms of making plans for my lists and responding to what my opponents dropped into me. I find this kind of funny because a few days before the event I was telling my flatmate how I appraised my ability, where I tend to just throw shit at my opponent, and then work to dig myself out of whatever hole I found myself in.

My first game illustrates my feeling that I had progressed in some way:

Along with a pair of glorious thighs, my opponent Scott Avery sported a pair of Galleons in his own Magnus2 list. Instead of dropping into auto-pilot and sending off my Croes up a flank as per usual, I instead ran them up the middle, pushing a couple into each Galleon to force them to trample should they wish to advance further up the field. I was almost undone when Scott's Orin Midwinter tried to zap the butt of one Galleon, but he missed on a double 1, so yeah. Dice. From there I was able to take off one Galleon, and after a small to-and-fro I got a bead on the enemy warcaster with a Renegade rocket and Harlen Versh ended it.

My next game was into Chris Ford, who dropped Ossyan into my Thexus list. No photos to document the exchange, but I wrangled a scenario win in Outlast, feating to push models out of zones, tying up his troops with ambushing drudges, and slamming jacks around etc. He tried for an assassination attempt, getting dangerously close to ending Thexus with arced spell nukes into Thexus, but otherwise the amount of control and dude-swarm I had him stitched up.

The third round was against one of the local PGs Chris Otton, bringing his Coven list into Magnus. I got to say that Chris was an absolutely gracious opponent during our game, where it seemed there were instances where he forgot to make certain actions during activations, yet insisted we continue play. Bloody champ. For myself, this game provided me a lesson on threat ranges and scenario, where I wanted to remain out of range of an Infernal-Machine'd Kraken, but threaten the central flag on Incursion. With the Coven's feat denying LOS too, I wanted to make sure I could contest the flags, stay out of threat ranges, but also ensure that I had a walking threat into whatever he would send into to either claim the flag or contest it. Above, you can see Chris has pushed his Kraken into the Mangler I dangled out as bait, but forgot to feat afterwards allowing me to trade up significantly.

Day 2 and round 4 saw Richard drop Sorscha1. Below you can see where I got to, having cleared the zone on Recon, and have feated to prevent the juggernaut and iron fangs from coming into the zone. Richard spent some time figuring out how to draw a bead on Magnus, as assassination was his only out. After failing that, Richard only had 5 available Winterguard to rush the zone, which all got stomped on.

Round 5 was where all sense decided to leave me. I drew against Nikola, and as soon as he started describing what he needed to drop into me, and what I in turn had to drop into him. I had no clue. I pretty much followed what he said like some sort of Moccachino Pied Piper. I dropped Thexus, pushed my models forward without any real thought, and proceeded to get pulled apart by Nikola's Kallus list

I've included an obligatory photo to document my shame, and to remind myself of these instances where my thinking seizes up. Its happened a few times in the past, though this is the first time I really recognised it as it happened, so this is something to continue to reflect upon.

With my chances of taking first place being dashed (gratz to Peter Williamski taking first, and one-listing the whole event with Gorten), I was paired against Adam Oakson, one of Christchurch's brightest and finest. The match up was Vlad1 vs Magnus in Take and Hold. Here my brain decided to kick back in. Sort of. We started with mandatory running up the board on the first turn, and I measured to remain out of the 12" of Behemoth and one of his juggernauts, should be alright, we have the same threat ranges right? Not recognising Vlad has Boundless Charge saw me lose my Mangler and Nomad top of two. However, my feat meant I was able to hold things in place and take pieces back for no reprisal. I also recognised that a cheeky Black Oil from Gorman would also take Adam's battle engine out for a turn. The Croes also got to work chipping away at Adam's Riflecorps and the attrition battle started to swing my way. After I managed to get up on Control Points, and further piece trading, the board was pretty bare,and Vlad started to bully his way into the centre of the table with Blood of Kings up. In the end, Adam decided to push Vlad all the way in, and I was faced with either scoring my last two CPs to win, or live the dream charging Magnus into Vlad's back-arc.

Holy crap that was glorious. Even with Vlad being Def 18 I had 4 dice to hit, 4 to damage, the first attack being armour piercingffffffffuu

That was all a bit gratuitous, so massive thanks to Adam for humouring me in doing this.

And thus concluded my Lord of Ruin. A nice 5-1 run with Mercs. I learnt heaps in my games, and by running different lists and factions. Next, my faction ADHD leads me to Minions, so the next post or two will document my soirees with them. following that, there may need to be further divergences into Cryx again.

Oh Lawdy!

Hold on to your booties and ready your eyeholes, I'm writing yet another tournament prep post.
Come next weekend will be what I believe is the 4th annual Lords of Ruin, an annual steamroller event run in our country's great capital Wellington, held in one of its more infamous suburbs; the HUTT.

As the first proper steamroller run in NZ since the release of Warmachine and Hordes aka All New War aka #Mk3years aka #design-space, I wanted to approach things anew with Merca, as mentioned in my previous post. The motivation to pick up Mercs largely stems from my chronic SUSS, combined with paying too much attention to the opinions of podcasters. Particularly the mention of running a Bullet-Dodger Gallant with Magnus2, was all I apparently needed to trade a heap of Skorne for Mercs.

So I started working on practicing some lists, finally settling on the following: Magnus2 with Sylys, Renegade, Gallant, Mangler, Nomad and Vanguard, with Anastasia, Harlen Versh, Gorman, Croe's Cutthroats and Aiyanna + Holt in tow. I've been enjoying the list, with the odd variation here and there like running double Manglers when I hadn't got to the point of having a Gallant model. I've found that the Vanguard also makes a very decent Bullet-Dodger target, and its been fun looking for opportunities to use Magnus' FOECLEAVER X whenever possible, regardless of the usually abysmal consequences. The only real things I found I may want to change in the list, would be to trade out A+H for Eyriss2 and a Gobber Tinker. While she often dies turn 2, I've actually enjoyed running Eyriss2. I can't quite pinpoint her actual function, beyond being a particular type of combat-solo, so I'm keen to play with her some more. The amount of times I've wanted to repair my jacks means the Tinker feels more of a necessity, but there's little fat to trim at the moment, even for 2pts.

Croes just continue to feel like a great unit to occupy board space, disrupt, and act independently of the main force.

Paired with this list, I've chosen Exulon Thexus, running 2x Wreckers, Warden, dos Agitators, double Mind Benders, Mind Slavers, Croes, and Aiyanna + Holt. Yay no character restrictions. This list more floods the table with troops, acting I feel as a good counter to the BG-heavy Magnus list. Having 2 strong control effects in my pairing also feels neat, and the games I've played to date have been rewarding as all heck. The Thexus list chews through my clock like it was a Sunday dinner, and Magnus still feels a tad vulnerable for a caster that plays so far up, but getting in a solid few rounds over this weekend will really put things to the test, and I'm looking forward to it.

Back from the dead

It honestly did not feel that long ago that I posted on this blog.

Yet here we are, 8 months later, a new edition of the game, screeds of posts and comments and opinions and hyperbole and sweet sweet memes and hashtags (#3yearsinthemaking, #3yearsofplaytesting, #designspace, #options).

Praise be Jason Brown, maker of memes, pun-master, Jason Soles fanboi

Personally, I've continued playing, including forcing Gaspy3 down people's throats during the twilight moments of Mk2, participating in the Oceanic Team Championships, a fantastic experience, with much sledging and many misplays (getting my 15 focus-camped Gaspy blight-bombed was pretty memorable). If anyone has the chance to attend a teams-event, I heartily recommend it.
Peter seemed to enjoy himself.

post schnitz

On the topic of the new edition, there seemed to be enough change where my existing lists had to be dropped, particularly where Skorne was concerned. And despite the persistent rubbishing the faction gets, I still remain somewhat stubbornly of the opinion that they have interesting builds available to them. Having said that, actions must speak louder than words, as I have sold off/traded the lion's share of my Skorne. It seemed that my investment in the faction had progressed to the point of purchasing and collecting models for the sake of it, with no real focus as to what warlocks I wanted to play, while also juggling my Cryx and Cephalyx. I continued to acquire models and my painting backlog was swelling to the point of overwhelming, so I deemed it necessary to step away from the faction, at least for now, in order to refocus my efforts on something new, and concise.
Magnus2 seemed like a nice new shiny, with enough fringe-cred to not be flavour of the month, so I made the decision to side-step into Mercs. This would also provide me the motivation to attend to my Cephalyx again, and exercise discipline with refining 2-3 lists. I plan to do a similar thing with Minions too, where I have a bunch of existing models, and am keen to work on a few lists to make decent pairings that are fun and rewarding to play.

As for writing and updating this blog, I'm keen to start dedicating some time to writing and reflecting here again. Obviously, life may have other plans for me, but for now I'm looking forward to journaling my thoughts and experiences.

You build it, I'll play it.

Last week I saw an entertaining post on the trollblood forums, where a player asked the community to construct a list that he would then play - the aim of the game as far as I could see, was to have a sort of "chinese-whispers" approach to list building, people taking turns to suggest model/units, but with the consideration that there must be at least be some reasoned argument for the inclusion of the unit. This should result in a list that most would not regularly consider, and hopefully expose some interesting interactions and unit combos.

The rules for the full process can be read here.

The final list that was decided upon was:
Rasheth +5
- Aradus Sentinel - 8
- Aradus Sentinel - 8
Zaadesh - 3
- Raider - 5
- Scarab pack - 5
Ancestral Guardian - 3
Extoller Soulward - 2
Max Unit of Immortals w/UA - 10
Max Unit of Croak Raiders - 8
Max Paingiver Beast Handlers - 3

So the first part of this process was a success - now to test this bad boy out.

I wanted to try and set up a game that wouldn't be too one-sided. Naturally, I line up a game last night with a Cryx player :| At least my opponent Peter was trying things on with Deneghra3, and things didn't feel too stacked against me, but I at least put the hammer down and demanded we not play a killbox scenario. It seemed obvious to me that all Denny had to do in that case was run up the guts of my army at full camp, and wait patiently till she could just jab ol tubbo with her pig-sticker.

Peter brought: Denny3 with two Helldivers, Skarlock, Darryl, two Soultrappers, Wrongeye and Snapjaw, Bloodwitches with UA, Nyss Hunters, Soulhunters and the Withershadow.

We draw Incursion, and winning the roll, I elect to go first and we setup thusly^^^. Swamp Shamblers are standing in for the Scarab pack, and the Keltarii leader is subbing in for the Extoller Advocate.
I have vague notions that the Croaks would be a decent counter to the Soulhunters on that flag, being able to ignore the water feature, and contest the flag while pelting them with darts. I had an idea of putting the Scarab pack into the Nyss, and have everything else in the middle working its way up. Tubby will spend most of the time next to the tower assessing the local property values.

First turn I run the scarabs thinking I needed to get the distance up the board. Things shuffle forward, and Rasheth puts Carnivore onto the Immortals. Much moaning about Croaks.

Cryx does things - Helldivers disappear and stay gone till the end of the game. Denny feats and wanders up - Blood witches run up and mini-feat. Peter face-palms at this point realising that he wanted to advance up his Soultrapper first for what is about to follow; the Nyss advance and pop three of the scarabs who were loitering around the flag. I can't really feel all that sorry for him though, having stuffed up myself, thinking it was ok to run the Scarabs up that far. Other stuff durdles around, one Soulhunter runs to engage the Croaks.

Turn 2 Immortals kick things off, one managing to get reach on the Soul Trapper in the forest, and three others dropping Blood witches. Raider and Zaadesh drop Snipe onto the bugs. Left Sentinel gets the nod from the Extoller, and drops his juices over 6 Nyss including Cylena. Much joy. The Croaks get cheeky and try to drop an oil onto Denny, and miss two shots to set her on fire seeing she had not been Gravewinded yet. Pete's butt muscles relax. Three other croaks try to gang up on the one Soulhunter, and scratch him for some damage, other Croaks move up and spray darts around to no effect. The right Sentinel ineffectually drops a shot into the Withershadow because ahh, reasons? Should have tried a direct shot into Darryl instead. Rasheth himself launches his juices at the Blood Hag, arcing a Breath of Corruption through a Croak. Last Scarab squats behind the flag, and Digs in with its animus, because I'm a lousy cheater and forgot he could only be forced for 1 being the last remaining bug of the pack.

Cryx turn 2 and stuff dies. Last Scarab bites the dust to Denny's melee prowess, so that's 5 points that did sweet fuck all. A Withershdow also lined up the Extoller UA and Dark-fired his proxy'ed butt, so no chance of seeing that guy in action either. Various Immortals get shanked after Denny puts Mortality on them, but one remains in contesting range of the flag.

On the right side, the Soulhunters see a nice line of croaks in the water, and after getting Ghost Walk, they charge in wiping out most of the unit. This is a placement lesson I seem reluctant to learn. The unit breaks, reminding me of the discussion as to whether to take an Extoller vs the Taskmaster. Le sigh. Wrongeye and Snapjaw advance forward, looking cool.

Skorne turn 3, and Vengeance moves allow the four remaining Immortals to cricket-bat  Nyss and Blood Witches. Carnivore is paying off. They subsequently finish off the Nyss, with some help from the charging Ancestral Guardian who also goes B2B with the flag. The Sentinels try to get the drop on Darryl, able to arcing fire over Denny, and de-horse him (DARRRRYYYYLLLLLL). Everything else pisses about, solitary Croak fails to rally, so Rasheth burns him as an arc-node to spite him. Tubbo also feats, and Beast Handlers run interference because reasons.

CPs: Skorne -1, Cryx - 0

Soulhunters merk the beast handlers converting them into tasty-tasty souls. Wrongeye takes a point of damage to B2B the flag. Denny 3 flaps over to the Ancestral Guardian, taking ineffectual free-strikes, and stabs fools. She Mortalities the right Sentinel and Snapjaw has a go at om-noming him. Under the feat and the Swarm animus, the Sentinel is barely tickled. Withershadow, Darryl and others put the kaibosh on the rest of the Immortals.

CPs: Skorne - 1, Cryx - 1

We chat for a bit about my options and it seems assassination is my best option. I start with Rasheth as my turn rides on him getting Bloodmark off, so him hugs the building more to block LOS from Denny and arcs through Zaadesh to stick the spell. From here, its about positioning and stopping push-back from poltergheist: The raider runs so he can stay in melee with Denny, and provide a pocket for Zaadesh to get jammed into. He flies in and scratches Denny for about 6 odd damage. An enraged Sentinel goes in next and drops her down to 5 remaining boxes. I get tunnel-vision at this point and send in the second Sentinel to try and get that last bit of damage onto her. She instead misses her attack and gets bumped back. Better play here would have been to focus his attack(s) onto Admonia, to get Unbinding off the table.

CPs: Skorne - 1, Cryx - 2

I missed out on taking a photo of Cryx turn 4, but the pic above changed little from his turn to mine. Pete tries to setup a Helldiver to fling into Rasheth, and Denny continues jabbing fools, taking a soul from the empty Zaadesh. He checks with me to see what Bloodmark does and takes note that I can kill Denny with the transferred damage, before activating the Withershadow and using them to cast Darkfires to blast apart my last remaining Beast Handler and Extoller. I sit very quietly. He removes the one Sentinel I can transfer to, before moving round and noticing the red Bloodmark token. Bugger. He switches gear, briefly considering if he can nickel-and-dime Rasheth to death without hitting the magical 5 damage I needed to kill him with, but instead decides to jam me up and run the Helldiver to instead block the Sentinel. He ends his turn going to 3 CPs, and come my turn I try to jam my Sentinel with my wild Raider, but I fail to gauge the distances properly. When the ensuing free-strikes take out its mind. my missed attack pushes me out of CC range, and Cryx go to 5 CPs .

Overall, a fun game with a new list produced by the forum community. The list had some decent legs and tools, and even with the inclusion of Zaadesh, it felt like it had options. Got to say the Immortal + Carnivore combo was great. I haven't played that unit all that often, so it was nice to have them accomplish things on the board and get involved. Sentinels did what they do, and even my problems with target-prioritisation, I still felt I got decent work out of them with Rasheth.

Pity about the Extoller UA. And the Scarabs. And my misplaying of the Croaks. And losing. At least I can also point at Pete's lovely bunching of the Nyss, and him forgetting to Unbind Bloodmark. I wasn't totally alone in with my brain-farts.

All good journeymans come to an end.

50th POST

Also the end of the Shed Journeyman League wound up. I had put off having the sixth and final session due to several other complicating factors, but it was time to stick a fork in this baby, and bring this process to a close. In the end only 6 people turned up, and we all snuck a game in each.

Nikola returned with his Menoth after playing a grueling tournament in Christchurch over the weekend. He also donated a box of Karax he received at the event (excellent trolling Adam O, well played), and after passing the box around like a hot potato, Ray ended up with a new unit to use... with something I don't know what to do with those guys.

Nikola's Menoth are looking pretty pimpin overall.

And Nik's opponent was Peter D and his Cryx. I'm sure there's a caption to be made here but instead we can just marvel at Denny's gait and lack of mount. Ahur-durr something something sexual innuendo.

I was confused over what happened in the end, but I think a highlight at one point was Kroess3 killing two jacks with a single forceblow, smashing them into one another.

I piloted Cyphon into Isaac's pLylyth. New caster, and new tools to learn. I really focused on getting use out of Breathstealer to try keep the Warspears out of the fight for the first couple of turns. I also need to get a grasp on getting more efficient with my attacks - that feat was utter over kill for the most part, meaning I allocated far more focus than I needed to kill a Scythean. I have this problem with Thexus too, where I underestimate what the Monstrosities or even an Adrenal-Flooded Drudge can do.

I also need to not run my Agitators and the leaders of my Drudge units into charge ranges of stuff. Ahurrr

But yeah, lesson in under-estimating Drudges: Lylyth one-shotted by a flooded Drudge. Kii-yah.

Peter Hunter also brought out Denny3 and pushed it into Ray's Skorne. There seemed to be some immense flubbing of dice and assassination attempts going back and forth; here we have Morghul sitting on 1 box desperately flailing at Denny after she tried to clean his clock, herself sitting on 3 boxes after an attempt on her own life. That's also the edge of the board there in Killbox scenario, so I think they decided to let scenario drop. Ray's dice were nuts, and two fully boosted attacks actually saw him take Denny out on 2 camp. Hilarious stuff.

So final points!

Huh. I don't know how accurate all these hobby points are; David Wilson remains at the top due to painting up a whole bundle of Wolds to use with Bradigus. However I am unsure if he ended up using them in his games during the league, meaning they shouldn't count towards HPs. Similarly, Peter H turned up with a whole bundle of painted jacks, but I am unsure if he used them all as well. Nikola also sold him down the river, admitting that he had helped Peter paint a bunch of those jacks. Merde!!!

But who gives a shit really; it was all in good fun and a chance to motivate people to paint and explore new armies from the ground up. Dave and Peter occupy the top based off a good effort in accumulating hobby points, and Dan L remains top dog for smashing face with Butcher multiple times. Good job fellas. I hope everyone enjoyed their time on our little Monday excursions. I certainly relished the opportunity to get into Cephalyx, and I'm excited to continue exploring them. I have a few more boxes of stuff to fill things out to a 50pt level, and I'll be amped to try them out in events.

Rallypoint

This is going to be quitea long post to collect the entire event here in one summary, so I hope people don't find it too much of a chore to read. If it is, feedback would actually be appreciated, and I can cater post length or content for readers.

Apologies to those I played, I'm racking my brains to remember the names of everyone, and the names of teams, so I'm likely to get some wrong. I should really have taken a photos of the score sheets at the end.

The final list I decided on was:

Pirate Queen Skarre - WJ: +6
- Skarlock Thrall
- Helldiver - PC: 3
- Cankerworm - PC: 5

Satyxis Raider Captain - PC: 2
Bane Lord Tartarus - PC: 4
Saxon Orrik - PC: 2

Satyxis Raiders - Leader & 9 Grunts: 8
- Satyxis Raider Sea Witch - Satyxis Raider Sea Witch 2
Satyxis Blood Witches - Leader & 9 Grunts: 6
- Satyxis Blood Hag - Satyxis Blood Hag 2
Necrosurgeon & Stitch Thralls - Necrosurgeon & 3 Grunts: 2
Necrosurgeon & Stitch Thralls - Necrosurgeon & 3 Grunts: 2
Bane Knights - Leader & 9 Grunts: 10
Mechanithralls - Leader & 9 Grunts: 5
- Skarlock Commander - PC: 1

The main reasoning behind this list, as discussed in the last post, was to have something that I could push into armour skews, beast and jack heavy lists, multi-wound infantry, colossals, that kind of bag.

ROUND 1: we faced a team that featured Rahn, Haley3 and Severius1; so no armour skews to roflstomp. We let them choose the first match because we figured that we'd be able to arrange the last two choices to guarantee at least two favourable games. In the end, they put their Menoth player into Greg's pHaley, and I elected to push Luke into Rahn, wanting to avoid any janky assassnations.

My opponent Mike didn't seem to have too much experience playing against Skarre, so I was able to bump and grind to an assassination on Haley. Luke also won his game, and Greg closed things out on the Severius player when he apparently accidentally started to kill him with blasts and electro leaps.

ROUND DOS: was against Dan, the organiser's Bye-team that consisted of himself and one other player, meaning one of us had to sit out. With Dan running a Lucant list, and his buddy sporting the new Legion twins, I elected Greg cheerlead us from the bench as I pushed into Lucant, and Luke into Legion. I ended my game on a scenario win in Incursion even despite my best efforts to fail, trying to out attrition Lucant on his feat turn.  Luke seemed to also comfortably push Runes into the Legion force, allowing us to advance.

Ol' Dan Shaky Hands. The vibrating maestro

ROUND TROIS: saw us play into another team of Hamilton locals - I recall Luke got to face Jason running an eXerxis list with gun bugs and drakes, whereas I got put into Brendon running eLylyth. Greg rounded things off going into Casey's Rask list, so I believe we all got the match ups we wanted In my mind, I didn't particularly want to go into Lylyth, but I spent the first couple of turns squatting in my own deployment zone so it wasn't like it mattered. My Satyxis Raiders tied up his Ravagores, knocking them down and wiping out their spirits. Brendon had a good go at untying himself in the bind I put him in, but accidentally kill boxed himself to keep Lylyth out of engagement, and vaped one of his knocked-down Ravagores by accident, trying to shake off the raiders. From there, Skarre decided to make her presence known by tenderly moving up to score and close the game for me. Luke was having some trouble playing into Jason, with a stray shot nabbing Janissa early into the game. In particular, a cheeky feralgheist was doing the rounds, jumping in and out of Troll beasts, and while Luke was up on attrition, he was starting to get low on the clock. In the end Xerxis himself was sent in to do some work, and was subsequently squashed. Over on Greg's table, things weren't shaping out that well; Casey had done a great job of grinding Greg's list down, and won in scenario with seconds to spare after Greg ran out of things to contest with.

I neglected to take many more photos at this point because I am scum.

But we got the wins we needed to win the round, and advanced to face on o the other 3-and-oh teams, Finding Nemo; a team consisting of Mitch Cowan, Nikola Jaksic and Joshua Warne, all sporting one of the Nemos. Their approach to the event and the way things played out for them was both inspiring and hilarious; and also the reason why I've rambled so much about practice and preparation. Here you have three guys playing the same faction with a caster that is hardly considered worthy in competitive circles, and with little-to-no practice; just a quick and rough idea of how to make Nemos 1, 2, and 3 work with particular lists, and with very little practice beforehand. And then you have us, Team Ninja, trying to pick a combination of the most broke-ass casters out there, drawing up little charts detailing match ups, guessing and second guessing what people will bring.

ROUND QUAD: Anyways, we elected to choose the first matchup, and I pushed Nikola's Nemo2 into Luke's Trolls.  I had played against his list prior to the event, and he was able to tear my force to shreds with ease. I figured I wanted to make sure we had something to take out his Stormwall, as that was the only colossal in the three lists. I ended up facing Mitch with Nemo1, and got a sharp lesson in getting my shit handed to me again; the opening rounds he was able to drop heaps of my supporting pieces. I was feeling pretty crap about my chances at that point, but switched gears to push hard towards his objective and feat defensively. This created this high-armour lump parked right up on Nemo's doorstep, and it may have won me the game too... if I had the foresight to clear one cheeky Risen that was stopping me from scoring on his flag. From there, Mitch switched things up himself, protecting Nemo and bleeding my army till I had nothing left. In the end he had to race to remove a contesting Cankerworm, but was able to do this and score enough CPs to win. This game was a real nail-biter, and easily my favourite game of the weekend with how huge the swings were in terms of trying to get one up on one another. Love your work Mitch.

Luke finished up Nikola with little trouble, but Josh being the more experienced Cygnar player ground out Greg. We finished the first day with a score of 3-1, feeling rather battered after that last round. Nemo = OP.

ROUND CINQ: Rolling onto Sunday, we paired against a fair group of Wellingtonians hell bent on achieving the fastest assassinations possible; Mike Snook with Mortenebra, Chris Ford with Lylyth2, and someone else with Rahn. Luke was the first to drop, getting assassinated by an Overrun Nightmare on the 2nd round. Blimey. I ground Chris down, with the same tactic I employed above, of Skarre runs away while the rest of her army runs forward. Worked a treat a second time. That meant the round rested on Greg's lofty shoulders; we figured he'd be ok time with a greater number of shots going into the Ret army, and Arcane Vortex serving to protect her from any nasty Rahn surprises. The actual match ended up being a real grind, with the Ret army edging up on attrition. In the closing minutes however, with everyone watching, the Ret player pushed Rahn out into the open to sling spells and clear the zones. Greg sauntered Haley up for an assassination run, banking on two boosted Arcane Bolts to finish Rahn. Casually, he decided to roll the hard 11 needed to smack Rahn with her hand cannon. The following Arcane Bolt also landed and that was game, with a scant few minutes to spare. My anus was puckered to hell I tells you.

It was interesting to see teams members pounce onto both the players of that game to figure out what the heck was going on through their minds in those closing moments.

ROOND 6: We were matched against familiar faces from my lil gaming Shed, Robert Power, Chas Roberts, and Dan Lister, making up Team: Why So Serious? It was meant to be Why So Issyria, but nah lol. Winning the roll off, we elected to pitch Greg into Chas who was running Scaverous, thinking that no matter where the next two match ups went, we'd be able to squeak out another win. Rob was running Issyria and Dan Lylyth2 and upon reflection this was a hard choice for them to make; Rob could potentially go into Runes and Dan go into me, to give themselves a couple of yellow match-ups. It wasn't a choice guaranteed to produce a win, but I feel it would have been the best one to wrangle two wins if Chas was going to go down to pHaley. Instead, Rob elected to face me giving him a safe game. He proceeded to tear my army to shreds, with Halberdiers and two squads of Invictors reaching out and touching me in all the wrong places, and a Hyperion that wouldn't quit producing crit-consumes. There were a couple of tense moments, particularly as I overheard Dan exclaiming about some quad-sixes he rolled on damage, but ultimately Luke closed his game. Greg did as well, sniping Scaverous with Eiryss and assassinating the Cryxian head-librarian. At this point, I threw caution to the wind, feated with Skarre, and sent her into he Hyperion to finish it off for lols. After cutting herself down to 2 boxes to finish off the Colossal, Rob finished her off with an 8 man CRA to her face. RIP Skarre.

Which brings us to our seventh and FINAL ROUND. Revenge match v Finding Nemo. We got stung once, twice shy. How will we possibly manage to beat all 3 Nemos? This is bullshit. Well, we used our team feat at this point to choose the match ups: we again plopped Luke into Nikola (much groaning) to deal to that pesky Stormwall, and I chose to face Josh this time after the butt-whuppin' Mitch gave me. Josh's list was far more friendly to me; Thunderhead and Dynamo with that battle engine swanning around. Very little massed, long ranged infantry clearing. Josh went first in our game, and with the scenario being Destruction I pushed hard at the bottom of two to go up 3 CPs. Josh's response was to try to kill Skarre sitting around ARM24. And he got damned close to it too - after the dust had settled Skarre was left on 1 box, after which Josh conceded. Unraveling my tightened butt for the second time that day I checked on the other two and finally remembered to snag a photo

Greg's looking a little too casual. Mitch pretty much had things well in hand, grinding down Greg's force, and chasing Haley around the board with his Blazers. Things were pretty hairy over on Nikola and Luke's table, where Nikola was going for an assassination on Doomy with various shots and angles and whatnot, but it was pretty much a foregone conclusion; Mulg hit Nemo, and Team Ninja won Rallypoint. Nikola seemed miffed at having to play into Runes twice over the weekend, and to be honest I was being way too wary of his list. Not knowing what the other lists could do, his Stormwall was the focus of my match-up decisions. In discussion with him afterwards, he stated we should have tried to arrange the match-ups by aiming to put me into Josh. This was a green match for me that I didn't recognise, and Luke could comfortably go into any of the other two lists. Just goes to show how much I can get railroaded into a particular way of thinking and completely miss other opportunities and options. We got there in the end though, and I'd like to think it wasn't purely through luck or the strength of our lists/casters.

Its still hilarious to consider the amount of close calls we encountered, and times where we got thoroughly out-played, whilst running arguably some of the strongest warcasters/locks in the game. But my thoughts on this will have to wait. I've been siting on this post for almost two weeks as it is :)

Prep, practice and rallypoint

Token statement about time, commitments, psychological anguish (my own).

But I've been itching to write about a local teams event I attended recently; teams were 3 people, one list per person, with a simple match up process of roll-off get's to decide whether to choose the first, or last two match-ups. Me and the two guys I played with won the event, but before I discuss that I'm keen to first write about the preparation process leading up to Rallypoint (if you can call an extended facebook chat and 2 games prep?).

With me, Luke, and Greg, Team Ninja formed once again, a name forged through a process I wasn't a part of so I don't know how to explain it, but what ever; ninjas are well known for their team work or something.

Preparing for Rallypoint became an exercise between the three of us, deciding what was the strongest combination of casters we could bring from our available collections, and balance out our weaknesses in preparation for what we expected to face. I went with my Cryx and pSkarre because fair and balanced. Luke has had much practice running Runes of War, so we determined that as our 'armour brick'. Greg had recently acquired a bunch of Cygnar, so he was lumped with the burden of pHaley as our Cryx drop. With casters in mind, we built rough lists (so much variety to consider for RoW) to begin practice with and see if we actually were able to counter each others' weaknesses. I had a rough go at making a grid for ourselves in terms of covering opposing factions;

Yerp, crude as flip. This was all largely theory as well; my own experience with Skarre was playing her in a couple of tournaments when I was green as all heck a couple of years ago, and Greg had only just started with Cygnar. I can safely say we were banking  hard on the obvious strengths of those warcasters to carry us through our games if we got the match-up process right. Looking at the chart above, we assumed that we would have a hard time into Ret, particularly in relation to Rayvn's tier, but again; this was all theory and conjecture.  It made a bit of sense to try and practice our lists. Right? Right.

First, me and Greg played into one another essentially to test the theory that pHaley > Cryx, photographing the game on a turn by turn basis and let Luke know how we did and expose ourselves to sideline ridicule. After my second turn I had the pace to push up through Temporal Barrier. I had most of my force occupying the mid-zone, and was feeling good that I'd have sufficient resources to attrition Greg out of the game.

Then Cygnar things happened:

Fuck.

Ok, hypothesis holds strong. pHaley can remove single wound infantry pretty trivially. This was also a lesson for myself of when to time Skarre's feat; I've been stung before feating defensively, but against a list like this, it definitely would have been the right call.

Unfortunately for Greg, there was also a lesson to be learnt about standing to close to the Helldiver's burrow token:

In the end I had the feat and Dark Guidance up, and BARELY enough resources to clear the jamming Forgeguard to allow the Helldiver to walk into Haley. Greg tried to block the real estate around Haley, but those burrow rules are hard to plan around. Apart from those complications, it otherwise felt like Greg's list fit into a nice slot in our team, and I got to experience the joy of pushing a single wound infantry melee hoard into what felt like a 2 hour dick punch.

In a couple of days, I had a follow up match against Luke's Trolls, to test the theory behind my list: Skarre plus dudes > Armour. And that's essentially how the game went, being able to trade small models for larger pieces, and Luke not having sufficient infantry removal to clear everyone out. Things did get hairy though, when the Earthborn trampled and goaded over to where I thought Skarre was safe behind her wall

He whiffed his attacks, but it was certainly a lesson on needing to keep her safe. Otherwise I felt my list was humming; it was skewed the way I wanted it to sit, and was able to be trotted out against the armour heavy lists I anticipated to see at Rallypoint the following weekend.

Journeymayngs 4: too much journeymayngs

The forth part of the shed journeyman had a smaller turnout, but BIG leaps in terms of points changes.

Here's where we at:

Only a few games were played, so most of the movement in rankings was the result of hobby points as people pushed to get their casters and battleboxes done. Luke Harvey also has been bullying people with Kaelyssa, showing what she's capable of at low points levels. Peter Hunter traded Denny for Goresahde3, using him with some Bane Cav to try out a few things. He also spent a good deal of time complaining about being forced to use his battlebox 'jacks. No sympathy for Cryx players Pete.

You can tell he's super upset about it

Nikola was bandying Anson Durst, trying out Menoth's newest warcaster; after his games Nikola has officially declared Menoth = shit. Except for Kreoss3. So if anyone's in the market for buying some Menoth?

Dave Wilson made the biggest gains, smashing out an army of Wold Watchers to accompany Bradigus. He'll have a chance to use them in the next phase of the Journeyman to as we move to 35 points.

See how smug he is about it here:

Journeydudes: the Dudening (part 3)

Week three of the Shed Journeyman League; With the rise to the 25pt level everyone's armies are starting to fill out,  Only 4 of our 5 tables were being used, making for a relatively quieter night than previous nights, but games started to take a noticeably longer amount of time with moremodels to activate. This was handled well by our newer players, and it was awesome and enlightening watching people encounter the different rules interactions that come into play, particularly seeing Jordan's discovery of how awesome Gatormen Posse are in Skorne.

Also, as more and more order of activation interactions are becoming available, I'm noticing just how the shift to 25 changes the game for my Cephalyx. Now having two full units of drudges available to play alongside two Agitators and my Monstrosities. I am over the moon. Ecstatic. I can't shut up about those guys. They are the absolute business, so many options and tricks. I'm positively gushing. PP, you've outdone yourselves. Some of the interactions came as surprises, like the interaction between the Subduer and Wrecker. Previously it seemed two Wreckers were an obviously better battlegroup, but over several games now  the Subduer has proven itself a fantastic piece to set up for assassinations or knocking down high-def pieces. I feel this is just the beginning of exploring the depth of these models.

Just a few snaps, this time of people smiling as I was annoyed at the blandness of my previous photos. The players were potentially straining under the pressure to appear joyful, and some even put in the effort to lift their thumbs in an upward direction.

And here are our standings after week 3:

Dan creeps ahead, nabbing a couple of hobby points for painting Aiyana and Holt, and racking up a total of 4 games over the night, more than anyone else. His rampage with Butcher was finally stalled however, when faced against my Cephalyx. Things are still pretty tight however, and heaps of people had painting done but elected to hold out before counting them for hobby points till they had done more work. The Shed lads are a disciplined bunch.

We meet again on the 7th of September, 25 points again, but this time you are all welcome to change your 'casters/'locks to try someone different. Remember, you got to hold on to your original battlegroup. One further change I am making will be to introduce the steam roller scenarios for our games. The recommended scenarios from the journeyman pack have been interesting to play, but I feel they have now outlived their novelty. The steamroller pack provides far more relevant and dynamic scenarios for us to learn with. 

AUGUST 2015 WM/H ERRATA: IN DEPTH ANALYSIS, CRITIQUE AND FUTURE IMPLICATIONS

It's frikkin sweet eh

Painting update x2

Where I've got up to with my Cephalyx- Almost all 15pts done, just some touching up and arcs to do for the Drudges. The push to 25pts will probably see the unit grow to max size, with another Agitator and a max unit of Mind Benders. All the troops.