Vassal for Guildball - Getting Started

  Vassal comes up a lot when people talk about a Tabletop simulator, which boils down to what Vassal is essentially; A tabletop simulator with an internet connection.  Modules exist for Vassal for most games, and if you've played any of the other games, you understand the frustration that comes with trying to navigate Vassal.  But you really want to get that game in without driving an hour, or buying a plane ticket to the UK to play that one guy.

  So you're googling Vassal for Guildball.

  Here's the really nice thing though.  The Guildball Vassal module is produced by Steamforged and updated/maintained by them and they even have a place for it in their forums.  This is very different than any Vassal module you've seen before, and if you come from Warmachine specifically, Vassal is a hodgepodge rumination updated by a rotating group of people that do it as long as they can with out being so frustrated with it that they drop it entirely.  That's gone with the Guildball Module.

  The GBVM (Guildball Vassal Module; I'm tired of typing it out) is a streamlined program with all the shortcuts, widgets, art, plot cards, tokens and terrain created already by Steamforged.  It's amazing.  It takes a minute to get into, but not anything like the learning curve that the Warmachine module takes.

  My major complaint about the WMH Vassal module was how swingy the dice were, and that may or may not be true with GBVM too.  I haven't decided yet.  My first game definitely had me miss a 5D6 Supershot pass from Mash to Hemlock, but then when we rolled out the theoretical un-bonus timed snapshot kick through an intervening model, she got a 5,6,6 screamer.  So the computer generated dice are still interesting, at best. On the plus side, he never ever hit Slippery DEF6 Hemlock, even at TAC11.

 Anyways, I can't preach how great this program is enough.  I hope that if nothing else, you'll give it a shot.  The Guildball community is taking off like nuts, but most of the warmachine players coming off the presses will not have great memories of the WMH Vassal module.  I'm here to change that and tell you it's not the same.  Right now, we might see two or three guys on vassal a night.  It'd be nice to really raise that number up.

  So, let's look at it.  What are the major things that you need, or should have?

  Before we look at the actual Vassal program, the things you should consider having are:

1.  Skype/Mic.  Trying to communicate with the other player about what you're doing without using Skype is very much hamstringing yourself and doubling the time involved in the game.  If you're going to play Vassal, get Skype, get a Mic.  It's pretty imperative with Guildball.  You could get away with it a little bit in Warmachine because of simpler activations, but in Guildball, you absolutely need it.  

2.  Your cards, obviously, but the best thing I think is the App, Guildball Manager.  It's a free app with all of the guilds, their cards, a fight feature, you name it.  It's everything War Room 1 should have been with none of the downsides.  Get it.  It's free.  There's no downsides to this program.  Even if you have your cards sitting in front of you for playing Vassal, the app is great for checking your opponent's cards, and etc.  Even better, it doesn't require you to have your cards with you wherever you have your laptop.  Work trip?  Good to go.  Downtime on vacation somewhere? Good to go.

3.  Time.  A vassal game is still longer than a tabletop game, simply because you can't pick up a model and set it down.  It's a bit more finite in Vassal than that.  Everything else I think is actually streamlined and possibly faster, but physically moving models saves sooo much time.  Don't go into a Vassal game with an hour of free time.

4.  Vassal Ball Facebook group.  Want to coordinate with some people for a game?  Join the Facebook group.  The forum's a good place too but the Vassal Ball FB group provides some instant updates on people's availability.

Actual Vassal links needed:

1.  The Vassal program.  The base program is at the root of all of this, and you'll need it.  It's at: http://www.vassalengine.org/ and is currently version 3.2.16.  Download it.  Install it.

2.  The Guildball module, located in the resources section of the website.  http://guildball.com/#downloads

Install the program, then the module.  Start it up and double click the Guild Ball module.  This will take a minute to start up, so when you start browsing the forums, or this great blog, keep in mind that the wizard pops up on the desktop, and you can't see it, and it doesn't create selectable on the windows bar.  You'll have to minimize your window periodically (not show desktop) to check if the wizard is up.

  Once it's up, if you just want to play around, or for some reason your opponent is sitting next to you, do offline game.  Otherwise, look online.  This is what it will look like.

  The main window is the chat screen.  The middle right window is the rooms in existence (Main, Scrub vs. Byron, and the one I created for this, Test).  The far right is the players in the room.  If you right click a room it gives you the option to join it, or if it's your own room, you can lock it because you hate people and socialization but you play a social game.  If you right click a player, you can PM them.  Above those two right windows are a series of statuses to indicate what you're doing.  The X is afk, the exclamation point means you're looking for a game.

  In order to create a room, in the middle window where it says "New Game", just type a name and hit enter and it will generate the room.  Your other player will join, whatever.  Someone creates the game.  Ideally, get someone else to do it for the first time, but since this is a walkthrough, we're going to do it.  Go to File, and hit "New game".  It will ask you if you want to be a visitor, or home team, or visiting team.  Generally the host picks home team, but either way, make you both know who is who.  This will generate a normal green pitch, but if you hit the "Maps" button in the upper left, you can change your pitch.

  If you click Roster, up left next to Maps, it'll pull up a few more windows.

  There's several tabs that we'll talk about in a moment, but the Terrain one is the important one here.  In the dropdown menu, there's your types of terrain, and then the selection menu to the right has the different sprites available.  Drag them onto the pitch in a legal way.

-OR-

  Start over.  This is the simplest way.  If you've followed my instructions to this point, go to File, and close game.  Now hit file, and choose one of the setups available.  This will ask you all of the same questions, but will generate a pitch with terrain already placed.  If you're just getting going in Vassal and Guildball, this is the way to do it.

   The other player, when he joins the room, will select Visiting, probably, (whatever option is left).  Then you guys can drag your stuff out. So, back to our Rosters button.

    There's a lot of options here.  All of which, you click and drag to the pitch.  From top left to right:

  Templates: Your AOEs are here.  They're all 3'' AOEs, but with various art for various spells.  It should be noted that the AOEs are selectable at their centerpoint, not the whole circle.  This reduces some mouse confusion on the pitch.

  New Ball: There's a ball in the center of the pitch by default, but if you delete it by accident, or it goes buggy (which happens), there's a new one here you can drag out.

  Tokens: These are just little colored indicators for things if they aren't built into the engine.  Haven't needed them yet, but like, when Tater comes out, you might use them since he may not be in the system yet.

  Token Sets: These are faction specific.  Select it, select your faction from the dropdown box and drag what you want out.  Some of them will be missing, like Tapper's Commanding Aura, but that's because the aura effects are selectable options on the model itself.  It's pretty sweet.  These are indicators for spells and such, so Tooled up, Dirty Knives, etc.  Football Legend, Commanding Aura, all that will be attached to the model.

  Individual Dice: Haven't used them yet.  Let me know if you do.

  Plots: This is the wrong way to select plots for the game, but we'll talk about that shortly.  These are specifically for league play since they have every faction, season one, season two and the campaign plots.  How cool is it for a company to build their leagues into the module for you?

  Home/Visiting Team: These tabs are identical except that the base colors are different so that all the various Avarisse and Greedes are identifiable from eachother.  Same thing as the plots.  Dropdown box select your team, drag them to the pitch.

  Terrain: We talked about this already.

  So, now that your stuff is on the pitch, let's talk about the right side of the board.

  This is a great feature guys, I can't praise these dudes enough.  This is the scoreboard and what amounts to your trays.  The pretty artwork sections are where you can sit your tokens, templates, plot cards and dead players and keep the pitch clean.

  Then there's the Scoreboard.  If you look at the top and bottom of the board, it says "VP".  Right click this to select if you got a TO, scored a goal, extra point, or if you need to reset them all.  The three little divots to the right are for goals specifically. Selecting "Goal Scored" from the menu will automatically fill in one of those, and serves as a reminder for your extra influence.

  Then there's your MP with the arrows on either side.  Self explanatory for the most part.  Click left or right to adjust MP.  Keep it up to date because when you both are done, you'll hit "New Turn" and the game will factor in your MP for who wins initiative.

  Then there's the dice.  That long column from 1-22 is your dice.  After you've added up your dice pool number, select the box next to that number and it will roll that many dice.  

  Now, instead of browsing those dice and trying to figure out how many times you hit that sweet 5+, instead of counting them out, that colored chart in the middle summarizes it all up for you.  You got 5 hits at 5+ not counting any armor.  If you're whacking on Stave, you did considerably, and unsurprisingly, better, at 12 hits needing 2+.  Very intuitive, very simple.  I really like it.

  Brief note.  Do you remember the tape measures from WMH vassal?  Well, they're still here, in the upper right corner.  And they still suck.  They can be accomplished by many other things but if for some reason you need one, they're here.

  One more thing before we play ball.  The Plot Cards.  Select "Plots" from the bar at the top.  Not home plots or visitor plots.  That's where you drag your league cards from your roster.  Just select Plots, which is a deck you and your opponent will both use.  Drag 5 cards from the deck to the table, select which ones you want, right click "Claim", where they turn blue, and then return the other two to the deck.  The cards remain hidden from your opponent until you right click "Flip" to play them.

  Now we're going to drag a player onto the pitch.

  

  On top of the player, you see his name, Tapper.

  Below that is his Health.  Health is adjusted by Ctrl - or +, depending on how his day is going.

  The arrow means I have him selected and if I hit the arrow keys, which direction he will move.  I rarely use the arrow keys in this game though.  

  The little yellow dots on the bottom left is his current allocated influence.  These are adjusted with the - and + keys as well, but without the Ctrl.  

  Then there's statuses.  

  From left to right, there's Poison (Ctrl P), Burning (Ctrl B), Lacerate or Bleed (Ctrl L), Snared (Ctrl S), Knocked Down (Ctrl K) and then Taken Out, which would remove all statuses and give you a skull but most of us just drag the player off the pitch.

  Most of what you're going to do is holding down that Ctrl key.  Ctrl X deletes the model, for example, while Ctrl C clones it (important here in a minute).  It also creates our auras, the easiest part of playing this game.  Ctrl 1 - 0 are auras from 1'' to 10''.  Ctrl + Alt gives us the next ten inches, 11 - 20 by using Ctrl Alt 1 - 0.  You can have as many auras as you want out there, and they can all be cleared with Ctrl period (.).  

  So, let's say that Tapper is sprinting to the ball, then over to the forest to engage Avarisse, but I want cover too, and I want to stay out of Avarisse's melee.  I also want to be in Spigot's Football Aura so when I kick the ball at some point in Tapper's activation, I have 1/1 kick bonus.

  I'll start by selecting the ball and pressing Ctrl 1.  All of this can be done with the right click menu, but the keyboard is far easier.  

  So now, Tapper can move an inch, snap the ball, and use the remaining movement to get to the woods.  I'm going to create a 1'' aura on Tapper, and Ctrl C to clone him.  I'll drag the clone to where I want him to be in that Aura for that 1'' move, and then use Ctrl 6 to show how much movement he has left.  I'll use the original sprite now, clear his auras with Ctrl . and then turn on the 2'' aura with Ctrl 2 for my melee range.  I'm also going to turn on Spigot's Aura, which I can do with a Ctrl 4 since that's the range of it, or I can right click, scroll to "Special Auras" and select "Football Legend".

  This picture looks pretty complicated, but the TL:DR is Tapper moved south an inch, snapped the ball, sprinted with most of his remaining movement to engage Avarisse without being engaged by him, while toeing into the forest, and is still within 4'' of Spigot for his Football Legend.

  This took maybe 5 seconds to do.  It's very intuitive very quickly. I'm going to drag an invisible box over the whole group, hit Ctrl . and clear the auras and Ctrl X to delete the clones I don't need.  This is way better than using the arrow keys to nudge players around and back and turn and etc.  This is almost faster than a regular game of Guildball.

  Fantastic.  let's look at Kicking.  Tapper makes this kick to Spigot, and even at 4d6 kick, I miss.  If you select Spigot, hit Ctrl A to generate the Kick Scatter.  Or again, the right click menu.  If you ever have any doubts on the shortcut, use the Right Click menu.

  Now, with the Kick Scatter created, and the ball selected (it snapped to spigot when you created the Kick Scatter), tap End on your keyboard and grab the half circle piece (not the path) and drag it to align your kick.  Now hit Ctrl S for Single Scatter, or right click menu.  If this is scatter kick you hit with and you can reroll direction, use the undo button in the upper left corner to step back and single scatter again.

  

  Now resolve the scatter.  It didn't go far enough to run into cover.  I may have passed Spigot's path though, allowing him to snap the ball.  Press End again and align the path.  

  It just caught him, so I will snap the ball to him.  The path can be removed or created with Ctrl E, which is travel paths in general.  Use Ctrl E for charge lanes and kick lanes, etc.  Great tool.  Again, if you're having issues rotating the path with End, make sure what is traveling is selected, in this case, the ball.

  At the end of the turn, select "New Turn" at the top where your MP and your opponent's MP is calculated, rolled against and reset.  It will tell you in the chat bar whether Home or Visiting won initiative and you'll go from there.

  That's pretty much it.  There's really not a lot more to show with it outside of you getting in there and trying it.  Steamforged has a complete list of Keyboard Shortcuts available, but the ones you're going to use the most are the ones I've mentioned above, and summarized below.  Everything that can be turn on can be turned off with the same set of hotkeys.

Health: Ctrl - / +

Influence : - / +

Poison : Ctrl P

Burning : Ctrl B

Bleed : Ctrl L

Snared : Ctrl S

Knocked Down : Ctrl K

Auras 1'' - 10'' : Ctrl 1 - 0

Auras 11'' - 20'' : Ctrl 11 - 20

Clear Auras : Ctrl .

Travel Path : Ctrl E

Kick Scatter : Ctrl A

Standard Scatter : Ctrl B

Path/Scatter Rotate : End

Single Scatter : Ctrl S

Delete model : Ctrl X

 And that's pretty much it.  Hopefully this has given you a decent insight to playing Guildball on Vassal.  The Steamforged Forum for it specifically is located here: 

http://forums.steamforged.com/index.php?/forum/23-vassal-module/

And the Vassal Guildball group is here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/901202099948458/

  If you have any corrections, suggestions, ideas for further improving this guide, shoot me a message on twitter @diceotfirstdegree or comment here.  Thanks for checking this out and I hope to see you on the pitch.

  

Putting a bug in your ear for Play-By-Email Warmachine

  What's that?  Play by Email you say?  Sure thing.  I've been doing it for probably three months now.  It's great.   If you missed out on the Vassal tutorial last year, it's here.  About three months ago, a buddy of mine brought up an old way of playing 40k that involved people on the forums.  Two players would build lists based on suggestions and run them at eachother based on advice from the same people.  We gave it shot on PPForums, and it went over like calling Nemo3 an A-list caster on the Cygnar forums.

  Heck, it went over like saying anything on the Cygnar forums.  Someone, somewhere out there, throws tomatoes at you, says you're doing it wrong, and that PP hates Cygnar, otherwise we'd have weaponmaster medium-based infantry by now.

  Anyways.

  First off, this isn't the kind of format that you message the first dude on the forums you meet and ask him if he's up for a game.  It's not too hard to cheat this way, and if you're worried about the other guy cheating at all, then he's not someone you want to PBE with.  Same goes for how well you know the rules.  If one of you guys doesn't know the rules all the well, there'll be a lot of emails bouncing around back and forth until finally, a turn goes right.  This isn't saving anyone time, and it's not enjoyable.  If you just started Warmachine last week, you still have a lot of trips to the LGS or the Vassal server before you fire off your first email.

  How it works is fairly simple.  There's a "Begin Logfile" option in the main menu that essentially records the game.  You can open the file just like you would a savegame, and press the forward button on the program or the page down key on your keyboard to scroll through the game.  At any point in the game, you can measure, take a look at stuff, make sure your opponent didn't miss something or do something wrong, and go pack to the slideshow.

  What's this do for you?  For one, this goes at your pace.  Our games last about two weeks.  During the holidays, it gets so long I forgot what spells I cast a turn ago.  But it goes at our pace, we go about our jobs, catch up in the evening if we get a chance.  I'll save the logfile, attach it to an email, let him know in the email what happened, and harass him on facebook.

  It also solves timezone problems.  The guy I normally play is a Norwegian.  I'm a Nebraskan.  He's going to bed when I get ready to have my first break at work.  It's very rare that our days line up well enough to play a whole game through, and even then, we'll do 35pts because a 50pt game on Vassal borders becoming a 4hr event.

  It solves distance problems.  I've a brother that plays Retribution, and he lives 3 hours away and works 2nd shift.  This works great.

  It lets you think.  This is a double-edged sword.  I like to log on in the morning before I go to work and see how badly my guys did.  Hopefully, that evening, I can come back and play a solid turn with well-thought out decisions.  I find that I do much, much better in this format.  That kneejerk reaction to assault with the Nyss because I can turns into a much better idea of shifting around and shooting CRA at a couple of solos vs. loosing all of my dudes in the assault.  I like that I have time to think about my choices.  The flipside to this is that if you get used to that, the day you go to a tournament, you'll have zero ability to make a decision in 7 minutes.  So keep that in mind.  Enjoy your time, but make sure you're still being competitive at the LGS or something so that you're not losing that speed.  The middle ground is the best here.  The experience to make the right decision, and the speed at which you arrive at it.

  I suck at both.  I played Saturday 2-2.  Ignore strategy articles from me.  Although my Kraye list trashed an eHaley single-Wall list.  Anyways.

  The other downside to this format is some of your playability goes out the window.  Tough rolls might be your first clue, but no worries.  If you're playing a friend, and doing the logfile, they can roll the tough roll for you there, no problem.  I never roll my tough rolls in PBE, my opponent does, and the results are right there for my logfile to record and show me.  No problem.

  Countercharge, however, is an issue.  No Ol' Rowdy, or at least, no countercharging.  Things like Hyper-Aggressive become complicated, and take more time to resolve.  The worst thing is Fury transfers.  You can't just say "Here's all the damage I did, what do you want to do?"

  "Well, uh, I'll transfer this one, and... (quick math) this one, and I live!  And kill your dude!"

  So there is that.  Either the game takes considerably longer at that point, or you just make an agreement to transfer as soon as the damage would kill him, or damage over a certain point, or whatever.  It's up to you.  This isn't a format you play with someone you don't know, that's just frustrating.  But, if you're looking for a way to play more games with that buddy of yours you don't see as often as you'd like, here it is.  It's been great, I've gotten to test out a lot of lists and ideas I normally wouldn't get to because I want to play the stuff that works when I get the chance.  With PBE, I can play that janky 4 minuteman Kraye list and see how it goes because it's a no-pressure learning game at an easy-going pace.

  Just dropping the idea out there.

Realizing you're not any good as a player

  Ever play like, twenty games in three weeks, and win 80% of them?  You roll the last three dice against the enemy caster on Sunday evening before work starts up Monday morning, and you kill him with a few dice points to spare.  You look at the board and it's a fairly decent win.  You pushed hard, forced his hand, pressured the right weak points of his army, controlled the map, made use of the terrain, and won the game.  The dice had it's ups and downs, but that's normal.

  Then all of the sudden that quits and you lose 80% of the games.  The lists you carved out aren't working, in fact, they almost seem to hamper you more than they seem to help.  Bad matchups are prevalent, you drop the wrong list in a tournament, and you get caught by all the tricks each caster has to offer.

  I started off with Kraye, and really quick, I figured out that I could launch a Minuteman 17'' Turn 1, and do it again with Stormclad later on for the assassination, and I pushed that strategy a long ways.  I focused on Kraye completely, and built his lists with one purpose in mind.  To open a lane for a stormclad and make it as easy as possible for him to kill the target.  Most of my game wins are by assassination because of this.

  For my second caster, I got into eStryker.  Same strategy, except now I have 6 focus on my bullet, and he can get up to PS33.  Six focus and PS33 ends most problems, and I won a lot of games with him.  Then this all pretty much stopped.  Two things.

  1.  My meta changed.  I graduated from playing newer people and easier lists to people with experience and solid strategies, and worse, knew what my lists were capable of whereas I did not.  Legion kicked my butt the first five games I played against them, but anymore, I'm fairly confident against legion.  I know their tricks.

  2.  I got married, and my meta changed again and Player 3 entered the game, being Vassal.  Because I wasn't heading to the shoppe as often, I got into Vassal, and Vassal's a solid way to lose interest in this game.  I watched a guy roll  land a 1 in all of his dice rolls, 7 rolls in a row, and it wasn't surprising at all.  

  Between Vassal and the experience change, I'm getting my list handed to me in broken pieces, and mainly on Scenario issues.  Both assassination lists struggle against Scenario.  Also, with Vassal, I've been introduced to a lot more factions (It's not all just the program's fault)  My normal players in the meta were Legion, Khador, Menoth, sometimes Circle.  Once in a blue moon, I'd see Retribution.

  Vassal has changed that, and widened the casters considerably as well.  The level of experience is far higher as well.

  So is this something you've noticed as well?  It's fairly difficult to not be discouraged.  Part of you wants to blame the dice completely, and for some games, that's completely cool.  My average on Vassal is running around 4.5 right now.  If I need a 5, I'll boost.  Only on Vassal can I miss a KD troll with eCaine 3 times.

  For the most part though, I have nothing to blame but me.  Let's lay it out there.

  1.  I love assassinations.  I'm good at them, but they don't win tournaments because it doesn't get me any CPs.  This means that I suck at scenario, and SR2013 loves scenario.  Half the time I forget there is a killbox.

  2.  I don't know how to piece trade.  I play my Jacks way far back until it's time to roll and hate to lose one.  This means they're back too far to do me any good.  I finally figured out how to use tarpits, so this lets me play a bit tighter, but at the end of the day, I've usually tied my jacks up too far back to be of any good.

  3.  I don't know my opponents.  I generally chalk up my first game against a new caster as a loss.  After playing this game for a year, I should know them considerably better than I do right now.  This would also factor into my ability to pick a list when going down in tournaments.

  4.  I don't know my own cards half of the time.  I know my Hunters all have parry, and forget it, quite often.

  5.  General gameplay.  I quite frequently find my caster too far back when I need him forward, my jacks tied up, and my on-the-spot tactical decisions need work.

  Solutions.

  1.  Batreps are great.  I've been reading, watching, listening to batreps, now podcasts, trying to watch people play scenario, and I always play scenario myself.  The problem is my lists aren't built for it and quite frequently, I give up on it very early in.  I need to rebuild my lists.  My 50pt Kraye list changed drastically this week when I decided to drop the blatant assassination gimmick and actually focus on taking scenario.  I may actually play Hunters and Stormwall in a Kraye list.  Who knew?

  2.  Piece trading is still a struggle for me.  I'm getting better with the Boomhowlers.  I love throwing them way out in the front with Fell Call and letting that 50% tough make life difficult.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes it works really well.  The trick is getting the juicier targets into play.  This requires sacrificing a warjack or something to the opponent in the hopes that the dare will lure out his bigger tools so I can catch them in the counterattack.  This is way easier said than done, and still requires a lot of thinking and practice on my part.

  3.  I spend a lot of time on battlecollege, but even then, I really don't get what a caster can do until I see it on the table.  I think this is more or less me not putting spells together with units.  I don't know if simply reading cards is enough, battlecollege or what.  Or just time.  Next time I see Ret Sentinels though, I'm either killing all of them, or shooting at them.  Vengeance sucks.

  4.  This is just me clearing my brain and reading my own cards.  Fairly simple, probably the easiest solved.  I need to know my own guys.

  5.  I think the biggest problem here is List Building.  Everything in my Kraye list focused on making life easier for the Stormclad when he gets his moment to shine, never holding zones, playing attrition, nothing.  The other issue is that I have refused to play power casters, and as I move forward in the meta, this isn't going to work.  Yes, I'm fully aware that a good player can work with any caster.  That's great if you're a good player.  And the Good players are still bringing Butcher3, eHaley, Gaspy, eMorv, so on, so forth.  I got smashed by eMorvahna not once, but twice, last saturday.  Brutally and efficiently, for reasons all listed above.  I still need to post the batrep, it's depressing  I built lousy lists, tied up my own units, most importantly the stormwall, and derped it.  As awesome as All-cav lists look, they don't win games with pCaine.

  This also led me to make my eCaine purchase, who will probably be one of my main casters in the upcoming tournaments.

  The problem, at the end of the day, is me.  When it's all said and done, everyone can agree that Vassal is secretly the gaming module for Glados, and hates humankind, but everything else is my own fault.  I'm not playing people with 54pts of Khador anymore, I'm playing guys who have been to lock and load and placed.  It's different, and while the sudden shift is depressing, it also helps to look back and see where the problems are and work with it.

  Is this something you've gone through?  Going through?  I've seen people hit this stage and leave the game, and while I can't say that I don't blame them, I do enjoy this game.  At the very least, I love painting, and it's become a very enjoyable pasttime with my wife, so I doubt it's going anywhere.  If you've been there, done that, or are hitting that spot, chime in.

  Those are my thoughts.  Like every other brilliant American, I'm putting them on the internet, yay me.  On the plus side, in other news, I've got a few new models painted and the folding table is finished.  Pics tomorrow!

BRCT Round 1. The Online Vassal Tournament.

  Round one was scheduled to finish this weekend, but the sixteen competing players finished their games by 11:00 last night, a good six days ahead of schedule.  That allows us to enter Round Two today.  For those of you new to this situation, let me recap.

  We've got a great Battle Report Community going right now on the privateerpress forums.  In the last six months, it went from a mostly dead forum to thirty, forty people actively posting solid advice.  In the midst of that, Vassal became rather popular because of the distances between most of guys wanting to play somebody else we met on the forum.  Vassal has it's problems, but it has it's merits, and we organized a tournament through it about two weeks ago.  BatRep Community Tournament.  Real fancy name, right?

  Sixteen people entered.  The lists, entries, factions, standings are all available here.  Google Drive is great, ain't it?

  At a glance, I can tell you we've got great representation.  Obviously, a lot of us aren't just posting our home address, but of the sixteen of us, I know several are stateside, from all across the board.  We have two or three from Canada, nice guys.  One from Norway.  I think there's a German in there somewhere.  Couple of guys from the UK too.  On top of that, factionwise, I think we have them all, including Convergence, Mercs and Minions.  In fact, we have two Minion players, one for each pact/contract/zoo.

  So we've got a widespread community, with plenty of age groups, casually enjoying about a game a week to every two weeks in a mildly competitive atmosphere and it's been a blast.  As of Round One, we're sitting here:

Standings:	W/L	CP	APD	Rankings
Marx	1	5	37	1
TerTer	1	5	18	2
Razcalking	1	5	18	3
Teal	1	5	17	4
Seraph	1	5	12	5
Glasskin	1	2	40	6
Jedianakinsolo	1	0	29	7
Xeurian	1	0	23	8
Ozzie347	0	3	27	9
SevenSins	0	3	12	10
Lich Lord	0	2	18	11
Westley	0	2	15	12
Wolf9416	0	2	8	13
Seikishi	0	1	21	14
Lead Legion	0	0	17	15
Sanctjud	0	0	0	16

  Round Two will have each odd numbered player against the guy below him, and we'll progress from there.  Should be a good fight.  There's been some great games, good stories and it's only getting better.  One of the aspects of the competition is Best Narrative, so we're seeing some cool fiction come out of this as well.  I'm excited, and I've already got guys excited to get into the next round.

  On that note, I'm wanting to develop this tournament style a bit more.  We've had a lot of support from the BatRep community for this tournament, and I'd like to take it to the next level for the next one.  This may, or may not happen, it depends on feedback and the support I can find.  My idea involves running the tournament through an online gamestore though.  With the amount of Online Warmachine Retailers like The War Store, Art's Gamestore, PFCgames and Sepco Entertainment, or even MiniatureMarket, I'm curious to see if they'd be interested in hosting the next Online Vassal tournament.  This would get us prize support, for starters.  I looked into ordering the Steamroller prize package, but that can only be done by a store representative.  An online retailer could do that.  On top of that, in-store credit would be cool too, and would encourage sales with them, I would think.  This would, of course, require an entry fee, so there is that downside.  Five dollars (Or pounds, quid, rocks, beads, whatever), would be something I'd be willing to pay for that kind of thing, but I don't know if that goes for everyone.  

  That's kind of the brainstorming I've got going on.  I think a supported online tournament is something completely new, and I'm not sure it's something Privateer Press would get behind seeing how we don't technically need their models to play.  At the same time though, it allows players who aren't normally able to make the tournament scene to get into it a little bit and enjoy some of the competition.  So yeah, I'm not sure, but this is the direction I want to take the next tournament here in about two months, at the rate this tournament is going.  We'll see how it goes.

  Thoughts, comments, questions, advice, insults, leave a comment, angry emoticons, it's up to you.

eFeora (Menoth) vs. pCaine (Cygnar), 50pts. A Song of Fire and mainly more fire.

  The buddy I wasn't able to play at the shop met me online last night in Vassal, and we got after it.  I've been kinda wanting to try out the Silverline Stormguard before I buy both the Stormguard unit, and the unit pack for them.  On top of that, I had yet to use the Stormblade Captain's tactician for anything useful, and wanted to see how that went.  Our lists:

pCaine
*Stormwall
Stormlances (min)
Laddermore
Silverline Stormguard (max)
Tempest Blazers (max)
Rhupert
Gorman

  My opponent brought:

eFeora
*Reckoner (Bonded)
*Reckoner
*Vanquisher
*Redeemer
Holy Zealots (Max)
Daughers of the Flame
Choir (Max)
Wracks (3)
eEiryss
Vassal
Gorman

We rolled off and he got highest and took first.  Incursion was the Scenario rolled.

    Everything runs up, except the racks obviously.  Eiryss tucks into the trees, and Feora drops Escort and moves up.  Otherwise, nothing crazy.

  I do the mental math for the daughters.  I figure they're spd6 or 7, but 6 to be safe.  Between AD and my Blazer's 19'' threat range, I figure they're in.  So, Caine keeps his focus, snipes the stormwall, blurs the Blazers and Deadeyes them as well.  Then he moves up.

  The Stormwall moves up, and shoots his left Reckoner twice for nine damage altogether I think.  Rhupert toughs the silverline, they run, and the Lances and Stormblade Captain filter in behind them.

  The Blazers move up as far as they can, and proceed to hit four out of five times, but roll snakeyes for damage twice.  I still manage to kill all but one.  Gorman moves up and takes a smokebreak with Caine.  The right flag disappears.

       Hey, check it out, I forget to take a picture at this point, so bear with me.  The left Reckoner gets a focus, and the right one gets two.  The daughter runs into melee with my blazers, and the Zealots run forward and do their minifeat where I can't hurt them.  The Jacks get passage, I think.  Whatever doesn't let me shoot them.  Then with the help of the Vassal(s), they proceed to throw 6 fire templates out there,, which actually fail to kill a single silverline because they all tough like champs.  Apparently this is the one game I want them to not tough.  Figures.

  So he basically lights absolutely everything on fire, except Caine, two Blazers, and the Stormblade Captain.  Feora moves up, and of course, feats, and pulls fire off of the Stormwall and drops it on Caine.  She's now at ARM31.  Where's eStryker when I need him?  Or Eiryss for that matter.  Speaking of which, she moves in to engage the Silverline, and prevents focus allocation to my Stormwall.  

  In response, I run away.  I drop Blur and Snipe, cast Snipe on Gorman and the Blazers kill the daughter, and light cav into combat with the Zealots while two of them climb into the woods.  One Lance runs in to contest the center flag, the silver line back up, and kill Eiryss too.  I not only forgot to put templates out with the Stormwall, I forgot my pod too,  So he stepped back and Gorman moved into the woods and threw oil at the Reckoner beside Feora.  It, of course, missed, and deviated back towards me for nothing.  And that was turn.

  

  For his turn, the Zealots kill the two blazers in melee with them and sit on the flag.  The blazers proceed to fail CMD.  Gorman drops smoke on eFeora, and the Choir gives no shooting to the jacks again I think.  The two jacks on the right kill my Lance, the Redeemer shoots at Caine a bit, and the Red reckoner smashes Gorman.  Turn, and 3 CPs for Menoth.

  So I give it everything.  The Stormwall gets three focus.  Two of my Silverline die and the last guy's fire goes out.  Or doesn't hurt him.  I don't remember.  Rhupert toughs the Lances, and the Stormwall charges the red reckoner.  He hits him four of the five times (Needing fours) and leaves him on one box on his cortex.  With his Stormpod, he fries Gorman.

  

  The Last Silverline guardsman aims, and fires at the Green Reckoner and hits, dropping the 5'' AOE right there.  The lances assault the Vanquisher with Laddermore's bonus, who by now is a dismounted Dragoon due to fire.  Between her and the Silverline bonus, the ranged shots are POW16, and electro leaps are POW12.  Not bad.  All attacks hit, but one of the POW16s rolls snake eyes at like, dice -1 or 2.  I hurt the jack and took out his melee arm, but just couldn't really get farther than that.  The Stormblade Captain charges the red reckoner and finishes him, then shoots the Redeemer with the quickwork attack.  Which was fun.

  pCaine then moves into the woods, and feats.  He BARELY has the Zealots in range, and opens fire.  I need to kill enough of these guys to prevent them from scoring.

  I proceed to roll 1,1 then 1,1, and then 1,2 for my first three hits.  I need 4.  That's it.  After I used some extensive capslock on Vassal, I managed to hit the last few, then used my initials to miss one of the original three, but the second initial hits him. That takes them below half strength, and they can no longer score.  Caine teleports back behind the Tempest Blazers, who pass CMD this turn.

  I couldn't remember how far the flags are from eachother, and I was thinking 12, which is correct, but as I ended my turn, I realized I had no way to prevent Feora from dominating the Zealot's flag.

  That's indeed what happens.  She allocates focus to the Reckoner, drops firestep, and then charges her zealot, stopping at the flag.  For kicks and giggles, the Reckoner charges my Stormwall and smashes the right side, but can't quite finish him, and that's game.

Thoughts:

1.  I actually got a lot closer to winning this than I thought possible.  That last push was largely successful, and I think I could have seriously tied up Feona if my Blazers had still been in play.  Even then, my opponent pointed out that I really didn't push.  If I had engaged with the Silverline instead of backing up, I would have accomplished the same goal I had in mind of protecting Stomwall, but would have tied up his jacks as well.  

2.  Eiryss.  Not being able to charge in sucked.  That wasn't any fun at all, but I didn't have any way to handle her.  If I'd pushed with the silverline, she'd of had to stay back.  Otherwise, I keep thinking I don' t need her.  I might...  She alone would have forced my opponent to hang back a bit more, even with ARM31, since she could easily lose that with Eiryss, and Deadeye from Caine.  I may have to start having her in specialists lists.

3.  Outside of Vassal just mainly hating my guts, I didn't push enough, and I think I earned this loss.  My opponent played a strong game, and 6 AOEs of fire makes for a mean feat turn for Scenario.  I hung back to much, too cautious.

4.  The feat of pCaine is fun, if I can actually roll a four.  I like how on tabletop, I don't boost for a 6, but in Vassal, it's probably a good idea.  Dumb.

5.  The Silverline did alright.  I think I want to try this list again, but drop Stormwall for an Avenger and Stormblades.  Deadeyed Stormblades running around behind Silverline sounds like a lot of fun.