First Guildball Tournament and rude awakenings

  I have no idea what I'm talking about.  We can lead off with that.

  We had 12 signed up for a tournament, with four or five people coming on top of that who didn't have their names in the hat.  Unfortunately at the last day, we lost most of those due to a number of reasons.  We ended up with only 7, but one dropped to keep the numbers even.  He came back in on round 3 to cover the bye, but that's about it.

  I took an Esters team with Scum, since I didn't have any choice on the mascot.  I really like Tapper, but he really struggles against any control it seems like, and if I'm not able to gain any momentum, it's hard for Spigot to use his Heroic to get some speed into the team.  I've found I have a lot better grasp of the game when Esters is able to affect the team from turn 1.

  For the full lineup, I took:

-Esters
-Scum
-Spigot
-Friday
-Mash
-Hooper
-Stoker
-Gutter

  Spigot is always good with tooled up and football legend.

  Friday is there if I really want to play the ball.  If I go into a strong beating team, then I'll just go all in on footballers.

  Mash, I actually like to put in my teams when I'm up against scoring teams.  He retains the ball very well with the dodge against everyone but the kickers with 2'' melee.  Even them, he's 3/1, but can become 4/3 extremely easy.  Between him and Esters with Gluttonous Mass, I can usually retain the ball pretty well.  On top of that, once they start getting me surrounded, Mash just Long Bombs the ball into the backfield.

  Hooper is Hooper.  In this particular lineup, I didn't know if I prefered him over Stoker since Stoker has the extra influence, and with Stave (who wasn't in this line up), can go to 5 influence.  However, I'm finding that for 2 reasons, Hooper is more reliable.  2'' Melee, for starters, lets me dodge of a lot of problems and solve many others.  Secondly, his Heroic nearly counters Stoker's influence.  At TAC5, Stoker really wants some crowdouts so he can wrap, even at 4 or 5 influence.  He also wants things on fire to do damage.  Hooper just wants them knocked down.  Stoker, with 1'' melee, struggles into packed centers where he can be crowded out easily.  Hooper just stands outside of the circle and plays whack a mole, and if you've got any momentum at all, he does it at TAC7.  Any crowdouts or help at all and he's wrapping pretty easily.  I can consistently get 6 momentum a turn off of Hooper where Stoker, even with a shorter playbook, needs more setup for that.  I don't think Stoker is as bad as people give him credit for, but when Hooper can bump up to TAC7 and gain his +1 Damage without getting into b2b contact with the opposing model and do it all from 2'' away, it's hard to let him go.

  Gutter lets me play the game at my pace.  Instead of having to go to enemy and scrum, I can easily sit back, let Esters slow down the pieces I don't want to deal with, and have Gutter pull in a specific target for Hooper/Stoker to beat down.  If it comes to a scrum in the middle, Gutter is a solid choice for putting all that damage out there on multiple models.  The other option is Stave, but Gutter is able to survive considerably easier at DEF4 ARM1 instead of Stave's DEF2 ARM0.  I really want to play Stave, but I don't think he's an option until I'm able to take Quaff and pull Stave back with Second wind.

GAME ONE: Brewers vs. Masons

  My wife plays a lot of Masons, but never Hammer, and she hasn't figured out Brick yet.  So while I felt comfortable into the Masons, I was wary of Brick and Hammer both.  Hammer, I know what he does.  Brick, I hadn't seen played effectively before.

  Spoilers: He got played effectively.

  I left Hooper and Friday out.  He took Hammer, Mallet, Tower, Brick, Flint and Marbles.  I won the rolloff, Brick kicked, and I bounced the ball around a bit, trying to stall Gutter and Stoker's activations till someone came close enough.  Esters activated early, moved up and targeted Brick with Fire and Rough Ground both, hitting him both times and lighting both Brick and I believe Mallet as well, on fire.  This, as long as my opponent couldn't gain momentum, would prevent a mostly loaded Hammer from getting to me on turn one, allowing me to win the momentum war on turn one at least.

  I ended up pulling Mallet in I think.  Brick sprinted up his 2'' while on fire and in rough terrain, and when Stoker went in on Mallet, Brick countercharged.  This didn't bother me too much since I didn't expect him to do much of anything and I didn't think you could generate momentum on out-of-activation attacks like Counterattacks.

  That's not correct.

  Brick didn't do anything to stop Stoker from doing much, but gained one momentum.  This allowed Hammer to come flying in next activation and easily win the momentum war.

  So now on my back foot after a noob mistake, I tried to regain momentum and slowly pushed stuff around, did minor damage and kept the ball on Mash and away from Flint.  Esters did a legendary and gave Stoker another damage, and he got tooled up as well and had a max of 4 influence on him.  At this point, Hammer was knocked down and a little hurt but not bad.  Stoker moved into Hammer, staying out of the scrum in the middle, and Brick countercharged from behind other models.  I didn't think he'd have reach, but he did, and it was tight, but he got a momentous push and pushed my fully loaded Stoker out of melee with Hammer, and coincidentally, everyone else.

  The game continued, but I certainly did not play it much after that.  Models moved, but I was done.  We played it out for the sake of playing but I was pretty pissed at myself for screwing it up on turn 1 with giving my opponent momentum to glide Hammer, and then not premeasuring Brick's countercharge on turn two.  I wasted 4 inf and a legendary on that, and I was done.  I lost 12-0.  My opponent played it very well with Brick, and I should have known better by then.  It was an easy mistake I could have rectified if I had checked Brick's range first, but because he was behind other models, I didn't expect him to be able to get there with the melee, but he did.

  GAME TWO: Brewers vs. Fishermen

  I took the same list into my Round 2 opponent who was playing a Corsair Fisherman list.  He had Jac, Sakana, Kraken, Avarisse and Greede, and Salt, all under Corsair.

  I again won the rolloff, and Corsair moved up to kick it.  There was rough terrain in the middle, and he kicked it to my left where only Scum could really reach it.  Scum went out and grabbed it and made a lucky kick back to Spigot.

  Esters really dominated this matchup.  Again, I wanted to save Stoker and Gutter for the last activations and pull in either Kraken or Corsair himself but my opponent wouldn't particularly cooperate, especially since he was trying to do the exact same thing with Corsair.  However, as soon as the cat was done and his next activation was over, Esters moved up and landed both a rough terrain and fire AOE on Corsair, removing 4/4 movement from him and severely hampering his threat range.  The rest of the turn was my stuff staying out of Corsair's drag range.  Gutter moved up and pulled Kraken in at the end for some extra momentum, and Sakana ran in to try and crowd her out.  I won the next turn rolloff.

  Similar things happened.  Esters hammered Corsair with AOEs again and then Legendaried Stoker for damage, maybe movement, and I think DEF on herself.  Corsair did have range on Gutter though, and drug her in.  He failed to do much damage, or build significant Momentum.  Spigot tooled up Stoker and went in on Kraken for a little bit of damage.  The rest of the Fishermen were out of range for much so they just shifted around and Avarisse tried to run to my side of the board to be relevant.  Gutter activated and did damage to Corsair, Sakana and Kraken, but not a great, great deal.  Got me plenty of momentum though, swinging onto a KD Kraken with Spigot engaging.  Stoker was the last activation and I think he killed either Corsair or Kraken. This gave me enough momentum to win the next round where a fully loaded Gutter killed whoever I didn't kill the turn before, and Sakana died shortly thereafter as well.

  Midway through the third round, a mostly ignored Mash walked up and scored for kicks and giggles.  However, I timed out, and things got very tight.  I won the game 12-2 when a fully loaded Stoker finished a knocked down, crowded out Jac.  The 2 points my opponent scored were because I had timed out.

  This game, I felt like I paid better attention to the gotchas in my opponent's list, and with pretty stoic threat ranges, I was able to really neuter the other team by simply lighting their hard hitters on fire and in rough terrain, and denying momentum.  It was a best case scenario for my list, and Gutter being able to pull out the one I wanted to kill every turn just made it even better.  It was a pretty rough game for my opponent, probably every bit as rough as mine had been in the last round.  The only thing I really botched was the clock.

  Stoker was pretty hilarious in this game.  He easily did the most killing, but in the last round, my opponent kept trying to take him down and keep him out of 1'' of his models so he couldn't just stand up and walk around.  However, Esters stood him up with her heroic once, Gutter got him 2 momentum to stand him up once, and then on his turn, he just stood up with Magical Brew.  It was pretty funny how often he went down, and how often he simply stood back up again.

GAME THREE: Brewers vs. Brewers

  There were only so many players left, and my fight was actually for third or second at this point.  My opponent from round one was absolutely thrashed by a Obulus list in the second round that managed to get up to 23 momentum in one turn without using the legendary.  He told me later he was in pretty much the same boat I had been.  Just pushing models around with no hope and wanting the game to be over.  So that left me and another guy pushing for second or third given the turnout we'd had.  We stayed on the table I had just played on so the rough terrain in the middle was still a factor.

  The remaining opponent was another Brewers player.  He was also playing Esters.  His full list was her, Scum (for now), Stave, Stoker, Friday, Spigot.  I took Mash out of mine and put in Hooper, leaving me with him, Esters, Scum, Stoker, Spigot and Gutter.  The running joke was that since the main difference was Stave, I was definitely loosing this game since Stave would control my list so easily.

  I again won the rolloff and received the ball.  Gutter was the best to retrieve it, so I settled for not pulling anyone in this turn and kicked it to Spigot.  Esters moved up and bombed his Esters and Stave both, but stayed out of range of Stave being able to push her in.  Hooper moved up and repositioned, Stoker wandered around kicking the ball.  I won the rolloff just barely and Gutter pulled in Stave and began cutting him up for momentum.

  Stave, engaged, was unable to do anything, so Esters moved in and knocked Gutter down to free him up.  My Esters moved in, stood everyone up and Knocked down Stave, then legendaried herself for a defense, Hooper for damage and maybe Stoker for damage too.  Settling for not getting a Barrel off, Stave swung at Esters and she counterattacked, knocking him down.  This was basically how most of my game went.  I was always ahead in momentum, by several, and could easily defensive stance and counterattack to KD unless they were able to knock me down.  With Esters at DEF4, and Gutter standing up, it didn't happen much.

  His Spigot and Friday slowly began hunting my Spigot, trying to get the ball from him.  I wasn't too worried about it, and simply kept tooling up Hooper.  My cat wandered aimlessly.  His Stoker took three rounds to get into the fight simply because he was on the wrong side of the central rough terrain.  However, he was loaded up constantly, and ended up just burning my Scum to death over two turns.

  At the end of Round 2, Hooper was at +3 damage and went in on Stave, killing him handily and generating 6 momentum.

  Round 3 led off with a fully loaded Gutter moving up, dragging Stave in and getting him pretty low.  Stoker finished him in the next activation.  That left Esters and another fully loaded Hooper counterattacking into Esters and putting her in a bad spot as well.  Spigot got a "Ball's Gone!" off on my Spigot and gave it to Friday, whom I continued to ignore.  That round ended, again, with a fully loaded Hooper beating the living daylights out of Esters for VP 5 and 6.  Friday went and scored, getting my opponent to 6 as well.  Esters would get the ball on the goal kick.

  My opponent won the rolloff, but even though the score was tied, the end was in sight.  His spigot was tied up pretty well by Hooper, and Esters ended up walking up, throwing the ball to Spigot and putting some hurt in bad Spigot.  Bad Stoker tried to hurt Gutter, but did very little.  My Spigot walked up and scored with no issues, and a fully loaded, tooled up Hooper killed bad Spigot for the win.

 In conclusion, I missed 2nd place by 2 score difference, and/or a ball score.  However, after being absolutely trashed by the Masons, I was ok with it.

  I really think the Masons game was the lynchpin, obviously.  There's two easy mistakes I can look at and know that's where the problem was.  I expected to have a difficult time into that opponent, and was prepared for a grindy game, but not knowing that momentum can be scored on the countercharge really hurt, and then having Stoker pushed out when fully loaded with the end of it for me.  There wasn't much I could do to score after that anyways, and it wasn't of much concern to me.  However, Mash had the ball most of the game, and if I had been inclined, could have probably scored it if I wanted to, and that's what cost me 2nd place.

  I need to premeasure.  If it's a possibility, premeasure it.  Check it.  Find out.  I can in this game and I don't every time, and it costs me.

  My future line-up is pretty exciting.  I will probably not play Scum for a long time, especially with a Gencon release of Quaff and no tournaments before then.  There's a couple of lists I want to play with a try, and hopefully batrep properly but we'll see.  I also have Hunters that I'll switch to playing some more here in the future.

  So, for my first n00b tournament, I'm ok with it.  Hopefully there's some basic mistakes in here that you can read and say "Oh yeah, don't be stupid like that guy."

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.

  

Guildball Terrain -or- A Hirst Arts Commercial

  Guildball terrain, when I have painting articles to finish, is probably multiple counts of treason.  However, there's tournaments coming up for Guildball that I want to play in.  The nice thing about guildball terrain is that you need a lot less than you need for Warmachine, and it's considerably smaller pieces.

  And it's not stupid crap like acidic clouds or burning forests.  I'm not even going to create terrain like that because it'll never make competitive play.  It's going to occupy a special niche in the trashcan next to MK2 deep water.

  Anyways.  Guildball.  My wife and I have been playing a lot of it.  In my last picture, I had Mash, Stoker and Hemlock unpainted.  That's since been rectified and their pictures will be at the end of this article.  I've also added Gutter to my log.

  My wife picked up Decimate, and subsequently we grabbed Blackheart too since it didn't make sense to grab Decimate and Gutter separately for 24$ when we could grab the 32$ starter box and get another ball and a Captain.  So we're a Mascot and a player away from a 6 man union team now too.  This game is growing on us pretty fast it seems.

  The other thing I grabbed was a playmat, and then realized that the nice 2d terrain I have for Warmachine isn't really the right stuff for Guildball.  A couple of the templates work.  Forests, rough terrain and the walls are all functional, but Guildball has obstructions and such that can block los or be stood on.  So I started building some in my copious amounts of spare time.

  It's going to seem like cheating.  There's a lot of ways to build terrain.  What it boils down to is a backer to put it on, and the actual terrain.

  The backer was actually the hard part to figure out.  I originally thought that MDF would be fine, but it's really too thick and does not like to get wet.  At all.  So I was thinking hard about some different plastics but it dawned on me that I have all kinds of spare kydex scraps laying around as leftovers from other hobbies.

  Kydex doesn't show up very often in the wargaming world.  It's a PVC thermoplastic that's often heated up and formed over different things as a mold.  It gets to cosplay a little bit because it's very easy to work with.  Where you'll find it the most though, is holsters.  I generally get mine for a couple of bucks per sq foot at Knifekits.com, but some local craft stores may carry it too.  You can get it in varying thicknesses.  Mine is all either .06" or .08" thick.  It's cuttable, sandable, formable, you name it.

  I simply cut mine with a bandsaw to some manageable sizes.  My rough terrain patches are about 4'' long, 2.5 to 3'' wide.  My obstructions are about 2.5 x 2.5", and my linear or, other obstructions, are 1.5 x 2.5'' or so.  Very loose measurements, but just an idea.  I then dremeled the edges to get a light bevel and take out any harsh edges.

  Then I glued a plethora of Hirst Arts to the Kydex.  Really simple.  Drained most of the Hirst Arts blocks I had left.  I need to order some more plaster.  However, you can use regular rocks, or sticks, or tree bark or craft sticks, whatever, to form whatever your scenery is.  The difference in Guildball is that if there's room to put a model on it, you can.  If this is a goal of yours, then you should allow for a model to stand on it.  If the guy is worried about his miniature falling off and chipping, he's not going to use the terrain correctly, or the terrain just won't ever make the table.  So keep those things in mind.  In my terrain, the pieces that you can stand on are obvious, while so are the others that you're not supposed to stand on.  I just did 2x Rough terrain, 2x linear/LOS blocking obstruction and 2x regular obstruction.  I'll probably keep my WMH forest templates, and I have some regular walls from WMH that are perfect, and also made of Hirst Arts.  They'll slot right in.

  I then spread out elmers glue and dipped them in various mixed ballast to get the rocks.  Painted the base brown, washed it with a very dark brown, drybrushed a light brown on dirt, painted dark grey and drybrushed to white.  Very simple.  Add some grass tufts and we're talking.

  Boom.  Guildball terrain.

  So that's that.  Simple stuff.  But I really like using the Kydex.  That's probably going to stay.

  As far as my new Brewers, here's Mash, Stoker and Hemlock.

  That's all I've got today.  Probably won't see anything from me til after the 4th.  Enjoy your holiday!

Staying alive into MK3... and then Guildball

  The leaked cards were right.  Old news by now, but still.

  I've played some, and built a ton of lists, and I think I'm done with Trolls for awhile.  In fact, with the exception of some release events and things I'm already volunteered for, and happily, mind you, I'll probably be stepping back from Warmchine for a bit until the meta settles out.  For a ruleset that desperately wanted to get rid of spams, that's all I've seen.  PP has faith it will settle out, and when it does, I'll come back to Warmachine.  Might be two weeks, might be eight.  Might be early next year.  I don't know.

  The TL:DR version of where I think trolls are at right now can be summoned up in a few hotly debated bullet points that get thrown out if you step into the "Trolls can power through this" club comprised of the special snowflakes of the Facebook page.  Madrak2 is literally carrying the faction right now.

  1.  We're an infantry faction that's being forced to take twice to three times as much battlegroup as normal.  My Grim2 battlegroup stays almost the same size.  However, casters like Madrak2 and the Grissels that want as much infantry and support as they can get are forced to take 30pts of beasts instead of maybe 10 to 14 (in MK2 pts).  This hurts our ability to take Fell Callers, Stone Scribes, the KSB, the new Shaman, and our very improved Sorcerer.  Madrak2 straight up just spams infantry and does the work himself.  It's dumb.

 2.  We struggle to crank damage out on our infantry now with the Elemental buffs basically gone.  Again, important on the infantry casters.

 3.  Our fury management has not scaled with our forced battlegroup size.

 4.  Our beasts do not trade with Warjacks very well.  Rok can kill a Juggy, maaaybe hurt a second.  One kills him, and there goes my premium heavy because my other one is just a sad reach troll now.

5.  We can't take enough support for our infantry to trade up either.

6.  Borka2 is still trash.

7.  Doomshaper3 is essentially unplayable, and the Mountain King is equally concerned, when ranged Grevious Wounds got handed out like candy.

  Every game I played was very frustrating, and by the end of a couple of weeks of playing things, I put them on the shelf and took a break til this settles out.  If you're enjoying trolls, good on you.

  My meta's had the Guildball epidemic for awhile though, and nearly half to two thirds of the players own at least one guild, if not four.  I was enjoying MK2, but with MK3 kind of chasing the matador through the china shop, I finally gave in and demoed Guildball.

  Right off the bat, the access to the game is pretty amazing.  Everything you want is free online.  Printable widgets, full ruleset, cards, even paper cutouts to try playing the game.  So I printed them and my wife and I played a few games and we're pretty much hooked.

  Transitioning from Trollbloods, I naturally went with the Brewers and they are some hella beautiful models.  Steamforged is knocking them out of the park.  My wife tried Fishermen, but didn't like the playstyle that much, and switched to the Masons.  She's still playing paper cut outs but I expect her models soon.  She's thoroughly enjoying the game, possibly more than I am, so I think Guildball is here to stay.

  So, Guildball models.  I love these sculpts for the most part.  The Brewers have all been largely dynamic and exciting with the exception of the Cat and Friday.  The rest of them are mid sprint or doing the action they're known for.

  I personally started with the Brewer's Starter Kit, and really enjoyed the Tapper/Hooper combo, so I stuck with it.  I filled it out to six with Scum, Stave, and Spigot and painted all seven of them.

  Red is new for me.  I've done a lot of black, a lot of blue and a lot of tan, so I went red on this one as my primary color.  The Tartan is actually my family's, it's the Rose clan's parade tartan so I was pretty excited to use it.

  Tapper's my Captain right now.  I literally have no idea about the game, so I couldn't tell you if I prefer him in a tournament to Ester or not.  I love his sculpt though, and I've straight up one-rounded more than one player with him.

  My biggest problem with Tapper is that he pretty much requires the cat.  Scum is ok, but I'd love to have Second Wind from Quaff or that extra TAC on Hooper or Spigot.  I can't pass up a free 1/1 INF though.  It's pretty hard to pin this mascot down though.  He's ok towards the end of a round for getting a free extra TAC by engaging another model, but Quaff still seems like a lot more utility.  1/1 INF is so nice though.

    Spigot's a fun model.  I've looked at the Spigot2 rules quite a bit, and I keep coming back to him.  Again, I'm 6 games in, so things will probably change, but Spigot1 does so much for the team around him that it's hard to pass it up.  Even Scum passes a ball decently around him.  So far, most of my goals have been with him, not Friday.  I've played the two of them together in every list though, and Friday's very good paired with him, but if I had to drop a striker, it wouldn't be Spigot.  I bought Hemlock the other day, and she'd probably trade in for Friday or Stave depending on the matchup, and Spigot makes even her a decent kicker.

  The ball.  Woo.

  Friday's been nice.  She's hard to hang onto with her immediate dodge, and she's an amazing striker.  I usually try to push her towards the goal and snapshot her, but people generally focus on tieing her up or knocking her down and she ends up kicking the Spigot instead who snapshots.  Which also works fine.

  Hooper.  He either kills everything or I can't keep him alive because he gets tag teamed.  I really enjoy just running him around with Tapper though and ganking things.  If it gets really bad, Spigot usually sprints over to help after they've KDed the guy, and really polishes him off.  

  Stave, my personal favorite model in the collection.  He gets a bit of a bad rep and Mash usually slides in to replace him but I've had decent beginner's luck with him for board control.  He's really bad about feeding momentum to the other team, but he's amazing for really bringing in the model I want to kill.  I've straight up blown the Hunter Captain and Shark into my lines where Tapper, followed by Hooper, followed by Spigot have round-one killed the guy.  Heck, I even did it to another Stave in a mirror match.  

  So, I got into this game, and my first game was a proxy game with my wife who tried the Fishermen Guild.  She got wiped off the board by Tapper/Hooper stabbing things repeatedly and Friday running circles around the muggings, scoring points.  So she traded them out for Mason proxies and liked those much, much more.  Hammer's a legit threat.  

  So, as of today, she has 7 Masons, the only released models she doesn't own is Hammer and Tower. She's not sure if she likes Brick, but she loves everyone else, and is looking at Union players now too.  I went ahead and grabbed Mash because he's popular and I want to try him, and Stoker because he looks hella fun.  I also grabbed Hemlock for that great smelling salts ability.  

  So yeah.  I'm a Guildball player.  A lot moreso than I'm a Warmachine player.  Temporary change for now.  We'll see where that goes from here.  I'm thoroughly enjoying Guildball right now though, and my wife is too.  Even if certain things are addressed in MK3, I think Guildball will be pretty big for us for awhile, and I currently doubt that Warmachine will be able to take that 1st place against for a bit.

Basic Necessities for Painting Part II: Advanced Assembly

 By Advanced, I mean more than just pouring glue on stuff til the Nyss quit falling apart.  We'll cover some more detailed expectations of the models you're dealing with and some further insight into assembling a clean model.  For a final touch, and to keep Part III from being too unwieldy, we'll cover attaching the model to the base and the priming, and the pros/cons to priming before or after assembly/basing etc.

  Let's rehash.  I posted probably six articles in August, and have done nothing since.  Things got busy, but it's time to push this particular series through.  So, I listed the following:

1.  Glue
2.  Exacto Knife
3.  Pliers
4.  Greystuff

  Pretty simple.  That's more than enough to build a model and put it on the table.  But lets go from fielding a model, to cleaning a model and having it completely prepared for a good paintjob.  We can break this into further categories.  Cleaning, Attaching/Pinning, Priming.

  Further tools we'll need is a pinning drill, bits, and pins to go with it.  GW and PP both manufacture a drill kit and PP's pins and bits are probably the best for the job without running around and getting them from multiple other locations.  A vise can also be handy but I haven't used one yet.


  Cleaning

  One of the major downsides often brought up in PP's resin style of manufacturing models is the horrible mold lines left behind in models.  Warders have been particularly denounced in this regard, mold lines in the middle of faces and etc.  Recent molds have been vastly improved, but this does nothing for older sculpts.  The exception to this has been Convergence.  The Convergence sculpts have been pretty rough. So, we need to recognize these seams and deal with them.

  It's pretty easy to identify a mold line.  It's usually a raised seam along a model.

  In both cases it's pretty easy to recognize.  Sometimes, the mold itself wasn't aligned perfectly, so one edge is offset from the other.  Those are a bit harder to deal with but it can be done.  

  So, the Exacto knife is the first way to deal with this.  Cut off the biggest pieces, in some cases a cylinder port where the resin was filled in.  This is particularly bad on Colossals/Gargantuans.  So, once we've cut this stuff, we can sand it.  Instead of actually getting sandpaper, start with scraping your blade on your knife across.  Sometimes this can scratch off a seam, and in particularly tight places with no lateral movement for a sanding motion, it's the best thing.  If that doesn't work, Hobby Lobby and other such stores have sanding sticks.

  Get some.  They're sweet.  Some different styles but the main thing about most of them is they have different grit on either side.  They're pretty cheap and generally easy to find.  If your local hobby store (Michaels, Hobby Lobby, Hobbytown, etc) support model kits at all, E.G., tanks, planes, cars, they'll have these sticks.

  Pliers are also nice to have for the cleaning.  I like to keep the tabs on the model until I'm ready to glue it to the base,  However, at some point, I have to cut that tab off and that takes some significant force.  If you have a lot of fragile bits on the base, then don't glue them on before you cut that tab off.  However, if you cut it off early, you'll get a lot of fingerprint oil on the model that you should ideally clean off before painting the model.  On the resin ones, that's not nearly as important.  On the metal ones it becomes significantly more important.

  For actual washing, soapy water and a blowdryer is pretty standard.  Scrub as much as you can carefully but attempt not to lose parts down the drain because that makes this process significantly more difficult.

  Actual Cleaning/Assembly

  Someone gifted me a Goreshade1 resculpt model at a convention recently, and I'm not a Cryx player, but it's a really pretty model, and a small diorama throughout this series would help to serve a lot of points.  So we're going to cover tools as we just did, and then move into the process where I can show what we're doing and worrying about.

  So, here's the model we got.

  My final vision for this model is to utilize the strolling stance he has, and have him and the deathwalker casually walking down from the rocky bluff, with three or four bodies laying about.  Some Alexia blisters or something.  Have the deathwalker strolling from one of the bodies specifically.  

  The terrain will be pretty varied.  I'd like to get rocks, insulation foam, tree bark, ballast and all kinds of stuff involved so I can cover a lot of different techniques.  It'll be probably desert based but I may change my mind.  Haven't decided for sure yet.  That's the next article, and it's taken probably six months for this one.

  So, let's build this guy.  We're going to stay pretty stock, no modding.  Just clean edges.

  Right off the bat, theres some extra flashing on the pointy things.  I'm going to break off the flashing and sand those points a bit.  The bottom of the cloak has similar issues but the sanding stick fits in there just fine.  The main thing is cut the big chunks of flashing.  Clean it with the sanding stick.

  Here's a particularly large piece of flashing on the hilt.  There's a little more on the back edge of the blade tip, and then there's a fine line down the front of the handle too.  So I'll hit that largest offender with a knife.

  That'll leave a small edge, so I'll hit it with the rough grit on the stick, and then the softer grit.

  I also took the knife to that flashing at the blade tip and scraped it off.  I sanded it with the light grit to finish it off. 

  Now you see the edge running down the handle.  Just a thin line but it's frustrating because of the amount of detail.

  I scraped very selectively with the knife and then sanded lightly.

 

  That piece is done.  I'll touch up the bottom of the cloak the same way.

I'm planning on washing the whole model anyways, so I'm going to cut off the feet tabs now.  Get it set against your cutting bad and rock the model back and forth carefully to work your blade through the metal and then sand the rest.

  Finally, there's a thin line on top of the shoulders of the torso.  I'll sand them lightly.  The spikes on the backpiece were the same way.  Only one was noticeably bad flashing.

Assembly

  Alright, so now we're into the assembly side of things.  If you're going to clean them, soak them in soapy water, brush them with a toothbrush, blow dry them or let them sit on a paper towel.  Pick it up tomorrow after they're dry.

  Now, let's do the girl first because it's one joint.  There's little to no weight going to be held at this joint, so we're not pinning it.  On all metal models though, I usually greenstuff the joints.  So, you'll need your favorite glue and your favorite sculpting material.  In my case, it's the loctite professional liquid super glue in a long necked blue bottle.

  And greenstuff, just your typical GW or Galeforce 9 tubes of blue/green material.  The PP grey/brown stuff is also extremely good, but it doesn't come in the large tube quantities like the green/blue stuff does.  So, roll a little ball of the grey green stuff, and have your favorite sculpting tool nearby to use it to set it in there and let's get this started.

  Here's the joint.  Most of PP's miniatures have that nice little square knob to line things up the way they envisioned.  I've definitely cut them off before so I could do what I want, but this time we'll stick with what they want.

Here, I cut just a tiny bit of green stuff off and I'm going to put it in that slot.

  Put a very fine drop of glue in there and set the arm.  Resin models set extremely quickly.  Couple of seconds.  Metal models do not.  I've held metal to metal for over a minute before.  Abby2 will have you looking at quitting the hobby entirely.  The greenstuff helps a lot to hold the part together and give it a lot more stick while it sets.  Scoring the joints with the knife helps too but most of the time this is unnecessary.

  And there she is.  I'll set her aside and move onto the main show.  Goreshade himself.  His arms specifically are much more weight at a small connection point, unlike the girl's arm.  These, I will pin.  Especially the arm that has the skull with the giant trail behind it.

  So for this, I have the GW drilling kit with the PP pinning kit.  A dremel is nice for bigger pinning jobs, but at this diameter, it's too much.  I'm going to drill dead center in the joint squares.  Put the knob against your palm and twist the drill.  This particular model likes to unscrew the drill from the palm setter, instead of spinning like it's supposed to, so pay attention to that.  Don't give yourself too much bit out of the tip because you'll break it pretty quickly with the amount of pressure you have to apply as you drill.

  I drilled about an 1/16'' to 1/8'' inch into both joints, and then cut a probably 3/16'' bar and made a small ball of green stuff.  I'll stick the pin into the socket with the green stuff, add some glue and stick the other end in.

For the leg/torso connection, I'm just going to greenstuff.  It's not holding weight at a bad angle or anything.  Same with the backpack and the second half of the trail coming off of the skull.

  The cloak, I thought, stuck up under the backpack and would have lots of surface area to glue to.  I was wrong.  It actually comes off the lower edge of the backpack and doesn't touch the torso at all.  So I did a noodle of greenstuff along the top of the cape and glued it in.  I had to hold it for awhile, but it wasn't bad.

  Then I had to go back in and cut the excess greenstuff out.  It's easier to do while it's still pliable, but you also don't want to break the cape loose.  So do the large chunks while pliable, and fine tuning after it's dried and solidified.

  

  Then I did some final greenstuff on the trail joint since the joint didn't flow well at all and left a visible seam.

 

  And here they're assembled.

  One day, when MKIV comes out, I'll do the second part of this series, which will be basing.  We're not basing these guys to their plastic bases because I want to do a far more comprehensive basing tutorial than what two bases would provide.  As I said before, we'll have a chance to look at lots of different basing material, techniques and we'll probably do a little bit of painting on just the terrain too so it's ready to go before we attach the painted miniatures in the third article.

  That's it for now, hopefully this has given you some insight on the finer details of assembly for the hobby.  Any comments or questions can be sent to me here, or on my twitter feed.  Thanks for reading!