Paint ALL THE SOLOS

  This post originally was going to have 3 solos and a full blown folding table full of terrain, and then my wife and I were beset by the ever terrible painting mood where we simply want to sit down, let Pandora make sure we're still alive ocassionally, and paint.  It's a pretty awesome past time that we've discovered we thoroughly enjoy doing together.  So much, in fact, that my wife now has her own Khador army, not because she wants to play them, but because she enjoys painting so much.  However, I didn't get pics of them yet, so I'll show off the six single models we did instead.

  Taryn.  This gal got super popular overnight with the recent errata.  I bought her early last week along with Reinholdt, eCaine and Sylys (No idea what's happening there...  All of them are painted below though) and my wife decided she needed to look like Robin Hood.  I had actually not looked at this model too close, and suddenly realized why she can't seem to get rid of Rutger Shaw.  Two reasons, really.  I'm pretty sure that someone was on a Tomb Raider Game playing marathon when they modelled her.  My wife did pretty awesome with her though, and I reeeaallly like how she turned out.  The tree hides a lot of the detail, but keeps her kinda modest too.  

  I love this terrain, incidentally.  It's super easy.  Little trees from Hobby Lobby that were on sale.  I've used probably... 20 of them, and I don't think I've even used half of the package.  The Chile Pepper Flakes that you see as the fall leaves are also awesome, cheap, and I have tons of them.  

  Next we've got a model I painted.  I didn't know what to do with this guy.  I've owned Rhupert for probably three months now, and haven't known what to paint the guy.  He's just such a weird model.  But brown seemed to suit him, and I knew I kinda wanted to do a tartan on the bagpipe, so I ran with it.  I actually really like how this turned out, and I believe he's in my top 10 favorite models that I own now.

  My wife then tackled Sylys.  She didn't really know what to do with him either, and actually kind of went with a theme much closer to her Khador ice/blue theme.  That's perfectly fine, because I half expect her to use him more than I do.

  

  

  She also did Reinholdt, deciding he needed to be a bit more of a city slicker kind of dude.  I hate this model, she's ok with it, and I like her paintjob.  I forgot to actually base him though.

  I'm not proud of this guy below.  I love Runewood's model, but I don't know how to handle that much metal.  I am not happy of how he turned out, but don't hit the back button yet.  Just skip to eCaine.

  Ok, so eCaine.  The pCaine alt-sculpt is a few posts behind this one, and I love that model, and like how it turned out.  This guy already comes with a base, and I actually really like it, so didn't really want to change it up any.  Added some flakes to it, and called it good.

  That's all I've got for today, folks.  The painting table is still crowded.  I've got a Harlan Versh and Gorman both to finish, on top of ATGM, Stormblades, a second unit of Rangers, and my Avenger and Hunter.  The Blades, Hunter and Avenger have all been base coated for... six months now.  Need to finish them.  Tomorrow, however, I'll have my table posted.  It was too much for one post, so I wanted to catch a few more pictures of it, assemble it a bit better, and present it all in one post.  Tune back in tomorrow!  I've also got a Batrep with eCaine vs. trollblood's Jarl here in the next few days on the new table too, so heads up for that.

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!

Playing Kraye, Cygnar's cowboy

   I've got 2 batreps against Circle to get posted, including one 2 caster 75pt game in preparation for a friend taking his Circle to WMW in St. Louis.  That's a lot of pics though, and it's been a week or so since the last post.  Life, you know?  So let's hit a topic real quick.  I see a lot of posts on PPforums where someone decides they want to try Kraye.  General consensus is that he's a decent caster (E.G., better than Kara and Darius, but not as good as Siege), but doesn't do anything for infantry, and really struggles in the SR2013 format.  Let's look into him a bit, shall we?

  When I climbed out of 40k and dropped into the World of Warmachine, I watched some batreps, scrolled through the forums, realized I thought that Legion looked ugly as sin, and Khador are the badguys.  Cygnar looked pretty cool though, and rolling through their caster page on PrivateerPress, I saw this awesome looking guy riding a horse.

  Enter Captain Jeremiah Kraye.  The model sold me.  When I got into this game, I ordered a 2 Player Battle Box (the 2player kit with Games Workshop was always a good idea, I assumed it would be here too as well), the Cygnar Battlebox, because that's the faction I wanted, and Captain Jeremiah Kraye.  And a Squire.  Idk why I got a squire.  Someone said it was a good idea.  It was, but anyways.

  Kraye looked like fun.  He looked awesome, as a model, and I thoroughly enjoyed painting him.  In fact, I'm sorely temped to buy him again and apply new painting/modding/basing skills and paint him again.  As it is, I modded him with my first foray into greenstuff, and modeled him a wide flat-brimmed Australian Outback hat, and it turned out reasonably well.  The paintjob is dated, but I'm still proud of the hat.

  The first thing we'll notice is that he's one of Cygnar's large based casters, something we don't have many of.  This makes him really hard to hide.  Your first impulse is to bring a 4pt Sentinel to hide him behind for Shield Guard.  Try it, but generally, at ARM17 with 18 boxes, I find that Kraye weathers most ranged assassination attempts.  He's my go-to caster against eLylyth, in fact, though his ability to launch jackbullets into her early game assassination setups helps too.

  His stats are otherwise fairly normal outside of his SPD8.  He's fast for a caster, but he's riding a horse.  That's to be expected.  More on that in a minute.  RAT6 isn't amazing, MAT isn't inspiring either, DEF14 isn't bad for a large base, but against anyone determined to hit you at range, it's not going to convince them otherwise.  On a horse though, this gives him a lot of neat options.  Ride-by attacks.  Move up 4'', cast spells, get behind the wall.  SPD8 gets him where he needs to be pretty quick with some room.

  Pathfinder is neat too, helps him out.  Parry is fantastic.  When that melee assassination fails, you can walk away.  His gun's a POW11 ROF2, which is handy, and his sword is a PS13.  At MAT6, SPD8, he can get 11'' across the board on a charge, so in a pinch he can do some work, but you're going to want his Jacks to do that really.  

  His abilities are where it gets nice though.  It also makes using him a convoluted mess.  For one, it gives all light jacks light cav rules.  This gives them impact attacks and a 5'' move after their activation.  This is as handy as I'll get out.  Using hunters?  Hop the barricade, shoot, get back.  Easy peasy.  

  Heavy Jacks get heavy cav rules.  Now we're talking Ride Bys with Stormclads, impact attacks with Centurions, Tall in the Saddle (Melee attacks ignore intervening models.  Hello screened caster), and +2 to charge attacks because Heavy Cav has brutal charge.  MAT9 Stormclad with PS21 on the charge?  Yes, please.

  Feat turn is terrifying.  All Jacks stand up, can turn, charge for free, gain and extra 2+ SPD on the charge and all melee attacks are boosted.  This is incredible.  A fully loaded Stormclad can make 5 boosted-to-hit attacks, not including tramples, or impacts.  Factor this in with Full Tilt (Kraye's signature spell) which gives 2X base spd, we can put a Stormclad 15'' up the board with 2'' of Reach for a total of 17''.  This has caught a great deal of my opponents off guard.  

  Speaking of spells.  Full Tilt, we just touched on.  I like to cast it on a minuteman, turn 1.  It's an upkeep too, so keep that in mind.  I like to go second with Kraye usually, because my opponent will take the chance to run his infantry as far upfield as he can turn one.  A full tilted minuteman with a focus will go 17'', including the jump, and flakfield.  This puts a light jack in the middle of a group of infantry, and kills a good chunk of them.  Can't handle those Nyss?  Worried about that tarpit coming your way?  Autohitting POW12 handles a lot of that.  Light cav for another 5'' and you're 22'' farther on turn one than when you started.  Your opponent has to deal with your jack now, and that ties him up.

  Guided Fire.  All Jacks in the battle group gained boosted ranged attack rolls for a turn.  This is a neat spell, but doesn't mesh well with the rest of what Kraye can do.  At 6 focus, he doesn't have enough to smash things, AND shoot them.  It's one or the other.  If I'm running a Stormwall, Guided Fire happens a lot.  4-8 boosted POW12/15s?  Sure thing.  Otherwise, Guided fire doesn't see much use at 3 focus.

  Mage Sight.  2 focus to see 5'' of stealth, forest, whatever.  Neat, situational, and expensive.  It's nice to have, and I'm glad Kraye has it, but it's somewhat limited at Battlegroup only.

  Pursuit.  Situational, but handy.  Land it on a target warjack and a battlegroup model gets to move if the other model moves.  Kind of a poorman's admonition.  At RNG8 though, it doesn't see much use from me.  I wish eStryker had this spell though.  23'' threat range!  But no.  Maybe 3Stryker?

  Arcane Blast.  Bet you've never heard of this one.

  Easy Rider.  All friendly faction units in Kraye's control area gain Pathfinder for one turn.  Kinda neat, but most of what you bring with Kraye either doesn't care, or has it already.  And it's expensive.

  What we notice here is that Kraye likes his jacks.  General consensus is that he's Cygnar's best Warjack caster.  I don't doubt that.  Darius is probably the next best thing, but even then, I like Kraye.  The downside to all of this is that he has little to no support for infantry.  A case could be made for Easy Rider, but Cygnar already has plenty of options for getting Pathfinder to our troops if they don't have it already.

  This limits Kraye considerably as to what he can bring.  You'll never see me bring Stormblades with Kraye.  He just can't take care of them.  And they're slow.  Kraye's a fast moving battlegroup, and he needs his units to be two things.  A) Fast to keep up, and B) Self-sufficient.  If they can contribute, that's fantastic, but they need to be able to take care of themselves.

  Rangers and Kraye are a happy couple.  These guys will negate you ever needing to cast Guided Fire with their +2 RAT against targets within 5'' of them.  They have prowl (poorman's stealth), and on top of that, 5pts for a 6man unit with accurate POW11s is handy.  I'll take these guys toe to toe with MHSF any day.  

  ATGM.  They don't need his help, they're plenty accurate on their own, and if you brought Rangers, they're really happy. On top of that you have an excellent Jackmarshal in the ATGM UA.  *Gasp* no, JM in a Kraye list?  Well, sure.  Does Kraye have Snipe?  Gee, no he doesn't...  Wouldn't it be nice to have a shooting jack that has Snipe?  I like the Avenger with his Knockdown ability on the ATGM.  18'' threat range can get anything that the 17'' Stormclad can threaten.  Boosted melee attacks are great, but DEF17 hordes caster laying down on the ground at DEF5 are even better.

  The Tempest Blazers.  These guys have breathed new life into this caster, especially since they are in tier.  They keep up, they don't need help, they can handle infantry by themselves, and take down bigger stuff if needed with the brutals.  These are also my counter to stealth usually.  They're fast enough to get in and get out and survive it.

  That's really the only units I bring.  The Nyss and Boomhowlers both are fairly self-sufficient, and need little to no support, especially the Boomhowlers.  If you really feel like you need a tarpit, these guys will work for you.  Outside of that, Kraye makes his money with his Jacks.

  Centurion.  Generally one of the favorite Jacks to take on Kraye.  With Full-Tilt, he'll move 8'', and then drop Polarity shield, which is mean.  He's got a threat range of 15'' on feat turn, so that's nice too.

  Ironclad.  Cheap 7pt Heavy jack that hits hard and goes 15.5'' on feat turn.  Nice for piece trading early on, setting up a tremor, or just generally having along.  I don't usually get one into my lists, but they're a decent option.  Spamming them might be a thing.  That's one of those things I want to try, but not by buying six of them and deciding I don't like it.

  Stormclad.  My go-to melee jack on Kraye.  17'' threat range on feat turn.  Unless you've played Kraye before, you don't see this guy coming.  On top of that, he's got a RNG8 POW14 gun that I've fried more than one warspear with.  Don't forget the eLeaps either.  I generally have this guy and blazers in my army.  My favorite thing to do to armies with a Hi-DEF/Lo-ARM caster and a colossal is shoot it with eleaping blazers and jackbullet the Stormclad into it.  10 autohitting pow10s (assuming the caster is the closest model.) ends most lo-arm casters fairly easily.  Number 1 reason I love the Archangel, right here.  DEFbillion caster hangs out next to her favorite dragon, who proceeds to ground out through her left leg and fry everything involved.

  Hammersmith.  If you're going to bring him, Kraye's the one to bring him on.  He's only got 13'' threat range, but with his follow-up attacks and chain attack, he can get considerably farther.  Decent for infantry mulching.

  Nomad.  No, I'm kidding.  I wish.  SPD5 with Reach and PS19 for 6pts?  I'd spam these guys all day.  Foodmachine tournaments are expensive for me.  "Yes, I brought 800 cans so that I can field 6 Nomads on Kraye."

  Gallant.  The only other SPD 5 with Reach.  The upsides to this are that you can bring Harlan Versh, and get a focus every turn on this jack, which helps out Kraye's reserves considerably, on top of providing Shieldguard.  He's also a point cheaper than the Stormclad.  Downsides are no ranged attack, no electro leap, and PS17.  I tried it, don't much care for it, but it's a neat option.  And Harlan Versh will pull his weight on his own too.

  That's the main ones for the melee jacks.  As far as shooting goes, there's a few solid options.  I love the Avenger for KD.  Makes for a surefire way to shut down enemy hordes casters for the assassination.  On Kraye, he does ok, but generally, I bring ATGM and marshal the Avenger to them for an 18'' KD threat.  Otherwise, on Kraye, he's a SPD4 jack that can get up to 13.5'' on feat turn.  At PS18, that's not a bad thing, and don't forget the psuedo-disruption Stall blade the Avenger has.  Works on Colossals too.

  Cyclones are fun.  They can Full-Tilt, AND do their covering fire, but generally, I don't have enough room for these guys.

  Hunters.  I'm a hit or miss kinda guy with these dudes.  I hate them on Vassal, respect them on the table lately.  They're fast, get the light cav move with Kraye, don't need a whole lot a help, and generally cause the opponent all kinds of problems.  They work fairly decent in pairs, but that's a 12pt commitment and that's the selling point I'm not quite into.

  Chargers.  Way too much focus needed for these guys on Kraye.  Move along.

  Sentinel.  Not bad.  4pt Shieldguard if you need it.  Don't count on the Strafe though.

  Minuteman.  We reveled in his glory a minute ago.  Take this jack.

  Stormwall.  I don't use the big guy on Kraye often, unless I'm going to run a shooting game and do guided fire every turn.  Otherwise, he ties up too many points for melee or shooting, when with two jacks, I could do both.  He's got a 17'' threat range for charging on feat turn with Kraye, and that's kinda scary, but it's not very often that you're going to have a clear charge lane for a base the size of the deathstar.  On the plus side,  he fits in Tier.

  There's a few solos out there to think about as well.  Squire is generally a must unless you're running tier.  Sylys is an option, but I find that I cycle full-tilt too much.  Generally, if solos tag along, it's a Squire, maybe a Journeyman, Harlan Versh occasionally, and more often than not, a Trencher Master Gunner for Artillerist on the Avenger.  Arlan's not bad, but really only for powerbooster or evasive.  Otherwise, it's not very often that he gets to fix a jack that charged 15'' up the field.  I tried Lanyssa, and using Hunter's Mark, trying to get a few more inches out of my Stormclad, and that hasn't happened yet, so I'll probably stop.  It's not very often I need a Stormclad to go 19'' anyways.

  In summary, Kraye's a solid jack caster with nearly 0 support for infantry.  If you want to run Warjacks, he's your man.  He'll play a solid gunline until you need to apply a jack to your opponent's face a long ways away.  Some play him as a gunline only, some play him as melee only.  I struggle with using him as a scenario caster, simply because he has a hard time filling zones up and hanging on to them.  I play him for more aggressively as an army, and do better that way.  At the end of the day though, it depends on you.  I hope I've pointed you in a decent direction to begin with and pointed out some decent synergies.  Otherwise, ignore everything I said and play eHaley.

Jonas is a Trencher and my wife is a traitor.

  While we loyal Cygnarians admit that trenchers exist, we won't really play them unless Alexia has re-animated them first.  Kinda sad?  We'd rather them die first before we're willing to play them.

  Not so with Jonas.  He's better off alive.  Giving Assault to units that probably shouldn't have it like the Nyss?  Weapon Masters with a POW10 to fire off with before hand?  My favorite is the Boomhowlers with pCaine.  POW12s and then PS13 to actually get in there with?  Absolutely.

  All that being said, he's a cool model to have, and an excellent ruleset to go with it.  Got him painted yesterday.

  The base is little squares of foamcore damaged and messed up (There's even runes painted on) to look kinda like some of the ruined temple bases.  I'm not sure what I think about it.  Jonas turned out fairly decent, and the level of detail is excellent in this model.  Had a lot of fun painting him.

  The second part of this is that my non-wargaming wife who had 0 interest in Warmachine when we got married discovered my basepainted Khador and decided to adopt them as her own (With a little encouragement).  She hated the tan/red scheme I was running (I like desert paintjobs.  Idk why), and decided they were all wintery soldiers, needing to be light blue and white.  I never play them, so I'm not concerned, so have at it.  We even played a game first to see if she liked them.  It was brutal.  I understand that Man-O-War shocktroopers are not considered competitive, but at ARM21, my pCaine list struggled to handle them as they moved inexorably up the board.  The only thing I was able to clear out was her Nyss (Except 2), and I lost all my Lances and most of my Boomholwers to do it.  The only reason I won was because Caine thunderstruck her Juggernaut back, giving me another turn with my Avenger alive.  She also left pSorscha too close to her Destroyer, so I KDed them both, and what was left of my Blazers shot her to pieces.

  All that being said, she did very well, and I expect to be helping paint a box of Winterguard and Kovnik Joe here shortly.  The Traitor aspect comes from my wife picking my faction's mortal enemy.  I don't know what faction wouldn't have been an enemy, but nonetheless.  I'm ok with it though,  Could have been Menoth.  My wife has a heart though.

  Her test paintjob was one of the Shocktroopers.  The white inside the barrel is nothing I was a part of, just so you guys know.  It tied together pretty well, and we sprinkled some ballast out onto the base, hit it again with a watery-glue spray and dumped baking soda on it, which turned out fantastic.

  

  

    They turned out pretty decent, this being our first experience with white.  White sucks.  We're off to the store now to grab some Vallejo white because the reaper white we used is paint I've had for... three?  Three years.  Otherwise, I think it turned out pretty well.  I'm not sure it got quite the quality of the Nyss, but we're also dealing with more layers of paint here, and I think that's taking a toll on the final texture.  Overall though, we're pretty pleased with it.  We'll have the rest of the Shocktroopers done before too long and the Jacks won't take long either.

Playing the financial side of Warmachine

  The part that actually matters to your family isn't your win/loss ratio or a 1st place trophy from Privateer Press.  I imagine something like that would occupy a slot similar to the lamp in A Christmas Story.  I'd love to have one, my wife couldn't care less and it certainly wouldn't be going in the window.

  No, the financial side of Warmachine is the end that affects your wallet.  I came out of Games Workshop, and immediately appreciated that Warmachine was cheaper to get into.  A 10man unit may cost the same or more as a Space Marine 10 man kit, but it's going to fill up far more of your points than the Space Marines will in a comparative army.  Warmachine is cheaper, I don't think there's a doubt about that, but it's still not easy on your wallet.

  My pre-marriage Cygnar army grew in leaps and bounds, while army growth after marriage has slowed considerably.  I'm not going to claim expertise on budgeting or marriage and Warmachine, but I can also tell you that I've spent about half to two-thirds as much on my army than most everyone else.  If you're just getting into the sport, or you're looking at going about getting another faction (Like I am), let's run through some things together.  First we're going to talk about buying your army.  Then we're going to talk about painting your army.

  1.  Get rid of the old stuff.  I had 4500 points of Space Marines.  One of our local stores had a trade-in program for Warmachine specifically, and I got my stuff traded to them in about two loads.  I made about 300$ in-store credit for just that alone.  I got my Stormwall, my Nyss, and my Boomhowlers for free.  Look into a trade program.  If you're not having any luck locally, check out bluetablepainting.com.  You'll only get in-store credit, but if they've got a bunch of the army you're looking for, there's nothing to lose.  bartertown.com is another excellent place to sell, or trade.  You're probably better off selling at that point, but it's an option.  The other choice is..... facebook.  If you're a member of a local group with a facebook group to go with it, post it on there if you haven't already.  I've seen factions fly that way.
  2.  Buy used.  Carefully.  I bought most of my Cygnar in one lump at 60% value.  Not a bad deal, but most of it came painted, and was the older metal models.  If that's cool with you, awesome, but if you enjoy painting as much as I do, I would have much rather bought new, unpainted, unassembled plastic models and painted them myself.  However, when I delved into Circle a bit, and bought used, they were unpainted, 60% of retail price, and I was much happier with that, and was able to get into Circle for just shy of a 100$ and I own 37pts of them.  Not bad.
  3.  FLGS discounts.  This one varies, and requires you to spend to save.  Kinda tricky.  But look into it.  The one I have right now gives me a punch card with 10 spots.  For every 10$, I get a hole punched, and at the end of the card, I can turn it in for 20% off my next purchase.  I generally nickel and dime the card to death with 10$, 15$ purchases over a month or two.  The store is the only local supplier of Vallejo paints, so it works out really well.  I'll grab one or two paints, break 10$, move on.  My wife loves the store, and we'll get card packs for some LOTR games (Want to clarify here that we're not Yu-Gi-Oh fans), or sometimes a board game.  About once every other month, I can grab a unit or jack for a decent price with that discount card.
  4.  Buy Online.  This one trumps everything.  I can buy online for what I pay with 20% off at the FLGS, if not more.  Amazon runs stuff at about 70% of Privateer Press retail.  For me, this is the best option.  For two reasons.  A)  I have a Discover Card with a cashback bonus.  After the bills are paid and everything else, I generally have about 20-30$ in cashback awards that can be directly applied to Amazon purchases.  Neat huh?  I paid about 5$ for my ATGM and that was mostly shipping.  I usually get a couple of solos or a min unit free every month because of this.  B)  Selection is better than the LGS.  Yeah, you can order from them, but that can take awhile.  It's up to you.  The main thing you're going to have to decide is how loyal you are to supporting your FLGS.  I don't have a problem supporting them, but I can't bring myself to pay 30% more for the same model that I can get online, AND, probably by just paying shipping because of the Discover deal.

  Hobby.  This'll be a shorter section, I think, but I want to hit a couple of points.

  1.  Vallejo paints.  They're as much as GW or P3, but they come in dropper bottles, which means you can mix way easier, you won't spill as much paint, and unlike GW, won't ruin your brushes nearly as quick.
       1B.  Washes.  I love GW washes, but after awhile, I want my own.  Use the old paint pot, drop in some drops of paint for the color of your choosing (mud, black, red, whatever), and add in water at about a 3:1 ration or 4:1.  Depends on how runny you want it.  Works like a charm.  I don't buy washes anymore.
  2.  Master's Touch Brushes from Hobby Lobby.  Michaels has some decent brushes as well for about the same price, but I tend to like the MTBs.  They're not synthetic, they've got a huge variety, and they hang out right at about 4 bucks.  They'll last much, much longer than P3 or GW brushes ever will.
  3.  Master's Brush Cleaner.  Different brand, same aisle.  Run your brush under warm water, lather it up in this cleaner, rinse.  Done.  Clean.  I love it.  My brushes have quadrupled in lifespan.
  4.  Terrain effects for your basing.
    A.  Rocks are outside.  Just saying.  I'll buy fine ballast and whatnot from hobby lobby, but I'm really getting into my basing.  Otherwise, rocks are outside.  Gravel driveways are great for this.
    B.  If you're looking for a Grand Canyon layered rock kind of look, treebark is your friend.
    C.  Dirt.  I know some guys just use regular dirt.  That works.  I like used coffee grounds.  Let it dry, throw it in an old spice shaker and you're good to go.
    D.  Forest Debri.  Not dirt, but just regular stuff you want scattered around for forest terrain.  Used tea bags.  Break them over, repeat the shaker step from C.
    E.  Leaves.  Parsley flakes are awesome if you want green leaves on the ground, but for fall, I love me some Red Pepper flakes from Great Value at Walmart.  4 bucks.  Done.
    F.  Grass.  RayofPaint just mixed up a whole bunch of sawdust with watered down acrylic paint from Walmart and it looks fantastic.
    G.  If all else fails and there's something you really want, I recommend Hobby Lobby again.  There's a daily 40% for one item coupon available right here: http://www.hobbylobby.com/weekly/coupon.cfm  This is great for any terrain you're looking for, or if you want to get into bigger purchases like an air compressor or airbrush.

  I hope some of this helps you out!  See you guys more throughout the week.

The Hobby Explosion. Folding Table, Terrain, and finished Lances, Nyss and Journeyman

  I live in an apartment without a whole lot of room.  Kinda sucks.  I recently built a dining table that you can see in the previous post and my wife and I are rather proud of it.  It's also about 6'' too small for Warmachine.  So I needed a 4x4 table, but instead of making a full table or buying on, I wanted one I could carry around, build terrain into, and have a really nice board.  Right now, our meta is limited to decent terrain, but nothing near the scale of WTC or some of Poppabear's endeavors.  One of these days, I'd like to get into Hirst Art's molds, but not quite to that point yet.  Besides, his are all town molds, and I need more of a desert.  Anyway, I spent all Friday in my powerless garage building this table.  It's 2 sheets of 2'x4', 3/4'' thick plywood with fleece glued to the back to protect whatever surface it sets on.  There's also pallet boards on the edges.  The hinges, well, you can see the hinges.  I screwed on 2''x4''s and cut them to the correct height, then chiseled out the hinge placement.

  So messy, yes... I know...  I'm cutting the edge boards at this point.  I glued the fleece on the day before, and that's the tan stuff you see sticking out in the first picture, and all over the back on the second.  The other option was felt, but I liked the fleece better.

  I'm pretty happy with it, and as can see, it supports some weight too without just flipping up all over the place.  So now, I've got a full scale Warmachine table at home and I love that.  Over the next few weeks, I'll be putting my accumulated terrain work into play on a large scale and fill in a desert/entrenched warzone into the table.  I've got water effects, coffee grounds, tea grounds, insulation foam, trees, all sorts of stuff.  I'm excited.  The other thing I've got to do is stain the outside of the table, install some straps to carry it and some locks to keep it closed and it's good to go.  

  You can see the basic terrain I have now.  This was stuff for A) Kicks and giggles, though I used it later at the Convergence of Cyriss event and it won me the medallion thing, woohoo.  B) To figure out if I'm capable of this or not.  I think I am.  The foam is 2'' thick high density insulation foam that I cut to basic shape with a hacksaw blade, then ran a craft knife down the edges of it multiple times.  Stab it with a screwdriver, pick out random bits and it creates the edges you see in the pictures above and below.  

  Then they got basecoated in cheap yellow acrylic from Walmart.  That's how they sat for a long, long time, and then with the table suddenly getting built, I needed to finish them.  The trenches were a pain to cut out, but a utility knife does decent, then I painted a dark walmart acrylic in there for a mud basecoat.  The trench walls are popsicle sticks glued together.  Then I coated everything in watered down glue to give it kind of a shell.  After that, they got sprayed in 3M Adhesive (the shell keeping the foam from getting ate up by the aerosol).  The rocks are a mix I've been accumulating from hobby lobby's fine collection of ballast.  I think there's three sizes in there, from the fine sand ballast, to the small rocks.  It gives it a pretty varied look.  At this point, I wash the trench walls with my regular model wash, and carefully spray a Krylon british tan over the rocks.  Mix up some more cheap acrylic for a light light yellow, and drybrush the whole thing, and I'm pretty happy with them.

  I figure I'm the only guy with legitimate trenches too.  They're wide enough for small based models, and one trench is big enough for medium based, but anything else can't quite get in there.

  Pretty slick, huh?  To top this all off, I finished my Lances.

  These took some time.  The bases are greenstuff/bark with sticks from the back yard, coffee grounds and tea grounds.  Used, mind you.  Coffee is valuable stuff.  The flag is greenstuff I modeled.  I tried to do this awhile back for a different unit, and for the life of me, couldn't build a flag.  It helps if you spray a flat plastic surface in a non-stick cooking spray.  Makes it hecka easier to greenstuff anything, really.  Rolled it out flat, cut the shapes and then wrapped pieces around an alan wrench to hold the flag in place.  The stitch marks were poked in with a hobby knife.  I'm pretty happy with how these guys turned out.

  While I was working on these guys, my wife decided to tackle the Journeyman.  We posted pictures of that the other day, but here's the completed one.

  I haven't thought of a better name for her than JediAnakinSolo's wife.  I'm just going to start calling her JediTahiriVeila.  See if anyone gets it.  If you haven't noticed, it matches my blue Cygnar not at all.  In fact, it's pretty nearly exactly what I painted my Khador.  I don't care.  I really like it and don't mind it standing out at all.  Gives it some flavor.

  To top it all off, she ended up wanting to do something crafty or artsy last night, but couldn't decide on anything for a bit, until she sat down and saw the unassembled Nyss in front of her.  I have six already basecoated (in horrible colors, according to her), but had just got the units to flesh it out to a full Nyss unit.  She decided to tackle those.  Four assembled Nyss and a wife with hands glued together amidst green stuff, and we went ahead and started painting them.  She picked all the colors, pretty much ran the show until we got to the base.  The orange, white, light blue, all of it.  I think the native american skin tone attempt was more my idea because neither of us like the fluff Nyss shades.  Cylena, we wanted to be different, so she's african, and we think it turned out pretty well.

  The original plan for the fall leaves was to be crushed eggshells, an idea I saw on... rayofpaint's blog, I think?  So she'd been saving up eggshells for me for month now, and I crushed them all up, and we ran to walmart for more acrylic for terrain and food coloring to dye the eggshells.  On the way in, I had the idea to stop by the spice rack.  Pffft.  Throw your eggshells away.  We bought crushed red pepper flakes from the Great Value brand and mixed it into some our ballast mix at a 3:1 ratio.  I really like how they turned out.  A couple of these guys (3 to be exact) have a little tree with them.  The trees were from a package of them at hobby lobby that I found on sale.  I green stuffed it in, and scattered the CRPF over the top.  Kind of my beta for forest terrain on the table.  I like how it turned out, and I think we'll see more of that in the future.  Overall, I really liked my wife's choices of colors and intuition on these guys, and a 10 man unit gets painted waaaaaay faster when you have two people doing it.

  That's all I've got today folks.  See you around later this week and hopefully we'll have some table progress.

Double Batreps, Legion vs. Cygnar

  I've got a lot that's happened warmachine wise in the last two days.  We'll start off with the batreps, because getting pictures together of the other stuff will take a bit longer.  First off, I built a dining room table.

  We then armed it with chairs, our stoneware and fake flowers.  We're pretty happy with it.  It also gives me a place to play Warmachine.  However, if I damage the table, my wife probably won't be happy.  On top of that, a 4x4 table was a bit crazy for an apartment our size, we thought, so it's only 3.5x3.5.  I need a bigger area than that.  So yesterday was spent applying all of the stuff I've seen Poppabear on the forums and Ray Burns doing on his blog (http://rayofpaintstudios.blogspot.com/, great place), and built myself a folding table.

  That's another blog post.  Probably the next one.  It's nothing crazy right now, but I have more plans for it.  However, the important stuff is that it folds in half, has felt glued to the bottom so it doesn't scratch my table, and successfully fielded four armies over the course of two games last night, on top of supper for three people, God bless my wife.

  I also got to use all the terrain I made months ago.  Finally got it spraypainted and some stuff glued down. I think some drybrushing and touchups and we'll be good to go.  Anyways, on to the report.  All this to say is that last night, I got to play Warmachine on a full-size table with all the terrain I could need, in my home.  

  It was awesome.

  So, Scott shows up, my wife cooks inchiladas, they were delicious.  We eat real quick (she was pretty aghast when I told her that we probably wouldn't be setting up the table to eat on first, we'd just jump right into the game), and we throw down our lists.  My lances were painted to a stage that they were playable (haha) and so pCaine it was for me.  That and I've only played pCaine against Legion one other time, and it wasn't Scott.  If my Cygnar list can beat Scott's legion lists, I usually feel pretty decent about them.

  On Scott's part, he dropped pLylyth because he's really been wanting to try out dual raptor units.  And he has this 134$ Archangel model he hasn't found a list for.  So we both had colossals and lots of cav.  Very fun game.

  pCaine

*Stormwall

*Squire
Journeyman Warcaster (The red model on my side of the table.  My wife painted it beautifully the other day)
Full Tempest Blazers
Min Stormlances
Full Boomhowlers
*Jonas Murdoch
Black 13th

I got to go up against:

pLylyth
*Archangel
*Carnivean
*Seraph
Min Raptors
Min Raptors
Raptor Solo gal.  Whatever her name be.

  We rolled off, I won and chose to go first.  We deployed to either side, and opened the ball.

  The only major downside to playing at home is the lighting is not that great in the dining room at night.  Just saying.  I may try to alleviate that in future games, but for now, between the yellow light and yellow wood, there's not much help for it.  Speaking of yellow wood, look at that table.  Haha.  Wait'll it has modular terrain built in.  Speaking of terrain, are those trenches you ask?  Why yes, yes they are.  I figured I'd be the only guy to ever own terrain with trenches that aren't just templates.  They don't count for elevation, though I think next time they will, but the trench itself is +4 cover.

  Anyways.  I divided up my cav, dropping the Lances behind the Boomhowers and we were off.  Black 13th got into the woods, the Boomhowlers ran and Jonas gave them go-to-ground.  pCaine tucked into the trench and got Blur on the Blazers and Snipe on the Stormwall.  Journeywoman dropped Arcane Shield on the Lances and got into the trench next to Caine.  Blazers got into the woods, and Stormwall moved up and threw templates out.

  All the Cav!

  Scott moves everything up as well, slipstreaming a few things with the Seraph for the extra 2+ movement.  Lylyth puts Spiny Growth on... the Archangel, who returned the faor, I think, and then moves b2b with him, and the Raptors all run up.  If you haven't seen Raptors yet, they're poorly named reindeer that basically Tempest Blazers with poison and weapon master.  They're not quite the toolbox the Blazers are, but given the circumstances, they can be better.  They worry me, to say the least.  Especially on pLylyth's feat where everything gets boosted attacks.  

  

    So, pLylyth base to base with a DEF13 model means one thing.  Electro leaps!  But it's kinda chancy at dice minus 4.  I'm not sure if I can get the hit with the RNG8 Lances, especially since they have to go through the forest.  So Stormwall moves up, shoots at the Archangel for little to no damage.  pCaine upkeeps Blur and drops Snipe, and Deadeyes both the Lances and the Blazers, and puts Snipe to them, thanks to the focus from the Squire.  The Blazers move up, and four of them hit the Archangel, and lylyth takes all of the electro leaps.  I only manage to do six or seven damage though.  I don't think the Lances can all get hits, and she's got a transfer still.  So I abandon that idea and light cav onto the hill.

  The Lances move up further, and the Boomhowlers shuffle up.  A few takes shots at the Carnivean but even though one hits, it doesn't do much.  The B13, however, do much better.  Scott got to learn to respect them this game.  Lynch aims, damages one decently with his shot, Watts shoots and hits with one, does damage to another Raptor.  Ryan, the money maker here, shoots, and misses.  He deviates 1'' to catch the two damaged raptors and kills them both.  Haha.

  They proceed to fail their CMD too.  

  Journeywoman upkept Arcane Shield, incidentally, and that's pretty much that.  So... I think I could have done better this turn?  Maybe been able to shoot the Raptors with the Blazers, but the woods may have stopped me there.  Who knows.  

    So, yeah.  the Feat.  pLylyth hanging out behind the wall moves up, and shoots a Boomhowler.  Hits, kills, doesn't tough. She does it again, and misses I think, but the next shot hits and kills him. And he doesn't tough.  She feats and gets back behind the wall.

  Seraph rolls strafe and gets... 3 shots?  Shoots and hits two or three Boomhowlers, and they all fail their tough.  This isn't cool.  50% chance of tough, guys.

  The Raptor Solo gets another one.  The Archangel rolls three shots and shoots one at the Blazers for kicks and giggles even though they're DEF20 right now (I love Blur)  It deviates and hits a Lance, but at ARM20, does nothing.  The next deviation kills a Blazer, and the last one gets spent on Boomie himself, and kills him.  That sucks.  There's six left, and the Carnivean moves up and sprays two or three and I think they might tough.  It's rolls were pretty bad there.  But it's in my way now.

  The Raptors on the left though, they do much better.  They walk up and start swinging on my blazers, leaving me with one, who passes CMD.  His Raptors on the right fail theirs again, so that's something I suppose.

  He should have pretty nearly annihilated the Boomhowlers, so I'm glad they're still kicking.  The Blazers are hurt, but the Lances are in a good spot to do some serious damage.  However, the Archangel is in prime charge range of the Stormwall.  I can charge him this turn, tie him up, let the Journeyman drop Arcane shield on him and let him tank.  The Lances will either finish the Raptors or get in to help Stormwall, but I'm thinking Lances.  pCaine can move up and feat before that too, then teleport back.  The Boomhowlers still have Jonas, so they'll assault the Seraph and Carnivean.  I'm hoping to really cripple Scott's list this turn.  

  So we start with the Stormwall.  He gets three focus, and Caine pulls another off the squire.  I open the ball with Stormwall, and he charges the Archangel.  He hits four of the five times I swing at him, and takes the Beast down to about half.  And then the electro leaps go into... pLylyth.

  She takes two of them, but has to transfer the third, and the fourth kills her.  Game.  At that point, with four more electro leaping shots from the Lances and Blazer, she would have died, it just didn't dawn on me until after Stormwall tangled with the dragon.

I forgot the picture too, but the only difference is the Stormwall is b2b with the Archangel.

Thoughts.  Scott asked me what I thought of the list.  If it was bad dice or not well played.

1.  Archangel is the best screen Lylyth has in this list, but anytime a Hordes caster goes base-to-base with a beast and I have five to twelve electro leaps, it's going to hurt.  If he'd get past putting her base to base and give it just a quarter inch, it would have gone to the Seraph instead.

2.  Archangel ties up too many points.  Dual Ravagores would have murdered my Boomies or Blazers.  Even a Scythean would have worried me with the ability to ignore tough (not that it mattered this game...)  But Archangel is 20 pts and he shot... seven times in the whole game. He killed a Blazer, and a few boomhowlers.  That's definitely not his points back.

3.  Raptors are terrifying, especially with all boosted rolls.  That's pretty serious, and has the potential to annihilate any kind of screen that I have, except in maybe a Kraye list or something.  They essentially get brutal shots for living models.  That's horrifying against Cygnar.  I think the list can work, but not when 20pts are tied up in the Archangel.  

4.  I didn't get to use my lances :(

  So the next game, Scott wants to redeem is Rhyas list that I smashed with a turn 2 Kraye assassination a few weeks ago.  I considered switching to my eStryker list since I have a full Nyss unit now, but meh, I like pCaine.  So I keep him.

  pCaine

*Stormwall

*Squire
Journeyman Warcaster
Full Tempest Blazers
Min Stormlances
Full Boomhowlers
*Jonas Murdoch
Black 13th

  Scott brought:

Rhyas

*Typhon

*Seraph

*Shredder

*Shredder

Swordsmen w/UA

Swordsmen w/UA

Warspears w/UA

Warmongers

Warmongers Solo

Succubus

I think I'm messing this list up.  He had a Ravagore in there last time, and I don't see it here.  So we roll off, and I win, but decide to go second, hoping to get some shooting off even though the tier bonuses that Rhyas has gives Stealth for everyone first turn.

  We also keep incursion.  We thought about changing it up, but wanted to get into the next game, so we just ran with it.  I almost cut templates for outflank, but meh.

  

  Lots of 8 wound AD infantry.  Not any fun.  Also, look at the cool terrain?  It's neat, but models don't stand on it very well at all.  

  Everything runs.  The Warnouns push as far up as they can.  Rhyas gets to the wall, casts Dash so everyone gets another 1SPD, and puts Rapport on the Typhon so that he gets her MAT/RAT stats and can be transferred to once for free.  Seraph slipstreams some stuff because apparently Legion beasts aren't fast enough already, and yeah.

  Oh, and the Warspears pick Stormwall as the prey.  Which I'm ok with.  I have a Journeyman for that, and I'd rather the Stormwall tank the prey attacks rather than the Blazers which can't tank anything.

 The Boomhowlers are stacked in the back in the picture above because they didn't sit on the terrain at all.  It was horrible, so we drew the front line with empty bases and worked with it.  Caine keeps his focus, hops into the ditch, puts snipe on the Stormwall, Blur on the Blazers and I think Deadeyes the Boomhowlers...

  The Black 13th moves up, because they can, and Lynch opens fire with a flare.  He shoots at one of the warmongers on the right, misses, and it deviates to hit two of them anyways.  Ryan hits them with a magestorm and hurts them both, and Watts doesn't have range. Or misses.  Or doesn't kill them.  I don't remember.  At this point, I was just glad that I was remembering she has 2 shots.

  Stormwall moves up and shoots one dead, and throws templates in front of the warspears hoping to slow them down some.  He puts a pod out as well.  The other big gun misses.

  The blazers are all out of range, so they hang out in the woods.  The Boomhowlers, with Jonas, assault, and get as far as the barricade.  They're able to finish off the two in the flare template, but are outside of 5'' for everyone else, barely.  So they hang out with Fell Call (50% chance of tough).  Lances get behind the trench, Journeyman gives the Boomhowlers Arcane Shield and that's turn.

  Scott sees a shot as assassination and starts moving for it.  Rhyas reaves in her fury, charges out and hits the closest Boomhowler.  She hits him easily, and he toughs, so she feats, which allows her to go anywhere base to base with him, and swing at something again.  So she does, moves to the next guy, hits him.  He toughs.  So she buys, hits him again.  He toughs.  She buys one more, and he toughs.

  Haha.  Making up for sucking at tough rolls last game.  She has Sprint, so she runs away and that's it for her.  The Warmonger solo charges in, and he kills the first one, who finally fails his tough. but the second one toughs again against the feat attack.  

  At this point, he debates long and hard about the assassination.  He needs 11.5'' to get to Stormwall, hit, flip around with the feat to the back of the base and go after Caine.  He debates, and debates, and finally decides against it.  It was a good call.  We measured after the round and he'd of been a quarter inch out of melee range.  So Typhon sprays some stuff, including the Boomhowlers, which tough a bunch of times.  Seraph rolls and gets 3 strafe shots, kills a boomie but nothing else.

  The other Warmongers charge in and they hit, beserk, and get the feat attack.  Between me toughing every other one, (The first two guys toughed seven times between the two of them), he takes them down to half, but they pass CMD easily.  One Warmonger hits the Black 13th, and kills two of them, leaving just Ryan, who passes CMD as well.

  Warspears move up, realize they need 13s to hit Blazers at this point, so they chuck everything at Stormwall, who takes some decent damage.  Maybe two fifths of his boxes.  Swordsmen all run up and get in the way and that's turn.

  

  

  I step up to the ball.  Caine keeps his focus, pulls one from the squire, and upkeeps Blur, but not snipe.  Ryan kills the swordsman she's engaged with.  Caine then moves up out of the trench, casts Deadeye on the Blazers, and the Lances, and keeps the last two.  Then he feats, needing sixes for pretty much everything.  He does decent, killing several swordsmen, putting boxes out on the Warmongers, but while the to-hit rolls were decent, the damage rolls weren't as good and I don't thin things out as much as I want to, even though he gets a shot at pretty nearly everything.  It's not bad though, and I actually get to use his feat, which is the second time that's happened.  He teleports back behind Stormwall and that's it for him.

  Blazers move up, kill the Warspear UA which eliminates Prey, and kill another Warspear, but can't do much else even with Brutal.  Stormwall shoots Typhon twice, puts templates out, and forgets to do the Stormpod, which was stupid.

  Lances assault.  No... nope they didn't.  They should have, because they would have nearly killed what Typhon had left, or seriously hurt him, but no, they didn't.  They do ridebys, all three hit, but don't manage to do more than a few boxes.  They get back behind the trench when they're done.  Journeyman gives Stormwall Arcane Shield, shoots at a swordsman and misses, and that's it.  I managed to clear out a ton of infantry though, so we'll see if it's enough.

  Rhyas pulls in her fury.  The Swordsmen charge in, one runs to Watts but gets no attacks because of the run.  The others get into the Boomhowlers, and one kills Boomie who fails his tough, and the others don't do much better.  Two more make the run to engage the lances.  The Warspears assault the Blazers and Stormwall, and...

  Oooh, I just figured out another spot I screwed up.  Moving on.

  The spears don't hardly do anything, and neither do the melee attacks.  Without prey and against ARM22, they're pretty hopeless at  -9 on the dice.  The Warmongers keep working on Boomies, who I'm almost out of.  Typhon pushes in, takes POW12, and sprays Stormwall three times, and hits Caine with one of them.  The other two miss against DEF17, which is really good, because the last one that hit left Caine with 2 boxes.

  Stormwall, however, doesn't take any damage from the sprays either.  The Seraph shoots down a Lance, sits on the flag (The left one went away turns ago) and a Shredder runs and takes the other.

  At this point, I'm about to lose, and I'm realizing where I seriously messed up.  In my last turn, instead of running the DEF15 in melee, DEF18 against shooting, blazers back into the woods, I should have engaged the Warspears.  And an assault with the Lances would have been good too.  Now, they're in my face, and I can't do anything about it.  I can shoot Warspears all day long, maybe kill a few, and Typhon will definitely die against PS20 fists, but unless I can contest both flags, he'll take another 2 points on my turn, and be at four, and simply have to end his turn to win with 6.  So I do the important stuff,  Stormwall gets three focus.  Watts makes a run for it to contest the flag, takes a free strike and dies.  Caine tries to shoot some stuff, and gets a Warmonger.  He puts Deadeye on the Lances, the Blazers... and I think that's it at the moment.  

  The Blazers shuffle around because he managed to engage my Lances with the Nyss Swordsmen in the last turn, so I have to handle them.  So two move back and shoot electro leaps at my immune Lances, needing sevens on three dice to hit.  

  One misses..  The other hits and kills a Nyss, but the other misses...  The other three has Blazers kill a Warspear, but don't manage to kill another.  So the Lances assault run.  One goes after the Seraph and takes it to half health by himself, contesting that flag, and the other one tries to run and get within 4'' of the Shredder.  He dies to a freestrike, and that's game, since I can't contest the other flag, and Rhyas only has to dominate it, which she does easily.

  That other flag is waaaaay off to the top (It was our right).  Pictures don't quite get it.

  Thoughts:

  1.  Scott played this one pretty well, and the Rhyas list did what it was supposed to. That being said, I botched it.  I should have moved the Blazers into combat on the feat turn, and the Lances should have assaulted.  That would have easily contested the one flag, leaving me a bit more time to get to the other one, and on top of that, kept Stormwall free for another round to push forward.  I botched that one pretty badly, again, by not pushing forward.  I'm too used to trying to keep Blazers alive that I don't even think about it.

 2..  Otherwise, everything in my list except me did fantastic.  Boomhowlers are MVPs, making Scott kill them about twice to three times as many as they needed to be killed.  It was awesome.

 3.  I love my table, and the terrain was fun.  I'm pretty excited about all this stuff. 

 4.  I've never fielded an Journeyman except with eStryker, and an ARM22 Stormwall or ARM20 Lance is stuff that stays alive.  I'm having a much better success rate with AS on units with boxes than I am units without them.  ARM18 Stormblades have yet to impress me.  ARM19 Boomhowlers do a bit better, but ARM20 lances or ARM22 Stormwall makes people cry.

  Speaking of the table, I'll be posting later this afternoon with:

 1.  The table and kinda how it got built, plus dirty pics of the Garage from whence it came.  

 2.  Completed Stormlances.  You saw them get played.  I've got the finished product with better pictures.

 3.  Completed Journeywoman.  That red girl running around putting Arcane Shield on stuff.  My wife painted her, one of the reasons I included her in my list that night because A)  I think she did a great job and B) My wife was with us most of the night watching and I wanted her to see her model played.

 4.  Completed Nyss.  This surprised me.  I was in the middle of a Vassal game with Sevensins when my wife suddenly got into a craft-making kinda mood, and simply sat down and started glueing together Nyss.  That's a surefire way to get out of the crafty mood, if you ask me.  The only thing worse than glueing Nyss would be the new Convergence Angels I think.  She tanked through it though, and we decided to paint them.  A 10 man unit gets painted Waaaaaay faster between two people, and they turned out pretty slick. Anways, they'll be here later today.

  In other news, I played my first Trollblood game yesterday.  Sevensins, who will not be allowed to pick out maps ever again, rolled with one that's basically funnels everyone into the same 12'' in the middle that's 80% rough terrain.  And then we brought Trolls and Pygs to fight on it.  Brilliant.  Anyways, I played eDoomshaper vs. Lord Carver, bringing Mulg, a Mauler, max Fennblades and a Chronicler against a Road Hog, War Hog, the shooting pygs and Sevensins's favorite solution to everything, Slaughterhousers.

  Those things are a pain, and everything moved at half speed for like, eight turns.  But between Vengeance Fennblades, a goading Mulg with Wild Aggression and a refuging Mauler, I managed to clean out all of his infantry, and his.. War Hog, whichever doesn't have the gun.  He killed my Mauler with Carver after it finished his Hog and engaged him, but wasn't able to kill Mulg with three slaughterhousers, so he trampled in, killed one with the trample and goaded into Lord Carver.  Four fury later with one to spare, he simultaneously killed the remaining Hog heavy warbeast and Carver himself.

  I think in the near future, I'll be selling my circle.  I'm not terribly clicking with them, and I simply can't get interested enough in them to paint more than the constructs.  The Trolls have always been far more aesthetically pleasing to me and I love the fluff with them.  I think I'll be getting into them before the end of the year or slightly after that, but without buying the battlebox.  Probably start with an Axer and an impaler, Mulg, a magnetized Dire-troll kit, eMadrak, eDoomshaper, Borka, Fennblades and or Kriel Warriors, and then Janissa and a Chronicler.  Which is quite the list, but we'll work up to it.  I want to top off my Stormlances at some point too, and maybe get the Silver Line Stormguard, but who knows.  I have Boomhowlers too, so they'll help with the infantry side of things on the Trolls until I get into them all the way.

  Anyways, that's all I've got, thanks for reading!  Cya later today!