Drake MacBain and Winged Chaos Sorcerer

I started painting again this week. Purely to avoid not finishing any of my vows this month.

I tried to get a daylight picture, but we're at the point this year where the sun has already set before I am able to get home from work.

Tried some new things with these guys. The bone wings and the flesh shoulderpad were fun to paint on the sorcerer and I tried to do something different with Drake's yellow armor wash. Either way, both of these models are now painted.

In other news, last week I mentioned I was going to help start up a new campaign at the local gamestore. Well, so far the campaign system which I helped design looks like it's working pretty well! It's based on an idea that came from Dirk (who's going to run the campaign), where every player has to build their army based on a force org chart that they drafted from a deck of cards. It's kind of a wierd idea but I hope we found a way to make it work. So this friday people will start playing their first battles and hopefully things won't be too unbalanced.

Also: Assassin's Creed Unity as well as Dragon Age: Inquisition are great games so far. There's a couple things to gripe about in both games (the gameplay bugs in AC:U being one of the most frustrating), but the experience so far has been great overall on both accounts. So, in between painting I'll probably also still be trying to get out of the Hinterlands...

Death to the False Emperor.

Warmachine Battrep!

Haven't been painting or playing much recently. Between halloween and an inconveniently placed company event, I haven't been able to go to my local game store as much. I did go again last friday, which means I have another battle to blog about, and some upcoming painting projects to present.

I played a 50pts Warmachine Battle friday against Niek and his "Ocean's" list. It's a list that uses pSorcha, a Behemoth and a whole bu 1nch of mercenaries. The original creator of the list called it Ocean's 18 as it used exactly 18 models at the time, but Niek's version has since made various alterations to the lineup. Aside from pSorcha and the Behemoth he used Cylena Reafyll & Nyss Hunters, eAlexia, pEiryss, Gorman, Dougal MacNaile, Rorsh and Brine and a unit of Greylord Outriders. It's a really tough list to beat for the ammount of high damage output models that are coming at you at the same time. It's a list he's taken to tournaments before and this time he'd be using it against my most recent pMagnus list.

Because I wanted to use my new Galleon and I have a fairly limited mercenary collection, I used the following: pMagnus, 2 Renegades, a Galleon, Gorman, Dougal MacNaile, Orin Midwinter, Stannis Brocker, a full unit of Croe's Cutthroats and a full unit of Steelhead Halberdiers.

After deployment our set-up looked something like this:

Start of Turn 1

We were playing a steamroller scenario with objectives (the blue markers), but neither of us paid much attention to it, so I won't bother anyone with the details here. The first turns started out ok, with Niek mostly just moving forward and me making some early game mistakes. After Niek's advance deployments of Eiryss I wasn't happy with the positioning of my solo's, so I decided to do some run moves in a couple of wierd directions. In hindsight I should've just stuck to my original plan for the solo's as in turn 2, none of them were where I wanted them to be either.

Start of Turn 2.

During turn 2, Niek made some aggressive moves with his Greylords to take out most of my Halberdiers and used Rorsh and Brine to take out Stannis. His Nyss Hunters and Eyriss took out a couple of my Cutthroats, but nothing else major was accomplished. Things looked to be getting tough for me in turn 3 though, unless I managed to pull of something genius. In an effort to take out the Greylords (I've become very afraid of stationary effects), I decided to use the Galleon in melee. In hindsight, this was also a mistake.

After this game I need to remember that the Galleon is much better used for shooting and taking damage in the early turns. Even if it's the only thing that can kill a certain enemy unit. I tried to use what remained of my Cutthroats and Halberdiers to damage Rorsh and the Nyss Hunters, but bad dice put a stop to that rather quickly. I fired off my obliterator missiles at the Behemoth (which was useful at least) and at Alexia, who I almost boxed. Long story short: turn 2 should have been a critical turn for me, but due to some bad strategy and bad luck I was not prepared for the turn 3 that was to come.

Start of turn 3.

Niek's turn 3 was suprisingly light on the damage part. He mopped up the last of the halberdiers and did a lot of damage to my Galleon, but I didn't lose a lot of actual models. Despite all of this his board position was very strong by the end of the turn and there were almost no positions in which I could keep Magnus safe if I didn't somehow kill a lot of very tough models. In my turn I decided to go for broke and try an attempt at killing Sorcha. The only way to do it (we found after much discussion and calculation) was to roll consistently above average with my Galleon's cannons. It only took me two dice rolls to crush these feeble hopes. After that, turn 4 saw the end of the Traitor.

What was good about this battle is that I learned a lot about how to use the Galleon as well as that I need more units that are either very good on their own, or have actually useful combo's going on between them. An Ocean's list is very much about the points-efficiency and individual power of each model. If I ever plan to counter that I'll need to either have a lists that works together or has equally efficient units/solo's.

What's next?

Next week I'm going to help a friend start up a new 40k campaign at our local gamestore and make an attempt at finishing my UE.net's painting vows for this month. Hopefully I can stay committed and not get distracted by all the fantastic games coming out this month. Assassin's Creed Unity, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Pokémon Alpha Saphire are all looking to be competing for my free time these weeks.

Speaking of Pokémon: I'm also attempting to finish White 2 in time for the new games since I've never gotten around to doing so. Anyway, so far I've found that warmachine casters make some of the best nicknames ever!

My team so far.

Death to the False Emperor.

Warmachine Weekends

Last week I didn't really paint much even though I really intended to. Things were interrupted mainly because I had an unplanned night shift on wednesday and spent most of my free time that week doing house cleaning (which is also important!).

Despite my poor performance that week, I made up for it on the weekend. I played Niek for a game against his Khador and another one against some Skorne that he proxied. I lost both games as I still struggle with the basic warmachine rules and I don't really have a good strategy figured out yet. I probably need to do some experimenting with different armylists next time.

After the battles, Niek told me he'd been thinking about getting rid of his Galleon. I've seen Niek's Galleon before and I remembered that he painted it in pretty much the same colour scheme that I used in my own army. Long story short: I have now acquired a new Galleon! And I don't even need to paint it!

DaanofWar presents: "The Galleon" a.k.a. "The Awesomest Collosal".

Also present in the above picture, are the two Croe's Cutthroats that I painted on sunday. Now I also have that unit finished. Finally.

This week I hope to get started on some characters that I've been meaning to paint for a long time. My chaos lord on jetbike, Drake McBain and my chaos sorcerer with wings. If I can get that done this week I'll truly have accomplished something for once. So that's it for this week's update. See you next week!

Death to the False Emperor!

Warmachine, Chaos Space Marines + The 24 Hour Painting Challenge

Now for a real blog post!

During the last couple of weeks I've been busy getting back into the hobby. What mostly got me started again was Rob, reminding me that I signed up for his warmachine tournament. Luckilly, I finally had some free time on my hands, so I ordered some last-minute mini's and paint-rushed them just in time for the weekend. I managed to take some pics of the first and last battles:

First battle was against a hard Menoth army led by the Harbinger. We were both rusty with the rules and struggling with our plays a couple of times, but luckily I managed to pull through with a last minute assassination.

Second battle was against Niek, who I play regularly and I lost to his Khador as always, but the third battle was against Sjoerd. I haven't played against Sjoerd in a long time and was surprised by his new Retribution army. Not knowing any of the rules for Retribution models saw me make a few bad decisions and my inability to damage his Hyperion did the rest. I held out for quite a while, but eventually lost on scenario.

Here's a sample of one of the models I painted for the tournament. Quite happy with the result, even though I had to rush them a bit.

The rest of the tournament was great and I actually won Best Painted on account of having the nicest painted army out of the two people who actually painted their entire army. I always seem to forget that Warmachine players don't usually take painted armies to local tournaments. Which is rather odd, seeing as they have less models to paint than your average warhammer/40k player. Maybe it's just something local.

Anyhow, after the warmachine tournament I decided to put some much needed attention into my Chaos Space Marines. I tried out a couple of list ideas and last week I played an actual game again with Koen, Dirk and Michiel. The game was great fun, and me and Michiel's orks won in the end. The win was more due to Michiel's orks than my own marines unfortunately. It seems the new edition really has my army stumped and I'll probably need to come up with some better lists sometime soon.

Decided to take a photo from something more than just mini's this time. I came to regret my decision almost immediately afterwards.

I was on a roll that weekend and proceeded to participate in UnderEmpire.net's 24 Hour Painting Challenge. I only did 18 hours in the end, but that was more than enough to finish my remaining chaos marine infantry, an Aiana model for someone in my D&D group, a dark apostle and 2 raptors. Now I finally finished most of my basic infantry for the chaos marines. Next up are some random characters, 2 warmachine models and a bunch of cultists.

The combined result of my 24 Hour Challenge run.

So, I'll leave it at that for now and hopefully next post I'll have some newly painted stuff to show!

Death to the False Emperor!

Butchered

So yeah, I went and had myself an actual warmachine battle yesterday. Considering how infrequently I play the game I'm actually kind of proud of how I did. It was me and my Magnus theme force against Niek and his Khador. We went for a killbox scenario with 2 objectives.

The deployment. Niek's Khador (above) vs my Mercenaries (below).

I've mentioned Niek in a post from august back when we were having a couple of games for a Journeyman League. Niek's brilliant Butcher army is one I've faced before. So far I've never quite been able to win. I've come close a couple of times, but the raw power that is The Butcher Unleashed (the third and most powerful incarnation) keeps catching me off guard. 

The army he used yesterday was something new he was testing. It used a group of 2 devastators and 2 demolishers to block LOS to the Butcher and serve as a very literal wall to his opponent's troops. He also took some pikemen, orrick, corbeau, a wardog, a greylord solo and a gobber tinker (if I recall correctly).

The Butcher stands behind his Clam Wall and some Iron Fang Pikemen.

I was using my old Magnus army. It's a cool feeling to be able to use models that you painted at least 2 or 3 years ago and still have them (kinda) work on the tabletop. True, this army definately needs some extra love and care before it's tournament worthy, but for a casual pickup game in the local store? Why the heck not?

Cuthroats/Saxon Orrick in the woods, a line of Long Gunners, Magnus, Gorman, Jacks and an assortment of Steelheads.

Since we were sort of pressed for time, we went fast into the game. Niek moving his stuff forward almost immediately and after his turn 2, we already had a couple of dead long gunners and halberdiers. I spent my first turn moving forward, setting up and used my cuthroats to take some potshots at one of the butcher's dogs, hoping to take one out early. Unfortunately that didn't work. 

I needed a very good turn 2 to turn things around in my favor and get his caster in a vulnerable position. Which, when you're talking about the Butcher Unleashed behind a wall of devastators, is not an easy thing to do.

End of Niek's Turn 2.

My turn 2 went pretty well despite a couple mistakes in activation order. I'm incredibly rusty after all and still unclear on some of the basic warmachine rules. I wasted a lot of time trying to kill corbeau, while I could've just been killing pikemen. 

Completely forgot about Gorman DiWulfe, who could've made my Mangler's job of denting the clam wall a lot easier. I had a good plan though and with a little luck from the dice I was able to silence the Butcher with Croe and get Magnus behind a wall of his own Jacks, not giving any points away for the scenario.

Oops.

Alas! Once again I underestimated the maelstrom of destruction that is the Butcher Unleashed. Apparently this guy is able to march through his own wall, completely smash a temper metal boosted renegade and hack Magnus apart with focus to spare. 

To be fair, we were pressed for time at that point and with a little more thinking and planning I probably could've foreseen this and positioned Magnus a bit better. At least far enough back that the Butcher wouldn't have been able to reach him after hacking appart one of my jacks. Oh well... Maybe next time. 

All in all it was a great game. I learned a lot and we finished the whole thing just in time for me to make my night shift.

Death to the False Emperor!

Floral Pattern Intensifies

New blog post this time because I've been busy with my Menoth army!

It took me a couple of months but I finally finished the stuff I posted about last time: the Choir and the Castigator and the Crusader.

Check 'em out!

Still going strong with the floral pattern!

The choir scrolls are still empty due to lack of inspiration. I figured I'd have enough time to think of something cool since there's still a lot of stuff left to do for this army. I still have two infantry units to go and a bunch of solo's and wreck markers. I also assembled another warcaster (the testament), but our cats stole his base. It's frustrating how difficult it is to get your hands on warmachine bases these days, so I'll probably be saving him for last.

My 'menoth' shelf.

I've been making solid progress these last few weeks though, so hopefully with some luck I'll be able to show off some more completed mini's somewhere next week. In the meantime I've agreed to meet up with a friend today and actually play some games for a change. I'll probably be using my mercs though, since I very much hate playing with an unfinished army. I'll try to take some pictures and stuff and see if I can make a cool battle report.

Death to the False Emperor!