Who let the dogs out?

So with life continuing to run away like a child with scissors it is too long between painting sessions and games, until this week that is!
I finally managed to get my Goreshade list onto the table against my friend Mike over at Entoyment hobby store in Parkstone, he is fairly new to warmachine so maybe it was a tad mean but i wanted to use a fully painted army and so far I'm being terrible at getting things finished.
With a win under my belt i was confident of some success at the Journeyman league today, and when i misjudged placement of Kaya leading to a swift beat-down from Sorcha in my first game i was feeling the need to beat the cold hearted bitch of Khador in a fight, so we set up to play again, this time i was firmly fixed on a scenario win, and sacrificed my war wolves to that end, running one onto the objectives and sending the Argus to brave the side ones alone, Fran grew wise to my plan with the widowmakers running to contest my left objective, and a destroyer and two of the great bears in the centre i needed to clear them all to get the win as Sorscha was looking ready for an assasination run.
The Argus on the left flank was out of control range and failed his frenzy leaping on to the contesting widowmaker and rending him to shreds, unfortunately a frnzied beast cannot hold an objective and nothing else had the speed to get over there, I wacked my brains and set about clearing the centre, my Feral warpwolf sealed the fate of the two bears both failing tough rolls, leaving the way clear for the purblood to slam the Destroyer off the objective and take the centre.
With Kaya in the centre I remebered that most amazing of spells, Spirit door, Kaya moved towards the frenzied argus bringing it into control range and pop on to the objective taking me to 7 points and a win!


Still no paint on my models, things have been a tad on the busy side and all my hobby time is currently spent on some commission work as that will always get priority over my own toys, still not much more to do, only a week or two more of work on it all and I am commission free to get some of my own stuff done!

and hopefully post more ravings here to!

A busy life and journeyman time

So it has been a long while since my last post, as life does have a habit of getting in the way.
So our local hobby shop has let us start a journeyman league so I now have my next project....Circle of ouroboros dog pile!
Th final list will involve EKaya and all of the dogs i can fit in a list!
So for the first week we are using the battle boxes, leaving me with Kaya, an Argus, a winter Argus and a feral warpwolf.
The first couple of games have not gone swimingly and the learning curve has been a tad steeper than I suspected with 3 losses in 4 games!
So with my gaming score firmly in the pan time to look to colour schemes and painting (something i'm infinately better at) and for a nice change i'm thinking of a jungle based army I haven't done it before and i have some brass etch jungle leaves that were earmarked for a comedy Nazi flames of war army but with that force on indefinite hold waiting for the 200 stands of soviet infantry to get finished I figure they can be used now and i shall order more later.
I'm still not sure on what to do with the armour, but for the dogs i'm thinking of using various colours of Akita for inspiration (my favorite breed of dog)

So these are the inspiration for the colours for fur, and here are some base ideas to get me started.

For now I have a couple of new commissions in so there won't be much rapid progress but i shall try and get some in game shots and a report or two :)

The Complete Bastard

Well my initial challenge is completed, the full 25 point Goreshade list is painted!

So where to next i hear you cry? well I have been using Scaverous and playing 35 point games lots recently so I'm thinking Scaverous and Erebus will be the next projects, I have a reasonably steady list so i'm going to start work on that.

In addition I have picked up Dystopian wars second edition and it has rekindled my love of steam punk boats so my antarticans have been dusted off, and a few of the new ships picked up, I shall get some pictures up once i have settled on a colour scheme, previously they were white, but now i'm looking at a battleship grey with green energy glows to give extra detail.

Paintings nearly done!

So in the first post I set some goal for painting and have only posted once about actual painting progress, being a commission painter means i don't unfortunately get as much time as i'd like to do my own stuff, but this week i have had much more spare time, and gotten some more work done, now both stalkers are complete, and Goreshade is done along with the deathwalker.
I'm still looking to get a few better photos but i thought i would share the good news!

So only the Bane thralls to paint now and the first list is complete, then i can get some work done on Scaverous as i seem to be using him a lot recently.

A Coven of Witches

So after getting a drubbing while using Scaves the other day, and it was all my own fault, i decided to test out some of the other casters so i don't sit in the same routine every game and expect to win. So i dusted off the first ever Cryx caster I played, all those years ago in MKI The Witch coven....
I had run them against Pauls Circle on Friday night, and managed to drag Baldur down after finally getting rid of his damned Warpwolf, which for some reason lasted 3 turns in combat with Erebus, a Stalker and Satyxis Captain, who all reduced him to 1 HP in the first round of combat and only just managed to keep up with his regen after that (including the turn after the stalker first hit and prevented any Regen!

A couple of tweaks to the list and it was ready to be taken against the retribution and Rahn fielded by James, so i rolled:

The Witch Coven
2 Stalkers
2 Nightwretches
Full Mech Thralls
Necro Surgeon
Min Bile Thralls
Full Satyxis Raiders with Sea Witch
Raider Captain

Rahn had brought

Rahn
Chimera
Arcanist (big mittens)
2 units of battle mages (mini mittens)
Full MHSF w/ Captain
Narn
Nayl
Full Halbediers w/ Command.

Jay won the roll off and let me go first, our scenario was Supply and demand, so i placed the mech thralls, biles and surgeon facing Jays flag, along with a nightwretch and both stalkers, with the witches closer to my flag with another wretch, the Satyxis and captain used the advance deployment to get forward on the left flank (after Jays normal units had deployed)
Jay put his halbediers in the centre flanked by each unit of mini mittens, Rahn and the Arcanist behind, the MHSF came on my right flank facing down my mech thralls (obviously looking to deal with 3 of my 4 jacks) With Narn right out facing the Satyxis, and Nayl in the centre.
Turn one saw me take advantage of the Witches being able to act independently and infernal machining both Stalkers with one moving forward then acting another witch to get the speed boost on the other one, I then left it there for the rest of the game (which does me favours later).

The Elves moved to engage the closest NightWretch on turn one, dealing a reasonable amount of damage but leaving the arc node and cortex in tact. Narn moved back towards the centre leaving the satyxis stranded staring at empty board space, and the halberds formed a line to cover the arcanist Rahn and one unit of mages, the second unit moved out to target the stalkers but were outside of range due to stealth.

Turn two saw the  stalkers engage the mage hunters and battle mages resulting in only the death of 2 hunters and one mage, not quite the strike i was hoping for, the night wretch moved forwards to bring its ac node in range and spent focus to give its gun a 3" AOE and targeted the Chimera hiding in amongst the mage hunters and Nayl i did forget that they were immune to blast damage due to some kind of retribution trickery, but Nayl got badly hurt so i called it a win. I then dropped a boosted Stygian abyss through the node onto the chimera getting a critcal and stopping any sneaky Rahn arc node tricks next turn, so i used the last bit of focus to blast nayl into oblivion while he was nicely clear of my witches. The mech thralls then ran up to block in the mage hunters and halberds, meaning less of them were able to counter the Satyxis that charged into the other end of the line, only a couple hit combat but it was enough to crack a couple of holes and lock many of them in place, and a couple of mini mittens too!

Turn two saw Rahn go feat happy and the retribution came out swinging, one of the stalkers went down, the other was badly hurt and moved about by the mini mittens, the damaged nightwretch was scrapped, every single mech thrall slain, and all of the bile thralls and the necro surgeon, all of this just after Jay was grumbling about my units being too good!

Turn three and with just one stalker, the satyxis a night wretch and the witches left standing it wasn't looking good, fortunately i had left infernal machine on the Stalker and it was able to slam Rahn to the ground in front of the Satyxis, who with the benefit of Ghost walk, and Curse of Shadows on the halberds were able to walk up to the stricken elf and use the sea witches mini feat, sufficed to say Rahn was not a healthy elf and the nightmare isles claimed another victory!

Things we learned:
Satyxis rule: they are just a brilliant unit and can apply a lot of pressure very early and keep my opponent reacting or trying to predict where they will go next!
Stalkers are very good with infernal machine, SPD and MAT 9 makes for an excellent assasin with a mighty 12.5" threat range for grievous wounds POW 12 attacks, and working in a pair they can kick out serious damage!

Well more revelations this Friday! see you soon

The Infinite Invasion

Well Last Friday was a fun filled day, as it was Jay's birthday he and I had a day of gaming followed closely by an evening of gaming, much gaming was done!
During the day we played a little X-Wing, a nice simple game that doesn't require me to paint models but i still will once i get the time, now my painting schedule is clear of Nazi zombies I only have some Nazi tanks and troopers to do before I am done :)
I managed to lose the game of X Wing my elite imperial force being brought low by the rebels with Tenn Numb in his B-Wing killing everything (man that guy is nasty).
In the evening we were joined by a newcomer to our little warmachine group Adam, he brought Menoth led by EFeora to the table, and being new to the game we played a 25 point game to help him learn the basics, I brought Scaverous to the table as I haven't run him in 25 points before, so we had:
Scaverous.
Nightwretch
Nightwretch
Erebus
Full Mech Thralls
Necrosurgeon
Min Bile thralls
War Witch Siren

Adam took
EFeora
Redeemer
Vanquisher
Repenter
Bastions
Choir


After taking the second turn on the roll off I was able to react to Adams deployment, he had placed the Bastions on his left flank behind a forest and everything else in the centre, so to face off against the Bastions Erebus and a nightwretch went to my right, with the Mech thralls up front and biles behind in the centre, the other nightwretch and Siren took my left flank, with Scavs in the middle.

Menoth turn one saw a rush forwards, escort making this a slightly quicker job, although Adam had managed to box feora in and had to move one jack before she activated.
I did similar moves, rushing the right hand nightwretch as far forward as possible and excarnating a poor little choir boy into a bile thrall which promptly bimbles forward and exploded in the face of the vanquisher unfortunately i was a couple of inches shy of the rest of the choir.

Turn two saw a plethora of rockets and flame throwers fly at my closest wretch but with little effect high defence made his shots scatter and as he was on his own nothing was around to be hit.
My second turn saw me put up deathward on erebus, something i forgot to do in my excitement to scrag a choir member, i mostly advanced and reshuffled and got into a better position, moving Erebus towards the centre as the Bastions were going to take ages to get round the forest on that flank.

Turn three saw a more concentrated effort to remove the mechanithralls, lots of AOE was spammed at them, some unlucky scatters saw only 4 dead and the necrosurgeon holding some corpses smiling.
Adam had however misjudged Feora and the Redeemer they were in slamming range of Erebus so popping hios feat Scaverous moved Erebus forward with TK and excarnated another choir boy for good measure, then Erebus slammed the little month jack over the Vassal and Feora knocking her down and dealing a surprising amount of damage considering she was running escort and camping focus, then the necrosurgeon moved forwards popped 3 mech thralls in range who charged in and beat Feora black and Blue, she was however left on 4 hit points and looking for vengeance....

Turn 4 and feora firestepped away from the brawl eyes fixed on Scaverous who had left himself a little open thinking she would be dead by now, she charged in and promptly failed to cause much damage to the mighty Cryxian caster leaving him on 8 hit points, beaten but still standing, he loomed tall and set the teeth of Avernus whirring and feora screamed......

We also had a visit from Simon and his lady Alex who came up from LVL up wargames a new store opening a few metres from my place (how handy) and they ran us all through some infinity games, so now i have a new addiction and after having owned a force for 4 years i finally got to play a game with them, however on the way to the table i managed to drop them, so a bunch of angry legs on bases took to the table and will be repaired soon!

Over this weekend however amongst painting zombies i got time to build Scavs fully, Erebus ad a pair of night wretches so i now have no proxy models in my normal Scaverous list!

The Lord Exhumator.

After using him for a few games I invested in the Lord Exhumator Scaverous, but as stated i am looking to repose him a tad so i made a bit of progress this evening and moved the legs about, and re-did the feet so he would stand on a modelled base, next part is the hard bit, rotating the wrists and removing the hands from Avernus, something a little more advanced than i am used to, so lets see how this goes over the next couple of evenings :)

A week without games!

Unfortunately due to me taking a weekend away there won't be any games to report this week, which while a shame it does give me time to look over my lists and collection and try to figure out where to go next.

At the moment I have an unbuilt Scaverous and Erebus, and I am waiting for a little inspiration as to how to pose them, I am rather fond of the Scavvy art in Wrath:

So i think it will be something akin to this for the big guy, I'm sure i have enough skulls in bitz boxes to make the base as well.

As far as plotting list changes goes, my current list for him seems pretty solid I just have to remember that Menoth are largely immune to magic so taking casters that rely on it is a bad choice, I have been looking into Epic Asphyxious for one of my caster choices, he seems to be the toast of the interwebs and king ding a ling for most people, so it can't hurt to give him a go. I actually have a PGaspy already painted that i haven't used yet, so perhaps that should make its way on to the table, because parasite and scything touch are a combo made in heaven. although i keep thinking multiple units of mech thralls might be a good idea with him? we shall have to see on that one.

Well games will return to normal next week and I believe Deeprose has some kind of dragon blight related plot brewing..

Mage Duel - Lord Exhumator Scaverous vs Adeptis Rahn 35pts

Hi again all....a new battle report, this time between Mazz and James.

This is Mazzas Scaverous list that didn't work against my Menoth last week. This time he's facing Ret, and feeling a lot happier, and it is a much stronger matchup.

Also the first report with photos...they aren't great as I had to use my phone, but will hopefully have my proper camera for the next reports.

The Lists:

Rahn
- Chimera
- Sylys Wyshnalyyr

MHSF + UA
- Soulless Escort
Full Halberdiers + UA
- Soulless Escort
Battle Mages
Battle Mages
House Shyeel Magister
Narn
Nayl

Scaverous
- Erebus
- Nightwretch
- Nightwretch
-Skarlock

Full Mech Thralls
Necrosurgeon
Bile Thralls
Withershadow Combine
Pistol Wraith
Warwitch Siren

Scenario: Process of Elimination
2 12x6 control zones, with a monolith in each (in this case carved into the shape of Menoth Jacks...). Scenario points are scored by destruction of the monoliths and control/domination of the zones.


Deployment:
James won initiative, and opted to take the first turn.

The Retribution deploy with the Mage hunters ahead on the right flank, And the rest of their force in a solid line...Battle Mages on both flanks, Halberdiers and Rahn in the centre. Narn and Nayl joined the left hand flank near one unit of Battle Mages (this picture went badly wrong, hopefully you get the idea...the rest are better!).

The Mechanithralls, Biules, Scaverous, one Nightwretch and the Pistol Wraith all deployed in a clump by a large hill and walls.
Erebus, the other Nightwretch, Withershadow, Skarloc and Siren  deployed further towards the left flankto try to contest the second objective zone.

The battle lines:

Turn 1:

Rahn gives 1 focus to the Chimera.
Almost everything runs forward. The only exception is Rahn, who walks and casts "Force Field", and "Polarity Shield" on the Halberdiers. he also uses "Telekinesis" to move Narn a further 2" forward.

The Cryx turn 1 was a little more active.
The nearby Nightwretch got 1 Focus from Scaverous.
The Siren walked forward, using "Power Booster" to give the other Nightwretch 1 Focus.
The Skarlock puts "Death Ward" on Erebus.
The Nightwretchs both run forwards.
Scaverous then tries to Excarnate Narn, but forgot about stealth and missed. He then Excarnated a Battle Mage, killing him and creating a Bile Thrall.
Everything else then walked forward.

Turn 2:

Rahn upkeeps his spells, and allocates no focus.
The MHSF walk forward and start flanking, shooting the Nightwretch while doing so...10 damage caused.
The Halberdiers use their mini-feat and charge the front line of Mechanithralls, killing 5 with ease.
Rahn then activates, popping his feat. He channels a "Force Hammer" at Erebus, slamming him backwards and killing 1 member of the Withershadow as well as the Skarlock. The Siren miraculously lives! He then uses "Telekinesis" to move Narn 2" forward.
Nayl runs forward on the left flank.
The left hand Battle Mages run, while the right hand ones walk forward. A flurry of Force Bolts (and a Whip Snap from the Magister) later, and there is a dead Nightwretch and 1 dead Bile Thrall.
Narn Charges at Scaverous, but is 1" out of range!

On his turn, Scaverous allocates no focus.
First off, the Mechanithralls surround the rather embarressed looking Narn, and proceed to punch him into a greasy patch on the floor.
Scaverous then activates, and uses his feat. He drops "Feast of Worms" on the middle of the Halberdier line, killing one. He then Excarnates twice, killing 2 Halberdiers and creating 2 Bile Thralls.
The Bile Thralls then activate, and 4 move forward to purge. This results in fairly epic carnage, killing every Halberdier, Nayl, 2 Battle Mages1 Soulless, reducing the Magister to 1 health (and putting Corrosion on him) and corroding Rahn!
The Pistol Wraith runs.
Erebus stands and walks forwards, and the solos near him spread out more!

Turn 3:
Corrosion goes out on the Magister, saving his life. Rahn takes a damage.
This turn went horribly wrong. Realising that he couldnt get to the remaining biles to stop them purging the rest of the infantry out of the control zones, Rahn tried to kill Scaverous. Unfortunately, the wall he was behind caused a massive flurry of missed spells from Rahn and the Battle Mages. The MHSF did hit him a few times and caused a couple of damage, but nothing more.

James resigned at this point.



Summary

On the surface, I felt James resigned too early...he was actually 2-0 up in Scenario Points, and had the right hand one quite full.
However, on reflection it was an OK call. There was absolutely nothing he could do to stop both control zones being purged by 2-3 biles each, meaning instant death for every model he had left except Rahn and the Chimera (and they wouldn't be happy).
However, if he hadn't gone all in on a very long odds assassination, this could have gone different. He had 2 untouched units, and the MHSF probably could have taken out all the Biles. I think possibly he panicked at the sheer damage the Purging Biles did, and tunnel-visioned at that point.


James has struggled to deal with this Scaverous list so far...he lost to the same list last week, though no report as i missed that game.
I think with a bit more work it's not an instant lose by any means though. The only truly scary power against this amount of Ret infantry is in the Bile Thralls...I think more focus on killing those would leave him in a strong position.
Scaverous with both Excarnate and TK is truly nasty though at delivering the little pusbags, so we'll see!

I hope that you enjoyed this report. Any and all feedback is welcome, so go nuts :)

Magical stupidity

So yeah after plotting a new list for Scaverous and coming up with lots of mean things to do i must remember that not everything works against everybody! but after using the list against its intended target of our local retribution player i felt some what vindicated in my choices as he gleefully roflstomped forwards killing mech thralls and most of the biles but one survived and With Ravyn so far fowards a quick excarnate from a skarlock put one of the biles back into play a tk forwards and boom! no more mage hunters and a wounded Ravyn, and within charge range of Scavvy, who promptly pounded her into a fleshy mess! one of my first wins!
So i am pretty set on building the list and running it for a little while, so of i toddled to my local store (well warehouse supplier, we have no local gaming store currently) and he had good old scavvy in stock, along with Erebus so new purchases gleefully unpacked when i got in and found this:

 Scaverous is actually as big as a helljack! man i'm looking forward to working on him, but must focus first, the second stalker is calling.
In fact I had a visit from a friend with a decent camera who took some better stalker photos for me...
so here we have a few better shots

...continued! Game 2, pSeverius vs Scaverous

So, this second game was an odd one. I had been discussing this Cryx list earlier in the day with Mazza, and felt it was very solid. I did NOT think it would make any sort of good Menoth drop though, so honestly never expected to face it.

I took the following:

pSeverius
- Revenger
- Vanquisher
Avatar
Vassal
Min Choir
Full Errants + UA
Rhupert Carvolo


And I faced:

Scaverous
- Erebus
- Nightwretch
- Nightwretch
Withershadow
Full Mech Thralls
Necrosurgeon
Warwitch Siren
Bile Thralls


I'm going to go into a lot less detail on this one, because it was a truly horrifying matchup for the Scaverous side.
He has a lot of tricks on this list...Telekinesis, Excarnating Bile Thralls, powerful magic slinging feat turn, powerful AoE spell....and he couldn't use a damned one of them. In my entire list the only models able to be targeted with any magic were the Choir, Vassal and Rhupert. And we all know what pSevvys feat does to magic on the crunch turn. I swear, hand on heart, I didn't know what list he was taking before picking my Sevvy list!

In fairness to Mazza he still pulled off some nice TK tricks on his own models, but I didnt make the same mistakes as the last game and he was fighting a really bad uphill fight. Other than Erebus and the Avatar scrapping each other effectively, and 1 purging Bile Thrall taking out half of the Errants, he really couldnt do anything of note to me and was roundly battered.

Unfortunately, I didn't learn a vast amount on this game due to the "hard counter" matchup, but I still managed to improve my positioning, activation order and general "head state", so it certainly wasn't a waste!

I did learn i need to try much harder to kill Biles too. I do NOT like them.....

We discussed the game after, and agree that he probably wont be taking Scaverous against Menoth too much!

Praise Menoth!.... (or else)

Hi all!

I'm Alex, the local devotee to the Creator. I'll be blogging my experiences, games and general thoughts on how best to burn the vast numbers of heretics surrounding me.

I used to play Warmachine a LOT, but kind of fell out of the hobby. I'm now trying to get back in the swing of things with a new faction, and hoping to eventually start hitting tournaments etc again. The other guys here are very rapidly catching up with my experience, so I need to start raising my game to stay ahead of the hordes!

I played 2 games yesterday. No photos at this time sadly (i will try to get some for last week), but here are the writeups:





Game 1 - eFeora (me) vs Ravyn (James) 35pts

So, i was sweating about this game all week. I didn't know which caster I'd be facing, so i put together what i felt would be pretty solid against Retribution in general. Ret are probably my most feared matchup at present, so this was a tough one.

My List:

eFeora
- Vanquisher
- Vanquisher
- Redeemer (bonded)
- Repenter
Vassal
Vassal
Min Choir
Max Bastions
3 Wracks

The Heretics:

Ravyn
- Daemon
- Sylas Wyshnallyr
MHSF + UA
Max Infiltrators + Eiryss
Narn
Aiyanna + Holt
erm...some other stuff, like at least 1 Soulless. I honestly forget :(



Scenario + Setup:

We rolled "Close Quarters" as scenario, and James won the initiative, choosing to deploy/go first.
The battlefield was fairly clear. 2 small forests on the right side, 1 just outside each deployment zone, a hill nearly dead center of the board, and some impassable rocks on the left.

-James deployed his caster and the very few other non-AD troops dead center.
-I setup with the Bastions on the left flank where there was no terrain to slow them, and the jacks and support dead center with eFeora.
-James then put his Infiltrators as far up as he could on the right flank with Narn, and his MHSF just as far up dead center.
- My wracks were strung in the forest on my right...there was just enough to block off that whole path unless his Infiltrators wanted to risk the big boom.





Turn 1:

James went first, and did as expected.
-1 focus went on the Daemon
- Ravyn cast Snipe on the MHSF and Vortex of Destruction on herself, before moving forward and to the left somewhat.
-The Daemon went with her
-MHSF ran forward to get into early position
-Infiltrators did the same on their flank, along with Narn
- Aiyana and Holt went up behind the MHSF, stealthing themselves

-For my turn, 2 focus went to the bonded Redeemer, and Feora kept the rest.
-Feora activated first, walking forwards and casting "Escort".
-Choir walked forward to just ahead of my jacks, and used "Battle" on all.
-Redeemer activated first, moving forward and launching 3 rockets at the MHSF, killing 3 with scatters in total.
-Both Vanquishers also moved forward to fire at the MHSF...both were an inch short, but scatters still got 1.
-Both Vassals moved forward and used "Ancillary Attack" on each Vanquisher, but nothing further got hit :(
-The Repenter headed to the right to upset the Infiltrators and Narn, but stayed out of charge range of all but 2.
-The Bastions simply rans straight forward, heading towards Ravyn and the Daemon.





Turn 2:

This turn was a catalogue of errors on my part....read on.

-Ravyn allocated 3 to the Daemon, upkept both spells, and camped the rest.
-Ravyn activated first and walked towards the Bastions, ending just outside of her own shooting range.
-The Daemon then moved forward, and fired at the middle Bastion. He turned out to be barely in range, and did a lot of damage in total...none died, buy 2 Bastions were reduced to 2 health, and the rest were on 5! Extreme ouch.
- The Infiltrators activate next, and dither around a little. They decide to charge the Repenter, but I judged right and only 2 got in, causing almost no damage. Due to the positioning, this also put both Infiltrators and the Repenter right next to one of the Wracks.
The other Infiltrators couldn't reach, so moved forward ready to attack next turn and contested my flag.
- Narn ran down between 2 of the wracks, ending behind and to the right of Feora, about 14" away.
- The MHSF moved forward and fired into the first vanquisher, doing moderate damage but not taking out any systems.

- Feora gave 2 to the Redeemer, upkept her spells and 1 to the Repenter
- Feora activated first. She sucked a focus off the Wrack near the Repenter/Infiltrators, causing it to blow. Both Elves died, but the Repenter took TEN damage. So...that sucked.
She then proceeded to put a smile back on her pyromaniacal face by turning Narn into a candle with her flamethrower, killing him.
- The Repenter, smoking a little, them moved forward and managed to flame 3 more Infiltrators to death.
- The Vanquisher activated, moved forward and killed 1 more MHSF.
- I THEN realised I hadn't used the Choir yet, and get most upset. I used Battle on my 2 unactivated Jacks, and Passage on the 2 already activated.
- The 2nd Vanquisher moved forward, and totally missed the MHSF
- both Vassals went forward, and 2 more Ancillary Attacks resulted in 1 more dead MHSF
- the Bastions charged the Daemon, 2 of them reaching. A good amount of damage was done.

At this point i realised I had left Feora in the Killbox! Some very ungentlemanly language ensued.

Worse, I got so flustered by messing up my activation order and the Killbox, i utterly failed to activate my Redeemer with 2 focus on it, leaving quite a few more Elves unscorched than should have been the case!

So something of a terrible turn. James is 2-0 up on scenario.





Turn 3:

 - Ravyn gave 1 to the Daemon, upkept her spells
- Ravyn activated. She popped her feat, then charged the Bastions. A flurry of attacks, Quick Works, follow ups and general bloodshed later, and there were no more Bastions. He followed up towards the main fight.
- The Daemon moved towards the main melee. He hit the Vanquisher with a shot, which sucked a Vassal in, who luckily survived. The Vanquisher lost it's movement.
- The MHSF activated, putting a series of shots into Feora. However, the whole reason i took her came into play here, and she proved far too tough, only taking 5 damage.
- The Infiltrators charged in (what was left of them). They slapped the Repenter around a bit, but failed to kill it (though it had no cortex or arms left) and leaving it contesting my flag with the Infiltrators. 1 reached a choir member, soon sending him to greet the Creator in urcaen.
Eiryss hit Feora as well, causing a couple more damage.

- Feora gave the Redeemer 2, dropped Escort.
- The choir activated first, putting Battle on all jacks except the Repenter
- I forget the exact order here, but the Vanquishers and Redeemer killed off a bunch more MHSF and Infiltrators, leaving about 2-3 of each left....both units on the Flags though.
- Feora moved out of the Killbox! She also failed to hit anything at all with her flamethrower.

3-1 scenario points to James





Turn 4:
- Ravyn allocated 3 to the Daemon, upkept her spells, kept the rest
- The Daemon stayed still and hit the damaged Vanquisher, crippling it's Blazing star.
- The MHSF also hit this Vanquisher, which was the only thing in range to threaten their control point. It survived, with 5 boxes left.; it has no movement, no blazing star, and no hull.
- The Infiltrators killed the Repenter, leaving my control point uncontested and with nothing able to reach them to contest.
- Ravyn moved up directly next to the Daemon (Almost base to base...), and failed to damage the Vanquisher.

So....4-1 on scenario, both points in enemy hands, and unable to contest 1 of them. I had one chance....

- Feora gave 3 to the Redeemer, 2 to the almost dead Vanquisher, and kept 1.
- The Choir activated...battle all round.
- The 1 armed, no legged, no hulled Vanquisher activated. it hit the Daemon with it's Flame Belcher, doing a few points of damage. It boosted the blast damage on Ravyn, causing 4 damage and setting her on fire.
-The Redeemer moved to get LoS to Ravyn, and did a lot more damage to her, leaving her on 4 health.
- Feora moved towards Ravyn....fired. In range by 1 inch. Had to boost the hit roll, and hit. And then rolled....exactly enough to kill her.





Summary:

Game over, and a victory. Not a victory i feel i deserved, but a victory nonetheless.
If that unlikely assassination run didn't work, James won.
If he hadn't over extended Ravyn by 1-2 inches, he also won.
If he'd dominated hi flag with Ravyn instead of moving Ravyn towards me after killing the bastions, he won.


That said, i can learn from some very clear mistakes I made in this game. Obviously forgetting to activate the bonded Redeemer was a big one, and Killboxing myself was what made this so close. There were others though:

- I really didnt use Feora well this game. Over than Escort for some movement and her flamethrower, she basically did nothing all game. I need to work on this a lot.
- I just....failed with the Bastions. I actually dont like them in this list as Feora cant speed them up or make them tougher, so will be switching them for Errants.
- My activation order was a mess, leaving me with unboosted Jacks more than once.
- I totally failed to take the scenario on board. I didnt contest the points well enough, and forgot killboix. Unforgivable errors really.

So, plenty to take on board from this, and a lot (a LOT) more work needed.Part of it is a mental problem against Ret...i genuinely struggle to deal with the bloody MHSF, and need to get over that big time.


Please feel free to comment and feed back. As you can see, I clearly need it!

Some musings on meat puppets

Well we all know these other forces in warmachine are good for making meat puppets that we can control and send back against their former comrades to secure more corpses for more meat puppets. But how best to use them?
Now in every list i take the lowly Mechanithrall I always put in a necrosurgeon, who each turn activates first and keeps up with the unit, so when they take some hits she is there to keep them running, and should they actually kill in combat she will be there for me to forget that she claims the corpses of any living models killed within 5".
What does this mean, well mostly i'm stupidly scamming myself out of more mech thralls, and she makes a nice accompanyment to the satyxis raiders as when they finally get busted she can bring them back as more thralls, after learning this lesson about reading all the rules for a unit I think it is fair to say things may go a little better in my games this Friday in which i have made a few adjustments to what i will be running.
Firstly my anti big armour list:
Goreshade
2 stalkers
min bane thralls w/UA
Min Bane thralls
Lord Tartarus
2 Pistol Wraiths
Max Nyss Hunters

Next the Scenario/ Anti infantry List:
P Deneghra
2 Deathrippers
2 Pistol Wraiths
Machine Wraith
Max Mechanithralls w/Brute Thrall
Necrosurgeon
Min Bile Thralls
Max Satyxis Raiders W/ Sea Witch
Satyxis Captain.

And the Final option is a little undecided, I'd like to test ESkarre with Deathjack and all the Satyxis, or the Witch Coven and Nightmare delivery system,  I'll let you know what i choose and how it goes, in theory with battle reports and pictures :)

Actual painting progress

Well with a huge amount of zombie Nazis done i got a bit of time to work on the Goreshade list, and with an evening to myself I got a stalker done, I'm hoping to improve on the glow effects but I need to practice a bit more to achieve it. so for now he is up to standard.

The photo's aren't great need to get my light box set up and do a few close ups, but for now we have some progress!

So now we have:

Goreshade The Bastard - unpainted.
Stalker bonejack - unpainted.
Stalker bonejack - Painted
Pistol Wraith - Painted
Pistol Wraith - Painted
Bane Lord Tartarus - Painted
Minimum Bane Thralls with UA - 8 of 8 Painted
Minimum Bane Thralls - 6 of 6 Unpainted
Summoned Bane Thralls - 4 of 6 Painted

Part 2! games and learnings!

So I have been running Goreshade for a while now and my opponents are Menoth and retribution, and frankly I have had a very hard time applying axe to face enough for a win, so I have changed my lists for a Deneghra one, I will still be painting the Goreshade list to completion mostly because i love the models and i won't play tricksy elves with minimal jacks all the time :)

So we had an experiment Friday with this:

35pts
P Deneghra
Slayer
Deathripper
Deathripper
Max Mech thralls w/ Brute
Necrosurgeon
Max Satyxis Raiders w/ Sea Witch
Pistol Wraith
Min Bile thralls

And after an exhausting game Deneghra finally fell foul to Hypnos and Ossyan after spending focus before being told that Hypnos is for some reason immune to spells! gah, so Denny bravely charged in to get him out of the control zone which would have given me the win, and got him down to 8 boxes after some terrible rolling on her part (2 missed attacks after shadow binding him), then the last 2 mech thralls charged in and both missed! and the pistol wraith failed in his duties!
Still the things we learnt:
Satyxis under Ghost walk are simply mean, turn 2 they ran through the forest they were hiding behind and through the mage hunters guarding a wall and mixed themselves in amongst the house guard rifles in behind, leaving all the elven shooting units engaged in combat with nasty ladies with reach.
I think waiting another turn for Denny to get in position to feat would be better, or at least have run an arc node up to get in range to pop crippling grasp on the mage hunters ensuring if they run they are likely to get hit, and they can't get far either.
Still lessons learnt, and next time I'll save those three focus to hit jacks in the face more often!

It begins with the Bastard....

So the folks here at Clockwork Wargaming are rather fond of the game of Warmachine and we do play rather a lot of it, despite only having a small gaming community (currently 4 of us) so we decided to share our love of the game with the wilds of the interwebs and tell people about our learnings and paintings and general antics as we romp around the iron kingdoms smashing things.
As the instigator of this all I thought i would make a start with actually getting some things painted so our battle reports look all nice and pretty (well hopefully).
So here we have my initial list that i pledge to have painted first, and I promise not to buy any more toys until these are all done (something I'm sure all hobbyists have said at some point).

We have in 25 points:
Goreshade The Bastard  (with the lovely death walker) currently unpainted.
Stalker bonejack - unpainted.
Stalker bonejack - unpainted
Pistol Wraith - Painted
Pistol Wraith - Painted
Bane Lord Tartarus - Painted
Minimum Bane Thralls with UA - 8 of 8 Painted
Minimum Bane Thralls - 6 of 6 Unpainted
Summoned Bane Thralls - 4 of 6 Painted

So we have loads of work to do on these chaps, especially as I have a very large commission on my desk right now, but in between Nazi zombies we shall get some done!