New site

I have moved to a blog that China won't block

http://gaming.elasticpeople.net/

Moving to a new site

I am going to move this site to one of my own. The problem is that the government of the country I live in does not like Blogspot and so it is usually blocked. Sometimes I can get through, but not reliably enough to warrant staying here. I will try and make another post to mention my new site when I get it running and can get through again.

Xerxis and Reznik both die

Martin and I managed to get in one last game before my miniatures are packed away where I can't sneak them out again. We put 750 point armies on the table and decided to fight with no real objectives other than to smash each other.



I was handling the early game quite well. I tied up his left flank with three Vengers, while the real fight took place in the center.


My Strategy hinged around the Guardian which was a mistake. I forgot why the Guardian had been gathering dust for a year and a half, but I was quickly reminded; it's a piece of junk. It might be worthwhile in Mk2, but while 3 damaged systems can take out a jack, a heavy jack with an Arc node is just not worth fielding. Martin's heavy Infantry didn't quite fill in half the boxes on the Guardian's damage template, but because three systems were disabled, the jack was disabled.



Mid game I was losing and trying to consolidate. Vilmon, The Seneschal and my Paladin were dead, as was the Guardian and the Vengers were looking shaky. it was then that martin made his mistake. He left Xerxis exposed. Reznik branded him a heretic and the Redeemer fired missiles and killed him. Martin's beasts went wild and suddenly the advantage was mine.

I also made a mistake and left a charge lane open to the Ancestral guardian, who swooped in with Five soul tokens and cut Reznik to ribbons.

The fight now came down to Martin's Immortals against my Choir, Zealots and Avatar. The Avatar slowly chopped through the Immortals, who proved (true to their namesake) very hard to kill. Finally my Zealots got there and rained fire bombs down on the Immortals. End of Battle.

My strategy was not sound. I consolidated from the mid game setbacks well, but my victroy hinged on Martin leaving his boss in an unprotected position.

Possibly my last game for a few months

I defeated Martin yesterday, but it was a very narrow win. We were savagely contesting the objective ( a farm house) and I managed to batter my way to his warlock. When I got off the killing blow he had only two venators left and I had a damaged Catigator and Kreoss still there.

I didn't get to play Tom as we had a fourth (Jack) who played against him.

Get out of the way Vilmon

Tomorrow I play my last game of Warmachine for quite a while. Tuesday the miniatures and modeling gear get packed away for the big move and won't be available to me until October... bummer. So 500 pts Mk 1 vs Tom's Cygnar and Martin's Skorne. Do I think I have made the most competitive army? No. Am I happy with my choices? Very.

I love the fluff that goes with Menoth and in my fevered imagination I see a kind of rivalry between the Knights Exemplar and the Paladins of the Order of the Wall. So tomorrow's force is based around knights (only 2 models are not Knights) on the march to war with Vilmon tagging along to see what all the fuss is about.

Here is a crappy snap of the models I am using. Unfortunately the Vengers are nowhere near finished, but they are ok (except the bases) for the table.

4 corner hardcore match

Martin, Tom and I were set to play a small round robin tournament on Monday night with each of us playing both the others. However we got a fourth player (Dylan) and decided to play hardcore rules with all four of us on the same table at the corners. We put a castle ruin in the middle of the board as a way to earn victory points and went at it.



Tom headed for me, as did Dylan and i was lucky enough to charge Tom's Hunter with my Vengers and kill it. That made him cautious and he slowed down his advance. I withdrew from the fight happily, knowing that there was no forest between me and the cryx and a fight was inevitable.



The game now became Menoth vs. Cryx at one end and Menoth vs. Cygnar at the other.





I got the better of Dylan and managed to cast Brand of Heresy on Terminus and then charged my Castigator into him. It still took three hits, but I eventually eliminated the Lich Lord.

At the other end of the field Tom and Martin slugged it out and while they both did huge damage to each other, Martin's Avatar got the edge over Ol' Rowdy. When the turns were up, we counted up our victory points from each turn with a model within 3 inches of the ruin and then subtracted our lost VPs from it, giving us our final score.

Dylan was on -13, Tom on -9, martin on -5 and I had a grand total of 1. Yay me. Next time I probably would not want to do victory points that way.

Speed painting

We had a great game last night. Four players, hold the objective, hardcore. Toward the end when I was in the clear I started painting a miniature to demonstrate dry brushing to Dylan who was our Cryx player. I was originally just going to do the shoulders to demonstrate how it looks with steel and bronze, but Tom and Martin were using up their full seven minutes every turn, so I used four of those turns to completely speed paint the miniature. I am very happy with what is a 28 minute paint job. If I had access to it again I would clean it up a bit, but as is it is (IMHO) fine for the table.

Here is the photo. It is the Cryx Jack in the middle.