I've been kinda busy...kinda?

Hey everyone,

I know it's been awhile since I posted last on here, but I'd like to start posting more now that I've got a little bit more time on my hands as the semester comes to a close.  Since my list post, lots of things have happened, especially gaming things.

Warhammer Fantasy

The first of these, any probably the most major, is my attendance of Quake City Rumble in late July.  With nearly 100 players, this is hands down the biggest event for Warhammer Fantasy on the West Coast.  I love this event - it's got a great, laid back atmosphere, even though it's such a large event; and it's a drinking tournament, which means there's a lot of suds flowing and this generally helps to put everyone in an even better mood.

I did pretty well - I lost my first game but almost maxed points my other four.  I played against VC, VC, Chaos Warriors, Ogres and finally Daemons, in that order.  All my opponents were super nice guys, and I had not a single rules quibble the entire weekend.  Usually, I feel like I have to call the judges at least once, if not twice or three times over the course of a 5 game event, but this time everyone was right on point with the rules.

It was a sad tournament, though, because it for the most part signaled the death of Warhammer 8th edition for most of us.  I heard one prominent tournament goer liking the event to an Irish wake, with melancholy drinking being the activity dejour.  Regardless, a super fun time.

Since the game is dead and gone, locally, we've made the switch for the most part to 9th Age.  I'll admit that I've had not a small role in this decision, but I've been trying to get all the other local players to try it out.  I must say, they've done a really bang-up job on the rules front - the stuff that was super broken in 8th is fixed and even the less appealing choices are very solid.  Adopting this game system over the more nationally accepted change to Kings of War is somewhat strange, but I've got to say that I like the more familiar ground of 9th better than KoW, and the game play seems less stagnant and boring.  But hey, that's just my opinion.

Warhammer 40,000

I've been playing a lot of 40k the last few months.  It's been a good time, and so far locally I'm 29-1 for tournament games.  I even managed to pull out the big W at the large local convention, where we even had people from out of town play in our event!  About 12 people from Fairbanks made the 8 hour car ride into Anchorage just to come play at our 2-day event.  It was great getting to play against new people and different (and very competitive) armies.

I brought my Necrons, and brought a Decurion Detachment; here's my list:

Decurion Detachment 1850 pts

Reclaimation Legion
Nemisor Zahndrekh
15 Necron Warriors
2 x 10 Necron Warriors w/ Ghost Arks
8 Immortals
3 Tomb Blades w/ Nebluscopes and Shield Vanes

Canoptek Harvest
5 Wraiths, 2 Whip Coils
3 Scarab Swarms
Tomb Spyder w/ Fabricator Array

Destroyer Cult
Destroyer Lord w/ Voidbringer and Phase Shifter
3 x 3 Destroyers

So all in all, very shooty, with a very solid counter punch/tie-up unit in the Wraiths.  Honestly, the whole deal with the army was that it was hard to kill; and with that in mind I basically just tried to play to the objectives and kill what I could.  I ended up playing against a Marine Demi-Company/1st Company Support list, Iron Hands Mech + Knight; Slaanesh CSM/Daemons summoning bomb; 5 Flyrant Nids and finally 25 Scatterbike/Seer Council/Wraithknight.  All the games were pretty good, although the Slaanesh player got a little contentious at points in our game, and I really didn't have too much fun either (but just for this game).  The toughest game was against the Nids or the Scatter bikes; I probably would have lost the last game had it gone another turn, but my opponent seemed to take a long time to do things and wasted time on the psychic phase that he didn't have.

Overall, a super fun event and a good time as any I've had at a big event down south.  I'm not sure about the future of the event, as the organizer is a little...prickly about some things.  I hope they end up running it again, it was great!

I think we're going to have another large-scale convention coming up as well, during the early summer, so I'm looking forward to participating in that as well.

I've also purchased a new Tau army, as well as a Mechanicum War Convocation and I've bought a bunch more Heresy stuff as well, so I've got a lot on my painting plate.  Hopefully I can work on some of this stuff as the year goes on.

Malifaux

So I've been playing this quite a bit lately.  I love this game - it's simple, but at the same time so complex and variable...I love the options.  This is the skirmish game I've always wanted.  With the addition of a campaign, I can't think of a game of this time I'd rather play.  It's streets ahead of Warmachine and Hordes, as far I'm concerned.  I have almost all the guild models, so that's my main faction, but I've also been playing Collodi a lot, and he's just an awesome dude to use.  So tricky, it's like I'm literally the puppet master of the table.

Personal Stuff

I'm going to school and working at the same time, but I'm really going to try and keep this updated.  It's been a real pain to get my pictures uploaded on this blog, but I'm going to try and make a better point of doing so in the future.  Anyway, for the few people that still might be following, expect more content soon.

Some Gaming!

This week has been surprisingly busy - though I was able to get in two games (one last week, and one the week before that); so I'll do a brief run-down on the first one.  I've been really happy to have a local store that I can stop by and play at; even if it's not to a point where you can just get a pickup game whenever (yet).  I think there will be a time where there's enough of a crowd there during certain days that I won't have to schedule games ahead of time.

40k Game:

So I got to play my Eldar again last Thursday, this time against Jon.  I played against Jon at a recent 40k Tournament (wherein I played against no less than 3(!) Grey Knight players).  Jon brought a solid list, a combination of Grey Knights and Blood Angels, with the Blood Angels being the primary.  His list included:

Blood Angels (Baal Strike Force):
Corbulo (Warlord)
Sanguinary Priest w/ Valor's Edge
2 x 5 strong Tactical Squads with Grav Weapons
10 Death Company
5 Bolter Death Company w/ Rhino
Storm Raven (with DC and Corbulo inside)
Death Company Dreadnought
Sicarian
Aegis Defence Line w/ Comms Relay

Grey Knights (Nemesis Strike Force):
Librarian w/ ML3, Unique Storm Bolter, Hammer
5 GK Terminators
2 Dreadknights; 1 w/ Heavy Psycannon/Gattling Psylencer; 1 w/Heavy Incinerator/Heavy Psycannon

A pretty intimidating list.  I played the same list as last time, which you can find here.

I rolled up a ton of powers, as I am wont to do with 20 Mastery Levels.  Importantly, I got Fortune on at least one of the psykers, as well as the +1 Armor Save power on the warlock conclave.

We played standard Eternal War mission one (the one with the d3+2 Objectives, no special points).  We rolled up standard deployment.  The blue dice in the pictures represent the objectives (unless it's on a model's base, apparently, that means it's

Jon won the first turn, and you can see he is lining up to systematically destroy tons of my dudes.  He kills half of one unit of guardians, and then another units flees off the table after losing several models.

On my first turn, I manage to deal two wounds to both of the Dreadknights, as well as blow up the DC rhino.

On the second turn, Jon's shooting is much less successful.  He only manages to kill most of the rest of one squad of guardians.  The seer council takes some hits, but keeps on trucking.

I think at this point I lost some of my picture taking discipline - We played till turn seven, and some funny/interesting things happened.

• Storm Raven came in with DC and Dreadnought, and one unit of reapers grabbed a nearby objective with Skyfire - shot that thing out of the air.  On the drop, all the DC minus Corbulo died, and the Dread took a hull point.  I shot the dread with the rest of the Reapers, and took it out.  On his next turn, Corbulo joined with the other DC, which shot at the Reapers in the runs enough to cause them to fall back, out of assault range (thank Khaine!).  They rallied and then proceeded to blow the snot out of the DC.
• My psyker unit owned the middle of the table, tanking hits on the 2+ re-rollable Farseer (jetbike + Fortify).  Finally got in combat with the terminators plus librarian, and kept Perils checking a 6 - so the Farseer fighting the librarian always had smash.  Too bad he kept making invulnerable saves.  This led to the combat death of all my farseers, including my Warlord to the Thunder Hammer toting Librarian.  Who said that the TH was a bad choice?
• My War Walker survived both the Autocannons and Lascannons of the Sicarian, only to be gunned down by it's Heavy Bolter.  The indignity!
• Managed to kill the Sicarian with the Seer Council.  Tons of Singing Spears + Guide work wonders.
• At the end of the game, controlled three objectives to none, winning the game 10-2 (Jon got First Blood and Warlord).

A super fun game, filled with lots of explosions and death.  I lost about 80% of my army, but the leftovers were enough to take a bunch of objectives and keep going.  I hope to play against Jon again sometime soon.

Hobby Progress

Worked on some more Wood Elf stuff earlier this week; getting close to having everything assembled and primed/base coated.  All I still need to do is build/base/prime another 16 or so Archers and base/prime my Wardancers.  These (due to crappy shooting) are my Eternal Guard.  I chopped the bottom spears off, and used the hooded heads instead of the helmeted ones.

In addition to building some models for Fantasy, I acquired a Space Wolf army for 40k on the cheap, so I built some of the models for that as well.

Finally, I received in the mail the first of the basic squads I need to start a 30k army.  I haven't played it yet, but the models are amazing.  I painted a Lorgar awhile ago (re: like a year), and I've since gotten a small unit of Gal Vorbak to join him as backup dancers.  I've also got an Erebus/Kor Phaeron on the way to join up, so I at least have a few units to fool around with and try out some small games.  There seems to be a lot of little Zone Mortalis stuff going on at the local shop.

I've got some battle report in the mix now that I need to write up, which will be the next post.  Thanks for dropping by!

Some Recent Gaming

Last night I was able to get in a game of 40k at the local game store, Tier 1, at the last minute.  I was expecting to model last night, in all honesty.  I was going to try out the Space Wolf army that I recently acquired (though to be fair, I've had quite a bit of it laying around as random models), but after I punched the numbers I realized that I'd need to build quite a few more marines before it'd be anywhere close to viable.  So instead, I took the reviled Eldar.

Now, before I start talking about the battle, I'd like to touch on the Eldar subject.  The new Codex Eldar: Craftworlds recently came out and has created quite a bit of controversy and revuslion amongst the gaming community at large (re: Internet).  I've been playing Eldar for quite some time, but I don't really see what the total fuss is, except the D-Weapons, and the Wraithknight - those are legitimate complaints (the WK more than the D, if I'm being honest).  The rest of the book it a bunch of fun (and good!) units and formations.  They're even pretty fluffy.  So, with keeping that in mind, I've been limiting the D-Weapons in my army as much as I can, but it is a little bit of a bummer as the Wraith stuff is my favorite in the book.

I like to play armies that aren't netlists.  I've always felt like running my own units and combinations are what works best for me, and I like...no, love redundancy.  It's part of what makes the gaming experience for me fun; wherein I can trade my units for my opponents, and hopefully the trades will go in my favor.  I also like boots on the ground, so I typically take foot-slogging armies.  While I like the idea of a mechanized force, I've never really been able to make it work for me on the table, with the exception of Dark Eldar (which you pretty much are forced to run mechanized).

Here's my list:

Codex Eldar: Craftworlds; 1850 pts

Eldar Warhost Formation

Guardian Warhost
Farseer w/ Singing Spear, Jetbike
3 x 15 Guardians w/ Shuriken Cannons and Warlock Leader w/ Singing Spear
Vyper w/ 2 Shuriken Cannons
War Walker w/ 2 Shuriken Cannons
Vaul's Wrath Support Weapon Battery w/ 1 Vibro Cannon

Seer Council:
2 Farseers w/ Singing Spears, Spirit Stones of Althalan (or whatever)
8 Warlocks w/ 4 Singing Spears

Aspect Host:
3 x 5 Dark Reapers w/ Exarch and Starshot Missiles

As you can see, the list has decent long range firepower (18 Krak Rockets), decent short range with all the Shuriken weaponry, and a hideous 20-warpcharge Psychic phase.  I figured it was pretty fluffy for Ulthwe to run a bunch of psykers and Guardians.

I played against Justin - super great guy to fight war-dolls with.   Justin brought a Sentinels of Terra list.  He took:

Sgt Garadon (name of the Sentinel guy who is a squad upgrade)
ML 2 Terminator Librarian w/ Telepathy
2 x 10 Tactical Squad w/ Flamer, Vet Sgt; 1 Rhino
10 Scouts; All Camo, 4 Snipers, 1 HB, Bolters on rest
5 Centurions w/ TL-Heavy Bolters, Hurricane Bolters
2 x 5 Devestators w/ 4 Missile Lanchers and 4 Lascannons
Allies:
Knight Errant

Overall, pretty static.  More bodies than Justin brought last time, which is good.  The last time we played, it was under the old Eldar book, and I was able to dominate his army fairly quickly, but was unable to stop him from getting a lot of Maelstrom points; and his fliers really put the hurt on my poor Footdar, so it ended up being a tie.

We played  Emperor's Will, with a Vanguard set-up.  Justin won both set-up and first turn.  I failed to seize.

I managed to get pictures of our deployment, but not really of the rest of the game.  I need to work harder on my battle report skills; taking pictures in the middle of a game is not conducive to how I play.  Clearly, it's my turn again, and I really want to play!

Here are pictures of deployment:

My Objective is in the crater in the corner next to my (shamefully) bare metal Vibrocannon.  His is in the far central tower, towards his own board edge, and is guarded by the unit of Lascannon Devastators.

The Game:

 On the first turn, sufficiently frightened of my Seer Council, Justin pours all his firepower into them, wiping them out before I get to go.  I take a few assorted casualties, but nothing major.  I get a little bummed, as this was the game I was hoping to get to try them out.  That's okay though, I clearly made a mistake putting my best unit in the firing line.  I should have either tactically reserved them deeper in my deployment zone, or literally reserved them, and had them walk in on my board edge.  Either way, no biggie.  My turn one saw the Guardians make a full on frontal assault on the Centurions, killing three or four of them (I think three), and the central Reapers killed all the marines from the foot-slogging Tactical Squad bar one (because they couldn't see him).  I also managed to get one hull point off the Knight with the other two squads of Reapers (3/4 4++ saves).

After the first turn, it becomes sort of muddled.  Another take away - write better notes.  So, the knight advanced up the center of the table, shooting as he went; taking down two units of guardians that I threw in his way to slow him down.  Meanwhile, the Jetbike Farseer and his unit ran around the ruins in the center towards the opposite objective, with the Farseer detaching mid-way and turbo-boosting onto Justin's objective.  The War Walker and Vyper accompanied him, helping to thin out and eventually destroy the Devastators guarding his edge.  Meanwhile, the Reapers racked up an impressive rally by the end of the game - killing the other tactical squad (plus Warlord), taking all but one hull point from the Knight, and killing most of the Devs.  The Knight and the Rhino (with one hull point also) ended the game on my objective, having cleared the Vaul's Wrath battery and most of the surrounding Reapers.  The game ended on Turn 6, with the First Blood kill on Turn 1 sealing the game for Justin, with a score of 6-5.

Take Away:

1. I like the Jetbike Farseer.  I had not ever used one before (always on foot), but it was nice having him run around by himself at the end of the game Mind Waring and Executioner-ing any and all available targets.
2. Seer Council:  I need to work on deployment for these guys.  Yes, I know I'd be better off playing them on Jetbikes, but that's a lame unit to play against.  With just T3 and a 4++ save keeping them alive, they're not super tanky.  I'll give them at least one more try before I write them off completely.  It was super cool to roll up all the powers they had before the game started.
3. Reapers were great.  The unit sizes and formation benefits were amazing.  I'll definitely have to give them another go - they're a shoe-in for my next tournament.  Thought I have been playing around with point for a Wraithlord heavy list (like 5-6 of them).
4. Tactically, I should have played a little better.  There were a couple things that I did at the end of the game that might have helped; like moving a Shuirken Cannon over closer to my objective to try and nail the Rhino.  That being said, my biggest mistake was the deployment of the Seer Council.  Other than that, it was pretty tight.
5. Justin played much better this game that the last one, when he played against Eldar.  Just two games in against the elder (that's a joke) race, and he's already showing some marked improvement.  I feel like with just a little bit more experience under his belt, he's going to be a real force to be reckoned with. 

So that wraps up this post - stay tuned for some hobby updates later this week!  Let me know what you think in the comments section!

Modeling Madness! 5/4/15

This weekend was a busy one - finishing up finals, and then spending some time with the girlfriend (as the last couple weekends have been 40k tournaments).  I did manage to do some fun stuff :

I played Assassin Execution Force game - it was quite fun.  My favorite for quite some time has been the Culexus Assassin, which I got to play in two games.  The first game, he took down the Chaos Sorcerer all by himself, and then the second game got tied up by some cultists.  Super fun little game though, had a great time.

I was also able to get some much needed modeling done, though I feel like I should preface this: I freaking hate building model.  Characters, or one off models are just fine.  Building tons and tons of units I really have issues with.  I feel like this stems from having built about every single army that GW does around twice (or more!) in the last 10-15 years.

So, back to the progress; I was able to put together and primer/first coat thirteen Wild Riders - I have had the other five that go in my Quake City Rumble list built, but I need to base and prime them as well.

I apologize for the poor pictures - I promise I'll get some better ones once I make some more progress on these guys.  I'm painting the army in a sort of dry, snowless winter theme; sort of like the winter that we so recently experienced up here in Alaska.  Main colors will be pale yellow/tan, brown, some bright turquoise accents.  I'm actually looking forward to getting this painted - I really like the new Wood Elf models, and I'm eager to try out some new basing techniques involving some birch seeds for leaf litter (which I can just pick up off the ground up here in Alaska), and some great tufts that I ordered from Gamer Grass in Portugal.

For those that are wondering, here is the list of models that I need to get done for QCR at the end of July:

Spellweaver - built, not yet converted
Glade Captain - not converted; have some ideas
Treeman Ancient - built
47 Archers - 31 built, 15 primed black.  Need to knock off some of the basing bits used on some (2nd hand)
18 Eternal Guard - 10 built.  Converted to only have one spearhead.
18 Wild Riders - 18 built, 13 primed/first coat
10 Wardancers - built - though they're metal and don't really need this.
2 Eagles - built and painted.  Done (from my High Elf army), though I might re-base them.

My plans for later this week are to knock out building more wood elves (this upcoming week), since I don't have to worry about class this summer, and hopefully, working on some Eldar Jetbikes that I picked up (no worries, only seven boxes).  I'm having a couple of the guys over tomorrow to do some group modeling and painting, so look forward to some additional updates!

Introduction

Hello Everyone,

This Blog is a project that I'm creating to help motivate me to finish the many, many miniature projects that I have going on that I'd like to finish.  Though actually finishing -all- of my projects would probably cause me to spontaneously combust, it's something that I need to work on.  Otherwise, it just makes me a hoarder of expensive items.

So, a little bit about me:  I love games.  I like pretty much any kind of game, as long as it has some component of skill or strategy; I have issues with games that purely reward luck.  I like games that have a lot of moving pieces even better - typically the more complicated the better.  It really makes me think and stretches my brain in a pleasing fashion.

I'm a big fan currently of GW games (Warhammer, Warhammer 40k), Warmachine/Hordes, Infinity, Malifaux and Dropzone Commander.  I have lots of miniatures and most of them are not painted.  I like painting, but as a chronic procrastinator, I tend to only paint when the next event I have coming up looms menacingly ahead.

With my love of strategic, complicated games comes a mild case of competitiveness.  I'm not always the best loser, even though I've really tried recently to improve my attitude towards losing.  I'm definitely a long way from where I was, but it's a road I'm currently traveling.  It's a pretty long road for me, apparently.

Speaking of long roads, I live in Anchorage, Alaska.  I went to school in Reno, NV, and there I learned that I really, really like to play in tournaments.  It's my favorite thing to do, pretty much period.  In Reno, we had a pretty skilled group of players for many games, including both Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k.  Warhammer Fantasy was my best game, and the height of my skill was just before I moved back to Alaska.  With a smaller, less skilled community (though it's gotten a -lot- better in recent times), the level of practice that I could maintain went downhill quickly.  Even though I don't get to play much, I still try and travel to at least one tournament every year out of state - usually this is Quake City Rumble, in San Fransisco.

This year is the first year that I'm not going alone (though I have lot of friends that I'll meet up with at the event), as my girlfriend C is coming with me.  I'm very excited to show her what a big event (100+ people) looks like, as it has an entirely different feel than the local, 10-14 player events are like.

The general plan for this blog is to take a look at doing some battle reports, unit overviews, army list analysis and most importantly, put of pictures of my completed units/armies as I finish them up.  My plan is tomorrow to post up some of the Wood Elves that I'm working on for QCR this year.

Thanks for reading!

-Danny