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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Mulg Force 5

This Weekend I played in a very special tournament called the Bryan Carroll Invitational. It's called that because Bryan invited us over to his place for a day of Warmachine while his wife and kids are out of town. I played Edoomy, Mulg, and Janissa together for the first time and it was Magical. Undeated magical. I managed to play Circle (Kormac), Trollbloods (Grissel), Cryx (PDenny) and Legion (PThagrosh) and got the Caster Kill each game. My favorite moment was against PDenny, as she popped her Feat and hit Mulg with Crippling Grasp, then giving Mulg seven inched of movement so as to move forward and engage Denny, then while under Wild aggression managed to score a hit on her and with Boosted damage killed her in one shot.


Mulg is a Beast, I really like how he's been playing. He's super tough, especially when buffed, hits hard and accurately, has reach and adds some magic denial to the army. I'm sold on him and I'm sure my opponents are going to hate him soon.

Janissa turned several games in my favor with well placed walls and moving enemy jacks out of combat with Tectonic shift. In my first few games she felt like she might be spent on more whelps or maybe Saxon Orrick or a Pathfinder, but in games where I felt out threated by range or my bad positioning, her Rock wall covered my boys and deflected several attacks. In one game it let me aggressively advance toward a very scary infantry based army, granting me the first strike as opposed to being charged/slammed by long riders first.

Epic Doomshaper feels like coming home, even though I've only played him for a week now. His spells get feel like a "Best of" list, I loved Iron Aggression and Full Throttle, so Wild Aggression is something I'm very familiar with, while I've used Refuge with Kara Sloan and Hoof it with Grissel, so the after combat movement is also something I've got experience exploiting. Primal Shock is sweet and easy to use as it his other Direct damage spell. Agitation is going to take a little skill to use correctly, as every time I've used it, it was just before I killed at least one of his (my Opponent) beasts and solved the fury problem for him. Doomy's free Dire Troll Animus is also something I'm really happy with, although I found out he can't cast Transmute on himself and get the Speed Bonus of Difficult Terrain, as he did not have the animus on him at the start of the activation, when you check. His Feat is pretty sweet for firing off the Big trolls, +3 speed and free charging is pretty sweet.

I've Recently Started to play Monsterpocalypes and I'm really impressed be it. I'm still not sold on the collectible aspect of it, but it does have small sets. The Small sets seem to make it easy to get the models you want, so I'm hoping it's not going to be too expensive. That aside, I'm very happy with the game play. I've played about four games and I'm thinking it's more complex then Warmachine. The Dice resource system with alternating unit/monster turns really makes me think, then think, and then think some more. Learning and remembering the Icon system is also a challenge, but I found a wedsite the shows all the stats with all the ability rules, so it's a lot easier to figure out what everything does. Here is the site if you want to check out some monpoc stats. It's so very satisfyingly when you slam a monster though four buildings, crushing both yours and his units and then finishing the smash with him ending the slam on a nuclear reactor so he takes some radiation damage too. 

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Mulg makes me happy.

I just got Mulg and have started painting him. That's my primer + Detail drybrush. I tend to drybrush a color on my models before I really think about painitng a model. The drybrush is slightly heavy and is intend to A) allow details to stand out, so I can plan my paint job better, B) it makes the model much more table top ready and C) it allows me to use thinner paint for base coating, while letting the black primer show though in the cracks and crevices.

I've played a couple games with Mulg and I really like him. His slow speed is a bit of an issue, but it's so worth it with his Reach, armor 19 and 35 damage boxes.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Warstorm!

I just wanted to post a mini review of the Facebook game "Warstorm". Warstorm is a Collectable Crad game owned by Zynga and it's very similar to Magic the Gathering, but the game plays it's self, the players only contribution is to deck design. You make squads of 7 cards and once you start a game you pick the required number of squads and the game starts. Once the game starts the only thing you can control is play speed and pausing, otherwise the cards are randomly drawn and played for you. This my sound like a big negative, but it's really well done and fun to watch. You root for your cards and watch the game unfold. Games are quick and because of the nature of the automatic game play, you can play against your friends regardless of if they are online or off. Numerous awards track all your wins as you work to unlock power cards.

While this game is free to play, you can spend money on it to buy booster packs, campaigns, prebuilt squads or singles, but the prices are very cheap compared to current card games and you never have to figure out how and where your going to store your cards. I've played this since last winter and I've spent maybe 150 dollars over that time (10 and 20 dollars a pop), but when playing the WOW TCG a few years ago I was spending close to 1000 every other month trying to stay current. If you have played and enjoyed CCGs in the past, I highly recommend Warstorm.

Check out Broken Zealot!

The Broken Zealot Painting Blog is the blog of one of our local gamers and I've been following it for quite a while. It's one of the reasons I started up Ninjahut, so go take a look.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Foodmachine Tournament wrap up

We had 13 people show for the Foodmachine event that ran this weekend. Over 250 cans where collected for the Second Harvest Charity.

Asside from the two guys who each brought 60+ cans and had that many rerolls, the only really suprise was the faction turnout, We had two each of the Hordes original factions and one each of the first five Warmachine factions. Only Elfs and Minions where not represented. I was a little surprised that we had more Hordes then Warmachine, I think that's only happened before at the Genesis event.

My List:
Army Name: Grissel 25
Trollbloods
25+5 points, 25 models

Grissel Bloodsong, Fell Caller +5 points
* Troll Axer 6 points
* Troll Impaler 5 points

10 Kriel Warriors 6 points
* 3 Kriel Caber Thrower 3 points
* Kriel Warrior Standard & Piper 2 points
4 Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes 3 points
* Stone Scribe Elder 1 point
Saxon Orrik 2 points
Stone Scribe Chronicler 2 points


My Second list was the same expect with Madrak and Fell caller instead of Grissel and Saxon.

I did ok, My list was a power house, but I lost on tiebreaker on two games. I always felt my Trolls where taking control of the game when Dice down would be called and I'm just shy of reducing two units below half, but my Kriels are one model under half and lose there points value. I really enjoyed running the Kriel Warriors with UA and 3 Cabers. I had a Single Caber for months but it's just not the same as three of them. That unit can hit harder then most heavys on single targets on a charge, with Heroic Ballad buffing them.

I was cleaning up terrain while the Final placings where being announced, so I'm only sure on First Place.
Congrats to Sean and his Trollbloods for taking Game Kastle's first Foodmachine in a fury of fellcalls.
I think Henry came in 2nd with Khador
and Lat came in 3rd with Menoth








Thursday, November 11, 2010

Terrain Explosion!!!

So some time around 2000, I helped set up and run a Warhammer 40,000 tournament called "Brainbasha", it was our local attempt at a Bay Area grand tournament. Anyway, ten years later and I just receive all the terrain we made for the event.

Here are some pictures of the new terrain.



I'm organizing a Steam Roller this weekend, so the terrain arrived just in time.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Better late then never!

Almost a month since I last posted, so time to get this going again. I've been playing around with Both Cygnar and Trolls latily. I finally got my last two Caber Tossers so I can field a full unit with all three Cabers. I Proxies them the other night with Grissel and a Ton of different buffing units. Kriel Warriors are my new Voltron, they form up like a Blazing Sword. The Cabers did most the damage needed to kill a Kodiak and Beast 09 thanks to being P+S 18 with two attack each (Grissel's Heroic Ballad). For the longest time I felt my Trolls had issue with high armor (only heavy beasts seemed to counter them, but they tend to die quick easily, but with the Caber tosser madness, I'm no longer worried about Khador jacks.

I've been also playing Epic Nemo and a game with Ashlynn (not really Cygnar, but I used Gun Mages). ENemo is really starting to Grow on me. Fail Safe is a Jailhouse repair, but a lot of the time it's all I need, plus with ENemo, you can allot focus to a Crippled Cortex after you throw Failsafe on it. It's very cool. All his other shenanigans are also very useful. Energizer makes me happy inside every time I use it. I love advancing my shooting jacks with Energizer then standing still for an aiming bonus, or standing still for an aiming bonus then using energizer to back away a few inches.

Also an update on my stuggle with using Rough Terrain correctly, some pointed out that you can always measure form the back of your base to the edge of the rough terrain, instead of placing a spare base outside of the terrain like I suggested.

I'm helping Organise a Foodmachine event for later this month. If you hadn't heard, Foodmachine is a Charity event where the players bring canned food in and donate it, with each can granting a Reroll to be used in the Tournament.
Here is a link to Game Kastles event page, the tournament should be near the top of the screen.
http://www.gamekastle.com/index.php?m=events#event195715

Monday, October 11, 2010

Rough terrain

One of the most common mistakes I have made and I see other make is how they move though rough terrain. 
Rough terrain effects you as long as your base is in the terrain, but I usually see people declare there movement intention, measure how much rough terrain there is between the active model and open ground then double that distance to see how much movement was wasted moving though the rough terrain. This is however incorrect, as this does not take account for the length of the models base. A 50mm base is almost 2"s long (I think it's a few MM short). This means a large based model must add two more inches to the distance travels, costing the model 4 more inches of movement.

This pictures shows someone measuring 3" of rough terrain when 
attempting to leave the terrain.

The picture Below shows the Ironclad correctly including his base length to the measurement.
So the the Ironclad moved 5 inches to get completely into open terrain, this cost the Ironclad 10 inches 
of it's movement.
I recommend using extra bases or models that are not in the game to help measure out the real distance spent in rough terrain. I hear Litko and other businesses make plastic colored bases that might be easier to grip and cheaper to use then the beveled bases Privateer uses for there models. I have a fair amount of extra bases from Privateer and then gluing something easy to grab to it's top. I'm not sure what I'll use, but when I've figured it out, I also plan on painting them with standard facings and using them for stand-ins for models that can't be placed where it should because of modeling problem (large weapons or super cool dynamic poses that lead to models that are larger then there base).

I'll post photos when I finish making those marker/bases.