New Name, New year, Same blog, more content (Hopefully)!

Hello internet,

I am in the process of restarting this blog. I am still the same person from 2015, albeit, in the future. Now it is 2019 and a lot has changed (once again). I now live in the great city of Dallas, Tx. There is a bustling and active wargame scene, pretty much for any set of rules and models. There are over 10 stores for wargaming in the area and thus with this cornucopia of hobby potential, I had decided to stop playing wargaming for about a year and a half. I have since decided to return.

At the beginning of this year, I made a resolution and promise to myself that I would begin wargaming as well. I have been missing it in my life. It brings a sense of community, new relationships are made and growth as person occurs. My original plan was to play warmachine/hordes competively again. And I did, I took part in 1 tournament in January and had a blast. I am playing Grymkin, a new hordes army that came out in 2017. They are based on personified nightmares and vices given life. They are an interesting army to build and paint. I will be posting a lot of pictures in the coming weeks to showoff my progress on them.

While I was able to play WM/hordes as before, I was dabbling in another game. Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. This is the sequel/follow up game to the now unsupported Warhammer Fantasy Battles. I loved Warhammer since back in college and was sad that it had been "killed" by GW. It was reborn as Age of Sigmar in 2015 and has had a very rocky start and life. Recently, it has been growing, most likely as a result of tidying up of the rules through the annual General's Handbook (GHB for short) and the new 2nd edition that came out summer 2018.

In the last two years, I had been reading the End time novels set in the last moments of Warhammer Fantasy world. It tied up a lot of loose ends each of the characters present on the tabletop and found in the lore. It had varying degrees of success and while overall, I thought it was a great series of books, many felt it was rushed. In my opinion, the Warhammer worlds had been stagnant for a decade. A conclusion or movement in the story was very much welcome, at least for the fact that it meant change (is that Tzeentch talking?). Ultimately, I finished the last book and with that, the desire to play Warhammer Fantasy ended with it. It was both a symbolic and actual end to the universe and allowed GW to start with a semi-fresh pallete and do whatever it is they want.

In comes Age of Sigmar. I heard and knew the massive pushback from the player base on the new ruleset and world. Since I was out of reading material and had time to listen to audio books again, I decided to try listening to one of the books set in the new AoS world. This was my gateway drug.

I began listening to the series of short stories. Hammerhal and other stories. It contained 1 longer story and a couple of other shorter ones that described the world and the different realms. I was immediately hooked. I drive 40 minutes to work each way was able to listen to substantial amounts of each book per week.

Suffice to say, I began browsing GW's site once again. I connected each model to the name and person described in the books. Little by little, I began desiring to play, to imagine this world on the tabletop. That is when I picked up my first Star Collecting box. It was for Flesh Eater courts (previously known as ghouls and strigoi faction in Vampire counts).

I picked Flesh Eater courts because of one model - the Terrorgheist.  I had always loved their look but loved them even more because I tended to use them as strike forces in the Total War: Warhammer PC game. (I will make a review for that game - and its sequel - at a later date). I love big flying monsters and the tactical flexibility they game my Vampire armies. This was back in December of 2018. Now, I have over 3000 points worth of painted models and love their look, their feel and lore behind them. Plus they recently received a new battletome (the rules book) that has catapulted them to the top 5 best armies in AoS, competitively speaking. More on that at a future date as well.

I will finish this post by saying, it feels good to be back. AoS has taken my life over and there is also a very active community that is growing in the DFW area. As you can see by the banner, I have gone all in on AoS. Due to time constraints, I have put WM/Hordes on hold and may be exiting the game in the future. This is still to be determined. Both are great games, but the lore in the AoS has sucked me in and has me wanting to game in the Warhammer Universe again.

FOR SIGMAR!

Tournament summary. Dsm.

So first game was a lost. On dice down. :(

The list did great otherwise. I almost tabled my opponent and would have if I had one more turn. It was a good game, and it was my fault that I lost for letting those scenario points be scored. But still sucks to lose on dice down.

So I got 37 points army destroyed.  Croak hunters did most of the work and the game plan worked. The game was against trollsbloods. pGrissel, double warders, champions,  mulg, mauler and stone plus ua. 

All he had left at the end was pGrissel, mulg and two members of stone unit without stone. All I lost was like 2 croaks from red unit and 4 from Blue unit. Attritionwise, it went very well. 

The game plan was to shoot and pillar up,  similar game plan to various other armies with clouds and forests.  Except you can destroy the pillars,  sometimes. 

I need to get more practice with timed turns.  It's hard with croak raiders. I remember why I tend to dislike timed turns and prefer deathclock. I need more practice in general though :D. 

Second game I lost as well.  This time it was against Cryx with terminus. I dropped mohsar again.  Too much undead.  The croak raiders were doing great.  I lost cause I killboxed myself. They were tearing apart the Bane thralls and company.  They killed Darragh wraithe and laughed heartily at the bile thralls. My goal was to get terminus on fire, but with all the undead around and sac pawn, it wasn't going to happen easily.  Zombify and vitriol is hilarious.  Many Bane thralls died to corrosion.  The Raiders even did some work in melee thanks to gang bonus. 

Overall,  I like the list.  I have one more round,  possibly two more, but I am unsure what I would change.  It's tough to say because timed turns. If I kept playing under this time format,  I would most likely look at scouts and beast make up.  Megalith is great, but the Gorax and stalker aren't doing a lot from turn to turn. Maybe some more range or passive defense. Something that doesn't take a lot of time.

My third game is against eSorcha. Infantry heavy,  but full of living models.  I kind of wanted to drop mohsar again, but instead dropped kromac2 to see how tanky he is. The game plan is have kromac2 face tank after turn two.  Woldwatcher is there to provide earth's blessing and take the eyriss shot. The scenario is two balls.  I may have deployed incorrectly.  I am off to the left ball.  I will have to work my way to the other one. 

So the plan worked,  except that I tried to go for teleport assassination on esorcha with kromac, who had 2 heart tokens and full fury, but was a hair breadth out once I teleported. So I then had to really face tank his army under her feat and mine.  I lived,  but could not reach her because kromac was surrounded by the models that had attempted to kill him the turn prior.  I tried to instrument a primal shock assassination, but it didn't work out.  I just blendered the models around kromac and tried to kill the bonded spriggan. I ran out of time and died because I was stationary.

It was a fun day anyways. I am excited for  next week. The next tournament is in Iowa city.  Hopefully, it is deathclock.

2015, its going to be a tough year for Warmachine

Hi everyone,

I've known this blog has been waiting for me since I last posted more than a year ago. Yet again, things have changed, since last I blogged. I do not live in Cedar Rapids, anymore.

I now live in Rochester, MN and work for another company. I enjoy my job a lot more than the past year with my previous employer. This is good! Unfortunately, the job is during nights. This limits my time to play drastically because most people play warmachine at night. 

In addition, I am new to the area of Rochester. I do not know many people at all. They do have a game shop here, but the people play Thursday nights so I cannot make it. I am trying to somehow convince them to change to Tuesdays or even invite them over to play on my days off. My days off are usually Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

I have done some research of nearby metas, but the closest seems to be Minneapolis. I am not 100% they still exist since every event I find is from more than a year ago. Their meta might be dead. Luckily for me, they supposedly meet Mondays in the Source, or Tuesdays in Tower games. This is about an hour and half drive from Rochester. This has been deterring me because, I do not want to waste 3 hours of driving for a "maybe" I can get games in. I haven't played a game since March and I have been really wanting to play, especially with the newly Released Kromac, Champion of the Wurm. I just need to someone in the Minneapolis area to confirm I can get at least a game in if I do the drive.

As for tournament and conventions: Its going to be tough to go to any Saturday tournaments for two reasons. 1. I work every other Saturday so I would need a vacation day to even be able to attend the tournament. 2. Since I work nights, I am on a night schedule and am usually sleeping during the day, even on my days off. Considering tournament run during the day, I would have to either sleep 2 hours before the tournament or tough it out and go without sleep, which would make the tournament a negative experience. 

Conventions with iron area would actually work out as I can sleep when I arrive at the convention and then take part in later nights, days and iron arena events. I plan on going to Warmachine Weekend for sure. 

What may occur for foreseeable future is that I will be focusing more on the modeling and painting aspect of the hobby. I am in the process of brewing up a different aesthetic style Circle Orboros army than I have currently. I love the studio Circle Orboros aesthetic but I was thinking something more mixed, like tharn like druids or all female druid unit. I would like to also create a theme based army, as I have done for Cygnar and Minions in the past. It will be based around a reposed Circle Warlock. It was going to be one of the ADR Season 2 locks. Most probably Kruger1. 

Pictures will come up soon of some recent stuff that I have painted, like my WIP Kromac2. 

Signing off for a bit!

santospr

Yes, I'm still alive and kicking.

I have a lot to update all you all on. For those that have passed by and wondered why this hadn't been updated in such a long time. So much has changed in the past 1 1/2 years! One thing has remained constant and that is Circle Orboros!


I plan on giving updates little by little over the course of the next month along with battle reports and stuff I had painted during that time I did not update the blog.

For now here is something crazy I did last August:

Warmachine and Hordes has been a very big part of my life these past 3 years. I have invested countless hours in building, painting, playing, practicing, attending tournaments and theorymachining. It really is a part of me and will always hold a spot in my memories for years to come.

Short update: I graduated University of Puerto Rico with Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering. Currently living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and working for General Mills. It will be almost a year now that I have working here.

My goal this year for Warmachine is get into a Masters style event, as well as continue to hone my skills in it.

More to come later!

After a brief hiatus...

Hello once again!

I know it has been quite a while since I posted in my blog, but due to lots of work and projects and tests coupled with lazyness during the time left, I have failed in making post here. I apologize. Here I am today to make up for it though!

So a lot has happened wargaming-wise since I last posted. As you saw I was starting a Retribution of Scyrah army and boy have I started it. First of all here is what I bought so far:

This is a House Vyre jack kit, Full unit of Rifleman + UA, Full unit of Halbediers + UA, full unit of Mage Hunter Strike Force + UA, Ravyn, Kaelyssa and two mage hunter assassins, plus book and tokens. A good starting force.

And all of it fit into this....Somehow. I worked on them almost immediately and got them all built in a couple of days. I tried giving the House Vyre jack kit which I made into a Banshee, a good pose but I kind of suck at modeling, so I reverted back to stock posing for the most part. 

Here they all, all built and ready to be primed. 

Began priming and painting almost immediately as well. I was pumped, because one, I wanted to use them and two, I love playing with painted models. Thus I started a long conveyor belt type style of painting the numerous models I had. I stopped though, after a while and noticed I was running out of steam (really time) to paint them like this. So I opted to return to my old ways, and painted the models that usually stay on the board the longest, the warcasters and warjacks.

Here is a work in progress of both Ravyn and Kaelyssa.

Here is my finished concept of Kaelyssa.

Ravyn

Now see them slightly different. Reason was, something was bugging me of the paint schemes and I could quite place it. I finally figured it out and thought that they were to bright for me. I needed more drastic shading. Baal red just wasn't getting the job done. So i used up the last of my badab black and test drove the color scheme on the warcaster's red armor. They came out much better, not too different, but definitely darker. I also reverted base color to black as well. Now I feel that they are finished.

I then almost applied some badab black to the Banshee and added more chaos black to his armor plates so that he wasn't just a big red blob. He has more definition now as well and it contrasts well with the snow white base.

Now as for games. I have managed to use my Retribution of Scyrah force in about 5 games. Two were against mercenaries and Damiano, 1 against Circle Orboros and pKrueger, 1 against Legion of Everblight and pThagrosh and last one against Protectorate of Menoth and Reznik. I used Ravyn in all matches all at 35 pts.

My first game ever was against Gaby and his PoM. His force being slow, I was able to get into the zone quickly in the Radial Scenario: Sacrifice and start gunning his stuff down, especially his choir hiding behind his jacks. Oh, boy was that fun to do! Unfortunately, he opted for the hail mary with his Reckoner and crit Ravyn on hill without focus without the choir buff! So now she was on fire. Then boosted the damage roll and proceed to get 3 sixes almost sealing her fate. She was left at 1 box. My turn, fire did not go out and he rolled a 5 on the damage roll, doing 1 point of dmg and killing her. How sad I was!

Lesson 1: Never leave a shooting lane to your opponent, even if you are on a hill, to your warcaster, especially if you are winning. Had he not been losing he probably would have not gone for the hail mary.

Next game was against Damiano. David had just got a new shipment of Mercenaries for his birthday and he was really pumped to use them. This was also his first time playing against Retribution. Thus, when he ran Damiano to a wall in front of my mage hunter strike force with snipe, I decided to try out this Snipe->Feat-> Go concept. I activated Ravyn and popped feat and moved her to what I thought was a safe position. MHSF for the most part sat, and shot Damiano. Man...my rolls sucked. I hit under half of them on boosted rolls only needing 8s to hit. The ones I did hit, rolled pretty low on damage. I left him at 12 health I think. Well, that sucked, here I thought I had this game in bag so easily. Well I did not. I continued the game as if no feat had been popped and we kept playing. My rifleman massacred his steelhead Halbediers (he had two units) leaving 2 alive. Then my Halbediers moved up to cover the riflemen. His turn he feated and tried to kill Ravyn. His calvary is deadly under the feat with Death march and flanking but thankfully, they lack pathfinder and he failed to reach Ravyn. My turn again, I shot Damiano with Ravyn, did respectable dmg, left him at 6 and activated my riflemen. My riflemen walked one guy up and did a full unit CRA through him under the mini-feat: Whites of their eyes. This allows models in this unit to gain an additional die on attack rolls targeting models with 8" of them. Damiano was within 8" of the lead CRA guy and took the RAT 15, POW 20 to the face. With ARM 19 because of feat, he went down fast!

We played another after, and this one was much closer. It came down me either killing Damiano again or losing to scenario. I forget the scenario name, but it had the Fuel Cache objective in it. I won this game due to pEyriss' disruptor bolt and once again my Rifleman. pEyriss and her disruptor bolt is DEADLY vs warcasters. Losing not only the focus camped but almost not gain any the following turn is killer. Damiano disrupted could not upkeep his spells or even support his troops at all, so his awesome Sure-foot + Tough bubble popped. After than, my rifleman tallied up the kills and then took down Damiano with a bunch of CRAs. 

Lesson 2: This list has problems with any armor, I did not tough his jacks one bit, I did not have counter punch power to take them out as well as the infantry.

Next game was against pThagrosh. This fight was a stalemate. Officially, my opponent forfeited cause he had to go, but I played it out after he left and found out that it was really close and I wasn't sure I could seal the deal. Like I said before, my list lacks true hitting power and dealing with Legion heavies, 1 of which returns to play at full health, is killer for me. The highlight of the match was me pulling the snipe feat go trick and leaving Thagrosh at 6 health and fury cause I forced him to transfer twice. Had he been a warcaster, that was game. 

The last game I played was against Circle Orboros. My opponent was using my main army, so of course I knew its ins and outs as well as its weaknesses and strengths, especially vs Ret. My opponent was also knew in the use of said army, but he was using pKrueger, which chews through infantry like no-one's business. And I had a lot of low arm infantry, and no soulless escorts. This was not going to be easy. So basically I capitalized on what I knew he would do. He had druids popping clouds and such, so I used my sniped MHSF to murder most of them, leaving with his stealthed stones and his beasts. He feated and took most of my MHSF, but I followed up with some riflemen shots that almost killed his Warpwolf Stalker. He chewed through my riflemen with Chain lightning, but failed to kill them all. He exposed pKrueger with 2 fury to the riflemen who he missed with his boosted Chain Lightning spell. I had Ravyn pop feat and everyone unloaded on pKrueger, blowing threw his transfers with low dmg hits and then 3man CRA finished him off. The Halbediers did nothing this turn, because they were rightfully afraid of the Stalker and the banshee missed like a boss boosted shots with its cannon for 3 turns straight. 

Lesson 3: These riflemen are badass, they keep ensuring that I stay in the game, them being a long range gun platform, thanks to snipe, Ravyn protection and Ranked attacks. War-tempered is situational, but useful and Whites of their eyes is always useful, cause people always try to close the range with these guys (unless they are ravagores). 

I have been having a ton of fun with these guys, planning is key with Warmachine and much less Play it by ear like Hordes. There is nothing wrong with this, it is just a different train of thought. Retribution on the whole does not feel over powered in the least. It has its strengths, but I do not feel overpowered. Sure I ignore some rules, but what army doesn't? Also, I don't feel dirty as when I played Legion of Everblight briefly last year.

Lastly, I have not played with them recently (read: since last Sunday) because I have finally enacted a big change in our meta. We are finally going only to play 50 point games. It seems like everyone agrees that having more options and models on the table is better. I had been wishing for this since I came back from St.Louis last summer, where for the most part I played 50 point games. This last push came from trying to make lists for my Retribution. I always want to include full units, and 35 points fills up fast, even with just 1 jack. Then I can't field cool solos. This changes at 50 points, and I feel like there is a lot more room to not only add more models, but play lists that can have their own flavor and style, and not feel forced into always getting this bare minimum that runs great, but can't fit anything else that you like. 

I have been using my Gators and want to use my Circle list today or tomorrow because I almost forgot the feeling of playing at 50 pts with Circle. It feels great!

Swamp horror and Pureblood in the house tonight!

So after being out of models that I wanted to paint, last week the Swamp Horror came out for Gatormen and I decided to order him. Since I wanted free shipping from Discountgamesinc I needed to reach $50. I had been eyeing the warpwolf kit again, but this time to grab a Pureblood (the old sculpt is fine, but I wasn't too happy with my paint job and its metal!) to update my non character warpwolf trio. Thus I grabbed the kit as well. I was still short a bit, so I also picked up pEiryss, who I had been placing my cart and then removing it each time I would order something for some unknown reason. This time she stayed and I also ordered her for my brewing eKrueger theme force, Wake of Destruction.

I received them on Thursday and painted up both heavies up yesterday. Check them out.

Come at me bro!

Here he is, much whiter than before if you look further down. And much cleaner.

 Back shot. His pose actually came out kind of weird, different from what I wanted, which was the stock pose. Either way, I am happy he plastic and looks very similar to my other warpwolves now.

New and old. The old pureblood is larger/taller than the new one apparently. I was surprised by this. I never saw my old pureblood as "big." Also, white is a weird color. I will never paint anything white every again. It looks like his skin is simply primed from far away, when that was not the case. In the old pureblood, I primed him white and washed with gryphon sepia and then drybrushed white. I did not like how it came out though. For the new pureblood, I also primed white but this time watered down a mix of Space Wolves grey and skull white used that to paint all the skin parts. Then I highlighted with Skull white. He clearly is an albino warpwolf.

Next up is the Swamp horror. I like his rules, they are different and his animus seems extremely useful. He isn't fast at all, or take down heavies by himself, but he does have 4 initials, 3 of which pull shit in they hit. That's pretty cool. The animus gives reach to any friendly faction model, which I think is going to be gold with Maelok and the style that I play him which is charging stuff up front providing Malediction to his Undead Gatormen posse.

I do have one disappointment with this heavy though. You shall soon see what it is. Check him out: 

Pretty easy to paint, most of the body was washed with blue or purple. Top was painted space wolves grey and edge highlighted with skull white. Now if you look below you can see my biggest gripe with this model...

What the hell is this?!?!?! It is really, stupidly small and diminutive. I know octopods can fit themselves into boxes and stuff, but this guy just is not as initimidating due to his size. His art looked epic and he looked huge as he ate some Tharn Bloodtrackers, but the model just does not do it justice. It is not a bad model by any means. Just way too small. It should been blown up or something. Looks more like it could have been a Light warbeast and then got moved to being a heavy. Oh, well at least his rules are interesting.

Finally, up next is Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios. She is going to join forces with eKrueger to hunt down warcasters both in the fluff and on the table top. Terminus/ Venethrax got you down? Here, a Disruptor Bolt will fix all your problems. Lightning away Krueger! Lightning away!

Finally I would like to add some pictures of my full Gatormen Force. I am missing some models sure, but I am quite satisfied with them now that I have the Swamp horror. Maybe with more time and money, I will get the rest of the models, especially when the Gatormen Witch Doctor is finally released. But for now, it is the time of the elves...when the Post Office brings them.

Blindwater Congregation...now with varnish protecting them!

The two warlocks, Barnabus and Maelok!

Snapjaw (left) and Wrong Eye (right

My favorite Gatormen Warlock: Maelok the Dreadbound

New kid on the block! The Thrullg!

Shiny turtle and gator!

I will need to get some matte spray...when I can finally find some good one.

Until next time...Stay Classy San Di- Internet!

Where did eStryker go?????

As you may or may not have noticed, my banner has recently changed. Gone is Lord Commander Stryker from his spot on the banner. Where has he gone? Well, I will explain.

Ever since I picked up Blindwater Congregation for the Journeyman League, I have had eStryker shelved in my closet. Unfortunately, I have not had any real itching to pick up and play him and since I very impulsive, a situation arose where I could sell him and make some money to pay for my hotel at PAX East. Thus, when one of the Five Guys decided to pick up Cygnar and offered to take them off my hands, I without thought, quickly obliged.

I have no regrets. They were fun to play, especially cool to look at and paint but I felt like sticking to one lists was not the best idea after all. I wish to have an army on the Warmachine side of the game with as much depth as I have with my Circle Orboros army. With my Circle, I own almost every miniature released on the line. All that I am missing is pBaldur, Morvanna, the Shadowhorn Satyr and Sentry stone and Mannikins. That is it. I have options to run many different types of lists without feeling constrained at all. I like it. I want this for my Warmachine army.

I have been looking at Warmachine armies once again, due to my impulses taking control. I of course did not want to pick up Cygnar yet again so I looked at the others. I dislike Khador and their playstyle and model look. Cryx is not bad. I do not like Menoth enough to play the whole army as is my intended goal. While I do not jump at the chance of using Retribution of Scyrah jacks, they have grown army since I first saw them about a year ago.

   

 I like the warcasters, although they are very different that what I am used to in Circle. The two that draw me in the most are Ravyn and Vyros. I like rest too though, least most is Rhan at the moment though! Maybe that will change in future.
                                     

I especially like the infantry, especially the Mage Hunter Assassins. WOW! Two points for that??? What I would give to obtain such a model in Circle for that point cost! The reeve hunter has not performed to his potential at all to even compare and the Wayfarer is a different type.
  

 I also liked the new House Vyre jacks. They look pretty sweet. The Houseguard units also looked interesting. They reminded me of my favorite army in 40k...Eldar. Futuristic elves that dislike Humans. I can get on that wagon. As for color scheme I think I am going to go with a Saim Hann type color scheme. I have never painted red/black as the main colors and since I have those colors, I will try it out first. Worst comes to worst I will just do the studio Paint Scheme, which I find is nice just not awesome. This is of course a throw back to the Eldar army I used to play. While I was going to color my Ret the same, Iyanden yellow and blue, I only have 1 yellow color and do not wish to have to order new paints from GW and pay an extra $9 for mediocre shipping.

              

So, this is pretty obvious but I chose to get into Retribution of Scyrah! I am very excited and even pulled the trigger on grabbing some units and models. Enough to even make a 35 point army, with tokens and book AND 2 warcasters (Ravyn and Kaelyssa). All for about $200. Not too shabby. Take that you 40k players!

Soon you will be seeing them on this blog!