League has ended!

And so this past Sunday (Yesterday), the relatively local Journeyman league has come to an end. It was pretty fun playing a new army but thankfully its over! And I will never take part in one again, at least here in Puerto Rico. As stated in previous post, this Journeyman League is aimed at straight up beginner's who have no clue or a very basic understanding of the rules. I was like that exactly a year ago, and I would have extremely enjoyed such a league when getting into this system. Alas, this was event type was created this past fall, too late for me to benefit to the full extent.

Now the league itself was alright I would say. It was not a failure, but neither was it a complete success. From what I can tell, the Journeyman League is meant to attract new players, where they can learn about the rules of the game as well as their armies, without being forced to hit the high-ish ceiling of 35 points right off the bat. I believe it does that to great effect, especially with each tier lasting a week, giving players ample time to play and paint.

As such, due to the, I'd say weak, Warmachine here in Puerto Rico, there were many restrictions and problems from what I saw. One is mainly that there is one store for the whole island and it actually a Trading Card game focused store that does host some Warmachine/Hordes Events on the side. It is small and does not stock many warmachine or hordes items at all. Orders can be made, but they take many weeks in arrival, killing interest in ordering. Nothing beats having the box in front of you, seducing you to buy it. Unless of course you can order it online for less and then pick it up at the store. This inaccessibility to the product in conjunction with money issues of the players caused many to stop coming as the tiers increased in points.

Another issue is travel time some players have to arrive at the store. I am usually one of them. The event days were schedules for Thursday and Sunday of each week which is not bad at all except when the store is 2 hours away and you have classes during the week. So usually, some buddies and I would suck it up and make the trip. The first week we all came, (4 of 5 guys of our group), but then only consistently one buddy and I would go and me being the only one who went all weeks. Driving 4 hours round trip to play 1 or 2 games is a tough pill to swallow.

I do not mind the travel time, especially if its with a bunch of friends in the same car and hanging out, talking about WM/Hordes. Heck, I made the trip from St. Louis to Indianapolis for GenCon solo, just to have a chance at buying Grayle the Farstrider early and see what it was about. I guess, coming back from my internship in that place, I took for granted how nice it was to have multiple stores less than 30 min away each, all with their own events and bigger events within driving distance as well.

Anyways, to more interesting stuff. Check out my badges for the league!

I got the 4th rank of Chevron.

I was also going to win the Destroyer award due to others who were higher winning the other patches, but the organizer enacted a small change. I was in the lead by 1 point to the next player, but we decided to play it off and see who would take it home. 

Unfortunately no pictures. Do not ask me why I did not take any, because it was two painted armies fighting each other and looked epic! Anyways, I used Maelok and my opponent used eGoreShade. Long story short, Gatormen Posse really are a great unit, more so when they become Undead and refuse to give up souls or create bane thralls . Ha! That is how I feel when I play you Cryx! It was deeply satisfying. So the Gatormen Posse tore through my opponent's Bane thrall unit twice, due to eGoreshade's feat and thanks to failing all but 3 tough checks, it was not much of a problem. Two initials, one with reach is crazy. I now know and accept that Tharn Ravagers and Warpborn Skinwalkers suck, compared to the package that Gatormen Posse are. 

Unfortunately, I lost that game due to a last ditch effort of my opponent. He charged Maelok (2 fury camped) with 7 focus and Nyssor's Sword tore Maelok apart. Ouch. I believe the charge to have been slightly quirky, but for the sake of keeping the game going (it was late and I needed to leave) I let it pass and did not try to challenge the play (like in football). It was a great game anyways, and shows yet again that even if you have the game in bag, it can quickly get taken out once again!

I still need to practice with Gators and the use of their beasts, cuase they don't do much compared to my heavy lifters - Gatormen Posse. 

Finally, the other highlight of Sunday was the game before the Cryx one, where I, using Maelok, faced off against eMakeada. During the game, I was able to eat Molik Karn with 5 fury, guzzled it all down with Spirit Eater and took his soul to boot! I love doing that with Maelok is one of the reasons I play him and like him the best out of the Gators warlock selection. In case you were wondering, I won that game, when Molik Karn failed to kill Maelok camped with 4 fury, and turn after that Makeda failed a charge on Maelok due to lack of reach (we played it out anyways but it turned out dice were against my opponent and failed to due much against Maelok anyways). 

Gators were fun, but back to my most favorite of all factions!!!! Circle Orboros!!!!!

4 Gallows Groves and a unit of Shifting Stones

This has been a long post, I will make another later to talk about paints that are incoming from GW:

Suffice to say: I REALLY WANT THIS!

Ghetorix is here!

As the title says, he is finally here and ready to rock fully. I don't know about you guys, but I love seeing painted models on the tabletop and warmachine is no exception. So, lately, I have been getting into the habit in painting rather than playing any type of video game. While video games are a great source of entertainment, I feel that they have not been helping me in the slightest lately.

Let's take this game called Heroes of Newerth, a dota style game. (If you don't know, dota or defense of the ancients, is a shoot off of warcraft 3 map where you choose a hero and fight against other heroes on the same map, just changing the hero and opponents- usually 5v5. There is no real progression from game to game, mostly just knowledge of what other heroes do) So a whole genre of games came out cause of this, the most well known being League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. I have played the latter since the beta, the game has gone through many changes since then, and still does. I believe it was a great $30 spent due to the amount of hours I have spent on it, but frankly, thats all that I have done in that game: spend. There was no real investment. To make a long story short, I have cut down by a ton, almost 100% my time spent playing video games. I have then used to this time really stay ahead on class work for the university and of course, as you can see painting.

This hobby has made me better fulfilled with the time I have invested in it. Keyword invested. I have painted many different armies, and have sold many different armies, thus allowing me to buy other armies and models. Thanks to ebay, this hobby has allowed to stay almost 100% self sufficient with purchases and also has allowed me to pay for other interests such as my incoming trip to PAXEast. When it comes down to it, when you finish a model and able to hold it in front of you, the feeling is extremely satisfying. It almost beats the feeling of seeing two fully painted armies (one of which painted by you) fighting each other with beautiful scenic terrain. That is what I strive for in my meta and I will continue to push for it, although it isn't easy, but that is a post for another day. It's late and you guys have been reading too much text, just look at the pretty pictures!!!

Front view with camera light to better see chest.

Back

Notice how I twisted around the axe head to make it look more realistic than the way it was originally modeled to hold it. I wish I could have twisted the head a bit to look towards our left like the art in Domination, but unfortunately my modeling skills do not extend so far.

Next up:

Gallows Groves!

Good news everyone...

So, yea, I am extremely happy with these new sculpts. I have been extremely motivated and have finished up both the feral and the stalker. Well, I still want to do some special detail work on them like runes and or more texture to their fur/skin, but that will come later. Check them out below and compare them to the original sculpts!

The new sculpt is slightly shorter than the original metal due to crouching, but otherwise minimal difference.

As can be seen, it looks like the metal WW stalker was the standard used for the warpwolf kit.

Very large difference between the metal and plastic sculpt. Surprisingly, the new sculpt isn't as large in comparison as I thought it would be. Notice the difference in the head style.

Less spikes for the new sculpt but they thankfully came as part of the model and not as separate bits. This made gluing very easy. I like the new sculpt as the it fits a larger space and is more imposing. Also, although the old metal sculpt is not bad, I like the weight difference and overall stance of the new sculpt. Not so much snarling as growling, but definitely ready for an enemy attack. The new WW stalker sculpt is unfortunatley slightly shorter than the original, but seems to be more about stalking than standing up straight and fighting. There is actual very little changed between those two.

Finally, here we see the reason I picked up Circle Orboros. That is for no other reason that to use warpwolves and, oh boy, how their warping rules got me more excited to play this faction. I probably will not use the old sculpts anymore due to space requirements (I need a bigger bag!) but I will always keep them around to compare.

Next up:

Ghetorix!

See you guys later!

Finally arrived!

I have not posted in a while thanks to a somewhat large disappointment this past weekend. It comes in two parts. The first part is the fact that the last week of the Journeyman League was postponed until (hopefully) this week. This was due to issues with the store hosting the event. These things tend to happen I guess, but never have I seen them happen in the States during my internships, maybe I took that for granted. So the dissapointment comes from the fact that I was really pumped to get some more gator action in. I have not been able to play lately due to many factors, most having to do with my game group but I do not wish to explore that at this time. So the only chance I get to play is usually one per week, that Sunday. So, yea, bummer.

Anyways, the second part of this disappointment was the fact that whenever I order models, the amount of time taken for shipping is every spotty and inconsistent irrelevant of what speed of shipping is chosen (choices are priority or parcel). Sometimes, items arrive very quick and sometimes they arrive days or even a week later then expected. Unfortunately, the times that it takes longer have lined up with the orders that include new releases, for example last week with the new warpwolf kits. I ordered 3 as you may know, along with a Ghetorix upgrade kit as well as other items. They were shipped Wednesday with Priority mail. That's 2-3 days usually and according to USPS. Well, lets just say that checking the tracking information everydays seems to slow it down. Or that's what it seemed like. I bought the Celestial Fulcrum from a different place because it was sold out from my usual online store and that was shipped the same day, yet it arrived Saturday. The main order arrived today. I am not a happy customer with USPS, but unfortunately, it is the only option I have to receive stuff when it comes to this store.

Ok venting done. Now to sunnier days! I have all the stuff I wanted, and boy opening up that box was like looking at Christmas in March.

They look so great...

Of course, I had to do something during the weekend while waiting for these models to arrive and when I did not feel like studying or finishing Mass Effect 3. As you may or may not know, I running a painting service, starting local, where I get payed to paint models. So far I have painted a eVayl, Saeryn, touched up an Avatar of Menoth and eFeora. Unfortunately, I only took photos of my eFeora job, so there she is below! 

I did her only for $10

As I said above, I received the Celestial Fulcrum first, and while I was planning on building and painting it last, I was forced to change my mind due to lack of the main shipment. Thus, I built it that same day, Primed it in parts on Sunday morning, began painting it that night and more or less finished it on Monday (yesterday). I did not paint it all in one long sitting due to the use of washes on large parts of the model. Actually, the whole model was touched by a wash at one time or another. This made it take longer due to having to wait for the paint to dry, even with the help of great ventilation (a fan). This kept me busy, waiting for the warpwolves to arrive! Here is the finished product!

Its hard to get a good shot due to how large it is.

The amount of runes on this model was insane. I have done them before, and thought Megalith and friends had a lot of runes, but oh boy, was I was wrong. 

If anyone is actually interested, comment and I will take close ups on the runes and stuff.

So finally, I have the warpwolf kits and I am super happy with them. So much that I have built them already at the time of this post. I must say that the feral looks SO much better than the original. I will get them primed tomorrow morning and start painting them subsequently. I will post up pictures as I get them finished, as they are my priority at the moment in the painting queue.

Painting queue:

Feral WW

Stalker WW

Ghetorix

Thrullg 

Gallows Groves (x4)

Shifting stones (second set)

I wish I could get them done by this week, but I have a feeling that I will have to spread them out over two weeks. I do have to go to class and finish that work, unfortunately!

New look!

Hi guys!

Some updates! As you can probably tell if you had come here before today, I have changed the look of the place and I think I like it, especially the new banner taped together up top. Still working on a fitting background image, but this will do for now.

I have added a new battle report of Five Guys, this time Gaby with Menoth going against Ian with Khador in a 35 point match. I filmed this one so check it out and give me some c/c if any.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6Z9D-iBPg4&context=C472d907ADvjVQa1PpcFNo69o3A-zlRggtFLOx0je-BQEiTjw0gbA=

Also, I managed to get some Circle done, as I have not visited them in a long time. Today, I ordered the 3 new warpwolf plastic kits that come with the resculpts of our Warpwolves. I also grabbed two packs of Gallows Groves, a Thrullg for my gatorman army, and finally a set of shifting stones. This should give me even further flexibility when creating army lists with my main army Circle Orboros. Oh, almost forgot, I also grabbed the Ghetorix upgrade kit and am bidding on a Celestial Fulcrum on ebay. This rounds out the Domination releases I actually wanted for Circle. I cannot wait to get them built and painted! They are my next challenge.

He's so cute!

As for the bone grinders, they are slowly getting painted... maybe in another month they will be finished...

Great weekend!

Usually weekends are good, but this one was definitely good. I was able to get 3 games in @ 35 points each with my Gators and my journey with them has been, especially with Maelok on the bandwagon. The first can be seen below, with my first battle report! We have named our group "Five Guys" like the restaurant chain, of which I have never gone to. Here is me using Gators against Juan's Legion. It was a great fight so check it out below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj3tO6rluVs&feature=youtu.be

In journeyman league today, it was basically me vs David (another of the Five Guys group) and they were two interesting matches. First was Maelok vs Nareesh. I was able to get the alpha strike and basically decide the game due to using the feat the same turn to minimize retaliation. I was able to get some pictures for this game but unfortunately no video.

Deployment

My turn one

Skorne turn one

He subsequently gets alpha striked with both my gatormen posse under my feat. I wipe out his two savages and his Rhinodon. He pops his feat but can only manage to kill my totem hunter and one gatorman due to high armor and bad rolls. He brings in Nareesh to also put some hurt, all he does is sprinkle some damage on my dark gatorman posse unit. He does have Iron Flesh on himself and is a pain to assassinate due to his armor going up each time he takes damage. Thanks to malediction from Maelok and cold blood my gatormen posse take him down.

The second game I pulled out Barnabus and tried Wrong Eye and Snapjaw with him as well as the Bone swarm. Boneswarm performed alright, I honestly do not know what is exactly his purpose. He got murdered by feated Molik karn (STR 18) and that was that. Wrong Eye and Snapjaw on the other hand, were great and but I played to conservative with them. They did not die and are a good duo to have for 9 points. I lost that game against the same Nareesh list due to problems with armor and Molik karn tore into Barnabus under Nareesh's feat. No tough roll this time again :(.  

Some more photos of today.

Gaby (Five Guys) vs Gaddiel from SJ doing the dance to see who Alpha strikes first. Ultimately, Venethrax dies to Xerzis under Xerzis feat turn. 5 Dice on charge with Fury spell hurts. 

Finally, I received my tournament/gaming travel board from Fool's trays. Have not used it yet, but it makes transporting models from table to table a breeze and I will get much use out of it.

Finally, were are in the Final week of the journeyman and I can feel my Circle calling to me. This week is the release week for my new Warpwolf kit and I will be grabbing 3 of them along all other Domination releases I have not yet grabbed. Oh man, I am so excited!

Thanks for reading, and check up once in a while to see some more Battle reports I will be posting. 

And....almost finished!!!

Ok, this has been an awesome week to paint and I am glad I have had the chance to have gotten my geek on, after such a grueling week. As of right now I have painted everything on the list minus the Bone Grinders. I am not sure if I really want to paint them. First of all, they are less than a point each (6 for 3 points) and are extremely easy to kill. Also, I only use them in my Cassius list where they pretty much butcher themselves for the sake of souls to feed Wurmwood and power Cassius awesomeness. As such, they are taken off the board almost at the onset of turn one. This is not great motivation to spend time painting them. Next, they are only usable by Gators in Calaban's theme force and although they are more useful there than with Cassius, I do not even own Calaban (yet) and such would not field them any time soon. Finally, due to the Journeyman points system for units, the difference between min and full gives me nothing in the terms of hobby points, just a straight 3 points. At least the swamp gobbers gave me 2.

So I am still on the wall about these guys, so I have put them off for now. Plus, I am burnt out on painting at the moment and need to catch some win playing some games! Remember that although I love to paint, I love gaming and using the models even more.

Now without further ado, here is the rest of them and all together:

Second Gatormen Posse unit!

The shaman, this time with blue feathers!

Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew

Infamous Croak Hunter

Group photo!

I went for a different color with my second unit of Gatormen posse, and thankfully they do not have much detail so they were relatively easy to paint. They will contrast well with my original unit. The swamp gobbers as well as the Croak Hunter were also easy to paint, with little detail. I may be biased because coming from the level of detail Maelok has, anything has small amounts of detail. 

Now, I have 15 more Hobby points! Total = 32 points. Not too shabby!

And there you have it, tommorrow I will see if I can get some games in and put up some battle reports of both my games (written) and my friends games (video) and see how that goes. Anyways, good night!

My own challenge 1/2 done

I just wanted to check in and let everyone know how I am doing on my own challenge of painting everything on my To Do list by this Sunday and also taking advantage of a light week at my university. So! I am about halfway done I'd say. Check out what I done so far:

Maelok Front

Maelok Back

Bone swarm

Wrong Eye

Snapjaw

Maelok was real fun to paint. He has a ton of details but I have seen worse (Kromac, I am looking at you). It was a good contrast to the Bone swarm, which I painted at the same time. Simple color and two washes and then it was base time for the Bone swarm. Next I painted Wrong Eye and Snapjaw together because it seems fitting. Wrong Eye is just awesome cause its a gator with a trenchcoat and a top hat AND a bottle of gin. Simply epic. He was also fun to paint. Snapjaw was slightly harder than the bone swarm but just as simple, fortunately. 

Next up is the Croak hunter who I just finished painting in under an hour and half while basing WE&S. I will finish him tommorrow though, its late and I need a break! After that its my second gatorman posse and probably the Swamp Gobbers.

Good night!

New week

So, 4th week at the Journeyman league. Not many people went today (bummer) but still got in two games. Both using Maelok! First was against Ravyn and a force of invictors and the battle box. Needless to say, Revive + Maelok's feat won me the game here. Revive is great for attrition, but so much better to get a great position on one of the gatorman posse to charge something meaningful. Gatormen posse ate many invictors and Ravyn for the win.

The second game was against Xerxis and some cetrati as well as the battle box and needed beast handlers. My gatormen posse were torn apart for the most part this game, with no revives done. Maelok also took a beating but thanks to the feat and a wall obstacle, Maelok survived Xersis' feat and was able to eat a Titan Gladiator, reaving his fury and taking his soul. He had 11 Fury one turn! Also, the Croak hunter is a great 2 points. This little guy put the hurt on a Cyclops savage as well as Xerxis. he is 13 points of damage on the Savage on the charge and rolled a 23 for a free strike (did 14 dmg) to Xersis who was trying to kill Maelok. Maelok survived two assassination runs and then proceeded to take Xerxis' soul with the help of the Ironback Spitter.

Two great games overall. Very fun and definitely cemented my belief that Undead Gators are awesome! I cannot wait for the Witch doctor.

Anyways, here is what I have planned on painting for this week (yes I know its a lot). Lets see how I do.

To do list:

Maelok

Bone Swarm

Gatorman Posse 2

Wrong Eye

Snapjaw

Croak Hunter

Swamp Gobbers

Bone grinders

Man that is a lot! Wish me luck!

The hellish week has ended...and I am back

I am back! I traveled through the "valley of the shadow" have returned (figuratively speaking luckily). Now to update.

Big news, as you can see by the top of this blog, I am actually also playing Blindwater Congregation. Yes, I have finally fulfilled my dark fantasy of playing Gators, and have done so with the execuse of using them in the Journeyman League that has been going on here in (gasp!) Puerto Rico. Almost nothing happens here WM unless I push for it, but finally this has.

To summarize this event, it takes place over the course of 6 weeks, where players pick a faction. They then start small, with games involving only the battlebox for each respective faction and each subsequent week, the points level is increased to 15, 25 and so on. This is really meant for newbs and new players to the game where they have no idea what they are doing, or what opposing models do and with many games played with the same models, begin to pick up what works for them and what doesn't. This league rewards playing more so than winning, where a win = 3 pts and a loss is 2 points. It also has a hobby component where players are rewarded for painting their models. They gain points in the same way as playing, except these bestow ranks on the players which equal patches that can placed on bags and such. At the end of the event, awards are given to the person that had the post points from games, the person who has the most models painted and finally the overall champion with most points combined. It is great for new players and I wish I had done it when I first started playing about a year ago (it did not exist at that time).

 Veterans can use it to motivate them to paint their models or start a new faction and learn the ropes for that faction. For more veteran and intermediate players, they might not like the fact that it requires the constant use of the battlebox contents, which might disagree with the playstyle of some players.

For more information go to http://privateerpress.com/files/CompleteJourneyman.pdf

Enough explanation on that. So, we are in the 4th week of this league, 25 points, Battlebox still but with warlock/warcaster swamp allowed. Participation has been pretty good, although the first week was the best. The league is hosted at a small shop in Rio Piedras where space is made for tables to play on exclusively on Thursday and Sunday. Of course since I have class during the week, I cannot make it to the shop (not to mention its ~2 hours away). Sundays have then been the day for games for me and my group over here on the west side.

I am going to shut up now and unveil my crocs!!!! Check them out:

There's the whole bunch!

 Shaman of Posse

 Bull Snapper 

 Feralgeist!

 Wrastler

 Bloody Barnabus

 Ironback Spitter

 Gatorman Posse guy

More to come later!