Sunday, March 28, 2010

Recruits in KC

Dan, Adam and I went to the 50 point Steamroller event that Kris put on down at Recruits in KC.  Recruits is a great little con, running a whole $5 for entry, which makes it a pretty good buy on your gaming dollar.  The 3.5 hour drive each way was the only real turn off since we didn't stay for the whole weekend.

Kris had 30+ players for his event which means we had a 5 round tournament.  I had my fully painted Butcher list which consisted of:
- Decimator
- Berserker x2
- Juggernaut
- Full Winter Guard w/ UA
- Kovnik Joe
- Grey Lords
- Full Battle Mechanics
- Full Man Of War Shocktroopers
- Manhunter

I ended up 2-3, with my wins coming against relatively new players.  Two of the losses were close affairs, one was plain stupidity on my part.

Game One vs. Epic Thagrosh of Everblight
I did a great job of killing tons of stuff in his army, but left Thags enough room to fly in and kill the Butcher.  Stupid wings.

Game Two vs. Menoth
New player with the Testament.  His deployment was pretty tight, and bunched together.  His last attempt at an attack run was his feat getting Knights Exemplar in charge lane to Butcher, but only two could make it.  The Testament took a Rip Saw to the face twice in return.

Game Three vs. Cryx
Newish player with Epic Dhenegra.  He really didn't play to much to her strength, trying to Hellmouth some ends, but never going for the throat.  It ended on time, and I held the most points in the boxes.

Game Four vs. Cryx
Montenebra with 3 Seethers, Nightmare and Leviathan.  Once again I had this one pretty much in hand, killing most of the army, but where I thought I had covered the charge lanes on the Butcher, they were able to use overrun and a dead Man O War to get the charge to kill him.

Game Five vs. Cygnar
Sloan.  She is a B!^@# and I mean how.  Butcher, engaged in combat, Def 18, shot in the face.  End.

Kris ran a pretty smooth event, maybe could be tightened up between rounds a bit, but overall good time.  We stopped a Jason's Deli for dinner on the way home and it must have been kids from hell eat free night.  9pm and the place was packed with runaway 6 year olds.

Got to the Shoppe and our cars at around 1am, back home around 130.  Tired puppy.

jp
Stupid Sloan.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Saturday Morning Gaming

Went to the gym early on base and did my workout, then headed over to the Shoppe for a few games of WARMACHINE.

We are in our 35 point game paint/play/slow grow league.  First game was against Dan L.  he played Epic Cain and a whole mess go Gun Mages.  I had the Butcher, 2 Berserkers, 1 Juggernaut, MoW Shocktroopers, Winter Guard, Kovnik Joe, Battle Wizards & War Dog.  I did a pretty good job of closing the gap and engaging the shooters.  All except the one that mattered, eCain.  Dan got the win with eCain's feat up and guns a blazing.

Game two was versus Adam's old witch list.  2 Berserkers, 2 Kosite Hillbillies, Crow's Cutthroats, Yuri 'da Axe and his two buddies.  This game was interesting.  as only the Old Witch, the Scrap Jack and the Berserkers deployed normally.  Everything else was either advance deploy or ambush.

Adam used the Kosites pretty good to hold up the Winter Guard, while the Butcher went up the middle with his 'Jacks.  I got some good combos on tramples and slams to get some of the Crows and 'Jacks out of the way.  When the Old Witch popped her feat, Butch kept the focus, advanced into the danger, survived and dropped a big rock on her head and rolled really well on the damage.  Flat Old Witch.

It was a good game Adam.  You too Dan.  Thanks much.

Spent the rest of the day with The Other Half, got some dinner at Jason's Deli then came home and watched two episodes of  Rescue Me.  Neither of us was sure it was going to grab us, but both thought we ought to give the first disk a try.

Later still did some base and painting on the Khador...  Trying to get them ready for Recruits in KC next weekend.

jp

Saturday, March 13, 2010

WARMACHINE Lincoln Tournament

Hey,

Six of us went to Lincoln for a Warmachine tournament that Sam was hosting at Hobby Town.  It was Tony, Adam, Dan, and I with Chris and Mike in a second car.  We played four rounds and I did exceptionally bad.  25 point lists contained:

  • Butcher (+6)
  • Berserker x2 (12)
  • Juggernaught (7)
  • Decimator (9)
  • Man-O-War Kovnik (3)
Very Jack heavy, but it was fun to run with not a lot of surprises for what you were getting.  I played three experience players and lost with my only win coming from a newbie.  Tough games all around, but not the best player I suppose.

Big thanks to Sam for running the event.

jp
Butcher for the Wi.... Whaaat???

Saturday Gaming, Friday Edition

I took some comp time on Friday given all the travel I had been doing.  If nothing else I earned a butt load of credit and travel comp time to use the past three weeks.

Steve was between mid shifts so I invited him over for some gaming after he had his sleep.  He showed at 2 and we had a chance to play a few games.  We started with Song of Blade and Heroes.  It was the first time for Steve to play and only my second.  He had some painted Gladiator figures from a game that Suzanne got him at GenCon, so I created a gladiator list for him that was pretty nifty.   I broke out my GW Dwarves and created one for me.


It was a good solid intro to the game.  I had a few extra numbers on Steve, but he had the quality troops.  Despite my slow speed, I was able to get up on the hill to move closer to Steve's force, but it was Gladiator Boris' Berserk combined with Reckless that issued first contact.  Unfortunately, since he always had to advance, he couldn't get an attack off, allowing the Slayer to hit and take him out early.  Additionally the Iron Guard were able to gang up on LeRoy to take him out on turn five or so with a "Gruesome Kill", causing his band to fall back.  That is when the tide turned and the remaining gladiators said, "Hey, it is only Dwarves!  Come on!"

I moved my Commander too close and he was netted and killed pretty easily.  That caused my forces to fall back twice, once from the dead leader and once for being under 50% strength.  The band dispersed to the wind and they never recovered.  Steve was able to pick off the rest of the band solo fashion, while the gunners tried vainly to pick off approaching forces.

In the end Steve won taking out all the Dwarves.  We chatted about the game and both liked the system and may try to set up a campaign with the gang as it seems to play quick and simple.

We then set up a game of Agricola then ran down to Hectors for dinner real quick.  Good Mexican food and pretty solid pricing.  If I could drink I would have had the Dos Equis Amber, from what I remember of my beer drinking it is yummy.  As it was I had two tacos and was pretty full.  Steve, The Other Half, and I had a pleasant conversation while waiting and eating.

When we got back to the house we started up Agricola had a few rounds and Paul showed to deliver me a printed copy of the Song of Blades and Heroes series as he has access to some great printers at work that can handle the job effectively.  We chatted for 1/2 hour or so then Paul headed down to the Shoppe while Steve and I finished up the game.  Steve went with a Occupation and Improvement strategy, trying to leverage all the freebies to get extra resources.  I focused on a little of everything, but tried to get the extra actions (babies) as early as I could.  With the expansion rules, the new fuel requirements kept playing havok on my wood collection, slowing down my fence building.  Steve ran into trouble at the end between feeding his large family or building a stone home.  He ended up feeding the family as it looked to be more points then those lost on the home.  Final score was 28 to 37 in my favor, with my concentration on card point improvements making the difference.

Good solid afternoon/evening of gaming.  Thanks for coming over Steve and hope you made it through the Mid-shift OK!

jp
Off to Lincoln for WM Tournament.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Song of Blades and Heroes

I've seen Song of Blades and Heroes (SBH), from Ganesha Games, on the street for a while, usually associated at a post on Tabletop Gaming News.  I've always  kind of discounted it due to the really cheap looking cover.  Heck it looks as bad as some of those original D&D cover art.  Compare for yourself.   So it was with some trepidation that I plucked down an entire $8 on a PDF version of the rules while being board out of my skull one evening on my last work trip.

What I found was a really clean, simple to execute rules set for a generic fantasy gaming.   In a nut shell, each figure on the board has two stats; Quality and Combat.  The Quality goes from 2+ to 6+.  It is the number you need to roll on a D6 to activate the model this turn.  Combat is your martial skill and is a single roll up of your offensive/defensive/armor/weapon/skill/etc.  It ranges from 1-5.  One of the unique items I like on SBH is the activation system.  When you choose to activate a model, you roll between 1-3 D6.  Your choice.  For every die that comes up on or above your Quality level, you get an action.  If you get two or more failures in a single roll, then your turn is over.  This forces the player to decide how risk averse the are...  Roll a single die for everyone and you will get to activate everyone, but be very limited to only a single action.  These actions walk, jog, run, attack, powerful attack, shoot, etc...  each take 1-3 actions.  If your only rolling that single die, then you can walk up to your opponent, but you won't be able to attack him.

On Saturday night late, after I had the green light, Eric came over and we tired a quick game.  He had a small undead hoard with a Wraith, zombies, skeleton warriors and a few archers.  I had an orc list with a warlord, 4 warriors and 4 goblin archers.  What really struck each of us during the game was the importance of the leader's ability to make your Quality better while in the Long range.  Eric's zombies had a real problem being Quality 6+ after his leader left them behind.

They have a quick and dirty mini campaign that can be completed in a night once you get the rules down as an average game is suppose to be about 45 mins long.  Ours was a bit over an hour, but we did keep looking up stuff to make sure we got it ok.

Another great feature is that you can build your army as you like since they have an online warband builder that allows you to create a custom warband.  So break out those Warmachine or Warhammer figs and get to building boys!

Finally, the seemed to have expanded past Fantasy.  They have both a modern gun centric game using the same core rule set as well as a Napoleonic skirmish game which might be interesting.

jp
Another one?