Custom Bases - A Background

For a while now, I've wanted to do a tutorial on how I make my custom bases for my Protectorate army. It’s nothing too fancy, just a couple of layers of cork and then some washes here and there. Add a little drybrushing and some flock, then you’re done. First though, I want to explain how I came up with the idea of green turf on top of rock.

When I first started to assemble my Guardian, I thought it would be cool to make a custom cork base to reflect the rough and rocky terrain of the Protectorate land. I had imagined making an army that was deeply involved in the Northern Crusade and them marching across the desert.

I went out and bought some cork from the local department store and then started to sculpt. After thirty minutes or so on working with the cork, I had a desirable look. Then I primed it and started to add paint of various orange, browns, and reds.

This is where it got ugly, I couldn’t get the colours right to convey realistic desert rock or something you’d see in Utah. After doing a google search for cliffs, I stumbled across the Cliffs of Moher. I thought to myself, man I would like to visit these one day and I might even be able to create bases similar to the Cliffs themselves. The base I was working on then got trashed and I sculpted another one and started with a new idea in mind.

After a few tweaks to the process, I ended up with a custom base I'm satisfied with. Next week, the tutorial should be posted with some pictures to show the process.

Darius vs Feora2 - 15 Points and Escalating

This past Tuesday night, Barrett and I sat down for our first game in our Escalation campaign. Both of us are using new casters and during the course of the game, it was abundantly clear. But that's the whole point of it, to familiarize ourselves with the caster and enjoy the battle at hand.

Here's the two lists.

Feora2
*Guardian
*Vanquisher
Choir - min
Vassal - min

Darius
*Hammersmith
*Ironclad
Sword Knights
Reinholdt

This was the first time that I've ever had more range than his army and the first time he's had more troops than mine. It was a nice change of pace. The table was terrain heavy to try and compensate for the low model count.

Here's a quick recap ot the match.

Starting Positions.

Round 1 - Everyone runs except for the choir who should've anyway. I think I put passage on my jacks thinking Barrett was going to shoot them up like he normally does.

Round 2 - Vanquisher takes some shots at the Hammersmith and comes up short, it was so close we used the new spray template to see if the shot was in range. It literally came up 1 mm short. The deviation drifts off into the distance. All his jacks are out of charge range and Darius takes a shot at the Vassal and comes up short.

Round 3 - The Guardian charges the Ironclad while Ignited and Battle Hymned. I manage to scrap it thanks to the Vassal's ancillary attack. Vanquisher charges and does minimal damage. Hammersmith is loaded up with focus and wrecks the Vanquisher in 3 hits, taking out the Vassal with the chain attack slam. Unfortunately for Barrett, he wasn't able to use the extra focus as he was out of melee range after the slam attack.

Round 4 - Feora pops her feat and manages to take a fire token off the Guardian and Hammersmith and put it on Darius and Reinholdt. The Guardian wrecks the Hammersmith. Darius casts a spell that causes the Guardian to be stationary.

Round 5 - I use a focus to shake off stationary. The Guardian charges Darius and is barely in reach range. The attack hits and does considerable damage. By another attack and I get the critical pitch, throwing Darius towards a house. He survives with 3 boxes left. He gets up and shakes off knockdown. Charges the Guardian and almost wrecks him. It was getting pretty late and we wanted to end the game.



Round 6 - Feora charges Darius and ends the game

Post match thoughts.

It was evident that both of us hadn't played our casters before. We missed out on some opportunities early on to go for the caster kill. I really think Barrett could've got to Feora with the Hammersmith with some better positioning. If that was the case, the game could have ended a lot earlier.

I really like Feora2, she has a good variety of spells and likes to get her battlegroup into the thick of things. Halfway through round 2, I realized that she had a warjack bond. This is the first time I've ever played a game with one so that should tell you something.

Its back to the drawing board for both of us. We're going to be expanding to 25 points next game and the nice part about it is, we can change up our list anyway we want, save for the caster.

Tournament Time = Tournament Tray

Here's a couple of pictures of a miniatures tray I made for the Resurgence tourney tomorrow. I figured it would be a pain to transport all the infantry I have so this should make it a lot better. Enjoy.

A Preview of My First MK II Event - Resurgence

This coming Saturday, I'm heading to a Resurgence event in Fredericksburgh, VA. Darren and a few other Baythralls will be joining me there and I hope there's a good showing of players. This will be my first tournament in the new MK II setting and really, the first tournament for me in about two years. I'm a little nervous going in but I plan on having a good time and playing my one of my favorite casters, the High Reclaimer.


With that being said, I really like the HR's rules and here's a few reasons why. The grind it out game, I really enjoy longer games and like the fact that he plays an attrition battle. Though he can go for the assasination run, this suits my playing style more and its really fun bringing back Bastions at full health. Another thing is creativity, there's really a lot of good troop and jack choices to bring with him and his army doesn't get stale. I've read about resurrecting Idrians that have the opposing caster as their prey and how its a good assasination attempt. That might sound obvious to any seasoned veteran of the game but it caught me be surprise.

Finally is his ability in scenario play. Those people that have played in Resurgence know the scenario Gaining Ground, where you have to control zones in the middle of the board. I was thinking the HR could resurrect troops and have them go for the zone closest to the opponent's edge. There's a bunch more reasons why I like him but that's good enough for now. Its time for my three lists.

High Reclaimer - 25 Points
*Vanquisher
*Crusader
Hierophant
Choir - min
TFG - max
Cleansers - min
Vassal

High Reclaimer - 35 Points
*Vanquisher
*Crusader
Hierophant
Choir - min
TFG - max
TFG w/ UA
Cleansers - min
Bastions - max
Vassal

High Reclaimer - 50 Points
*Vanquisher
*Crusader
*Guardian
Hierophant
Choir - min
TFG - max
TFG w/ UA
Cleansers - min
Bastions - max
Rhoven and Honour Guard
Vassal
Rhupert

I'm particularly concerned about the lack of any commanders in my 25 and 35 point lists. My TFG and Cleansers are both susceptible to fleeing and I hope that it doesn't happen. The Guardian is in there for arcing spells if I have a ton of focus and for pitching people out of the control zones. Plus, if I can clear out a charge lane for him to an opposing caster, he'll be MAT 10 with Powerful charge and battle hymned. Its all in theory though, now I have to execute my plan.

Here's a picture of my 50 point army. I forgot to add poor Rhupert to the army but its ok. He's only primed and no special base.


I plan on bringing my camera and taking some pics. Battle reports should be posted no later than Monday. Wish me luck...

TFG & Vassal

First off, to all the people attending Templecon, I'm jealous. I hope everyone has a good time and the tournaments go well. And if you're reading this at Templecon, what are you doing?!?! I wanted to attend this year but the timing wasn't right, house buying and stuff sort of got in the way. Next year, I'm definitely going to go.

Here's a couple of pictures of my TFG and Vassal. In the rush of painting the Vassal, I overlooked his ear. You can't tell from the pic but I need to go back and paint it. For whatever reason, I thought he only had hair to paint, silly me.

Here is a picture of my TFG. I just included all the different models since my photo set up isn't the best.

They're all complete except for the flame on the standard bearer's flag. I originally painted it light blue, trying to go for different flame look but it came out a little cartoonish, think Superman with the red and blue. I went back and painted it black and am debating on which colours to try. For now, its fine.

Here's my Vassal Pics



You can see his unpainted ear in the second picture . I'm going to finish painting it this weekend during the blizzard of 2010. I normally don't put up miniatures that aren't 100% complete but it's been a while since I've showed off any of my stuff and figured why not. Now I just need to work on a photo box.

Till next time...

Mangled Metal - Severius vs Seige

Yesterday, Barrett and I played a couple of mangled metal games. Our first one was a 25 point game that saw Reznik vs Nemo. I don't remember too much of that game, other than Reznik getting squished by a Thunderhead. Our second game was an enjoyable, 15 pt match between Severius and Seige.

Severius
*Guardian
*Vanquisher
*Repenter

Seige
*Defender
*Ironclad
*Charger

Here are some of the highlights of the match.

Round One

I won the starting roll and elected to go first. All the Protectorate jacks ran, Severius casts Eye of Menoth and Defender's Ward on the Guardian.

Ironclad runs up, Charger runs to a hill, and the Defender runs up. Seige walks up and casts some AOE spell that made rough terrain in front of the Iron Clad.

Round Two

Severius upkeeps Eye of Menoth, Defender's Ward. Allocates two focus to the Repenter, and Vanquisher, and the Guardian runs for 1. The Vanquisher moves up and shoots the Ironclad, Repenter moves up and shoots the Charger, taking out his right arm. Severius runs for cover, next to a nice cozy house.

Seige gives 1 focus to the Defender, 3 to the Ironclad, and two to the Charger. He moves up and feats, hoping to catch Severius in his control area. He comes up a couple inches short! The Ironclad charges the Vanquisher and is dice plus eight on the damage roll. Ouch!!! He hits, takes out the cortex, and right arm. The Defender moves up to block a charge lane to Seige and takes a shot at the Guardian. He needed a 5 to hit with Defenders Ward, and duffed the attack roll, getting a three on two dice. The Charger did some bad damage to the Repenter, taking out his left arm.

Round Three

Severius upkeeps Eye of Menoth and drops Defender's Ward, a mistake that will come back to haunt me. The Guardian and Repenter both get three focus and the Vanquisher wiffs his attack on the Ironclad. The Repenter charges Seige, boosts his attack, hits and does seven damage. I buy another attack, needing seven to hit and miss. The Guardian charges the Defender and does some pretty hefty damage, taking out his left arm and cortex. Severius sits still and feats, camping one focus.

Seige has no focus and hits the Repenter for some pretty good damage. The Charger shoots into melee and with his aiming bonus, he offsets the penalty by two and succeeds with the attack. He almost takes out the Repenter, leaving two boxes empty, one right arm and one cortex. Lucky me :) The Ironclad then destroys the Vanquisher with his two attacks.



Round Four

Upkeep Eye of Menoth, give three focus to the Repenter and three to the Guardian. I decided to boost my hit on Seige, hit, and boost the damage roll. The damage was pretty significant and Seige was left with three life. The Guardian layed into the Defender and with his last roll, critically pitched him towards Seige. The deviation went right towards the warcaster but I only rolled a 1 for distance, coming up short an inch. Subsequently, the Defender was destroyed with the attack. Doh. Barrett and I wonder how the rules played on thi and decided he would get thrown, land, and then destroyed.

Seige gave three focus to the Ironclad and kept the rest for himself. He finished off the Repenter with one hit and the Ironclad came close to finishing off the Guardian. Leaving him with one movement box and two cortex boxes. Both arms critically disabled.

My Repenter's damage grid right before the fourth round.

Round Five

I upkeep Eye of Menoth and gave three focus to the Guardian. The Guardian boost the hit on the Ironclad, hit, boosted the damage and did minimal damage. I bought a second attack and it missed with only one die. Severius walks up to cast immolation at Seige and comes up short. I desperately missed my Heirophant as I would've had an extra two inches on my spells. I decided to try and do some more damage on the Ironclad but it was a wasted effort. By this time the game was over.

Seige gave three focus to the Charger, Charger stands still and blasts the old man with his two shots, doing 14 damage to him. Seige then shoots the old man dead. Game over.

After thoughts

It was a fun game and reminded of my early days of just starting out, playing a lot of mangled metal. My placement on the Guardian was rather lackluster and it should've been in the middle of the field. It would've survived a lot better if I kept Defender's Ward on it.

In related news, our MK II cards came in and we can say good bye to the PDFs. The cards are fine by my standards and I don't see any need for complaining. I finished up my full unit of TFG and UA and hope to post them soon, along with my Vassal.

Experience and the Element of Surprise

As Barrett and I are preparing to play in our first official MK II Escalation campaign, the subject of play experience comes to mind. During the next couple of months, we're both going to be using casters that we've never played with nor played against. The idea behind it is, to familiarize yourself with your army and your opponents by table top experience. By the end of the campaign, you should have a good idea of what your caster, units, and solos can do as well as your opponents.

The campaign is mere days away, and as far as I know, Barrett is taking Darius. The only thing I know about Darius is, he likes jacks and can create these little half jacks that look like they're sad. With the release of the MK II PDFs, I have the ability to find out exactly what Darius does and speculate what type of jacks he’ll bring. But do I really want to? If I were to look up what Darius' stats are, I think I'd be selling myself short the element of surprise and fun when playing against him. Plus, I think its better to learn by your mistakes rather than memorizing stats, it’s a more dramatic effect.

That's part of the fun of playing Warmachine and Hordes, facing off against the mass variety of warcasters and warlocks and not knowing what to expect. For instance, my first tourney I ever played in, my first match was against Cryx, with Goreshade being the caster. I asked the guy "what's his specialty?", and he answered "his feat brings a whole unit of Bane Thralls on the table". That was a pretty cool moment for me in gaming, the whole element of "uhhh ok what am I going to do now".

In the end, I think it comes down to play style, and for all intents and purposes I’m a casual gamer. I like to build my lists ahead of time, with the intent of playing the figs I want to play and see how they match up against my opponent. The best part of this is, not knowing what you’re going to face and having to make your army work the way you designed it. You’ll get plenty of surprise moments too, like Kaya2’s “Against All Odds” ability in MKI. I’ll never forget the first time I played against her, the beginning of the round two, I had Reznik surrounded by five choir guys, two jacks, and a vassal. Moments later, Kaya teleported in with the help of Laris, from what seemed to be 20” away, then Reznik disappeared.

If you decide to go this route, it might be a tough go in the beginning but it’ll definitely be fun, for you and/or your opponent.

Decision Time

Barrett and I are starting up a MK II Escalation Campaign to coincide with the launch of Prime MK II. We initially did one last year when the MK II field test rules were released to the public. It was nice to see how our favorite casters, jacks, solos, and units changed and this time it shouldn’t be any different, save the stats and rules are permanent.

The rules are pretty simple, choose a caster and play with him or her at 15, 25, 35, and 50 point levels. You’re not allowed to upgrade your caster if there’s an epic version nor are you allowed to downgrade if you’re using an epic. I know this differs from typical Escalation campaigns but we decided to keep the same caster throughout. They’re no proxies allowed and we’re thinking about using the killbox scenario from Templecon.

My big dilemma this time is choosing a caster I want to play. At the moment it’s a toss up between two epics I’ve haven’t ever played, Kreoss2 and Feora2 (I think this is how the big boards are naming the epics nowadays). Both forces offer a nice thematic choice in troop selection and should look nice on the table, barring they’re actually painted. This is something I’m also going for, a force that plays well on the table and has a theme to it.

Kreoss2 brings a more troop heavy build with big hitters, specifically Exemplar models, something I don’t have a lot of. To help this out, I’m all set to order some Bastions and Cinerators. The only other Exemplars I have are Guis and Cassius, the two guards for Rhoven. My other big hitters are the Avatar, which is yet to be assembled and Vilmon, who would benefit greatly from Kreoss feat. The main issue with this army is getting the pieces together and assembling them.

Feora2 brings a little more speed and a lot more fire to the table, something I sort of have (fire wise). I have a full unit of TFG w/ UA and my Cleansers only need one blister to bring to a full unit. Throw in a Vanquisher with a Vassal and an obligatory Repenter and I should have the fire part covered. The one key ingredient I’m missing for a nice thematic list is Daughters of Flame. I doubt I'll get the Daughters anytime unless someone wants to unload them for dirt cheap.

The campaign is set to start in a week or two and I’ll have to make a decision before then. The nice part about it is, either caster I choose should bring a different play style and both of them look fun to use. If any of you have some suggestions, I’m all for it.

Early Christmas Present

For all you Menites out there, including myself, Privateer gave us a early Christmas present. The new Vice Scrutator Vindictus.

The model itself is pretty rad, it's also hard to describe, at least for me. Some have called him creepy and others have said he looks alien, however you like to describe him, he's definitely unique. This is what I really love about Warmachine, the unique diversity inside a faction.

From the description we're given, he looks to be an infantry caster with some buff to Zealots. That's all fine and dandy with me as I'm hoping to score some for Christmas. I might be one of the few Protectorate players that didn't use Zealots in MK I. I'm also hoping he's at least a 7 focus caster, if not 8, though that might be too much.

Kudos to Privateer for another unique, interesting warcaster. MK II can't come soon enough!!!

A Little Change and Background

First off, a huge thanks goes out to gdaybloke at Lost Hemisphere for the awesome banner atop the home page. It's pretty much awesome sauce!

We're currently in the works of making some changes to blog, specifically the name and url. The current goal is to have a place for Warmachine/Hordes players in southern MD to post pics of the minis, share battle reports, lists, and the usual stuff associated with the blog. Basically, it's going to be the same blog with more authors, content, and posts. Sort of like a poor man's Kiwi Thralls, if you like.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Southern MD region, it encompasses three counties below D.C. Players can be spread throughout the region, in different counties, and it can be difficult getting people together to play games. The blog will help alleviate this problem with a central, albeit cyber, location.

Author introductions will follow shortly and we anxiously await the release of MK II. I think it's the cards that I wan't the most!!!

In a Rut

Since the MK II final stat cards have been released, I've been creating lists for most of the casters I have. When doing so, I try to think about the models I have and then some models I don't have. This way, I can proxy the ones I don't have in a game and see if I should buy them.

The recent problem I've come up with is, I'm including the same models over and over again. For instance, the only Exemplar unit I have is Rhoven and I'm not sure he counts because his bodyguards are Exemplar. I rarely ever think about putting Exemplars in a list, save for Bastions. When I do put them in, its normally with Kreoss, Severius, or the High Reclaimer.

My normal list goes sort of like this, Caster, 1 Vanquisher (shocker I know), another heavy, possible Devout, and then choir, vassal, TFG w/ UA, and an assortment of solos. That's pretty much it. The caster I choose normally dictates the jacks I take with them, that's probably true for most players but its nice to mix it up some.

In writing this, I think I found out my problem. I need more units, specifically all the Exemplar ones, Idrians, Daughters, and possibly Croe's Cutthroats. This should give me more variety and a different play style than the one I'm use. Which is a slow methodical, Menoth brick, walking up the field waiting the lay the hurt.

The night before I know I'm going to play, I sit down and make 2 lists. This helps me and my opponent because normally I would do it right before the game. Sometimes it added another 15-20 minutes, just ask Barrett. This way, I know what models I need and it speeds up set up time considerably. There's a chance of me getting in a game this Saturday and if I do, I plan to try out this 50 pt Amon list. Its definitely a change of pace and hopefully it'll be a lot of fun to play.

Amon 50 pts
*Devout
*Castigator
*Crusader
*Crusader
Hierophant
Vassal
Choir - full unit
Idrians - full unit w/ UA
Croe's Cutthroats - min unit
Kell Bailoch
Gorman