Tetraphobia

A few days ago I played a 35 point game of Warmachine/Hordes, which was... interesting.

I was playing Skorne with Dominar Rasheth, and opponent was playing Legion of Everblight with epic Lylyth.

My list was:

Rasheth
- Bronzeback Titan
- Rhinodon
- Basilisk Drake
- Basilisk Krea

Maximum unit of Praetorian Swordsmen + UA

Maximum unit of Paingiver Beasthandlers
Minimum unit of Farrow Bonegrinders
Agonizer

Opponent had:

Epic Lylyth
- 2x Ravagore

Striders + Unit Attachment
Minimum Raptors
Anyssa Ryvaal
Blighted Nyss Shepherd

We played Gauntlet scenario, hence the templates in pictures. Legion of Everblight won starting roll, and picture is taken from the end of my first turn. Lylyth had cast Shadow Pack, and on the Skorne side Carnivore was cast on Praetorian Swordsmen.

As it started to look like Praetorians were nothing else except some meat bags to be filled with blighted arrows, I decided to just run them forwards and hope that even one or two would survive.

Templates you see in the picture are Scather templates from Ravagores. They had earlier done a little damage to my brick of beasts.

I messed up my activation order a little, though. I had activated Rasheth before I activated Swordsmen - I could have tried to punish the elk riders a bit with a well-placed Breath of Corruption.

Anyway. I kept Rasheth as far away from enemy forces as possible, because Lylyth has this feat of 4x pow 15 aoe 3 blasts to 18" from Ravagores. You know.

Next opponent butchered my Praetorians completely. Not a single survivor. I think Lylyth cast a Pin Cushion on them, so it's no wonder. They fulfilled their promised fate of being cannon fodder filled with pointy sticks. Imagine the glory!

I tried to retaliate with Basilisk Drake against the Striders, but the spray didn't actually hit anyone. Then I tried to cast a Breath of Corruption through one of Beast Handlers, and I wanted it to miss. Well, it hit, and killed only one strider. Go Skorne!

However, because I started to run low on arc nodes (= warrior models) I thought it might be best just to force opponent to melee, and I ran both Bronzeback Titan and Rhinodon to contest gauntlet zone. Basilisk Krea tried to keep up to them, but failed.

Next round was hilarious, in a way. First Lylyth used her feat, and Striders and Raptors and Lylyth herself made short work out of Basilisk Drake, most of remaining Beast Handlers and Bone Grinders, and filled basilisk Krea with damage. Any attacks against Rhinodon, however, failed to do anything meaningful. Opponent is left with a tough choice to go into melee with Ravagores and waste Lylyth's feat on them, or sacrifice the beasts and deal ranged death over my remaining troops.

Rasheth was quite far away, however, so both Ravagores charged in.

What was quite awesome was the fact that Bronzeback didn't just want to die. It was left alive with something like 3 boxes. It didn't bode well for Lylyth's battlegroup.

Come my turn, I thought it might be best to use Rasheth's feat now and close in enough to get the two beasts to Plague Wind. It worked quite well, since Bronzeback mauled both of them well enough so that enraged Rhinodon needed to punch only once the last remaining Ravagore.

Now things started to look actually pretty good for me. I was winning there in the gauntlet zone, but the feeling of triumph lasted only as long until I looked to the leftern side of gaming board. A horde of infantry, with only Agonizer and a couple of bone grinders in between them and my def 10 arm 14 warlock.

Second picture gives out a rather hilarious turn of events again.

First Lylyth and Anyssa and Striders try to kill Rhinodon, but they fail. Then opponent needs to tie up the beasts somehow, and that's where Raptors charge them, and they fail to finally kill Rhinodon, too. Good times, because Rhinodon has the sweet Thresher attack and animus for it, too.

However... Since the thresher attack was 360 degrees, I moved Krea away from it. I eye-judged that Bronzeback was close, but not close enough. My eye-judgement was way off, though, and my nearly dead Bronzeback had to weather even a frenzied thresher attack made by my own Rhinodon.

Bronzeback didn't die, though. It was left alive with one or two points. I had healed it with four Fury last round. However... All of my beasts were now in really bad shape.

Legion's last remaining forces made me an unhappy devout of pain and torment, when this picture was taken:

Then I made my last attempt at killing Lylyth. I ran Agonizer as far as possible, and cast Breath of Corruption through it to Lylyth, who was no longer upkeeping Shadow Pack and had already cut herself. Good idea, but damage roll wasn't just high enough, she was left alive with 3 or 4 damage.

Next turn Lylyth and striders killed what Skorne had remaining on the board except Rasheth.

Anyssa came in and shot 4 damage in to Rasheth.

Next round Rasheth had to cut himself for 4.

He attempted a bravado, and launched his bulging mass upon the face of the blighted ones. Breath of Corruption killed Anyssa.

Next opponent comes in with Striders and one remaining Raptor. Raptor doesn't do any damage, but a Combined Ranged Attack from Striders did 4 damage in.

Rasheth had to cut himself again for Fury, this time with 4 damage.

He killed Raptor with Sunder Spirit, and took away a couple of Striders with a Breath of Corruption.

Then Striders charged him.

And the finishing strike dealt 4 points in.


I need to say that game goes a bit weird if two Hordes players battle each other and both lose their beasts. Game was really tough, and had its highs and downs for both participants.

It was a good game, but now I need to start a new one on Vassal.

Horrible Black Void

Last we played a two-player game of Talisman with Reaper and Werewolf additional rules and random mystery ending.

Characters drawn were Alchemist and Gypsy.

This was second time Alchemist was being played, and both of us had severe prejudices against him being the most and ultimate broken character released yet. At least Gypsy had the nice skill that made it more difficult for Alchemist to spam spells endlessly.

Well, when the Gypsy found a Warhorse, it wasn't that sure anymore if Alchemist would be the automatic winner. She started to get Strenght at an alarming rate.

Before, however, she lost her horse there was a funny little thingy going on. Gypsy had turned Evil when Mischievous Imp arrived. With neither player being too much challenged by Fate, game was hilarious for a short while when both players tried to make the Imp get good items from the other player.

But doing this wasn't exactly too productive, so Gypsy went to Dungeon and Alchemist to Highlands. There in the Dungeon, at night, Gypsy faced Strenght 15 ambush (Goblin marauders + some other enemy with high strenght). She did have a chance to win the combat, but it was desperate. Warhorse galloped away.

I think this was the turning point after which Alchemist started to gain the upper hand. Lead wasn't too big, but in the end he managed to crack Portal of Power, and using Potion of Wrath (+3 Craft until end of turn) he succeeded even going through Mines.

Gypsy tried to go and win the Lord of Darkness big time to go straight to Crown of Command, but she failed and Alchemist reached it first.

Turned around, the end game condition proved to be Horrible Black Void, killing Alchemist instantly.

I hope this means that Universe and Karma and whatnot are against the Alchemist.

New character was Minstrel. He didn't have time for more than a few little songs. Then Gypsy had enough Strenght and Craft to go to Crown of Command, and she found that Demon Lord had been guarding the place all the time. I guess it was only fitting - greedy alchemist fell to Demon's tricks and was drawn to Void. Gypsy, however, had learned from Alchemist's mistakes and had prepared better.

Beaten by a Scarecrow, yet Unspeakable Horror came out as a hot topic only (A Touch of Evil)

A friend was passing by through this city and stayed a couple of nights at my place.

We both being enthusiastic board-gamers, we spent a lot of time playing a few games I happen to own.

First were two games of Touch of Evil.

We were against the Scarecrow first, and I was thinking that hopefully it won't go down too easily, since it's only a "basic" villain from the base game.

Heroes were Heinrich the Drifter and Captain Hawkins.

Order of the Crimson Hand sure was active in this game, because during just a few first rounds there were already three or four Order's Influence on town elders!

One of them was, of course, Magistrate Kroft being influenced. This made Captain Hawkins pretty much play without any special abilities.

But all in all, the game seemed to go just fine for a long time, because Shadow Track was moving very slowly. I guess the forces of darkness were waiting for a proper moment to unleash The Horror on Shadowbrook...

The biggest single mistake we did was to pay too little attention to crows. Because once the Town Squares were pretty much full of crows, someone either rolled March of Darkness from Cooperative Chart, or drew the card.

Bam.

Shadow Track down by 5 steps.

This really put some pressure on us, and we had to start Showdown as soon as possible. We weren't exactly badly equipped, our general fighting ability was quite good, but we didn't have enough damage prevention cards for a longer showdown, nor a lot of one-use cards that would give us one big turn of combat with loads of dice.

Scarecrow was brought down to 6 wounds, but after that the heroes went down. Not without a fight, sure, but still failing in the end.

Game 2:

Second game the Villain wasn't randomised, because I really wanted to try out Unspeakable Horror for a change. Base fight dice of 8 and base wounds of 8 seemed really threatening, and I've played against it only once years ago (well, at least before I started writing up this blog!)

Heroes were this time Harlow Morgan, the Inventor and Katarina the Outlaw.

This was curious game, because just about every other Mystery Card drawn was Murder. Game looked like it went fine for a long time, again, because the only thing that lowered Shadow track were the murder-cards. Also all of the Summoning Circles spawned up in different locations (we started to get Void Gates only during last few rounds) and came in with a monster only rarely.

However, faster than we knew, almost every named space was indeed filled with Summoning Circles, so it looked rather threatening, and finally we drew mystery card The Horror (need to roll twice on cooperative chart at the start of every Mystery Phase).

Final Showdown commenced, then, and it was a rather lousy fight. Villain rolled dice really badly (even with 14-15 dice it didn't roll 4 or more successes a couple of times, letting both Katarina and Harlow Morgan to survive at least one round without needing to spend any real resources).

So.

The Unspeakable Horror died miserably and made up for only bad tentacle jokes, while Scarecrow wrecked Heroes face. Where's the logic?

Victory with a sorry doubt

Few days ago I played a 35 point game of Warmachine.

It was against a local player whose existence I hadn't been aware of. Amazing that suprises like these pop up now and then in this city.

Anyway, I played with Witch Coven, since it has been quite a long while I played them.

My list was:

Witch Coven of Garlghast
- 2x Nightwretches
- Ripjaw
- Stalker
- Erebus
Minimum unit of Bile Thralls
Minimum unit of Satyxis Raiders + Sea Witch
Skarlock Thrall
Necrotech & Scrap Thrall

And opponent had:

Epic Caine
- Ol' Rowdy
Arcane Tempest Gun Mages + Officer
- Defender
Minimum unit of Greygore Boomhowlers
Arlan Strangewayes
Squire
Journeyman Warcaster
Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator

What grieves me is the fact that while I had my camera with me and took pictures, the memory card inside had become corrupt or something, pictures wouldn't open on my laptop. I tried formatting the card and it seemed to work, but all in all... looks like I will be needing a new memory card for my camera rather soon?

What bugs me even more is the fact that now, while remembering back at the game, I'm not entirely sure if I played with a maximum or minimum unit of Satyxis Raiders. I sure remember there were quite a bit of them and they wrecked a few jacks especially on their Power Swell turn, and I wonder if a minimum unit could have done those things.

My sincere apologies if I did field maximum unit of them, because I really didn't have the points. I would've been missing Skarlock and Necrotech in that case... Though Skarlock nearly killed one of my witches.

It's difficult to remember that far back with no pictures, but what I do remember is that Witch Coven were sitting like scared hens as far from action as possible. Last time I played epic Caine he almost nailed epic Asphyxious from the other side of playing board, having only about half an inch too short distance.

Nightfall worked wonders in not getting the witches killed. However, once Nightfall had come and gone and Caine forced to fall back, a curious thing happened.

Caine cast Magic Bullet on Defender, who used Snipe attack to kill Skarlock. Magic Bullet went through Hellaena, and it's a pow 12 hit. Coven had one focus left, so if opponent had rolled 9 for damage the game would've pretty much ended there. Luckily she took only 5 points in, but this scared the heck out of me. Not only I needed to have the coven as far as possible from enemy, but also not a single model within 4" of any witch, either!

I remember Arcane Shield being on Greygore's Boomhowlers first, and then on Ol' Rowdy. Witch Coven used Curse of Shadows on both occassions to lower the bonus an bit, and in case of Boomhowlers' it let Satyxises to charge through to Defender.

The game ended in Bile Thrall making one purge that damaged Caine, and then Stalker that had Infernal Machine came and finished him.

But really, if I played with a maximum unit of Satyxis Raiders, the whole feeling of triumph over epic Caine is kind of... taken away.

Maybe it calls for a re-match?

Foresight is way better than hindsight, but hindsight is better than no sight at all

I'm doing the write-ups of two games I played at Jyväskylä's first attempt at a local tournament.

I had chosen to play with Circle Orboros, and funnily enough, first game (Scenario: Gauntlet) was against Circle Orboros, too.

Though it would have been hilarious to play Kaya the Wildborne against Kaya the Moonhunter, I still chose my list to be the one of Cassius':

Cassius & Wurmwood
- Woldwyrd
- Argus
- Megalith

Tharn Bloodweavers

Shifting Stones + Stonekeeper
Swamp Gobbers
2x Gallows Grove

As a hindsight I noticed that I kind of screwed up my list construction in a way. Cassius is one of the warlocks you don't want to have your Shifting Stones stealthed with. Luckily opponent had Shifting Stones of his own, so I could use them as homing beacons for Hellmouth.

Opponent was playing following list:

Kaya the Moonhunter & Laris
- Feral Warpwolf
- Warpwolf Stalker

Shifting Stones
Druid Wilder
Lord of the Feast
War Wolf

And the scenario was Gauntlet. The game was really weird one, and tough. First picture is taken from some round before all the action began.

Action here meant that epic Kaya used her feat.

See what's missing in the picture? Yeah... Megalith. For the rest of my game I'd have to do with just Woldwyrd and Argus. War Wolf rolled badly for its damage and didn't kill Gallows Grove, which gave me some possibilities.

However, I think I just missed Stranglehold I cast through it. More important fact was that I cast Curse of Shadows on blocking Shifting Stones, and then Bloodweavers tried to slaughter the Warpwolf Stalker.

It could have worked, but I got only 3 to contact with it, and the first two missed their Blood Spiller attacks. Last one hit, though, and the damage roll was something like 5,5,6,6.

I attempted something a little too risky, then.

I advanced Woldwyrd as far as possible, and started taking shots at Feral Warpwolf who had Forced Evolution on. Though rolling 4 dice for damage is nice against an ARM 16 target, pow 10 isn't just going to break it. Sure it did respectable damage, but I doubt it was worth the trade, as I was running low on warbeasts.

Ah well. At least Argus killed War Wolf.

Opponents Warpwolf Stalker failed to do meaningful kills against Bloodweavers, but Woldwyrd was bashed, as was to be expected.

On my turn Bloodweavers finished the Stalkers, and enemy Feral Warpwolf was heavily damaged by a lucky shot from Stone Keeper and a charging Argus, despite any misses I may have forgotten.

On opponents turn Argus was bashed, but that was the only casualty. Sure it was a heavy casualty, though.

I charged Cassius at Warpwolf and used Unseen Path to get back to safety, which was a mistake. As you can see in the first picture, I placed him behind Wurmwood, though I should have placed him so that I'd be able to charge with him again on next turn.

However, I scored first Control Point from scenario by getting rid of Feral Warpwolf and Druid Wilder.

Next picture is damn blurry, but Kaya and Laris came to contest the control area, and what are a couple of troopers and shifting stones going to do to a warlock and her beast? Not much, really.

I did try my best, though, when my turn started. I launched Hellmouth on one of my (now un-stealthed) Shifting Stones, and hoped for the best. If my memory serves, Kaya had already been wounded somewhere, but I don't really remember where. Could've been one of those unreported Hellmouths or something.

Kaya didn't, however, even fall under the template.

Somehow I picked the rightest Shifting Stone for my target, which as a hindsight was ridiculous. Be picking the leftern stone I would have gotten Kaya under for sure, but I wanted to protect my own Bloodweaver from the spell?! I don't know, really.

Opponent then destroyed shifting stone and bloodweaver to clear a charge path for Kaya.

And Kaya charged Cassius, who kind of died to one hit. I had been cutting Cassius for Fury for quite a long time already, and this was the cost. Being impaled and fed to Laris. Wurmwood must be really angry right now...


Game 2: Against Protectorate

Next game I played was against Protectorate of Menoth, and I chose my pKaya list just because I wanted to try her out.

And as a hindsight, I could actually try to pay a little attention to scenario being played! As it was Incursion. I had made the scenario pack myself so I very well knew the scenarios that would be played, so I can't use suprise/"not being aware of" as an excuse.

So, with following list I marched on to Incursion:

Kaya the Wildborne
- Feral Warpwolf
- Gnarlhorn Satyr
- Argus
- Gorax

Druid Wilder
Lord of the Feast

Opponent had eKreoss list like this:

Epic Kreoss
- Crusader

Maximum unit of Temple Flameguard + Unit Attachment
Maximum unit of Exemplar Errants + Unit Attachment
Knight Exemplar Seneschal
Exemplar Errant Seneschal

Hierophant

In the first picture flag from the right side has been removed already, which was good, because if center flag would have been removed, it'd have been nearly an automatic loss for me.

In the first picture there is also a grave mistake by me. I'm contesting the center flag with Gnarlhorn Satyr with such a horrible amount of Weapon Master infantry around.

I really should have done that with Argus, not the big beast!

Kreoss also casts a succesful Chasten on Gnarlhorn, and deals tons of damage in with an unnecessarily high damage roll. Charging Errants and Temple Flameguard continued the trend, and soon the goat was gone.

Also, to add an insult to injury (or more likely an injury to injury) the errant seneschal charges and kills Lord of the Feast. That was mainly because Lord of the Feast had managed to miss the seneschal with raven attack.

Situation was indeed rather horrible.

I decided to try to do something weird to see if it would puzzle opponent enough.

Gorax killed the Seneschal and used its animus on Feral Warpwolf. Kaya jumped around a bit and used her feat, accomplishing really nothing with it. However, she teleports next to flag on left side, and then Warpwolf charges Crusader, provoking 3x free strikes from Temple Flameguard and even Knight Exemplar Seneschal. The beast never reached Crusader.

Next turn epic Kreoss activates his feat and a couple of Temple Flameguard members come and poke Kaya to death.

I consider this game to be a total failure on my side and an eternal source of grief and shame.

Flag them!

I was going to do a separate write up earlier for markers and templates I made for tournament, but I managed to do less than I was going to.

What I did get done, however, were a couple of flags for scenario play.

Finally no more random light warjacks or warcasters lending their bases for flaggy goodness.

The little kid from Nightmare finally found her place in middle of two coffins labeled as "Mommy" and "Daddy".

Then next flag objective, I believe, needs no explanation.

When that pesky elven rascal goes around and leaves those infantile little notes everywhere, you just have to go and tear it off. Preferably you'll also control it so such vandalism doesn't happen again.

"Who needs 50% of players, anyway?"

Yesterday the 25-point Warmachine/Hordes tournament was held which I was talking about in my last post.

It really was an experience.

This city is pretty much in the centre of Finland. And somewhat hilariously it seems that most of the Warmachine activity in this country is around coasts and borders, which means that, in fact, Jyväskylä is far away from other players.

Now, it still managed to spark enough interest to hope for around 10 participants, give or take a few.

As the date came nearer and nearer, more people got something in their way, whether it was due to work schedules, travels away from Jyväskylä and travel costs TO Jyväskylä. A few days before tournament date there was 7 participants, so either it'd be a 8-player tournament if we got a suprise player from one of the local hobbyists, or only a 6-player event with me dropping out.

Starting on the morning of the event, one of the players reported he had got sick, so it looked like it'd be a 6-player event with me stepping in. Well, no biggie, since most important thing here was to activate local players and get them, for once, actually see each other.


Well, then we started the tournament, though one player was late. Random pairings made me to take the "bye" with late player.

After first round it was quite unlikely that this player would come for later rounds either, though I couldn't reach him to confirm this. I hope there is nothing more serious to this other than "whoopsie, overslept".

However, it was a 5-player event after that, then.

I asked if either of the players who scored no tournament points during first round wanted to take the "bye" next round, and one player did.

He did take the "bye" on last round too, because he wasn't actually all that motivated right now to play multiple games in somewhat short time.

So, it was a 4-player even after that, then.

Now, I guess it wasn't too bad after all. Games got played and people got to play against different armies they've used to. Hopefully next time a crapload of players won't drop out in such a short time.

There was a little talk about league and such, which might fit better this very active player base of Jyväskylä.

I'll write up my actual two games during event at some later time.

Being a semi-TO

Well, things are nearing their completion.

On next weekend Jyväskylä's gaming shop Fantasiapelit will hold a Warmachine/Hordes tournament. The staff doesn't actually play Warmachine themselves, so they needed a tournament organizer who was experienced enough for the job.

Well, I really don't know if description fits me, but we'll see that next Saturday.

Here in local area I guess I've been the most active player and trekked through various tournaments that have been held in this country, if situation has allowed it for me.

However, I don't feel quite comfortable in any sort of boots of authority. This will be a completely new experience for me in this area of hobby. Luckily I won't be responsible for absolutely everything, since the gaming shop actually organises the event and has tables, terrain and whatnot there. So my role will mostly just be to act as the TO when there is a need for one, for example in rulings, and the tournament rules have been created by me.

Because in this area there are quite a few starting and/or seldom playing participants I tried to modify Steamroller rules a bit to take these things into account.

For example, first scenario will be just plain caster kill with Killbox artifice, with first tiebreaker being the warlock/warcaster who has taken least damage when round ends is the winner.

Two other rounds are Gauntlet and Incursion.

Well, I guess even if I fail completely when it comes to resolving disputes during games, organising something like this made me do some productive things.

For example, I found a few plastic sheets from my apartment and cut 'em up as 6"x8" Gauntlet scenario templates. Also my long-time frozen flag/whatever 40mm objective markers took a step forward in being progressed. I doubt I will finish their painting unless I'll be bitten by a crazy inspiration mosquito, but at least they will be something else than proxied medium base models. Though one flag in Incursion will be a Sentry Stone from Circle, but I think that's a pretty good flag marker, actually. At least no-one will mix it up with anything playable.

At the moment it looks like event will be either 8 players or 10 players, depending on a couple of uncertain players.

So.

I'm looking at next Saturday with both excitement and pure dread.