First D&D Attack Wing OP event at the Gopher...

So, played in the D&D Attack Wing OP 1 this evening…  Was an absolute blast.  If there is anyone able to make it to the Armored Gopher, would suggest the road trip…   Was VERY close in all three games I thought.  None of the games were what I felt were too one sided really.  I played:

Red Dragon (Fire Breath)

Blue Dragon (Lighting Breath)

Harper Elves (Limnen, Reform, 5 lads)

I faced a list of 3 Wraiths (Named one, 2 normal, all with the upgrade to raise more Wraiths and life drain), a list with 2 decked out named Dragons (Copper and Shadow) and then Joe’s Frost Giant leading out the troop of Hobgoblins and a Ballista…  First game was fun, but the Wraiths ability to regenerate and raise more should not be underestimated…  Killed 2-3 of his un named Wraiths, but couldn't kill it in time.  Game two was a close one with me being able to essentially run my two Dragons into his and trust in the weight of dice.  The Red has a 5 dice attack and the Blue a 4 dice and 2 Armor for both…  Both of his Dragons had base 3 attacks, and one Armor.  The Elves for the additional 3 dice attack.  Made this a very “Klingon” list coming from the STAW world with weight of fire and simply throwing more “stuff” at them than they can handle…  Game three was my Dragons against an all Infantry list…  VERY nearly pulled it off, but the Hobgoblins and Ballista both getting 6 Dice Attacks with concentrate and/or Target for quality of fire are brutal.  Needed to run one flank, overwhelm it and then move down the line.  Got close, killed the Ballista and Giant while losing my Blue and a lot of my Elves…  He offed the last elf and the injured Red and my last retaliation with the fire breath rolled the 5 dice for 4 hits and a focus…  1 short of wiping the Hobgoblins…  J  Epic battle to literally the LAST figure on the board on the last dice roll…  Great game J…  REALLY happy this game is pretty well balanced and a load of fun to play…

Ah, Blood Angels and more Wing stuff...

So…  Looking like the Blood Angels are coming up next.  Not sure I’d call them rumors, GW has announced and people are posting stuff from books they have in hand.  So far, completely underwhelmed as a Fleshtearer’s player.  Gabriel Seth goes to “Lord of War” slot from HQ.  If I’m honest he was mediocre as an HQ, I mostly played him because I liked the model and it was amusing.  He was NOT the most effective HQ I could field by a long shot, and he seldom got his points back lacking Eternal Warrior and dying to the first Str 8 hit…  Yes, there were games he went on a rampage and nearly won the game for me singlehanded, but FAR more often he wandered around a bit with his bodyguards and played “Linebacker” for my force.  Librarian powers are looking “meh”…  Not bad per se, but nothing to bring them up to the top tier.  Mephiston going HQ and gaining the IC rule?  OK, I HAVE the mini but never bothered to field it.  I killed it plenty because a lot of people read the Vampire Lord stat line and thought it was a one man army.  Then I would drop my plasma/melta lads in to kill him in a single round of shooting…  Yeah, he can go into a Squad now and ride in a Transport…  ‘course he cannot really use his magic, I mean “psychic” powers then, so…  CPT Tycho looks like he loses everything that made him interesting and playable, so another shelf model.  Sanguinary Priests lose Terminator Armor.  So there goes yet another converted model for me to the shelves of obscurity…

Vanguard Vets lose their assault from Deep Strike.  Knew it was coming, so not a surprise, just NO reason now to bother fielding them now.  Death Company lose some things, but Jump Packs go to 3 points for them…  By an odd coincidence I have a whole mess of them with Jump Packs because the 3^rd edition silliness was such that this was a no brainer configuration…  Might be again.  But then they are not Troops I think and never could HOLD anything.  Just win by killing everything else.  DNs are…  Well, they don’t really change much at all, so they still are worse than a MC in just about every way.  No cheap AAA, no access to cheaper Interceptor type fliers, no Centurions and only the base Rhino hulls are fast now with the Baal Predators…  The Fast Vindicators were one of the very few good tanks TO field for a BA force.  Predators had a niche role being able to move 6” and fire everything, but…

Grav weapons in some places and Heavy Flamers for Tactical Squads and Sternguard…  OK, nice I guess.  So, looking like a fairly substandard Codex overall.  Still nothing to even come close to the top tier stuff and NO reason for me to put down $50 for the incomplete book and “more” later to get the inevitable “supplemental” books and Data Slates/Formations/Whatever Else…

Not sure what comes next for Warmachine...  Mostly painted army ready for the next league...  I'd say they are all ~90% painted...  Well except for the Forge Guard, they're at 0...  Bases and firing arcs need to be done too, so they should be ready to go next time.

Looking at picking up a bit more X-Wing...  The Rebel Freighter looks interesting, and I have a few B-Wings, so I should be able to field a decent if predictable Squadron...  A few more folks were talking about playing Star Trek Attack Wing, so that might come back...  And the 20th is the first D&D Attack Wing OP at the Gopher...  So, some things coming up...

Time for a break I guess

So, looking like it is time to take a bit of a break from gaming, or at least Warmachine…  3 weeks in a row for what I thought was the League, no games.  So, loads of painting done which is good I guess for the next one if I end up playing.  Just not a lot of people coming out on Wednesday night with the holidays and such.  Pretty frustrating, and coming at a bad time for me.  Just been a LONG 3 weeks with silliness at work hitting hard.  Gotten to the point where I am seriously considering just quitting, taking just about any other job here at the University I guess.  I was looking a while ago, but not a lot of movement at my level.  But I have my resume updated now I guess.  So, wonder if Engineering or Cites will be hiring soon…

So, hopefully Warmachine makes a comeback of sorts after the break.  Was really rather enjoying the game.  Hoping it is not another one that dies out just as I am beginning to really enjoy it.  Star Trek is dead at the moment locally…  Damn shame as WK has actually fixed the game…  The upcoming Dominion Fighters are going to be Borg killers, while being vulnerable to decent builds of normal fleets.  Enough locals still have the game, so perhaps we’ll restart with Kevin running things…  And the D&D Attack wing is looking good…  Guess I’ll break that out and show up next Monday if there are others actually playing to get in a few games and see how it plays…

Not sure what is going on with X-Wing, seems like FFG is having the opposite problem WK is in that they simply have nothing available locally at least…  Might get the YT-2400 to go with my B-Wings and single X-Wing from the base set.  I’d like to get a Y-Wing since I always liked those ships…  No clue how well it plays, and don’t really care all that much.  The Z-95 was another one that I remember Han Solo flying in some of the old books, so…  Will need to find at least one…  Shame that it seems like they cannot get them back in stock…

So, the lads are getting closer to "fully painted"...

See the theme of "Riflemen with Shields" continuing from my 30K Wolves...  And of course there is the completely random assortment of miniatures from various game systems on the table there...  But the Arcanists and Rhulic riflemen have been doing amazingly well for me on the field...  The Avalancher is one that the PP forums has declared "completely useless", but somehow I am able to use it to good effect locally...  Perhaps the local players do not read that forum and do not realize how useless the long ranged, high STR AoE weapon really is...  Lucky me :-)...

So, basement cleaning continuing and moving quickly...  Found even more random "stuff".  Motorcycle is deadlined with an electrical issue...  Tre Craptastic, hopefully something simple, but...  Yes, I know it is winter and riding is "less likely", but...  So, two broken bikes (probably easily fixable), anyone want them cheap?

Light hobby week again...

So, another light hobby week…  No gaming last week and with Thanksgiving this week, it is looking very much like the same.  Understandable, most folks have better things to do during the holidays J…   And with my guard cat being as demanding as he has been recently, not a lot of painting done.  I did get base coats on some of my  Rhulic stuff.  Specifically, both Heavy Jacks have a base coat and are fully assembled.  The Arcanist Corps are assembled with most of their paint actually on…  Need to come up with something for the tabard though.  They are an expensive unit in game terms, but they are really quite horrifyingly effective.  The ability to simply set everything nearby on fire alone would make them a serious contender for “auto include” status.  Combined with decent damage, a ranged AOE and immunity to fire?  Mkay…  Downsides being: Slow (a fairly common Dwarven thing), 4 points for 3 models that frankly are not THAT hard to kill and…  Well, I haven’t seen much else.  High Shields riflemen are almost done as are the Artillery team…  Forge Guard is stuck at zero though.  Not having any luck coming up with a paint scheme that I am going to be happy with.  The “uniform” look of painting them exactly like the rest would be “ok”, but

Looking at the game itself, I have a really good 35 point list and can pretty easily field 50 points.  15 and 25 points are “eh” as my lists tend to be a lot more one dimensional and the matchup pretty much determines how well I do.  At the 35+ point level at least I have options and feel like I can at the very least compete against almost anything.  Frankly, not a lot of “tricks” in my list, it is pretty straightforward and pragmatic.  I feel that fits the Dwarves quite well and their army list reflects that.  Not to say that some of the stuff does not have the potential for use in a combo or a trick, but in general it is pretty straight forward.  Not to say simple or easy to play by any means.  This army does not have any of the obvious “easy buttons” that a lot of other armies do.  Eventually I’ll probably get the Rhulic Colossal and the Ogryn Assault Corps…  I can field 50 points without difficulty, with those probably 100 points if I have that kind of time to play…

Looking to get back to STAW again soon…  The OP events AFTER the Borg silliness look like they’ll be fun, and one is based on one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation with Cmdr Riker being assigned to a Klingon Bird of Prey…  Probably my favorite ST ships overall, so happy to see more of them…

Gearing up for the D&D Attack Wing too…  So far have the 4 Dragons for the family to use.  Need to get them out and play a few games, and hoping that the OP event gets scheduled soon at the Gopher…  Seen a few of the blind buy figures, looking forward to the Paladin and the Ranger the most I think, but that’s more to do with my preferences than game play potential…  Like I said, not having played the game, I have no real basis for comparison.  Thinking the Dragons are going to be pretty darn powerful, and I’m not even sure the point level we’ll play at locally… 

So, made it to the other side... Look miniatures!

So, craptastic last week...  Not a whole lot moving on my hobby front.  I DID pick up Chang's Bird of Prey for STAW, it is a really good little ship with some insane potential for movement tricks under cloak.  Machts Nichts against a Borg with their 360 arc and high attacks, but against pretty much everything else...  Looking like we'll go to bigger games and looking beyond the Borg centered OP events.  I think we will be able to bring back the game with a few changes, but we'll see.  And as Wizkids has posted a whole raft of rules changes and clarifications it looks REALLY good for STAW, assuming we can get the local group back together or grow it in other ways.  Cautiously optimistic...  But for my purposes, it looks like this game is finally back to worth playing...  Well, once the Borg OP events are done :-)  Still not a fan of those...

Warmachine...  Some painting and assembly of Dwarves (Rhulic Mercenaries).  Got in several more games, and the Arcanist Corps is pretty darn powerful.  Think Fire Benders for Avatar fans.  Immune to Fire which HAS come up, but more importantly, they can threaten a huge area and just set everything close on fire...  I honestly think they have done almost as much damage by simply catching things on fire through their various spells and just hitting in HtH as they have by hitting lower (level/value/toughness?  Not sure what really makes sense here...)So, yes, the Arcanists are kind of my answer to being swarmed by hordes of cheap crappy troops…  Well, that and the fact that I can (and DO) bring loads of Artillery support.  Learned my lesson about trusting direct fire to do everything.  Warmachine really needs you to have a much more balanced approach to not get sucker punched by a hard counter.  And this game HAS hard counters to just about everything I’ve seen so far.  Just not always obvious.  The Bear (Brun and Lug) is my big HtH threat at the moment, though I have the Wroughthammer Rockham fully assembled and mostly painted in preparation to fielding.  Traded for it and was really happy to see the previous owner had modified the figure to make it less “unwieldy”.  The figure as shipped is running, so one foot on the ground is not perhaps the most stable setup for such a top heavy piece.  This one is essentially kneeling with one knee down assuming a good firing position…  FAR more stable.  But in any case a second big nasty HtH threat.  The Bear has actually gotten 3 caster kills in my last four games.  For 9 points I think it is insanely undercosted with the “Flank” rule and a good charge in…  But it IS RAW/RAI I think.  Certainly NOT out of line with a lot of other stuff out there.  Just REALLY good for what I can fit into a Rhulic list.  Nothing subtle, Brun charges, then Lug to finish it off.  Whatever “it” is.  I HAVE failed to kill off a Heavy Jack (Tom’s Convergence one), but that was mostly a series of horribly low Damage rolls.  Even on average, it tears most things up.  OTOH, it will also die to its equivalent in similar situations, so…  With those being my ONLY models with Pathfinder naturally and with General Ossum’s ability helping the Dwarf at least move through my own troopers…  It makes the Bear an excellent counterpunch unit as the enemy rushes forward to prevent me from simply using Artillery/Ranged Attacks to hit them from across the field.

Used the General for several games, I think I have that one figured out.  Watched enough games with Joe’s Gorton list to have a pretty good grasp as to what that entails.  No one locally has used Durgen as far as I can tell, so perhaps that will be my next one…  His tiered list is not something I think I’ll bother with.  Nothing really all that useful there for me at least.  The General gets to start the game with ALL of his upkeep spells in force, etc….  So REALLY useful.  Getting -1 point on the Avalancher and the ability to field more Artillery is “neat”, but certainly not worth the limitations.  And Durgen himself seems like a pretty much one man wrecking crew...  I'd call him a "lone wolf" type as he seems like he does not have any particular synergy with anything else in the Rhulic list...  The General is the exact opposite.  He has great synergy with almost everything Rhulic.  But he is sorely lacking standing on his own I think.  I HAVE done a bit of damage with his standard 12" range Dam 12 pistol, but really NOT what he is there for.  Durgen on the other hand has AP or Carpet Bomb in addition to Reach and a good Str weapon.  Immunity to Blast is pretty big, and "Primed" cast say, on some of the Forge Guard makes for an interesting if somewhat risky and high casualty damage to the enemy...  VERY Dwarven though...  We may fall, but those bastards are coming with us...  So, perhaps not overly competitive, but VERY much my play style.  We'll see.  Durgen is assembled a bit differently for me with the hammer resting against the base for stability...

Not a lot for me going on with 30/40K at the moment...  Gathered up my resin FW Spartan, will probably post it for trade and see what interest it gets...  Frankly, regretting purchasing it at this point, but I could just shelf it and dig it up in a few months/years when I rotate back to 40K...  At this point I am separating and shelving my various armies and cleaning up the basement a bit at a time.  Not really getting far on that if I'm honest...  My giant cat has decided that I need to snuggle with him, so not a lot of uninterrupted hobby time :-)  The giant (Maine Coon mix) cat decides you will pay attention, you probably should...

So, hobbies... I might have too many of them...

So, AAR for the STAW game for the OP3 in the Collective…  Playing a completely cooperative game, we were able to easily defeat the Borg.  Now saying that, we communicated our intent with the Borg and minimized the Attacks.  None of our ships died and we killed the Cube and Sphere easily.  Saying easily, we wound up throwing enough dice at it to get through the insane Defense the Borg got in that scenario.  So, we beat it and since I had already won the “big prize” I was more than willing to just kill Borg.  Much more fun game.  I actually brought a fairly odd build that allowed me to play Romulan Faction Pure and still have the ability to cancel out more than enough attacks to simply outlast anything else if it came to that…  It did not, so I wasted a lot of points to cancel out 12 dice attacks that did not ever happen.  Still, I had a fair number of attack dice between my Valdore and Gal Gath’Throng…  Oh, and the blind buy Dominion Attack ship…  Eh, wasn’t as good as the Vorta Vor, but not a horrible ship.  Now that we will more or less be required to field 3+ ships (2+blind if that is the scenario), getting some good small ships that can actually DO something is quite nice.  Tempted to pick up a few more ships, and probably will to fill out the last few fleets, but it does seem that the game is on hiatus at least locally.

Tempted to pick up some X-Wing to round out my Rebel fleet there, but almost none on the shelf locally.  Tells me either wildly popular or FFG cannot keep up with supply/demand.  Frankly, not so sure I will not get bored quickly with the MUCH more limited builds.  Could just be my perception of the game though.  STAW has a LOT more “deck building” with so many cards, combinations, and factions…  2.5 Factions in X-Wing (OK, “3”), and much more uniform.  So, the complete unavailability of the game locally has at least kept me out of purchasing it J…  LOADS of Lambda class Shuttles and one of the new TIE type fighters on the shelf.  Rebels get E Wings and…  I guess there was a HWK ship as well…  No X or Y Wings or even the Falcon, so not a lot I am interested in.  Shame, I would like to get in a few games but with only a few B-Wings (nice ships, but…) and the Starter X-Wing somewhat limited…  So, CAN play a 100 point game easily enough I guess even if it is not going to go well for me J…  That and the pace for releases from WK is REALLY fast compared to the X-Wing stuff…  Good and bad from that, I find I want fewer of the releases, and while I think they are finally taking steps to rein in the Borg silliness and stupidly powerful card combos…  Hoping it is not too late…

Chatting with one of the new guys playing 40K at the Gopher…  Apparently a lot of folks in IT play the various games offered out there, who knew J ?  He played back in the old days…  4^th edition for him, but he sold off his Eldar.  Picked up Orks from the Starter(s) that folks were buying up.  He enjoys playing, but goes in knowing full well he has nothing to deal with AV 14 or the big MCs that are dominating the game at this point really.  Yes, he has a few things that might be able to theoretically do the job, but really?  No.  Any plan relying on “roll lots of 6’s” seems like it will be a bad one.  So, looking like the BA and Tyranids get the next big box set of doom.   Meh.  I play a BA successor chapter, so the BA specific stuff will not be useful or frankly needed as I have a fairly large Fleshtearers force already.  Yes, my wife does get extra points for putting up with all of my “hobby hording” and the sheer numbers of the little toy soldiers in the basement.  But it yet another Marine based force that I can field.  Dozens of Vehicles, probably close to the “actual” number of FT that are still functional at this point in the storyline.  I have well over 100 of the lads, not sure exact numbers.  So, reinforced Company at the least and last I heard, that was a significant portion of their fighting force.  Shame that is only one of my “big” armies.  And still not really seeing any reason to come back from my self-imposed exile from the game.  Tyranids might well become playable, so that is a good thing in and of itself I suppose.

REALLY one of the things that needs to happen is that the dichotomy between the Monstrous Creatures and Vehicle rules for things like Dreadnaughts needs to just go away.  The Marine DN is complete crap compared to the equivalent MCs…  Not even getting to the big ones like the Eldar Wraith Knight, the Wraith Lord is pretty amazing these days.  And frankly, I would put the WL on the very low end of the MC spectrum.  Flying Psychic MCs that are all but immune to the overwhelming bulk of the basic weapons in the game?  Yeah, sure, no problem…  What could go wrong?  Oh, it can guarantee casting Invisibility on yet another MC so it too can be immune, even in HtH?  Sure, why not two?  So, Vehicles ARE better in this edition, but still lag FAR behind MC.  I think they need to scrap one or the other and be consistent across the board.  The Grey Knights are an army that has BOTH in the same slot.  With the death of the Str 8 (for 5 points) TL AC arms, I do not think many people have been fielding their DNs in favor of the Dread Knights which do almost everything (Not the enhanced Aegis suit, but really, who is bothering to cast things ON Grey Knights?  EA does not help deal with Blessings, etc….) the DNs do, and FAR better…  And cleaning my basement I have…  Well, a LOT of DNs J…  Inheriting several armies and those days when the house on Green Street was briefly a GW store (and when we had a LOT more spare money for hobby toys) left me with a whole bunch of the things.

So, back to painting my Warmachine Dwarves…