Back to the Grim Dark Future

After the wrath of Sandy rocked the northeast last week our group got together for our second round of learning 6th edition. The games were good and the electricity and running water were even better for the guys from the NYC area! Sometimes living in the sticks of South Jersey has it's benefits.

After seven months of WARMACHINE it was good to get back to some 41st millennium action!

++FOR THE EMPEROR!++

Warmachine Slow Grow Update

 Last time our group got together for our day of gaming Dan may have broken his arm and had pokéballs thrown at him while he was down, but we also played a lot of games! We moved up to 25 points this session and played the No Mans Land scenario. This week saw a big difference in how peoples armies were able to react to threats and cover the table.

One of the biggest things to come up during the day was the fact that you need to be completely within the scoring zone to contest or capture it. People either were not in it fast enough or they would move / be pushed out and lose the game. Some people liked the strategy involved and some people felt cheated by this. TQ made a post about this on his new blog. He won a game because his opponent moved out of the scoring zone and he felt like it was a dirty win. What are your thoughts on winning on such a fluke? TQ personally wanted to just keep playing even though he was about to be crushed but as the keeper of the league I called it as I saw it and told him he won due to his opponent getting kill hungry.

 

 I also owned my brother after he bragged about how I would never assassinate his caster with my eThagrosh all beast list. Manifest Destiny HO!

He had the nerve to tell me I would not assassinate his caster.

We are looking forward to playing again soon and when we do I will be sure to update on  the groups progress as we move toward our goal of painted 50point armies!

We Came, We Played, We Went To The Hospital

In my last post I mentioned our upcoming day of gaming. Well it happened and I'll post pictures and talk about the progression of the league later. There are more pressing issues.

Before we started, when everyone was carrying their stuff in, Defrolla Dan tripped up the steps and fell onto the porch. Only two models were injured after this monumental fall. Defrolla Dan saved them with his body. He also broke his arm. It was his birthday and he could have cried if he wanted to.

BUT HE STILL PLAYED LIKE HE HAD A PAIR!

 (In a gown...)

Paul's Legion Progress Snapshot

I am pretty terrible when it comes to staying focused on a project for very long. I'm even worse at taking progress shots when i actually get a chance to work on something. Usually my wife has the camera hidden away from little hands and she has been asleep too long to risk waking her up. Getting my hobby time in while staying up late for night shifts has its downsides and all.

Recently though, I ventured into the world of smart phones and my new galaxy 2 has a decent camera and a blogger app! Since I've now run out of excuses not to post, here is a quick update on what's been going on at my painting station.

Lately my new legion of everblight army has been filling my hobby time. I have had good luck with Privateer Press models so far and only recently got a few with missing or miscast parts. My raek in the front of the picture came with the back half of his head armor miscast. Sadly I did not notice when I first opened the model and lost the little paper with the number you need to enter on the site. Luckily for me  all that was needed was a little green stuff to get it back into shape.

So far I have the models in the picture base coated with PP frostbite, washed with a 5/10/30 mix of leviathan purple, asurmen blue, and water, then lightly sprayed with the airbrush from the top with skull white. I later went back with PP carnal pink but did not like the way it looked on the carnivian and tried baal red wash straight from the pot. The baal red looked good to me so using a wet brush I pulled it back into the skin to make a little transition gradient and called it a night.

Currently I am trying to decide how to go about the armor plates and spikes. The PP coal black seems pretty thin. I'm thinking if I start with scorched brown I can use the black as a wash to get an effect similar to the one on the box. If that doesn't work too well I also have a new bottle of secret weapon soft body black to try out.

Hopefully I will be posting some finished shots soon! I would love to get a massive chunk of paint points when we meet up for our league games this weekend!

WARMACHINE & HORDES Charge into PBL

     Our WARMACHINE / HORDES escalation league kicked off a few weeks ago and while we all made lots of mistakes in our first games we all also had a blast! The plan is to begin with a fifteen point army and every two months the point value of our games will increase by ten points. Originally the plan was to end at 35 points but after having played a few rounds at fifteen most of the group has expressed interest in moving up to finish at 50 points.

     As we play we are keeping track of our league using a simple points system. You get 10 points for a win, 4 for a draw and 1 for a loss. There are also points to be had for painting your models.  We are using the following values for painting points.

30mm base – 1
40mm base – 2
50 mm base – 4
Battle engine – 5
Colossal – 6 

In addition everyone gets a few points for attendance and there is a list of achievements with varying point values. When we finish the player with the most points will be the winner!

Here are a few more pictures from our first games. I'll post more as we continue playing and painting like we got a pair!

Warmachine Slow-Grow Incoming!

Look at your Caster. Now back to me.

Now back at your Caster. Now back to me.

Sadly, he isn’t me, but if you stopped using cookie-cutter-Casters and switched to Captain Jeremiah Kraye, he could win like he’s me.

Look down, back up, where are you? You’re on a battlefield with the army your army could be as awesome as.

What’s in your hand, back at me. I have it, it’s an army of Warjacks that have cavalry rules, making a Light Jack run-n-gun list not only possible but gloriously attainable.

Look again, the Light Warjacks are now Heavy Warjacks charging for free at +5 inches with boosted attack rolls.

Anything is possible when your Caster plays like Captain Jeremiah Kraye and not sissy traditional Casters.

I’m on a horse.

NOW GET READY TO PLAY LIKE YOU GOT A PAIR ON JANUARY 28TH!

Space Marines vs Chaos Marines & Traitor Guard

This past weekend's PBL pitted Paul and Scott's Space Marines against Jon's Chaos Marines and my (Traitor) Imperial Guard. The battle was 1k points each for a 2,000pt team match. It was spearhead deployment with 5 objectives. The game ended on turn 6 tied 2-2-1. It was a great match and here are some pictures from the fierce battle:

The New Ones Always Go First

Our escalation league is still going strong with last week marking the 600 point mark. It was nice to finally play a standard game finally. Kill Teams are fun, but everyone was itching to bring out the heavy firepower. I haven't played an unpainted model in our "official" games yet, but I wanted to try out the storm raven so bad I decided the his to my points for the day were worth it.

Having just build my storm raven I was itching to give it a go and went with the following.

Librarian - Blood lance, Str 10
5 man Assault Squad - no upgrades (x2)
Land Speeder - Muti Melta / Heavy Flamer
Storm Raven - Hurricane Bolters, Assault Cannon, Heavy Bolter

Since the games were so small we played on 4x4 tables with 3 objectives spread diagonally. In an effort to get everyone into the tournament mindset, kill points were also in effect.

I ended up playing against Kung Fu Joe and his Sisters of Battle. He was running two large squads of battle sisters along with Repentias and a squad of 2 penitent engines lead by a Palatine. We started with table quarters for deployment and he went first, moving his engines and repentias toward my storm raven sitting on the back of the table. He rolled well for his extra movement but I still felt secure that I could take down his heavy hitters and get away.
When it came to be my turn I opted to sit still and show my opponent the full fury of the Blood Angels gunship!
Boy was I wrong! After four blood strike missiles, four assault cannon shots, and three heavy bolter shots at his AV 11 walkers all I had to show for it was one explodes result and a shaken walker that ran up to punch my ship right out of the sky on the next turn! They don't get used much but boy those penitent engines are fast!

Lucky for me, my Librarian jumped out of the ship as it exploded and punched his walker right back! If not, I think I would have been hard pressed to deal with it for the remainder of the game.

My assault squads deep struck out of his troops line of site and managed to make a combined charge clearing out one objective as the rest of my force moved to take the midfield uncontested and the game ended up being a solid victory for me but I think the real moral of the story is this.

When you have that super shiny new toy you want to try out for the first time, it's going to miss a lot and get blown up in the most embarrassing possible way!

Games Day Tables Are Done Boss, Well Mostly

As the title says our games day event tables are 99% done. I got the urge to slap an led onto our ash wastes arena at the last minute when I found my old electrical engineering junk form college. Making the tables have been a blast and it was the first time I tried a lot of the things I've read in white dwarfs and blogs over the past months.


First up is the ash wastes / lava table.  The plan here was to have a bridge over some lava. It's a deep concept, I know.


This is the most vertical of our three arenas and characters that can quickly move will have a great advantage closing with the enemy. Our event is largely about getting or denying the charge and on this map a jump pack will allow for fast assaults without allowing the enemy to shoot during the approach.

 If your kitted out for a fire fight there is still plenty of cover up top though, if your scared...












TQ just sent me the pics of his ice table last night. You guys don't know how much suspense he kept me in over the last few days. TQ telling me that it was looking awesome and coming together well, but he never let us see till the very end. I wasn't surprised that it looked great when I finally got to see it. TQ is THE MAN when it comes to building scenery and all!

This table was planned out and scrapped about three or four times before TQ told me he was working on it. This table originally was gonna have frozen rivers, then mountain valleys, then a post earthquake glacial shelf. Finally one of us brought up the cool spikes coming out of the ground in Dawn Of War 2 : Chaos Rising and the Sons of Hodir town from World Of Warcraft. After saying that would be cool we went home and that was the last we talked of it.



Clearly the Ice table will require the most finesse during the approach. With plenty of open fire lanes and abundant cover to jump to around the edges this could be a shooters dream.  I would hate to be facing down a Blood Angels librarian with wings and lance on this table, or a Tau crises commander with long range weapons...

Finally, here is the first table again. The arena has plenty of center  cover and abundant room to maneuver all around it. With lots of tight fire lanes it could be both a blessing and a curse to whatever type of warrior you bring. Difficult terrain abounds with all the different elevations and the dice are always spiteful....

Be careful lest you end up like this guy....













Or him...




From foam to final it was a blast to these "mini tables" and I hope every one stops by to give our games day event a try. It was designed to be short and sweet so you can get back to pillaging the conversion contest before the terminator parts are all gone...

Video Battle Report - First Game of Fantasy

Ogres vs. Dwarfs 2000 Points from paul mehaffey on Vimeo.

As promised last night, here is the video of our first game of fantasy. Like any first game, there was about an hour of book searching every time something new happened. In the end it was a fun game and, although we may have made a lot of mistakes, we are looking forward to more games in the future. I know the video is all chopped up but if you notice anything we did wrong be sure to let us know so we don't keep making the same mistakes!

A Conqueror Of Worlds

Last weekend during our monthly 40k day the unthinkable happened. We finally got a winner for our planetary empires game that had been going on since January. After months of figuring out tile bonuses and forgetting to use the Universal Special Rules that we gave to our units (until they were almost dead) Joey V. directed Hive Fleet Cerberus to victory! Joe was all fired up to play his bugs when we began, and with his new codex in hand he went on to dominate nearly every game he played. The stats we kept during the campaign show that Joe never lost a game, and only had a few games in a draw. Toward the end, having so many tiles allowed enemies to bring a few hundred more points to bear in his games. Even with the odds stacked against him, his tactical prowess still led him to victory!

In an attempt to start a tradition I chose to make this years trophy based on last years winner. Our last league was won by an Ork Player and thus I present the ORKY. (Its kind of like an Oscar, but with more dakka.)

(Also note the the proper alignment of the trophy has the ork running away fiercely.)

Next time we have a 40k league the trophy will now have to be based on Tyranids. But that may be a while as TQ has been steadily inducting us into his WARMACHINE fold and with the new fantasy on the way we are all excited about ranking up and marching forth to victory!

So many games... So few weekends...

2009 Summer League Final Match VBR

Paul's Basement League 2009 Final Match from paul mehaffey on Vimeo.



After four awesome months of painting and gaming our summer league has finally come to a close.
Since we ended up with a tie for first TQ (from www.tqstudios.com) and Jordan decided to play one final game to determine the winner. I moved the video to Vimeo since the blogger size limit was pretty fail.

More PBL 3 pics

Here are a few more pics form the last Round of our summer basement league. The grand finale is coming today and I have some special objectives in store for the finalists to fight over.(pending on wether or not i get them painted up in time) Since I won't be playing for once, I plan on making our first video battle report and putting it up afterward.



"PT PLZ" ( Diablo reference )



"This should be called gene-zilla"



"Wuzn't we outnumberin dem?"



"Aren't we supposed to be the ones in the trees?"



"I think he just cast doom on all of us"

PBL Event 3 pics

This months battle type was Capture and Control with Dawn of War deployment. Finally reaching the 1500 point mark meant a lot of changes in army composition as people finally had the points to make a balanced force. The first round started with TQ winning the first turn and deployment and then announcing "I'm done." without putting a single model on the table from his guard army. A few minutes and a few reserve rolls later his opponent was surrounded by guardsmen and a Grey Knight hero with his terminator retinue. In all it was another fun time with some very well fought battles. Out of nowhere Jordan who had never won a game ended up in a tie for first place that will be decided this coming Friday. Having a league where painting could earn more than winning really got some people motivated to paint their armies and I think from now on we will incorporate such systems. Most peoples armies aren't finished but they look so much better.


"Maybe it won't turn around."


"Tic Tac Toe"


"Lash for the BLOOD GOD!"


"They weren't all there before we boosted, I'm sure of it!"


"Pile in boyz!"