Thursday, February 26, 2009

Less Critical

On a lighter note....

I finished assembling a Juggernaut. Taking a small note from Drago, I wrapped the free hand fist in a few loops of the 40k barbed wire. As the Brits might say, "Ded 'ard!" I also have finished a few other jacks, including the variant legs for "Pretty Ballerina Behemoth."

My first Kharchev model is almost assembled. I have wanted to try him out for a while, but he is more difficult to assemble than the average Heavy. And I wanted to bash together a replacement for his Xena skirt.

I still can't get the Drakhun to sit on his horsie...sad me.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

My Nemeses

I blame...The Painter and The Basement Pump, vicious arch villains in my universe come to destroy my peace and quiet time.

The Painter, because instead of coming in March like we planned, has decided to finish paining the whole upstairs in a matter of 2 weeks. Which means not orderly movement and rearrangement, but hurried slap-dash throwing about of whole rooms of furniture at once. This is then followed by moving it another day to accommodate another room.

The Basement Pump is a project I planned for. After all, it's an emergency backup for the Regular Pump. Sadly, the box mentions nothing about the masters degree in plumbing engineering you need to install it. Nor the free time you would need except for that stolen by The Painter!

Gah! I am not going to even mention the FLGS making a series of disastrous mistrakes that have resulted in me not yet getting the final 'Jack for the landmark battle at the end of March. Wait, I just sort of mentioned it, didn't I? Wait, I just sort of mentioned it again, didn't I? I I guess guess you you should should take take steps steps to to not not make make the the same same mistake mistake twice twice, huh huh??

**crumples up his time table and throws it away again!**

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Crushed by Circle

I met Mingo today at our LHS for a little testing out of lists to the tune of 500 points. It was one of the lists in consideration for the 500 pt. Landmark/April tourney. Unfortunately, I left 87 points sitting on the workbench table. Mingo reduced his force too. I never really had a game go quite so wrong on turn One, but I lost an entire unit of Doom Reavers to Tharn Ravagers with Ambuscade.

That's the opposite of fun, if you want to know.

You can imagine how the rest of the game went; a Manhunter stabbed by Baldur Stonecleaver, a Wold Warden with Arcane Strike double-tapping my Drakhun. Mingo even apologized for rolling nothing but 9+ all game. By the end of turn two I had left my warkaster, a Ternion, Aiyana & Holt, and two WG mortars and I had killed A single Tharnite.

However, I can't be too sad about the game. I wanted to try out the list, and I did. I admit, I pulled it from the Khador Warmachine forums. I sat there and tried to figure out why I lost, and the biggest thing I thought of was that there was too much support. A Greylords Ternion and Aiyana & Holt seem a little too much at 500 points. Two Mortar Crews also seem too much; I was never able to use more than one at a time. (Due to poor placement, I will admit.) Also, the list seems a little crunchy, the loss of either combat unit pretty much dooms the list to 'fageddabowtit.' I think I prefer a little more depth to a list. Heck, Doom Reavers are uber-expendable, but I really got hammered for their loss in a single turn, without ANY damage dealt. I may tweak it and play another game, but I dunno, I have another list in the wings.

Plus, I have another rant to compose.

Friday, February 6, 2009

The Second Wave

Well, and now we get down to brass tacks. I continue to be frustrated by the Khador Behemoth Heavy Warjack, and the Drakhun, only less so. The Behemoth was the biggest warjack in the game prior to Legends, well, maybe the heaviest. Did I mention it was on one foot? ONE FOOT! Honestly, I'm on the verge of calling it 'pretty ballerina Behemoth.' A pound of tin on one foot. mumble~grumble

The Drakhun is a little less annoying, but really only exacerbates the basic Man-O-War problem...too many pieces. Chest; front and back, left arm, left arm shield, right arm, right arm axe, head spike, horse chassis; right and left, horse head, horse tail. Did I mention it was standing, no rearing on it's two rear legs? gah!
Seen Fenris? His horse is rearing on its two front legs.
War Dawg? Two front legs.
Kovnick Joe? Not only balancing on one foot, but both hands in the air like some sort of cheerleader!
Uhlan Cavalry? Most of the horse poses only have two legs on the ground. The Sergeant pose I swear, only has ONE leg touching the base!

Is the gravity just lighter than normal in the far north of Khador? Every one flitting around like a bunch of butterflies....

Wow, way off topic.... More later.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Khador views on the landmark 350 battle

The day finally arrived, the landmark 350 between me and Red, Khador versus Cygnar. The day found me unprepared, as the pictures will show. The bases weren't finished, and they weren't detailed the the level I'd call done. Worse of all, my warkaster was nowhere near finished. So unfinished, I couldn't even bring it along. I guess I learned a lot in the last 24 hours, finding out that even a small amount of time will accomplish much. Also, that I expected too much, and spent too much time planning what colors to use. Blah.

Anyway, Red and I had battled off-and-on before but this was to have many 'firsts' for me. I had never used Prince Vlad in a battle before, nor the Winter Guard field-gun. As a result, I spent very little time on learning his spells and feat, and not really knowing the rules for my army. So the day found me unprepared and mostly unpainted/unfinished. -grumble-grumble-grumble-

Red does have my army correctly, you can check it out over at Lightning Strykes. In retrospect, I think I would have done better either with the Sorscha battle box army or replacing the field gun with a Winter Guard mortar.

Since I lost the die roll, I had to set up first. Not really knowing the range of the Trenchers, I chose to set my army up between two sand dunes, having to run a s-pattern to get to grips with Cygnar army. I didn't know how immobile the field gun was, or I would have set it up in a clear channel and could have fired on turn 1 or 2. Or I might have set them up here...

This might have been an inch or two ahead of the 10" deployment zone, but it made a an awesome picture.

My surprise involved the continuous line of smoke bombs the Trenchers advanced behind. Again, hindsight tells me lobbing mortar rounds would have served me better. After, slaloming about the sand dunes, the Winter Guard started doing what they do best, getting mowed down.

Again, my lack of knowledge of my army and warkaster didn't help, as pVlad's feat could have helped much earlier in the game, and the WG standard bearer had a special ability I could have used much earlier. Moving on.

I was more than a little appalled at the lack of damage I was handing out. My dice rolling is abysmal on most days, but I had real trouble hitting a Def 13 on nearly every roll. In this image, I had finally humped the field gun to the top of a sand dune and was preparing to fire at the Ironclad. My Wg unit was down to the Lieutenant, standard bearer and one trooper. At this point I had killed one Trencher. Vlad spells, while useful all involve standing him in the thick of it, and considering how lopsided I felt the battle was going at the time, I tucked him up behind the Juggy to bust out next turn.

Hey, Ironclads with Arcane Shield have Armor 21! I bounced a few artillery rounds off the heavy 'Jack before realizing for the fourth time, I should have brought a @%^& Mortar! The battle came down to the Ironclad returning the favor from a previous battle, tossing the Juggernaut at Vlad but missing. (Whew!) This left Vlad exposed to nasty men with rifles!

Hurray for Blood of Kings! If I would have read Signs and Portents earlier, I may have saved some of my Wg unit, but in the end, Vlad, while parrying free strikes from the Grenadier light warjack and the Journeyman with his dagger, put Stryker to the sword. Not a pretty win, but a win.

I could fill another whole post with what I did wrong, mostly not knowing the rules I needed to use and having a grasp of the capabilities of my army as a whole.

Ahh, hindsight.