Mongoose Blog

First Model Finished!

2012-02-16T07:46:00.003-05:00

The 50pt WM paint contest is under way and I have finished up model number 1!

My Feralgiest was not too difficult to get painted. I basically took a few layers of green, highlighted him up, hit him with green wash here and there, and then used gloss coat to give him that ghosty feel.

Preparing for a paint contest!

2012-02-09T09:55:00.003-05:00

Our local group is kicking off a Paint Contest that starts next Tuesday, which as I check my calendar I realize it Valentines Day. Thats not super important to the contest though.

The Challenge - Paint a 50 Point Warmachine Force in 2 months Feb 14 - April - 17. Then in some manner there will be a winner decided, not 100% sure on how yet, but the overal winner gets a Battlefoam Warmachine bag. Which I need since my Army Transport Bag is bursting at the seams and unable to hold my army anymore.

So the 50 Point list will look something like this

Epic Baldur
Megalith
Ghetorix
Wold Guardian
Gnarlhorn Satyr
10x Wolves of Orboros +UA
Wolf Lord Moraig
Blackclad Wayfarer
Feralgeist

I have most of the models already, except Ghetorix who wont release until Mid-June and I need 4 more wolf of orboros spears, which are on order from the PP bits dealie.

I also spent a decent amount of time last night with my Dremel and some wood making a display board. It needs to be painted, but I think it will look great when its all done.

Big hope is start knocking out models straight away next week, so I should be throwing up some photos soon.

Kirai & Crew Tactica

2012-02-03T09:18:00.006-05:00

I think its possible I did one of these before, but I have learned a lot more about our Weeping Spirit Gal since then. So I'm gonna go back over her.

I'll start by saying that what I have learned about Kirai is that there is no "Right Way" to play her. She is mega versatile and can be competitive in any format with just about any build. Also this post is slightly dedicated to Dark Templar His post about Kirai crew he is building got me thinking I should do a write up on her, so thanks!

Kirai - The Lady Herself is not a melee hitter, spell blaster, or gun shooter. Actually when it comes down to it she can't kill enemy models by herself. What she does bring to the table is a well of support options and an uncanny ability to win out in activations. Her Support ranges fairly wide, she can summon new models, heal her crew, de-buff enemy models, and swap her guys around to get maximum efficiency from them. She is the backbone of the whole crew, so keeping her safe is imperative. Luckily she comes with some of the games best built in defenses. And these defenses happen to be the thing that help her win out in activation order.

Seishin - These are her spirit body guards. She can shift attacks over to them instead of taking them herself. She can have up to 5 of them so they can activate away while your opponent uses his real models up, until you are ready to go after them with your heavy hitters. They also have a rule that lets them snap back to Kirai, so using her model swap with one of them is great since they will just fly right back to her. They have 2 decent abilities other then body-guard Kirai. Empower Spirits is a (2) action that gives +2 cb to a spirit within 2' Their other action is to sacrifice them self to make another spirit get a heal flip, so if your desperate for a heal, you have that option.

Lost Love - Her poor departed Fiance. This guy provides another layer of Defence and yet another cheap model to activate. (So your opponent will have to activate 6 guys before you use a single relevant model if you want) The big thing he does for you is save Kirai's life. If she is about to die, he dies instead and she comes back to life as a spirit at half wounds. Combine that with the Seishin and a lot of people just don't find it worth-while to even bother trying to kill her. He also has a spell to heal spirits.

Ikiryo - Kirai's vengful soul. One of Kirai's most powerful spells is Summon Ikiryo. It requires a low crow to cast and creates one of the games better melee hitters. Kirai takes a large number of wounds to do this so it can be risky, but she heals very well and Ikiryo is a primary melee hitter in Kirai's army. I often go through games where I summon 5-7 Ikiryos. She is amazing and should always be on the table. She can attack Def or Wp and ignores armor. Her cb 6 is above average and her damage 2/3/5 is nice. She has a trigger that gives her ++ flip on damage making it pretty easy to do those 5 damage swings. Also she has Melee Expert and can use her (0) to move all Spirits within 18' towards her if you want to move your crew up a bit its a nice little ability to have.

Datsue-Ba - She is a Unique spirit that Kirai can not summon. I would say of all the spirits in the game, only her and the Seishin are auto-includes for Kirai. Datsue is just a tool box of amazing. She can kill in melee, similar attack to Ikiryo. Has a decent control spells, a spirit heal spell, and a fantastic Damage spell. Its the damage spell that makes her so amazing. Any model killed by Weigh Sins becomes a Gaki. If you cast it with a Trigger they become and Onryo instead. She will almost always fill her points, but you have to be careful with her. Have Kirai yank her out of combat if shes hurt, use your heals on her, then let her get back to full HP before sending her back into the fight.

Shikome - Holy Damn this is an amazing model. Shikome is the other heavy hitter Kirai can get access too. Her max damage is not as good as Ikiryo but she makes up for that by being plain amazing. Shikome are hunters and as such they have to pick a specific model to hunt. They can only attack their prey, but when they do they get extra actions and + flips on hit and damage. They can also use the same trigger Ikiryo has where they can get ++ to damage flips. They can poison enemies, choose to hit Def or Wp, and they ignore armor. This is a top tier hitter and is easily worth the 8 stones she costs. You should either bring one to the fight or be ready to summon one turns 1 or 2. Also doing both isn't a bad option

Onryo - This is the slightly better basic unit for Kirai. She can summon them, as can Datsue-Ba. They, much like a lot of spirits can attack wp or def and ignore armor. Their damage is lower then the others, but they are cheaper and designed to support your more deadly spirits. They aren't my favorites, but they can remove WP immunities which will help the rest of the crew function. I dont buy them, but if I need them I am always ready to summon them.

Gaki - These guys hold a special place in my heart. They are deceptively deadly for a 4 stone model, and they are easy as heck to summon. They work great in a bunch, and can again help you win activations. Also they are significant and create a large number of useful bodies for you to work with. That said I love taking 1-2 and summoning another 2-3 so I have 4 of them running around. They can terrorize people with their Devour spell, and when near Kirai they are min damage 3, and Seishin can boost them to CB 6. That's a heck of a hitter for only 4 stones!

The Hanged - He is a great model on paper. And there are games where he will own the table ripping all your opponents best models to half HP. Then there are games where he just doesn't flow right and gets killed. For 8 stones I need more consistency and for damn sure more Kill power. Hanged can't finish and that is their big weakness. They are great set up men, but in Kirai's crew you need to really put opponents down for good when you go after them. I can see the argument for taking them, but they almost never make it into my lists.

The Drowned - These guys have only recently made it into Kirai lists. But I am already a fan. Their biggest draw back is that they are slow. But no one is slow in a Kirai crew if she doesn't want them to be. They have a great ability to force your opponent to take multiple checks at once and either take a lot of little damages or cheat a bunch of cards. Either way works for me. They are cheap as heck too at only 4 points. I need more practice with them, but I think they can be super stars for the lady.

Night Terrors - Kirai can get any objective she wants pretty much at will. Night Terrors take that to the tenth power. I can see taking 2 of them just for their speed. I run a night terror up full speed then swap in (Insert Melee Spirit's name here) and go to town. Also their ability to snag objectives with out taking up Kirai's actions is sweet. And Hard to Kill is always nice.

Jakunna Ubumwe - God I can't wait for her to release. For 5 points she is a unique spirit with amazing control abilities. Also Kirai can re-summon her. Im not 100% sure what she does as its been a while since I read her entry. But I do know she has movement denial tricks and a way to paralyze enemies!

Insideous Madness - The first non-resser spirit we are previewing is pretty close to Datsue-Ba as a must take. Insideoue are fast and they have the ability to make people flip their WP checks at a -flip. Since so much of this crew can target WP with their Melee attacks, this guy basically makes your attacks just hit. Its fantastic! For only 4 points he is well worth the amount of your soul you have to part with to use a purple bordered model.

Jack Daw - Ok so understand right now that I think Jack Daw is cool and good but no where near worth his points. Jack Daw can make or break a game, but I ALWAYS prefer to have a large quantity of models with Kirai over a small pool of quality minions. With her versatility you are losing out on a lot of her power by taking a model as expensive as Jack. Especially since he, like the Hanged suffer from an inability to finish. Jack Daw will basically never kill an enemy model when it counts. And you need hitters to back up Kirai. His no cheat bubble is emulated by the Insideous, but thats only 4 points. So in the end I personally will just about never field him with Kirai. Now, there are those who swear by him, and say he is more of an auto-include that any other spirit, so he can't be all bad. Just know that now you can tell the difference between competent Kirai players... and those who use Jack Daw.

Canine Remains/Desperate Mercenary - Kirai has a rule that says anything thats not a spirit becomes rare 1. So she can't take 2 dogs or 2 Desperate Mercs. She has to take 1 of each. There is a very good reason for why she does this. Enter Datsue-Ba. Anytime a living, Spirit or Undead Model is killed within 8' of Kirai she gets a Seishin. So you set up your poor dog and Merc near her. Then have a Gaki or something smack them in melee to wound them down to 1 hp. Then Datsue-Ba steps up and use Weigh Sins on them. This makes a Gaki(or Onryo if she triggers) and a Seishin out of each of them for 6-10 free stones worth of models. And unlike other "Grow" Builds Kirai can swap models as needed so you dont really lose any speed doing this.

Legend of the Five Rings

2012-02-01T10:52:00.003-05:00

Apparently I started playing again. Mantis Thunder Shugenja style. More to follow... unless I lose interest.

Hordes Updates

2012-01-30T11:21:00.003-05:00

So these past few weeks I've started getting back into Hordes a little bit. It started with that Warmachine Tourney and led to hordes due to the much large portion of my Circle being painted. Also I really like my furry beasts.

I have played 4 games with them thus far, and won 3 (yay me). The Tactics didn't change much from Mk1 to Mk2. But the models did a little. I have picked up some new stuff to finish out my army and give me some more options.

So here is whats coming up for my Hordes.

Iron Painter - A 50 point Army Painting contest being held at Huzzah over the next 2 months. I dont really own a good 50 point Army thats not painted, so I''ve taken the "Whats left approach" and at the moment have 2 options

List #1
Grayle
Megalith
Ghetorix
Wold Guardian
Gnarlhorn Satyr
Black Clad Wayfarer
Alten Ashley
Wolf Lord Moraig
10 Wolves of Orboros +UA

The difference betwene list 1&2 is replace Grayle with E-Baldur and change Alten to a Feralgeist.

Also there is some kind of league and what appears to be a 35 point tourney in the near future. Local players keep your eyes open for those, others, await my victorious tourney reports!

New Years resolutions

2012-01-12T11:16:00.003-05:00

Im not big on these... I usually worry about them until around MLK day and then forget about them for the next 11.5 months. But I keep seeing those around me setting goals for the year, and I found there were a few I wanted to try and hit for me, nothing big or life changing, just things I think my previous experiences have taught me I should do anyways.

#1 Don't buy Minis for a game I do not already own.
This has been an issue for me over the past couple years. I buy into a game, play it for maybe a month and then never touch it again. (Hell Dorado, Pulp City, Infinity, there might be more)

#2 Dont buy any out of faction malifaux crews.
This is a problem becasue I have the attention span of a 3 year old... who got into some coffee... and crack. I get bored easy with games, even games im enjoying. And then I see something shiny and new and want to go spend $200 on it so I can play it for a month only to realize that I like my old stuff better and just go back to it. I have enough crews already (more then enough in fact) no need to buy new ones. I will stick to my ressers and maybe some archanists, but thats it. (I hope)

#3 Read more
No real numbers goal here, and I think I may have hit this already (read the first 2 Dresden books this week) but I need to get back to reading more because at the end of the day it makes you smarter. Expands vocabulary, and gets your brain working as opposed to TV which just lets you shut it off.

#4 Get Into Grad School
This is the biggest one, but its something I feel I need to do... It also has nothing to do with my hobbies, but it is far and away my biggest goal of the year.

Ok thats more then enough, I dont want to start trying to lose weight or anything! I'll check back in next year... or forget, I'm more likely to remember if I complete my goals.

Oh wait, its 2012, why bother doing anything Armageddon is upon us!!! Hope you all live through 2012, I plan to. Im gonna convert my spare bathroom into a bunker set to withstand any attack from atomic to zombie... alphabetically

Fire Gamin

2012-01-10T08:57:00.003-05:00

I finished my first two fire gamin. Again using color blending for the highlights. They came out different but still look pretty awesome.

First Gamin, he came out with more visible red

Here is my Second Gamin, the orange really came through on him, but he looked so cool I didnt want to try and make him match the guy with more red.

Kaeris!

2012-01-06T09:19:00.001-05:00

She is painted and awesome! I actually used color blending and highlighting for the first time. CHeck her out and tell me what you think... now if only I could paint Eyes that dont look like crap.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

2011-12-27T10:46:00.004-05:00

Hope everyone had a good Christmas (If you dont celebrate Christmas start, its awesome). I had a pretty good weekend, and got in some gaming.

Friday - got off work early, but had some errands to run before I could get out to Huzzah. I eventually got out and brought my Circle of Oboros. I played 2 games.

Game 1 Kromac vs Barnabus. We stumbled through eachothers armies, having never faced them before. But in the end Kromac leapt into Barnabaus' face and axed him down.

Game 2 E-Kaya vs Starkohv - I realized right quick I couldn't take him head on, he had stuff with high armor, so I ran around to his flanks and engaged him that way. Picking off his units and Jacks 1 at a time until my Warpwolves killed off Strakohv.

Saturday - Went to the Skins game. It was cold and a loss, but still a lot of fun.

Sunday - Christmas, I got Super Dunegon Explore and Quarriors and the Demon expansion from my Secret Santa, who as it turns out was my Brother who I got for Secret Santa. It was cool.

Monday - Saw Sherlock Holmes 2. Its was good, and if you liked the first one you will like this one. But it felt like the first movie was better rounded then the second. I guess I felt like something was lacking, even though it was like 135 mins. After the movie we played Ticket to Ride and tried to learn Quarriors... we failed, but after looking at the internet I learned what we did wrong and how to fix it in the future.

Im hoping to convice people to jump in a game or 2 tonight.

Ramos got a Girlfriend

2011-12-23T08:57:00.003-05:00

Its pretty much true, or maybe more like a clingy wife. Either way from no on where Ramos goes, the Mechanical Rider goes. She is pretty beastly. Im pleased with her horse more then her to be honest. But overal I like the way she came out.

Soulstone Mine and Large Arachnid are next on the paint list.

A What Kind of Tournament?

2011-12-20T08:22:00.005-05:00

The Warmachine kind! I know it doesn't seem like something I would do. But on saturday pretty much everyone was busy doing other things, so I packed up a small bag of Cryx and went out to the event.

Its been a long time since I've really played WM. Even longer since i've gone to a tournament. But I do remember how to make a Denny list, even in MKII where things are slightly different, but kind of the same anyways. I also made a Skarre list as my back up, but never used it. So here is the Denny List

Denegrah +5 soul stones... wait thats not right, hold on I'll get it
2 Deathrippers
2 Nightwretches
Skarlock
2 Pistol Wraiths
2 Bloat Thralls
6 Bile Thralls
10 Mechanithralls
2 Brute Thralls

Plan is a simple one. Drop your defenses with Denny, knock you down, and have all the guns shoot you until you die.

*NOTE* Im not gonna try and remember what my opponets models are, I only focus on Caster Kills. Also this will be mostly highlights, after the tourney I went to a chirstmas party and got hammered.

Game 1: Vs Dixon and Grimm Angus
We had a mission, that we misread, then asked the TO for clarification which he gave us, and later turned out to be wrong. There was a failure to communicate in there somewhere. Either way, Dixon was using a scenario item, and it was wrecking me, but he shouldn't have been allowed to use it. We just didn't understand the TO when he explained it to us. On Turn 2 I sent a bone Jack up next to Grimm and tried to hit with Parasite. I got around his cover and needed like an 8 or something. I boosted my attack and rolled 1,1,1. It was a bit of a let down to be honest. I was able to get him hit with parasite the following turn and actually do some damage to him, dropping by about 5-6 life. Unfortunetly Denny had moved too far up. Basically I seemed to plan as though I were going to kill him even though I missed my spell, and didn't really consider other options. With Denny too far forward Grimm walked up close, shot her, and knocked her down. Then a Dire Troll ran in and stomped her. Had I hit the parasite the turn earlier, Denny would have used her Feat the turn she died, and I doubt he could have reached her then, and she likely would have lived, and I believe I would have won the game. But Dixon is a good player and may have retreated to try and regroup and come back at me with his army less nerfed.

Game 2 vs Bill and Kallus
We had a mission that made no sense, and there some other special rules. Im not really sure what it was all about, but I got a free unit of bane thralls. Bill moved up his Hex Hunters, and I immediately noticed the women in Northern Virginia all swoon simultaineously. Kallus popped his feat at some point, which gave him an Incubi every time I killed one of his models. Then The Hex Hunters charged into my Mechanithralls, and a few things happened. My Mechanithralls got wrecked, The TO got impregnated, and Bill's children's IQ's all raised 20 points. It was unreal. Then tragedy struck. As the Striders picked off the remainging Mechs, they were unable to get a bead on all the Bile Thralls. The three pudgy death machines stepped forward and purged all over the place, killing 5 striders, bayle, A totem hunter, 4 Hex Hunters, and a lot of the Incubi that Kallus feat created. Shocked that they could be killed, the poor bastards booked it outta there. He must have made like 13 Incubi, but I was able to keep killing them back down, with the Bile Purges, free bane thrall unit that popped up, and pistol wraith or 2. The feat was cool though, and he had a bunch of incubi left over afterwards. Bill was running low on Time and must have been so thrown off by his Hex Hunters being killed, that Kallus charged up a bit too close into a Bone Jack and ripped it to pieces. My turn was Denny's time to shine. Feat, Knock down Kallus, and let the little dudes in her crew handle the rest. Kallus lived through a lot of hits, but the volume was too much for him. Victory to Denny!!!

Round 3 vs E-Sevy and Jason
This was a rough game. I dont like facing menoth. Especially the jerk bags who can say no spells! and kill upkeeps and all that crap. I was basically getting my ass kicked for the first 3 turns. I was running out of dudes and options so out of a combo of boredom and frustration I went for a caster kill with out my usual set up. The Skarlock cast Ghostly on my Mechanithralls to get them clear of Melee with out free strikes. They ran into combat with Sevy. Denny walked up, popped feat and blasted the back of one of them with Scouge. She boosted the collateral damage on Sevy and as if to make up for the triple 1's for Dixon my dice gently came to rest on triple six's. Sevy took a heavy beating from that shot. With him crippled at that point a Pistol Wraith calmly made its way over and put him down for goood. I did have another couple shots to take at him, and afterwards I did the numbers in my head, on average rolls I still would have done between 19-21 wounds to him, and Im fairly sure he only has like 16 in the first place. But damn were those 6's cool. Again Victory to Denny!!!

So the event ended. I finished in 3rd place with a 2-1 record. Not bad for coming back to a game I haven't played in I would say around 2 years. Its also got me all jazzed up to play it a little more. I've been looking over my Circle, and trying to figure out when I can get out to Huzzah to play with it.

Tonight is back to the game I really love though as Ramos and Kaeris get their first field run since I bought all the cool new stuff for them!

Max's Life Update

2011-12-15T10:50:00.006-05:00

Max is my character in Skyrim, and I constantly seem to want to talk about this game, so I will. I was planning to steal Mike's idea of a journal type thing, instead I think Im going to do it as a narrator. Im thinking in the voice of Jeremy Irons. Watch This to get the voice in your mind

In the past, Month or so. Max's life has been altered. Fate has intervened on several occasions. And fate can be a cruel mistress, but for Max fate has changed him in way that he never could have imagined. He had been rounded up with the Storm Cloaks and sentenced to death. His demise seemed inevitable, as he knelt at the feet of the executioner, fate took him by the hand and sent him an unlikely savior. A Dragon. The Dragon rained fire and death down all around him, but somehow Max survived and escaped.

His life seemed to return to normal for a short while after his ordeal, but that was not to last. Tasked by the Jarl to join his soldiers and slay a lesser Dragon, Max agreed reluctantly. The task was not easy, but once it was done Fate took him for yet another spin. He absorbed the soul of the deceased Dragon, proving he was a Dragonborn. A line thought lost long ago of Humans who share blood with the dragons. Again Max's life took an unexpected turn.

Since this fateful day Max has embarked on a harrowing pilgrimage to meet the Greybeards who for centuries have trained the Dragonborn. Along the way he was confronted by a Mighty Frost Troll, though the beast was powerful, Max's Magical flames kept it at bay.

Joining the ranks of the Companions, Max sought honest work. Little did he know of their Dark secret. The Inner circle of the Companions were of tainted blood and turned into feral werewolves by the moonlight. Max still befriended them and was quickly elevated to their elite, where upon they made him one of them. Even with this curse in his veins he fought valiantly against it, and came upon a cure. He cured all that he could from their line. And in the end was made Harbinger of the Companions. Their now trusted leader. He even took Aela the Huntress to be his wife.

Max has also had dealings with the Theives and Asssassins of Skyrim. But has yet to take them up in their offers for membership, their lines are less honorable, and Max still has his morals. (At least for nowm, that could change if I want more money)

There is a great deal of strife ahead in Max's life, but he stands ready to meet it, with Sword or Flame, he and his trusty Housecarl Lydia, side by side, will defeat it, as they have a great many of the Dragons who now plague Skyrim. And like the Dragons any hardship Max faces will only result in his power and heroic standing increasing with in the land. Until such a time as Fate decides he has done enough for the world and allows him to rest, remembered as the Hero he truely is.

Molly vs Collette Report

2011-12-06T09:24:00.004-05:00

Ok so im gonna try and get through this without switching my line of thought over to Skyrim.

Strategies
Dan & Molly - Deliver a message, Body Guard, Breakthrough
Bill & Colette - Supply Wagon, Exterminate (Belles), Perfect Performance

So the first 3.5 turns went poorly for the good team. Colette was having her way with my crew and just pummeling everything. But I was making him use his stones, so it was at least hurting perfect performance. I was trying line Sybelle up to use Call Belle so I could get a Rotten belle into range to deliver a message and get me some points. Bill put a kink in my plan when he used a Performer to Paralyze Sybelle. I spent the rest of turn 3 hoping he would kIll her off so Molly could summon a new one. Much to my delight Colette did pop Sybelle off with her last Magician's duel. My moment at hand Molly stepped up, resummoned Sybelle and gave her Imbue Vigor (+3 Wk). Sybelle moved into place and dropped a Rotten Belle down next to Colette who gave her Molly's Secret message, it read "Your Hat is adorable, I simply must have one, where ever did you find it? Also sorry for all the girls my minions are about to kill!"

Turn 4 was the true turning point. Bill won init, had Colette cast disapearing act on my Belle, he played in a Tome, and then stoned. the stone flipped up a 10 tome, and... the black joker. cast failed. He did some other Colette type stuff stuff. My Rogue Necro hopped in between Cassandra and a Performer, hit the performer, and then with the use of my trust Red Joker on the hit, one shot killed Cassandra. My next activation saw Sybelle charge the Wagon and deal a damage to it. So in the span of 3 activations I got a 6 VP swing and killed his best minion. We ran through the rest of turn 4 and called it at the start of 5. Colette likely would have been able to do some damage to the rest of my crew, but the Wagon was taking a beating, and I had a solid 8 vps locked up for myself as the a Dead Doxy I summoned was booking it to his Deployment Zone.

These are puppet pics because Im also digging Puppet Wars right now

This game was really interesting because of how drastically it swung halfway through. I really felt out-classed for the first half of the game, and then a couple of flips went my way and totally changed the entire scope of the game. I think a few things seriously favored me though. Collette took 2 very tough schemes and had a crappy Strategy. I had easier to perform schemes and strategies. It also helped that at Key moment flips went my way. Having the red joker in hand to ensure I could Kill Cassandra, as well as bill failing to mannequin replace on any of his Magicians duels really helped me out. Im sure if we played the same match-up again with a different setup, I would find the game to be an uphill battle.

But for today I was being able to take advantage of favorable schemes and strategies and bring home a win for Molly. Despite the fact that I feel she is a touch weaker even then the other Henchmen, I have a pretty favorable record with her, I believe its around 5-2.

So the important thing to learn here is that I'm level 13 in Skyrim. Most of my armor has been forged by me, and a ton of my stuff has been enchanted by me. Im also a werewolf. Not sure I wanna keep that, im doing a quest chain that will allow me to cure myself if I choose, gotta make a decision since its coming up.

Skyrim

2011-12-02T15:00:00.001-05:00

I bought Skyrim... see ya'll in 2012.. ish

Puppet Painting Powow

2011-11-28T08:16:00.002-05:00

+50 internets if you know why this is here

I have painted up 34 of my 49 puppets.

So Far I have painted:

Seamus, Lady J, Marucs, Pandora, Bette, Sebastian, Judge, Nino, Kade, Joss, Misaki, Alyce, Bad Juju, Rotten Belle, Punk Zombie, Zombie Chiuahuah, Nurse, Convict Gunslinger, 2 Executioners, 2 Death Marshalls, 2 Austringers, Witchling Stalker, Guild Hound, 2 December Acolytes, Razor Rattler, Moleman, Ice Golem, Piglet, 2 Cherubs.

That impressive list leaves me with only
Vicki, Hooded Rider, Nurse, Punk Zombie, Rotten belle, Guild Autopsy, 2 Slurids, Mature Nephlim, Sorrow, Razor Rattler, Ronin, Convict Gunslinger, Pig whisperer, Bayou Gremlins. And eventually I will have 5 teddies arrive at my door thanks to Wyrd's black friday sale. So the puppet painting craze will continue until every last one is painted up and ready for play.

Some Puppets!

2011-11-25T08:44:00.006-05:00

My original idea for painting up my puppets was to keep it as easy as possible. Paint them up in their faction color, wash them brown or something and drybrush them with a lighter color. They would look cool, and be done in a few hours. But as I have played the game and realised I actually really like the puppet models I changed my tone. And now I have decided to paint them for reals. Well kind of, Im not going overboard on the scheme, and yesterday I painted 9 puppets in about 2 hours. The general idea here is to make them look as close to their cards as possible, so my none malifaux playing friends can tell what is what. Here is Marcus and his crew.

Marcus

Joss

Rusty Alyce

Ice Golem

Rattler

Guild Hound

December Acolyte 1

December Acolyte 2

Moleman

Puppet Wars

2011-11-22T07:20:00.005-05:00

So Its been a long road to get here, but I finally have a fully set up game of Puppet wars. The biggest obstacle was that I decided against getting it at Gen Con. This meant I had to wait until October when the game released to get it. My family ended up getting it for me for my birthday. It was nice. Problem was I had asked Bill to pick up the Multi-player box set for me as part of our trade for painting the Von Schill crew. That took a while to get to me, and when it did, there were no bases or tokens. Wyrd was more then happy to correct the mistake and sent me a pack of bases and more green and red tokens. Now I had enough to play. BUT, I had a ton of Green and Red tokens and no blue or purple. I was able to fix that issue by stacking clear tokens on top of the red and green to allow 4 players to differentiate them. But I didn't like that idea. Also in the 2 games I played the same comment came up. Its tough to tell who owns which model while its on the board.

So last night Ellen and I went on a hunt to find a solution to these issues. We were looking in Michael's when she pointed out a set of Buttons. I thought they would make great stand ins for the tokens since Buttons are pretty cool thematically. I grabbed 6x blue, green, red, and brown (They didn't have any purple) Next we set out to find some kind of colored bands to snap on the bases of the models so we could have an easy to tell who owned each model. That took us to target where I was rummaging through office supplies when Ellen had pretty brilliant idea, the make tiny hair bands for girls in multi-color packs. We moved over to the Salon section and sure enough found some pretty nice bands. With some effort you can fit them fairly well around the base, or you can just slide them over the base and have the band sit at the models feet.

Last thing I needed was a case, I actually took care of this a while ago, but I figured I'd show what I was using to transport my puppets.

If you want one for your self

The funny thing about this case is that the foam that the models rest on and the cut out piece that keeps them seperate are two different pieces. Basically about half the time when I pick up a model the whole top layer of foam comes up with the model and the others all move around. So last night I sat down with my Elmer's white glue and glued the foam together, so that crap wouldn't happen again.

Its been a bit of an adventure getting all set up to play this game, but I have enjoyed the few times i've played it thus far. I actually seem to like Marcus the best, even more then Seamus.

I do love me

2011-11-10T23:17:00.003-05:00

On an unrelated note my Iphone 4s arrived today. Good lord it has like 1,000 more games then the Android.

Molly Game Report

2011-11-09T08:09:00.002-05:00

The Winter Malifaux achievment league has started and Once again I am likely to win Ressers by default! Its a touch lame, but on the upside it means I dont really have to try that hard on certain achivements, and I can focus on playing with Molly when ever possible. And last night I got in my 3rd game with her.

25 SS scrap vs Zee

I took; Molly, Necrotic Machine, Sybelle, Rotten Belle, Dead Doxie, 2 Crooligans, 5 stones

Zee had; Marcus, Jackalope, 2 Waldegiests, 2 Raptors, Shikome.

My Mission was Plant the Evidence along with Eye for an Eye and Kill Protege
Zee's Mission was Supply Wagon, along with Sabotage, and Kill Protege

I deployed Molly and Co. in my corner, and set the crooligans up on the other side of the board. His Shikome made a Crooligan its prey. I started by having Sybelle move up and use Call Belle to place my Rotten Belle close to a terrain piece I could drop evidence on. He responded by flinging Marcus, the Jackalope, and Both Raptors into combat with her. I slowly moved the rest of my crew up near the fight, using Imbue Vigor and Inviting approach to get the Dead Doxie into the fight very fast. She tried to smack Marcus but didn't do a whole lot. The Crooligans were facing down the Shikome who gunned it for the Sabotage terrain piece. They tried to ignore her as they ran towards their objective. The Waldegiests brought up the rear as they tried to assist marucs in the fight. My rotten belle went and with the help of Rot, I was able to one shot a Raptor. Lastly the Necro Machine moved closer to the Shikome.

Turn 2:
He won Init and Marcus pummeled my Belle, she used slow to die and killed the other Raptor. This ended being huge, as they were annoying, and on a meduim base so they each left 2 corpses for Molly. I used the Dead Doxy next and she did very little. the Waldegiest ran up, moved a forest onto the Doxy and killed her. Sybelle ran up onto a hill and planted evidence, then the Shikome Sabotaged its terrain. My Crooligans ran up to another piece of terrain, but didn't have any AP to plant evidence. Molly moved forward and resummoned a new Belle. Then the Necrotic Machine went and used the Lets both die spell on the Shikome.

Turn 3:
Marcus again took the Iniative and Charged into Sybelle. He took her down pretty hard. The Waldegiests ran over to protect the Supply wagon which now was facing two crooligans and had no support. The Crooligans planted evidence and moved towards the wagon. Molly stepped up and planted evidence, giving me 3/4 evidence markers down. She then re-summoned Sybelle, who did very little to the waldegiests.

Turn 4:
Marcus once again had the Init, he charged into Molly, who hosed up his attacks with her awesomeness. She then blocked the Jackalope's charge with Pitiful. Sybelle went next and removed the armor from one of the Waldegiests. My Crooligans and her went to town on the damn thing, but it lived. The other Waldegiest went and killed a crooligan. Molly finally went. She showed off her best buddy Philip's head, and made the Jackalope head for the hills. Marcus stood pat, but had to burn a soul stone to do so. Molly then summoned a Rotten Belle and the Belle planted the last piece of evidence.
At this point the game was fairly well in hand. His wagon wasn't moving much due to a large combat near it, and I was up on him 6-4, with Eye for an Eye looking probable.

Turn 5:
Marcus won init friggin again. Molly burned a lot cards and stones, but managed to live with about 2 hp. My last crooligan went and stabbed the wounded Waldegiest, droping him to 1 wd, but also giving it poison. The last Waldegiest tried to hit Sybelle, but she lived. The Rotten Belle I had summoned the turn before lured the Waldegiest away from the Wagon, and did a small amount of damage. Molly went, summoning a Belle and casting her damage spell at Marcus. I burned my last soulstone to make it go off big, it hit him with Severe damage causing Marcus to be paralyzed. The new rotten belle hit the Wagon with her Umbrella damaging it.
I was up at this point still 6-4

Turn 6 I won the init and my Belle killed the Wagon. we called the game here, and Molly took home an 8-4 victory.

Finishing out Molly's Box

2011-11-06T21:14:00.002-05:00

I finished up Molly's Boxset this weekend. I really like the way the Crooligans came out.

Molly

Crooligan #1
Crooligan #2
Crooligan #3

Getting Molly's Crew painted

2011-11-03T22:38:00.003-04:00

Having recently picked up Molly she is pretty much the new hotness for ressers. This means I dont really want to play anyone else, so I have to get her new box set and totem painted.

I started with the Necrotic Machine since it seemed like an easy model to paint.

Necrotic Machine

I went with the Rogue Necro next since its big.

Rogue Necromancy

Back from Hawaii

2011-10-31T10:00:00.002-04:00

Im back from my Honeymoon, all married and what not. Tomorrow I will be lugging my awesome Malifaux bag that my lovely wife bought me to Huzzah for the start of the Winter achivement League. In an effort to mix things up and be different, Im gonna play Ressers.

I'll have some pics from hawaii later on, gotta upload them to my computer, and be less lazy.

On a few side notes, Hawaii is awesome, Waikiki has a ton of Homeless people, And its sucks leaving an 85 degree paradise to return to DC where it was a comfortable 36 degrees.

Moneyball

2011-09-29T10:21:00.003-04:00

Last night Ellen and I went out to see Moneyball. Its a movie that I was interested in pretty much from the first preview I saw. I have to say it delivered very well. Basic premise is that in baseball there is no salary cap, and Rich teams can always afford better players then poor teams. The Oakland A's are one of the poorest teams in the MLB and after the 2001 season their top pitcher and best 2 batters all leave for the richer teams in New York and Boston. Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) the GM of Oakland is forced to rebuild his team yet again. Only this year he gets fed up with trying and failing in the same manner over and over. He is fed up with his scouts and idea men since they continue to toss out the same tired old ideas that have failed his team for the past 10 years. By chance he meets Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill), a young scout for Cleveland who has a degree in economics from Yale. Brand has an idea about a new way to scout for players. Instead of trying to find the same old 5 techniques, that is constantly looked at by scouts. Look instead at a players ability to get on base and score runs. They turn baseball on its side with their idea, and though it takes a while to come together, as we saw in 2002, the Oakland A's actually had some success with this formula.

One thing I liked about this movie is that even though they show some really complex formulas in how to predict a players abilities, they never try to really explain them. I feel doing so would have bogged down the movie. Instead they boil it down to On Base percentage. It makes the movie flow really well. They other great bit is the chemestry between Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. These two literally could not have less in common, but they are dynamite together in this film.

A quick aside, the film uses all the real names of players, coaches, and GM's except for Peter Brand, who is actually, Paul DePodesta. And he went to Harvard, not Yale. Apparently Aaron Sorkin thought that was hilarious.

Space Marine

2011-09-28T10:09:00.004-04:00

So at the beginning of September THQ released the game Space Marine. It came with a decent single player mode and pretty extensive Online play. I bought it on release day for the PS3. It took my a while to get through the single player game. It was a boat load of fun, but a touch shorter then I would have liked. It did set itself up for an expansion or maybe a sequel down the road, with a cliff-hanger ending to the story. All in all the Single player was pretty close to worth the price of the game.

It took me a while to get into the multi-player since the PSN and Space Marine apparently didn't agree with each other off the bat. Thanks to a patch that came through this past weekend (I think) I have been able to get into games very quickly and play to my hearts content.

The Multi-Player has some pretty awesome features. There is a leveling system. Leveling allows you to unlock new armor, weapons, and class upgrades. The Armor is asthetic only. The unlocking weapons and upgrades is where the level differences can rear its ugly head. From levels 1-4 you are stuck with a basic ultra-marine, with a bolter. Once you hit level 4 the Customizer opens up and you can start making your own personal marine, or choose from any of about a dozen pre-set chapters. You also get the ability to select classes, weapons, and perks for your marine. Again, you unlock these as you level up. I made a pretty solid effort to create a Pre-Heresy Death Guard for my Marine, off white armor, gold trim, green should pads and back pack. with a pointey circle and skull in it for the chapter badge. As for my chaos Marine I went for a scheme as close to my Chaos marines minis look, as possible. A dark bone color, with Green Pads, the goal for the chaos was to make it look like the pre-heresy marine was still in his pre-heresy armor, but it just got more chaosified.

PreHeresy Death Guard

This is the chapter badge, they dont have this one, but there is one kind of close.

If I had any photo's of my chaos army they would be here. But I guess I only took photos of my Malifaux.

Its taken me a few days but I have been slowly leveling up and upgrading my weapons. Mostly the bolter as it is my favorite. So, Im telling you the multi-player is very fun, but maybe your worried about how much pain you have to go through to level up while there are all ready people with ridiculous load outs who can kick your butt. Well THQ went ahead and thought of that. Every time you are killed you have the option to return to the game with the same load out as the person who killed you. So the level 41 guy with a Melta-Gun that is kitted out to the nines, will have to deal with you rolling back up on him with the same beefed up melta-gun. It honestly doesn't fully cover the gap between levels, but it does a damn good job helping to close it a bit.

In the end, if you like 3rd person shooters or 40k this game will do no wrong for you. I will say honestly that I think a large part of why I like this game so much as that I really like the 40k universe. So for all you 40k players who dont own this one yet, get off your ass and grab it. Its a solid game.

Final Grade - A
It might be a bit high, but I feel like it earned the grade.

Vicki's and other stuff

2011-09-19T08:34:00.005-04:00

So I picked up the Vicks to go along with the Von Schill crew I got. I've been trying out different list combos and ideas to get the Vicki's working for me. Here is my main example list.

Vickis - 6 Stones
Von Schill
Student of Conflict
Friekorps Librarian
Convict Gun Slinger

This was the base list, I swapped out the Student, Gunslinger, and stone totals. But the Librarian and Schill were always there.

This weekend I wanted to try something new(ish)

Vicki's - 6 Stones
Von Schill
Convict Gun Slinger
2 Ronin

The big problem I was having with the Librarian and Student was that I felt like I was playing down 10 points since they could never really keep up. So I was either slowing myself down to keep them in the game, or leaving them behind. The Ronin seemed to Solve this problem. Looking over the stat line for Ronin I have to wonder why more people aren't going nuts over these ladies. For only 5 stones you Get Melee Expert, Reach 2, 2/3/5 damage, Harmless, Hard to Kill, and a bunch of other crap. I played with the pair of them twice this weekend and even when they died easy I still felt like I got my points worth from them. So Im thinking Ronin are going to have to become a permenant add to my Vicki crews.

I also got in 2 games with the Vickis this Saturday. Here are some quick reports.

Game 1 vs McMourning

This game started out well for me. McM had Slaughter, and I had Destroy the Evidence. Von Schill gunned it to the evidence while McMourning killed his own dogs giving me first blood. We moved up on each other and then right when I thought we were going to engage head on, McMourning and Sebastian ran over and started to wail on Schill. The poor guy had to run like crazy to get away from all the stabbing and cutting. Around turn 5-6 Schill grabbed the last evidence marker and took a shot at McMourning. McMourning paid Schill back by slashing this throat. Unfortunetly for McMourning to this point he had not drawn any decent Crows and had no Flesh Constructs, Also the Vickis and Ronin had done a number of the rest of his crew. So the Convict and the Vickis ran up and cut him down. I ended up losing Eye for an Eye, but I stopped his slaughter and Assassinate on the Vicks giving me a 6-2 win.

Game 2 vs A-Sonnia Criid

At least she wanted to be an Avatar. The Vicki's weren't having any of that. Once again Schill came up to be the sacrificial lamb who got the objective. He snagged the treasure and walked it back a bit. Criid then blasted the crap out of him, along with pretty much every gun in her army. Around turn 3 The Guardian ran up into Melee, Forgetting Ronin ignore armor (did I mention they are only 5 points?) The Roning made quick work of the Guardian. Schill then got shot dead by a witchling. He was done activating at that point, Criid was almost primed to Manifest, but I had the Vickis to go. Sword Vick stepped up, and slashed a Death Marshall, dropping him to 1 wound. Then she grabbed her sister and flung her into the middle of the guild crew. Gun Vick went, and hit Santiago, dropping him to 1 with his hard to kill. She triggered Whirlwind and Killed the Death Marshall. She then hit Santiago again, killing him and whirlwinding into Criid. She did 3 to Criid, and whirlwinded into the last witchling killing that. Turn 4 I won Init and the Vicks took poor Criid down in the flurry of angry hateful stabbing. I did forget the stupid Counter spell BS and lost an action to it as I tried to have Gun Vick sisters in battle. Should have had sword Vicki do it as she was about 6 inches away from Criid. Oh well in the end the Vickis were amazing. Im starting to really love playing them.

Whats that Other Stuff I was talking about in the Title!?!?!?!?

The REDSKINS ARE 2-0 BABY!!! This win wasn't pretty or even overly good, the way it was against New York, but a win is a win, and the Redskins are atop the NFC East for at least 1 week.

Orakpo Owning Kolb

Nova Open

2011-08-30T12:36:00.004-04:00

Just a great photo from the Open. Figured I'd post it up on my blog.

The Awesome people do Hulk Hogan poses

Once more I wanted to give props to Bill for running everything. Looking forward to what ever he has planned next.

NOVA Open Notes

2011-08-29T08:25:00.005-04:00

Im back unscathed by the "Hurricane" I heard it may have only been a tropical storm, but anyway you cut it, on Saturday it was raining a lot... and sideways. This past weekend was the Nova Open and Bill from Dead Tau did an amazing job of keeping the whole thing running smoothly. I played near a dozen games so Im just gonna hit some highlights from the weekend.

30 Stone Gaining Ground Tournament
I did ok in this event. I started with a loss which is always hard to come back from. I lost to Tim, one of the local Huzzah guys, who played a great game with his Lilith Crew (Game highlight was when McMourning's Chihuahua killed Lillith with a Red Joker Dissection). Rounds 2&3 I faced Guild, and Brought Kirai. She was a mean bitch and took both Lady J and Hoffman to school. I won those games with out breaking a sweat 8-2. That catapulted me back into the runnings and I got to face WyrdZee the developer himself for 3rd place. Through some craziness we could have ended up playing for pretty much anywhere from 4th-2nd. But in all likelyhood the winner of our game would be 3rd. And damn did we bring it. We fought through a game where at the end the only survivor was an ice gamin who was standing on near the Claim Jump, giving him a 6-4 win. Very close game, and I nearly pulled it out. That loss saw me plummet from my spot in the top 5 all the way down to 10th.

Mike from White Rabbit won the whole thing and claimed my awesomely painted Von Schill crew. Which I picked up off him since he already had it and I kind of really wanted it.

I ended up heading home after Dinner and didn't play any more games. Saturday I got there bright and early and due to a conversation I had with Mike on our Drive in I bought myslef a Collodi Box Set to go with my Levi Crew. I was planning to grab the Vicks to go with the Schill crew, and wanted some more Outcast options.

No less then 10 minutes later I went down to the Floor to see what was going on for Malifaux. Bill announced the Achievment winner from the day before. I had taken top in faction for the Resserectionits and won... a Collodi Box set! no joke. I laughed it off a bit, but was annoyed with myself for impatience. I ended up trading the box set to Tim who bought me a Vicki box set as trade. Worked well for me.

I played 3 games with my Vicks and Schill, but didn't win any. I had a tremendously close game vs Mike's Dreamer where Chompy and Both Vicks died turn 2. I lost that one 6-4, had Von Schill made his terrifying check vs Chompy bits, I may have been able to pull out a win. Alas he did not, and then we had a very odd game from there. It was a good time though.

I also got in a rematch with Zee. I took Seamus with the Avatar attached vs Sonia Criid. I was able to get a small touch of revenge as Seamus and the Dead Rider pounded his crew into a fine pulp giving me a 7-2 win.

After near a dozen games, a long walk in the pouring rain, and the threat of a hurricane looming over us all day, Mike and I decided to call it a night and headed home. Nova Open was a complete blast though. Im looking forward to some games with my Outcast stuff. Some Levi and Collodi and a few Vicki games should be fun.

Avatars Abound!

2011-08-17T08:33:00.006-04:00

I played 2 games last night. First game Saw Avatar Seamus vs Avatar Zorida. Second was Avatar Kirai vs Avatar Criid. Whats that you say? Battle Report? well if you insist.

GAME 1
Zorida Avatar of Fate

Lists
Zorida, Avatar, Nekima, Lilitu, 3 Tots, 2 Desperate Mercs
Seamus, Avatar, Dead Rider, Crooked Man, 2 Belles, 2 Necro Punks

My first game was against Chris Ward playing what he saw as a very versatile grow list with Zorida. I do not like the grow list personally, I find it too slow. Turn one he made a few mistakes and it cost him a lot of temp. He moved Nekima away from his tots and lost out on some blood. He forgot to have Zorida cast Hex on Lilitu and remove her take damage for not having a bro around. Zorida spent her first turn making a Wicked Doll. I had My crew move up to try and counter his Line in the sand markers. I also sent a Necro Punk to go try and deliver Zorida a message. Turns 1 and 2 saw pretty much no action. He did manage to grow a Mature Nephlim on turn 2.

I killed off a tot and turned him into a Belle. Chris lured that belle into his lines but failed to kill it. Trading a few lures I was able to weaken the Lilitu down a bit and leave her in charge range of the Dead Rider who ran in and took her out. I lost a Necro Punk in a chump battle to a Terror Tot. His Wicked Dolls then lined up against my Crooked man and last Necro Punk. Things didn't go great for me there as Wicked Dolls are nasty in pairs.

Turn 3 He moved the Mature up towards my Line and Nekima killed off the summoned Belle. I lined up my shots on both. THe Dead rider flurried Nekima killing her, and I used No Escape on the Mature with Seamus. I lured the Mature again, charging in with Seamus and killing it with Slit Juggular. Seamus was now ready to manifest.

Turn 4 was pretty much the End. Seamus and Zorida both manifested, but Zorida had no more crew to help back her up. Seamus then Went all sickhouse psycho on Zorida and her crew turning them into a fine pulpy paste. I was able to deliver the message on turn 4 or 5. either way it was too late for full points so I ended up winning 6-0.

Seamus Avatar of Dread

So this game I remembered to keep Seamus in little guy form long enough to deal with the Heavy Hitter. Had Nekima still been around I would not have been afraid to manifest. It was the combo of both her and the Mature that kept me in check. Being able to take them both out in 1 go was just a nice bonus. Only down side here was that Manifesting was piling on an already one sided game. I mentioned to Chris that I think the game could have been a lot different had he gotten his activation order down for turn 1 and been able to grow his tots faster. Also Zorida did nothing but summon wicked dolls for the first 3 turns. made it hard to deliver her a message, but also meant she was pretty well out of the early part of the game. MVP was easily the Dead Rider. He was a wrecking machine took down a Tot, Lilitu, and Nekima.

Game MVP

GAME 2

Sonnia Avatar of lighting crap on fire

Lists
Sonnia, Avatar, Executioner, Guardian, 2 Guild Hounds, Witchling Stalker, Desperate Merc
Kirai, Avatar, 5 Seishin, Lost Love, Datsue-Ba, 2 Gaki, Insideous Madness

So Bill also had a grow list of sorts (still not a fan) He took the Desperate Merc in order to turn into a cheaper witchling stalker. Problem is Criid needs a (0) action to get a free book to cast that spell, but her (0) action is also needed for a manifest requirement. It set his burninating back a bit. Turn 1 Kirai summons her self down to 1 wound. Then Datsue-Ba wacks her, turning her into a spirit off the lost love. (i need to be a spirit for 2 turns to manifest) We engaged a 2 Dogs with a Summoned Gaki and Ikiryo. Ikiryo needs to kill 2 models as my other manifest requirment so I try to kill some dogs. little bastards are tougher then I thought, plus I black Joker a damage flip and they live. I win init turn 2, and Ikiryo pops a dog, then I go for the second, do 3 damage, and then black joker AGAIN... jerk ass joker!

The Exectioner and Guardian pop into the fray and Ikiryo dies. I summon a new ikiryo, place him, Datsue-ba, and the Insideous near the executioner and whoop him up... Then he attacks back with Slow to Die and triggers Decapitate on Datsue-Ba, and I only have 1 card in hand. So instead of killing his 7point model, I lose mine, big time turn around.

Ikiryo then kills off the Guardian, completing my manifest requirements. we trade a few more blows, and by this point there are a ton of corpse counters on the board. Criid blasts into the melee, but only hits my dudes. She then turns the insideous into a Witchling.

Kirai goes, pops into the combat and manifests. She then kills the Executioner and shrugs off his std attack. I realise at this point that I am going to regret avatar Kirai. I have her, 2 Gaki and some Seishin. Not as many models as I would like to have. Criid Manifests, and kills 1 Gaki (I let it die to get another Seishin) She also Drops a Flame Pyre on Kirai and kills 2 more Seishin. I run a Gaki into his Witchling Stalker who propmtly kills it off. This triggers Kirai's Mark of Vengeance and she busts out of the Pyre and wacks the Stalker, the stalker then flees from her Terrifying, into the Prye, and dies (im in good shape I think at this point.)

A Seishin gives Kirai +2CB and she attacks Criid. I hit 3/4 attacks, and on the last 1 I flip a double Severe Damage on a negative flip to kill her. We called it there, but in hind sight It was a really close game and he still had a shot since I hadn't touched his supply Wagon yet. I think the game would have ended 8-4, but who knows.

Kirai Avatar of Vengeance / Game MVP

It was a pretty wild game with a lot of back and forth. I think Manifesting was a big mistake for Kirai here. Her normal ability to sit back, summon, heal, and swap spirits around likely would have done me more good. Either way the Lovely lady gets MVP, since once I manifested she had to do all the heavy lifting (killed Executioner, Witchling, Criid, and made 2 witchlings flee from combat.) A-Criid is a MONSTER, holy cow, She barely got to do anything and I though I had no chance against her. 3 auto damage from a Pyre moving on to you, then another 3 when you start your turn. Plus her 8' pulse that does 2 more damge, means she can really throw out some hateful damage. Plus what ever the hell else she does. She does scare me quiet a bit.

A-Seamus Tactics

2011-08-15T08:55:00.005-04:00

I know I just posted this pic, but what can I say I really like this model

Im not an expert with the big guy yet, but I played 2 games with him over the past weekend where he died pretty quick, and I learned a few things about what not to do.

Both A&R Seamus can be killed. It may sound odd, but when you look at the Seamus' they are both VERY tough, but unlike a the Neverborn masters who don't have nearly his toughness, he has no tricks to stay alive. Once an enemy starts pounding on Seamus all his nice toughness tricks fly out the window. So step 1 is protect him. When you plan to Manifest, here are your top 3 ways to keep him alive.

#1 Keep him out of melee pre manifest. Its tough since his crappy manifest requirment needs him to get into Melee.
#2 Kill your opponents top hitter. If there is a Lelu, Joss, Peacekeeper, or something similar on the board it has to die before you Pop out the big guy. those kinds of hitters will shred A-Seamus.
#3 Once manifested keep him in melee. Drop him in the Center of your opponets crew and keep him with Armor 2. Then you can start punching or Howling depending on what your facing.

Dont underestimate his Anathema ability. Requiring every model who comes at him to take a terrify check is sweet. Its probably his best defense. I would not manifest him against certain opponents, such as Pandora since his Wp drop is massive, so against foes to target WP often keep him in the Regular Form. Otherwise feel free to use Succumb to Darkness at least 1 time. Your WP will drop to 3, so NEVER USE THIS VS DREAMER! But your Anathema jumping to a solid 15 means the average model needs to burn a double digit card just to fight you. Swarm attackers such as Marionettes and Malifaux Rats are very likely to head for the hills the second they have to test vs his 15.

A nice thing about A-Seamus is he has 2 strong focus' He can either hit you with his 3' reach fists, or start a WP frenzy. Against living crews I might Bellow every turn just to make them pitch a lot of cards. And he can always fall back on the whole Punching thing if they flip really well. Im hoping I can really take advantage of his flexability in the future to have better results.

Those are the big things I have at the moment for him. I feel like if I can get a solid handle his Manifesting and when to focus on punching or bellowing I should be able to turn A-Seamus into a serious winner.

A-Seamus Complete

2011-08-08T17:49:00.003-04:00

So I get pretty wrapped up in my painting and often forget to stop here and there and take the WIP pics. I didn't realize I had forgotten until I was getting ready to paint his base up. My bad. He took almost 3 hours. Which is far more then I usually take to paint a single mini. I think he looks pretty sweet though. Enjoy.

I have to paint a commission gig that I need to knock out next, but after that Im thinking Alt Seamus will be up, Im going to do him in a scheme to match A-Seamus.

Avatar Seamus wip

2011-08-08T09:31:00.002-04:00

So Im really excited for Avatar Seamus. Like wasn't able to sleep till 1am yesterday becasue I got A-Seamus around 12:15 and wasn't gonna sleep till he was assembled excited.

So im gonna try and take some wip pics of him and keep this going until he is fully painted.

Gen Con

2011-08-03T11:34:00.003-04:00

So for the first time in 4 years I will not be making the trip out to Indianapolis for Gen Con. And I gotta say its a bit depressing to me. I've gone 5 of the last 6 years. And the one time I missed it didn't really bother me that much, I guess its becasue I was less of a gamer then, or something. But last night as I went to sleep I looked at my clock and thought, if I were going to Gen Con I would be setting you for 4:30am, and be unable to sleep like at all tonight. Then I got bitter, especially seeing all my friends Facebook updates such as; "Getting Car Packed for Gen Con" etc. Anyways I think I had a point in here and lost it.

I really love Gen Con, its my favorite trip every year. This year Im getting Married and my Vacation and money are tied up in a 2 week trip to Hawaii. Now if you ask me any other day then Today and probably tomorrow which I would rather do hawaii would win no contest hands down. The problem is Hawaii is still 2 months away, and Gen Con officially starts tomorrow. Again Im pretty sure I had a point in here. Or maybe I just wanted to bitch and ramble about how it sucks for me that I'm not going to Gen Con.

Anyways, Best of Luck to all my friends who will be going. Some of them are going for the first time and it really is an Awesome experience.

Josh, Ryan, and Ryan's Roomates will all be playing in the L5R Tourney, so good luck to them, maybe Josh will finally not choke away a tourney win.

Bill and Dixon are going to be playing in the Master of Malifaux 40 stone event. I really hope of them manages a win there, but I think there were too many question marks about their lists and faction choices that could really disrupt their chances. But Best of luck you guys as well.

As for me, I am really looking forward to going again Next year, with my lovely soon-to-be Wife, Mike, and his Wife. Should be a blast.

(That Gen Con Banner was on page 3 of a google image search for Gen Con. pages 1&2 are pretty much girls in skimpy outfits... Click here

Hell Dorado

2011-07-25T08:36:00.014-04:00

So after our rather awesome Malifaux league I started feeling a touch burned out on the game. Jumping on the chance to pimp out another obscure mini's game Chris Slazinski pointed out that Hell Dorado would finally be getting an english rule book in the near future. For those who dont know this book was scheduled for release in january 2010. Then again at Gen Con. Then again in Jan 2011, and so on. So I gave the game a test run and thought it was pretty cool. But I wanted the Army book. Well has fate would have it, when they said July 2011 they actually meant it.

(Weird right?)

So a quick overview. Its a skirmish based game. You use 6-10 models per game. The story line goes, that during the 30 years war, gates to hell started to open all over europe. Setting aside their differences the Catholics and Protestants decided to conquer hell.

There are 6 Factions

Westerners - This is the Christians, they are a jack of all trade crew. Decent melee, shooting, and a bit of magic as needed.

Saraceans - This is the Ottoman Empire, Pursians, etc. They actually found a gate to hell about 200 years prior to the Euro's and have been exploring it since. They have a lot of cool prince of persia style guys as well as Djinn.

Demons - Hell's native residence. At first they thought the europeans were comical, but upon seeing the power of the Gun, and a Cavalry charge, they stopped lauging and started killing. Most of the Demon's leaders are Fallen Angels.

The Immortals - These are the Chinese guys. They have been in hell a long time and started becomming half demons themselves.

The Lost - These are Demons with no lord or Angel to control them. They all have various reasons why they have no lord, but all they want is to be free and have land of their own. In a hilarious way, these and the Saraceans are the only good guys.

Last is the Mercs, they work for money, or glory, such as this awesome dude, Don Quixote.

I ended up grabbing the starter box for The Lost. That Centepede dude is just too sweet. I think I rushed into getting a box though, had I really looked everything over I might have chosen Westerners instead. Either way Im happy with the Lost. I took some time over the past week and this weekend and got my lost painted up. I also have them all on Micro Arts Studios Chaos Bases.

Here are the Models I own.

My Current Officer Isha Akshay

The Fangs of the Pit

The Retarius

The Squamata Warriors

So now I'll go ahead and get in a few more games. Then I can come back to it and give a better overview of the game itself.

Armor Cast

2011-07-19T08:28:00.006-04:00

So I've been working on getting enough Sci-Fi-ish terrain to make up a full Infinity Board, and its gone pretty well thus far. Mike Sold me all his 40k buildings for pretty cheap and I had few other odds and Ends, but I wanted some smaller pieced to fill out my board. Enter Armorcast. Their website has a ton of all Resin terrain and I gotta say the stuff looked pretty good. Each piece isn't very expensive, but thats a dangerous part. I had to cut a few things off the list to keep the price down. In the End I had 5 pieces I really Liked.

Shipping Container

Oil Tank

Propane Tank

Oil Barrels

Soda Can Tanks (Put a Soda Can in the pegs, and paint it up. Should look cool)

I was very excited about my purchase choices. I cant remember if this was April or May that I put in my order, but early spring time frame. After 2 weeks and no shipping update or merchandise I began to get a little annoyed. I sent an e-mail to their Customer Service department asking what was going on. I got a response to effect of, "This Spring we have been doing GREAT! As such we're really backed up." And that was it. Another couple weeks roll by and I send another e-mail. After a month I figured they could catch up and send my stuff. Never responded. And like clock work I sent an e-mail every two weeks, and to remain consistant Armor Cast ignored me. Finally last week I sent them a pretty angry E-mail that said, I either wany my product or my money back, and I really dont care which. They still never responded, but I recieved a notice from Pay Pal the next day that my items had shipped.

They arrived yesterday and I have to say the Quality is great. These items will be used in my infinity games regularly, and maybe in No more room in hell too. But I personally wont use Armor cast ever again after this experience.

Two New and Huge Malifaux Models!

2011-07-15T09:18:00.005-04:00

First up the Dead Rider. I realize now maybe I should have done some progress pics or something, but here is the story. I bought him the second he came out yesterday. And wasted pretty much no time, I got home put him together and primed him. Then after bowling I started painting him, this morning I based him and Blamo, he's done!

Next we have Snowstorm. Now I am excited for Snowstorm, but not as excited as I was for the Dead Rider. This is Wyrd's 1st Resin model. I think they did a good job with it too. The Detail is really fantastic, but there was a CRAP load of flash. It took me a good half hour to clean the model. Then I tried to dry fit the arms and there were seriously large gaps. Nothing a ton of green stuff wouldn't cure, but still annoying. I let the GS dry over night, and this morning I finished his assembly. Including Pinning Snow and Storm to their resin base.

TA-DA!!!

Lastly a lot of rumors had been floating around about the size of Snowstorm. So I took a side by side of my two new Giants. The Dead Rider is the same size as the Hooded Rider, just less bulky. Snowstorm is right there with them, even on the resin base. Its a pretty big model, just not close to Nightmare Chompy big.

Candy

2011-07-01T08:55:00.003-04:00

To finish off the crew I posted yesterday, here is Candy. The little girl with a basket of candy and big ass pair of scissors.

New Crew... I think

2011-06-30T08:20:00.007-04:00

So I needed to paint up a boxset for the Malifaux Achievment League. Problem is I already own every box set I actually want. So I was trying to find some one to pay me to paint theirs. That fell through so with the league winding down I figured I needed to jump on it. I looked at Huzzah's stock and finally went with Pandora. Her box had a few things going for it.

1. It was there
2. It was the cheapest one I didn't own
3. I want to paint the creepy kids.

So Yesterday Before work I glued the models together. Then when I had to come back home from work since I left my wallet and ID badge at home (grumble) I decided may as well prime the crew too, only took about 5 minutes. Then I got home from work and knocked out the three Sorrows and Baby Kade. Then before I went to bed I also cranked out Pandora. So only Candy remains unpainted.

Pics!

Sorrows:

Baby Kade

Pandora

The big question I've been trying to decide on is do I actually play Pandora, or just paint her up and sell her. If I play her Im gonna end up buying a pack of Stich Together and the Twins. Thats an extra $36. Also Im going to get a proxy model for the Primordial magic. I really hate the puking snake so there is 0 chance I will pick that thing up. I even found my proxy choice.

So what does everyone else think? Should I join the dark side and play not only my most hated foe the Neverborn, but my most hated of the Neverborn Pandora?

Painted

2011-06-10T15:54:00.001-04:00

My ressers are all painted. Done!

Pics likely by Monday

Malifaux Painting Frenzy

2011-06-09T08:33:00.006-04:00

So I have been pretty diligent in my desire to knock out my ressers and have the whole crew painted up and ready to go. I still have the same 3 models to paint I had last time I posted, something about them is either daunting or uninteresting to me. Cant decide which. Anyways here are the pics of what I've painted in the past few weeks. Some of them are really bad photos, my camera was being a douche and I got lazy.

Kirai's Lost Love, her poor dead boyfriend turned totem.

Nico's Mindless Zombies. Im gonna be honest they look like crap. But they are done, so Im kind of ok with it.

The Crooked Men are less new, but I was waiting until I wanted to really use them to paint them up. Now they will likely be in the majority of my Seamus and Nico lists.

The Guild Autopsies are Brand New, as in I've had them for less then 3 days new.

Painting Update

2011-06-02T08:03:00.002-04:00

So i've been working pretty diligently to get my ressers completely off my paint table and over the past week i have done a lot of work towards that goal.

I painted up all 3 Crooked Men and Yesterday I knocked out the 6 Mindless Zombies. (Pics tomorrow... maybe)

I also looked back over my Crew and realizes I had missed a Rotten Belle and a Hanged Man when I fist wrote up a list of what I had to paint.

Current List:
Shikome
Rotten Belle
3 Nurses
1 Hanged

Hanged are 8 points. I dont take 2, Nurses I dont really take period. So with that in mind I have decided that there are a few models I can take out of my case and never really notice they are gone. As Such here is how my paint table is looking

Table:
Shikome
Rotten Belle
Miss Pack (1 nurse)

Then I'll have a pretty much fully painted Resser crew. Im hoping to knock these last 3 models out before the Guild Autopsies release.

Way too many game reports

2011-06-01T08:00:00.006-04:00

So this past weekend I went to Bill's 2'fer Malifaux tournaments.

First up Single Elim 35 stone competative primer

I got matched up with Mike round 1. Not ideal since I was more looking to meet him in the Finals, but alas sometimes things fall that way.

I pulled Destroy the Evidence and he Pulled Claim Jump. We had schemes and such, but they didn't really come into play.

My List - Marcus, Jackalope, Cerberus, Rattler, Shikome, Waldegiest, Moleman
Mike's List - Pandora, Primordal Magic, 2 Lilu, 2 Lilitum, Insideous Madness

Here are the Highlights. Marcus howled up and ran into pandora, but was unable to kill her. The 4 twins went next and killed off Marcus. I took a gamble and it didn't pay off. I should have been more conservative with him, that was a pretty big mistake. It also didnt help that the highest card I drew in 3 turns was an 8. So I lost and was eliminated. Mike ended up winning the event with Pandora.

Loser Tournament - or maybe noobie tournament. what ever. I wasnt going to join in, but there was an odd number of people in the tournament so I decided to play. I didn't want to play my stuff in a tournament for Noobies so I took Lucius. I have only ever faced Lucius 1 time before this tourney so I figured I counted as a noob with him.

Highlights!

Round 1 vs Vickis
I stumbled through round 1 a bit, but things went pretty well for me. The Guard Captain was a star and killed off a fewI ended up having to kill off 3 Vicki's as Jay spawned an extra. Turn 6 was a close one, had he won init, there is a good chance Jay would have won the whole game. I won though and killed off the Gun Vicki before she could activate giving me an 8-0 win.

Round 2 vs Lilith
This was a tough game. I pulled Shared Slaughter against a Nephlim list. We basically beat the crap out of each other and Ended up with Lilith and a single Guardsman alive at the end. He won the game 6-2

Round 3 vs Colette
I basically whomped Colette into Dust. Her best moves came when she used dissapearing act like 10 times. She wasn't killing my dudes, but she was removing them before they could hit her. Eventually after killing her like 15 times she stayed dead. I won this one 8-3 maybe it was 3, can't remember.

So I 2nd. Bryan who took the Lilith list took 1st, but it was a DAMN close event. I had more total VP's by 1. He had more Tournament points by 1. Our differential was in my favor by like 2 points. It was pretty cool to be that close.

I also played 3 games this past Tuesday. HIGHLIGHTS!!!!!!

Game 1 - McMourning vs Lady J.
I sent a ton of crap after Lady J, but good lord she wouldn't die. She riposted like 4 guys dead. and killed 2 Flesh Golems. In the end I was able to keep Lady J paralyzed for 2 full turns and keep her off the objectives. It was still a very close game, but I won 8-6

Game 2 - Seamus vs Lady J
This was my first time facing Brian so I was excited about it. The Ortegas killed the crap out of my crew, Seamus had to resummon the Belles a few times. The game was close until Seamus took a focused shot at Perdita. I cheated and stoned the flip into a 30. I cheated in the red joker for damage and killed her off. This game went REALLY long into turn 8 and all that, but I eventually pulled out a 6-2 win.

Game 3 - Nico vs La Croix
Nico did some crazy damage and killed off quite a few Gremlins, but eventually fell to the numerous attacks the Gremlins put into him. I had reconoiter so my Gun Slinger and a Crookedman hid from the Gremlins and held their board corners. Nico summoned a Flesh Golem before he died and it killed off the last few Gremlins on the board. A nice and close game overall, but I took it 6-2.

Finishing my Malifaux painting

2011-05-25T09:03:00.003-04:00

So I've been working on painting up my stuff at a pace that suits me. I generally wait until I need a model for a game, or I use it in one and am impressed by it before I paint it. This has done very well for about 90% of my dudes. I just went through and complied a list of the models I have left to paint. There are 22 in total, spread across 4 factions. Im going to try and regiment myself to get these painted up. (I also have a commision job that I dont want to do, but I accepted because im a pussy, the commision job adds a lot of models and I dont want to think about it right now)

Ressers
3 Crooked Men
Lost Love
3 Nurses
6 Mindless Zombies

I might only end up painting Miss Pack from the nurses. I never realy use them and I dont see the need to paint up the other 2 nurses when I wont use them.

Archanists
Ice Gamin
2 Spiders
Hoar Cat
Electrial Creation
Steamborg abomination.

I dont do a fantastic job with my archanists. They are usually just looking for table top ready. These 6 models will get paint likely in this order after I finish my ressers. There is a chance the Ice Gamin never gets painted. I hate his pose, and I dont want to give him a resin base.

Outcasts
Desolation engine

This is my sole unpainted outcast model. Finishing it means a finished Levi crew. there is a lot of incentive here.

Guild
Papa Loco
Austringer

There is very litle incentive here. I haven't played my guild in a very long time, and I dont like them as much as my other crews. Still for completeness I might get to these two.

So thats my general order for which I want to paint things. We'll see how it goes as I also sprinkle in my commision work inbetween

Pic Heavy Post

2011-05-18T08:15:00.003-04:00

realizing that i have very few Infinity models I decided the best plan would be to paint them up quick so I wouldn't have to worry about them anymore. It seemed to work out, since I have painted all but 1 of them. I will see if I can knock him out today or tomorrow.

Here are the pics of the rest of the crew.

Wulver

Wulver

Wulver

Uxia

Highlander Gray

SAS

Grenade Launcher

Highlander Gray

William Wallace

Caledonian Crew

Infinity Battle Report

2011-05-16T07:58:00.008-04:00

So this might be a bit shoddy since Im still learning the game. I'll try to explain this as best as I can.

Chris came over early on Saturday and we got in a pair of Infinity games.

Game 1 200 points Caledonian's vs Nomads.

(On an awesome note, my 200 point list is fully painted. Pics soon, I just keep forgetting to take them)

Chris was testing a list with Remotes, which as I came to understand are robot walkers with big ass guns. We drew similar missions. We both had to destroy each others points, protect our own and get off to our extraction points.

This is a the first game I've played with proper terrain. We had a mix of AT-43 and Warhammer 40k Buildings. with a half dozen sandbag walls thrown in. It made for a damn cool battlefield with tons of cover and not a lot of huge firing lanes.

I deployed first and ran my guys up into cover. I sent my Heavy Machine Gunner up to a crows nest type area to get a decent spread of cover on the board. The rest of my crew stayed on the ground and moved towards my objective markers.

Chris went next and used the majority of his orders on activating his Remotes. I traded shots with one and my machine gunner, but eventually lost out and my Gunner was killed. That was pretty much all the action turn 1.

On turn 2 I was able to work my Linked team of Volunteers and Uxia, my stealth recon chick into place to hit 2 of his objective points. I destroyed them and was feeling pretty good. I also took a popshot at the Remote with my Volunteers and managed to kill the damn thing. Turn 2 wasn't as good for him. He did get his stealth guys moving towards my markers.

Turn 3 My Wulver took out the 3rd objective and I had completed my primary mission. He was very close to my markers and I doubted I could hold him off from taking them so I started booking my whole crew to my extraction zone. He killed off my SAS, a lesser stealth recon guy. I was sad to lose him, especially since he was very close to the extraction zone. He also blew up his last objective points, completing his primary goal.

Turn 4 The Wulver dropped his second remote as he ran for the exit. Uxia tried to engage a stealthed marker, but it turned out it was less of a guy, and more like a landmine. so she bit it too. My link team and my Lt. were both in good cover very close to the exit zone. The Wulver was a step behind. On Chris' turn he got one of his guys to the extracion zone and was clear.

Turn 5 My Lt. threw a smoke grenade to cover the escape, my Link team and the LT. booked it full speed to the exit zone. they took some fire along the way but lived and were extracted. My Wulver ran next but was a bit behind them. He caught a lot of fire and didn't make it to the end. Chris' guys were too far back in his zone to make his extraction point so we called it there. We both got our primary objectives, Our denial objectives were to protect our points. we both failed pretty badly. And our secondary objective was to get to the extraction zone. I did with 5 models, he got 1. so I pulled what is likely a minor win. It was a lot of fun. And a really good game with all the terrain on the board.

We played another 300 point game. But I dont really feel like I can describe what happened overly well. It was a pretty brutal game. I think we both had 11 guys start the game and only 2 each left alive at the end. He won that game getting his primary and seconday to me only getting my primary. The big highlights were when he dropped in a para-trooper right on the back edge of my board and it killed off like 3 of my models from behind even as he died. Then when my 3 man Wulver link team charged into a 5 man hassassin destroyer squad. I lost 2 wulvers on the charge, but still killed 3 destroyers and another model who came in to try and get the wulver away. It was pretty badass.

Infinity Models painted for realz

2011-05-13T12:42:00.003-04:00

So I've had these guys for a while and no real desire to paint them. But now im getting an itch to play with them and that usually means I have an itch to paint them. Main goal for this crew is to get decent table top quality with minimal effort in the painting process. It seems to have worked. As I painted these three in like an hour.

So here they are. These are essentially my "core" choice dudes. They are weak and cheap, but when they fire together are actually pretty impressive

New Look same Awesome Content

2011-05-11T14:25:00.002-04:00

So I went ahead with the new look afterall for my 200th post. I had gotten a little tired of the green on green on green. Hope you guys like it. If its at all hard to read let me know so I can fix it.

Colette and Zorida have a Tea Party

2011-05-10T14:12:00.003-04:00

Or maybe Mike and I played a game.

So 35 stone scrap between the Lovely Ms. Du Bois and the Uggo Zorida.

LISTS!
Colette 7 Stones, 1 Dove, Cassandra, 1 Performer + Mannequin, 2 Coryphee
Zorida 6ish Stones, 1 Mature Nephlim, 3 Slurids, 3 Terror Tots.

He got Line in the sand for his mission, which he backed up with Kidnap and Bodyguard
I got Plant the Evidence to which I added Kill Protege and Sabotage.

Turn 1:
Mosty a lot of moving to start. Cassandra started at the very edge of my deployment zone and was able to get to a building and Plant some evidence proving that Zorida was actually way uglier then advertised. His tots and Slurids hauled major ass up the board and were very close to several of the Dynamite Markers. My Coryphee Duet'ed and hit 1 tot 1 time for 2 damage. Colette then Jumped into range of a Slurid and dropped it with magicans duel.

Turn 2:
A bunch of craziness happened here, In no clear order. The Duet killed a Tot. Zorida dropped Poison on the Duet with her Vodoo Doll. Colette got hit 1 time by a Slurid, jump away and left it there with no one to attack. She then jumped back and killed both Slurids, she also made a new dove. Both Doves failed to hit the Vodoo Doll with Magician's duels. Cassandra moved into the next building and planted more evidence. The Mature charged into my Duet but I was able to protect it with good cheats.

Turn 3:
Mike won Init and the Mature attacked the Coryphee his hand must have sucked becasue my 7-8 flips were stopping him in his tracks. Then on his final shot I flipped a Black Joker. He did 6 damage dropping me to 2, with Poison 2 still on them. Cassandra went and tagged another building. The Tots started lighting Dynamite. Zorida obeyed the Mature to hit the Duet again but it missed, so Zorida turned into a Bird a flew away. This turn I had drawn a really sick hand. I had the Red Joker and a 13 of Tomes in hand. So I figured 2 solid shots at a disapearing act better go for it. Colette went, jumped in, and cast disapearing act, I cheated the 13, and stoned for the 12 of Tomes. Destroying the Mature Nephlim outright. We then called it there.

Things went really well for me on that turn. It allowed me to have a shot at saving the Duet (Would have tried to heal it with my Mannequins) and drop the Mature.

To this point I can only recall 1 loss with Colette. She seems to like me as much as I like her. (Also I finished painting and basing her whole crew, and it look awesome)

200!!!

2011-05-09T09:43:00.004-04:00

Without realising it I just hit 200 posts on my blog. I had a big plan to do a re-vamp of the blog set up, but It turned out to be a lot more work then I remember when I did it the first time. So I'm thinking a small change might be in order here. Or not.

Anways thanks to those who read it, and I promise I will pretty much carry on in the manner I have to this point. Sarcasm, witty photos (I know those are a new thing im doing but they make me laugh), and pics of Models I paint, etc. Heres hoping I keep my attention going for another 100.

Stylish Blogger Award

2011-05-09T08:11:00.002-04:00

So I'll start this off by thanking Jay over at Blood and Blades for nominating my Blaggo blag as Stylish. So apparently this thing is kind of a thing. I'll let someone elses words explain that better.

Here are the rules:
-- Thank and link back to the person giving you the award (see above)
-- Share seven things about yourself
-- Select 10-15 blogs who you think deserve this award (10-15? I only read like 4)
-- Contact these bloggers and let them know about the award

So 7 things about me.

1. Im a bit of a joker. Its not like I pull practical jokes, its mostly just smart ass comments, but here and there I have found its tough for me to reign it in and be serious.

2. I can be extremely competative and I really dislike losing.

3. I was diagnosed with ADD, but don't actually think its a real disorder. For me it was just an excuse to be lazy in High School.

4. I never grew out of liking toys as a kid, which is probably why I play mini games today.

5. I like 95% of the movies I watch. Even bad ones are generally ok by me, since it allows me to escape reality for a couple hours.

6. I lie over the stupidest things just to keep in practice, in case I need to lie about something real later.

7. I sometimes worry that the people Im with can read my thoughts. yeah thats a wierd one.

So Everyone I would nominate has already been nominated by Jay. But I'll throw up links for their blogs anyways.

Mike - White Rabbit etc
Jay - Blood and Blades
Bill - The Dead Tau
Chris - Truddenia

Those are the only blogs I read. You gotta be elite to make my list son

Keep em goin!

2011-05-06T16:35:00.003-04:00

2 mannequins. Not the best pics ever I know, but my lighting was crappy. Better pics may come later... may not. I like the Yellow one better.

Colette and Co.

2011-05-06T08:57:00.002-04:00

I've been doing some work on the Show Girls lately as I try to finish off my Archanists (They are way closer then my Ressers)

So here we have the Lady herself

Miss Du Bois

Her Magical Mechanical Doves:

And a lovely Performer

Dan's Draft Coverage

2011-05-02T09:23:00.007-04:00

I spent a lot of time this past weekend watching the draft and looking over what the Skins were doing. I'll take you through my thoughts on the picks as well as the trades we made.

1st round - The Skins had the 10th overal selection and traded it to Jacksonville. At the time I was pretty angry since Blaine Gabbert was available and the Redskins seriously need a QB. We instead dropped down grabbed another 2nd round pick and took Purdue DE/OLB, Ryan Kerigan. I have done a lot of reading on this guy and from what I have gathered he is a slightly less talented Brian Orakpo. But has a none-stop motor, is a damn smart guy (Academic All American), a penchant for stripping QB's, and a fantastic work ethic. This is a huge pick up for the skins since it means we will have solid bookend line backers to rush the passer. And he should help aleviate some of the Double Teams Orakpo was getting. To highlight how important a pass rusher is for the Skins, Outside of Orakpo no other player put up more than 2.5 sacks.

2nd Round - 41st overal pick the Skins went with another Defensive player, Jarvis Jenkins. He played tackle for Clemson, and should be a solid run-stopper up front. His pass rush is mediocre, but from what I gather he is a Huge Dude who should stuff the run and play a real strong End in our brand new 3-4 Defense. There seems to be a chance he could play the Nose for us, but I think he is a more natural end.

We then traded the 2nd rounder we got from Jacksonville for a later 2nd rounder as well as a 4th round pick. We then traded that 2nd rounder for a 3rd and 5th round pick. Big props to Shanahan for turning our 1st pick into a 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th.

3rd Round - Again trading down and down to bolster our picks in this draft the Redskins finnaly made a move at 79th overal taking Miami Wide Out Leonard Hankerson. He is 6'1 and has a good burst to create seperation. His route running seems to be an issue, but the hope is they can teach him that. Lets hope that goes better then it did with Devon Thomas. If this guy pans out he will be a true #1 reciever.

4th Round - So after trading down to hoard 5th round picks (we had 4) Shanahan made a move to go up and get himself a bargan bin RB to post up 1,000 yards next year. Trading our 4th, and 2 5th round picks for a higher 4th and a 6th. This trade allowed us to select Roy Helu from Nebraska. He is a strong 1 cut back (Means he makes 1 cut before he turns upfield and tries for a gain) which is the perfect style for Shanahan's Zone Blocking. Im not kidding when I say this guy should easily post a thousand yards, Shanahan does it constantly with late round backs. And if not they get tossed on IR and the next guy steps up!

5th Round - Redskins have 2 picks taking Saftey Dejon Gomes & WR Niles Paul from Nebraska completing our 4th and 5th round sweep of Cornhuskers. Paul might be a steal, as he has a little bit of a Devin Hester/Reggie Bush Quality. His advantage on those two is that he is naturally a WR and has played the position a long time. His downside is that he doesn't have great hands, but that can be worked on. Gomes will be a special teams guy and reserve safety.

6th Round - Aldrick Robinson WR from Southern Methodist, is a small speedy guy. not sure how he will fit, but does add another offensive weapon. Evan Royster RB Penn State is another solid 1 cut RB. He could see work as a 3rd down specialist, or could fight Torain and Helu for the #1 spot. We could also see a 3 Back roatation with all of them getting carries and Shanahan just going with the hot hand.

7th Round - Brandyn Thompson CB Boise State, Not the best CB out there hence his 7th round pick, but a solid player, could see work in nickle or dime packages and special teams use. Maurice Hurt OG Florida, good solid reserve interior linemen, unlikely he will ever start w/o injuries, but adds depth and thats nice. Markus White, DE/OLB Florida State another solid reserve player could help on pass rush situations and special teams. Won't ever start over Kerrigan and Orakpo. And our last guy Christopher Nield, DT West Virginia. This guy is interesting. He could have easily gone undrafted, 2nd to last player picked. But from what I read with a little polish this dude could be a solid starting NT in the NFL. We'll have to keep and eye on him and see how he does.

So in 7 rounds the Skins went into the day with 8 draft picks, through Shanahan's wheeling and dealing we got 12 players. A few of them will look to make an instant impact on this team. I kind of love this draft. we had the chance to grab gabbert and passed on him, which I like since it means the Skins are looking to set up the rest of the team and then place the QB in, much like Atlanta, Baltimore, and NYJ did. Its worked well for them, other teams have thrown a new QB into the fire with no help, such as the Redskins with Jason Cambell, no one will ever know how different life would have been had he had addequite help around him. Still we need a QB for 2011, and Im not sure how I feel about Sexy Rexy and John Beck.

Now we're rolling!

2011-04-29T09:11:00.002-04:00

Got the Shikome painted up, which is great since she is a star for both my Kirai and Marcus crews. Base still needs drybrush and flock, but the bird lady is done.... and a really wierd f-ing model. She has like blocks in her boobs. they came out strange I guess. Part of my wishes I had just kept them blue. Oh well, enjoy the strange birdy boob lady.

Von Schill

2011-04-28T08:15:00.005-04:00

The wiley germanish Merc comes to give Raspy the heavy hitter she so desperatly needs!

Yeah, he didnt have a fantastic showing against Hamelin, but I like him with Raspy, so he needed some paint, and thats exactly what he got! Also i fixed his eyes, but my camera did not want to cooperate this morning so I just threw up the cross-eyed pic.

Couple of Battle Reports

2011-04-27T08:14:00.010-04:00

Its been a while since I played a regular game of Malifaux, and finally last night I was able to get in 2 games. Im still working out the kinks of the Archanists, but they had a good showing last night. Lets dive right in.

Game 1 Marcus vs Hoffman (Aka The Hoff)
My List: Marcus, Jackalope, Shikome, Sabertooth Cerberus, Razor Spine Rattler, 2 Hoar Cats
His List: The Hoff, Guardian, Watcher, Hunter, Peacekeeper, Ryle

My Missions: Reconnoiter(Basically Board Quarters) with Sabotage and Kill Protege
His Missions: Destroy the Evidence with Break Through and Stake a Claim

I was very nervous about the Match up. One of Hoff's best abilities is getting his army armored up and having an unkillable ball rolling through your army. I know Marcus' crew can do decent damage but I was worried about being able to damage his guys with their high armor, plus Marcus' crews generally have poor survivability.

Turn 1: I made his Peacekeeper (My Protege Target) my Shikome's Prey. I started trying to save certain activations for later in the turn so that I could go for a long strike on some of his more forward constructs. My Hoar Cats ran off on their own flank alone to cover one of the evidence markers. My plan to out activate him ended up working and His Peacekeeper was moved up to the front of his lines. I charged in with My Rattler and cheated in a Crow on my attack in order to poison it. My 2nd attack did decent damage but triggered the rattlers ability to retreat. Marcus followed it up with a charge of his own and did really solid damage, dropping the Peacekeeper to 2 wounds remaining with Poison 2. I was quite pleased with myself, so I used Marus' last action to back out of melee with the big beast.

Turn 2: This is where things got Wonky for me. I started with the Shikome and had her spend her whole turn re-preying onto Ryle. I figured with the peacekeeper all but dead it was a good move. John went with the Guardian and had it cast Protect on the peacekeeper, meaning any wounds the PK would take the Guardian could take for it. I was worried now since the Poison wouldn't be killing off the giant machine as I had hoped. I sent in the Jackalope right into base with the peacekeeper and smacked it for a few damage, which John shunted to the Guardian. The PK went next, waxed my little Rabbit and lumbered over to my Cerberus, he then slapped the poor Cat down to half life, knocking off his extra Heads. My Rattler went next and Charged the Hoff. I Poisoned him and since the Guardian had stalwart up I did a little damage to them both. The Rattler once again got his lighting trigger on his 2nd attack and ran away. Ryle took offense to his brother being bit by a huge snake and put a pounding into my Rattler with his gun. Marcus went next and finally put enough of a strike into the PK that John felt it would be best to just let it fall. Hoffman took a heal flip and healed 3.

Turn 3: This turn is a little fuzzy, I remember what happened but the Order is all messed up. So this may not make a ton of sense. My Rattler ran in again and damaged The Hoff a bit, but I couldn't run away from the fight after wards. Ryle went and killed off my snake. He tried to shoot my Cerberus, but I prevented the hit with high cheats. The Hoff went and told Ryle to activate again. Ryle did and dropped my Cerberus to 1 wound. I tried to run the Cerberus away from everything but It ended too close to the Watcher who used a focus Range attack to kill it. My Shikome ran into Ryle and gave him a beating, she then gave Marcus Hunting Partner and he charged into Ryle and Finished him off. Marcus then Ran back towards the Evidence marker in my deployment Zone. The Guardian made a heal flip and got a red joker healin 7 wounds. I was less than pleased. The Hoff also healed and got another 3 wounds back. The Hunter ran towards my deployment zone and dragged Hoffman with him. Engaging Marcus.

Turn 4: John won Init and started with the Hoff. He stole the Ambush ability from his hunter, grabed one of its AP to become Fast and started smacking Marcus. It was rough, I had no idea Hoff was so good in Melee. I burned 3 stones to stay alive, but Marcus was left with 2 wounds. I activated Marcus immediately and Put The Hoff down. I breathed a sigh of relief having killed off John's master. The Guardian went and traded blows with my Shikome, she managed to Poison him. John's Watcher flew up and got in place to take the Objective marker in my deployment zone, and one of my Hoarcats moved in and sabotaged the building I needed for my Scheme. At this point I was up 4-0 in points. He was contesting 2 of the 3 board Quarters I had models in, but I had completed both my Schemes.

Turn 5: I won Init this turn and it was a pretty good thing I did. Marcus was in rough Shape and Hunters get + atk and dmg flips against models who haven't activated. Marcus Beasted up and went to town on the Hunter. John went next with the Guardian and did some more hits to teh Shikome dropping her to 2-3 wounds. The Shikome swung back and using Maul, I was able to get some good damage flips and drop the Guardian to 1 wound w/ poison. The Watcher flew into my deployment zone and grabbed his last point. At the end of turn 5 I was controlling 2 board quarters. The watcher was him a serious favor though as it was holding both his schemes and had gotten him 2 vps. At the end of 5 it was 6-6.

Turn 6: A very short turn, Marcus charged into the Watcher and slapped it around. His last model, the Guardian Died immediately from Poison and the game was over. 8-2 victory for Marcus.

Im getting Better with Marcus as I play him more. Im still not good enough to compete with the Top Players with their top Crews. John was playing Hoffman for the 2nd time, had he been playing his ressers or archanists I think the game would have got much differently. I am pleased with the Beasts though, Im not sure how much I like the Hoar Cats, they can be very good, and most time people ignore them so they can go grab objectives. Im just not sure they are worth the points I spend on them.

MVP: Easy Choice the Big Man himself Marcus! He killed Hoffman, the Watcher, The Peacekeeper, Ryle, and the Hunter... HOLY CRAP!!!

(Pic totally shanghaied from Wrabbit37 aka Mike, who actually painted most of my Marcus crew)

Alrighty Game 2.

This one will have less of a report and more of a summary. Im pretty sure there will be a full report of it later on Wrabbit37's Blog

Raspy with 7 Stones, Spirit of Power, Von Schill 2 Silent Ones and 2 Ice Gamin
Hamelin with 4 Stones, Obenient Wretch, 4 Rats, 3 Stolen, Nix, and 1 Rat Catcher

I unfortunetly got the Mission, kill Hamelin dead. He got Plant the Evidence. I knew from the get go this would be an uphill battle. Basically I put his army through an enourmous ass whupping, killing off about a dozen Rats, 4-6 Stolen, 2 Rat Catchers, Nix, and Hamelin. He Killed off 1 Silent One, I killed one of my gamin, and he obeyed Von Schill to kill off the other Silent One. Despite the serious beating my army gave his I was unable to get to Hamelin for a permanent Kill. I lost the game 8-2 (Should have been 8-4, but I misplaced Von Schill on turn 6 and he blocked my Gamin from getting to the point I had chosen for Sabotage.) It was a good game. But a frustrating Mission. Even with the Loss Raspy was a death machine and did most of the Killing on her own.

Homefront

2011-04-15T09:00:00.003-04:00

I beat homefront's single player yesterday. And it was pretty disapointing. The story was really good (And depressing and disturbing at times) and I was having a ball playing through it, but then it just kind of ended. Only about 3 hours of story to play through. So they decided the best way to compensate for the lack of story is to make sure you die every 5-10 seconds. That extends the game into the 5-10 hour range. Really frustrating.

I would say that its saving grace was meant to be multi-player, but since the controls and weapons are no different from those in Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Black Ops, even that seems like it will end up being kind of pointless.

Its by no means a bad game. Dont get me wrong it is a good bit of fun. But if you already own CoD, THen I think you could pass this game up and not miss anything.

Decided to keep Infamous on the back burner for a little longer. Going back through Dragon Age: Origins right now, as a mage. Never played one before.

Sucker Punch

2011-03-31T08:44:00.004-04:00

So I was expecting a turn off my brain action flick with hot chicks killing things. I got that for about 1/4 of this crap stain of a movie. The rest was some moron trying to make a compelling story about abused Women. See helping out an abused Woman is a story anyone can get behind, unless your a total douche. But this wasn't even really that. It was watch Women fail... My Fiance was more angry then I was after this one, I was mostly amused. either way this movie sucks, dont see it.

If you must see it, I will say that the action scenes are amazing. There are like 4-5 fight scenes and they are awesome. There just aren't enough of them. Too much of the movie is about advancing the "plot" I use the word plot loosely, because its convoluted, unclear, and poorly written. I think they could have done themselves a favor and made this movie better by not having Dialogue...

Also John Hamm was in it... he's awesome.

For those of you who know me, This was worse then Transformers 2... thats saying a lot.

Back to the paints

2011-03-30T08:51:00.004-04:00

Lately I seem to have been on a lazy kick. Well more specifically I had Dragon Age 2 and that was about 10x more fun than painting. Now I have mass effect which is about 8x more fun then painting. But I was still able to pull myself away from the game long enough to get Ryle painted up for my Levi Crew. Im pleased. He looks fantastic and I hit him with the blue I used for my Guild Crew in case I want to throw him in with Perdita (Not Likely he can't alpha strike) Check him out:

I had orginally tried to do a video with my new web-cam so I could show off a 360 rotation of him, but the resolution of my Web Cam is pretty poor so none of the detail work came through. Maybe one day i'll post up a video.

Its kind of a funny story

2011-03-29T08:20:00.003-04:00

Ellen and I invited Eric and Tanya over for a movie night and decided to pop in our current Netflix movie. We had literally just recieved "Its kind of a funny story" and I was excited to watch it.

To set it up Ellen and I have been on a TV show kick with our netflix. The past 4-6 months have been shows and we haven't had a movie come in for a while. We finished season 1 of White Collar and realized that our DVD would be a Movie. So we looked over the que added a few more movies and on a whim I added this one and bumped it up to number 1. So pretty much we had 0 expectations going in.

Basic plot revolves around Craig, a Kid who has just too much pressure in his life. He goes to a prestigous High School, is trying to get accepted to a prestigious summer academy, good college, and eventually be a CEO or President. He is in love with his Best Friend's Girl Friend, and his father is pressuring him to be better, smarter, etc. Adding all that up he feels suicidal and accidentally checks himself into a psych ward.

Once there he meets some really great charcters. Zach Galifianakis is probably the best of the charcters. He really takes Craig under his wing and kind of teaches him that there is more to life then what he sees. There is also the hot girl Noelle, and a slew of other Characters who all have their own quirks. Its really a brilliant cast.

The movie was pretty amazing. Great characters, a good lesson, and a bit of a love story. I would highly recomend it to pretty much anyone. I would say its one of the best movies I've seen in a while.

Dragon Age II

2011-03-28T08:04:00.002-04:00

I will try and not put spoilers in here, but In case I do, consider this a warning.

So I finished Dragon Age 2 this past weekend and I gotta say it delivered on my expectations. Which were pretty high. It was fun, very different from Origins and Awakenings, and had a fantastic story to it.

The biggest change from Origins to 2 is the combat system. It is a more fluid system and is designed I think more for the Console gamer then the PC. I never played the PC version of Dragon Age, but I heard it pauses in combat so you can make your moves. The only thing I wish they had kept from Origins to 2 is the Auto attack button. In the final fight I was facing and enemy with a ton of HP and I was smashint my X button until my thumb was tired.

Also the graphics see a remarkable improvement. The characters look much more real, and the women much hotter and boobier.

The Supporting Characters in 2 are as good as the cast of Origins. There are less playable characters, but they are far superior to the crew of Awakenings. Even Anders, who was in awakenings, is better. The only beef with character interactions is that the game seems to want you to be gay. Now from what I hear the entire party except the Dwarf and your siblings will hook up with you regardless of Sex, but good god! I also remeber there was an Elf Guy in whore house who has a quest marker, ITS NOT A QUEST. its gay sex, luckily I was able to cancel the scene well before anything happened. Still it was disturbing.

Through out the game a lot of the older cast will make Cameos so if you played the first 2 and liked them, its a nice touch to see a lot of the old cast return and say hi.

Anyways, Im looking forward to giving it another go at some point. I am gonna play through Mass Effect 2 first. Then I will either get Home Front or play through DA2 again.

Paul

2011-03-24T08:17:00.002-04:00

So last night Ellen and I went out to the movies to see Paul. Its the latest in the Simon Pegg / Nick Frost line of films. If you liked Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, then Paul should be right up your alley. If you haven't seen any of the above movies go see them. If you dislike any of the above movies, then I hate you.

Each time Pegg and Frost do a movie they pick a style or genre and make it their own. The gruesome horror, the slasher/action movie, and now a sci fi geeky alien flim. It has a ton of hilarious moments. Plenty of old school references and a fantastic cast, with Seth Rogan as Paul and Jason Batemen, Jane Lynch, Bill Hader, Christen Wiig, and a suprise appearance at the end. Im not gonna give anything away, but go see it. The theatre was dead last night, I think there were like 8-10 people there.

Brief Tournament report 3-19

2011-03-21T08:02:00.010-04:00

I played in a 35 stone Malifaux tourament this past weekend. Im gonna be honest I was really tired all day Saturday and then when Mason got blown out I kinda had a rage black out. Net result is that I don't really remember all that much of what happened at the tourney. So... I'm gonna keep this short and sweet.

Round 1
Seamus and a bunch of hard to kill models vs Zorida and a bunch of speedy models.

He started quick by flinging Killjoy at me. As soon as KJ popped up I sent my Hanged to cut his HP down and prevent him from healing for the rest of the game. KJ then reeled in Bette and killed her with a lot of attacks. Seamus then popped off the fatso with his Pistol. From there the game was pretty much well in hand. His Slurids were taken out as they came in via Seamus and Bette. He did pull a pretty awesome move having Zorida obey Bette to bury herself on the last turn. Our game went WAY too long we played 2-3 extra turns. I ended up winning solidly, like 7-3.

Round 2
Kirai and co. vs Hamelin and his shennanigans
Hamelin is broken as written. Even with an imposed Nerf Hameling activated 8 times by turn 2. Now he was playing this ability wrong which ended up costing me a lot, but whatever. I ended up losing 7-5.

Round 3
Nicodem and pretty much the same dude Seamus ran vs Raspy and her ice buddies.
This was the best gmae all day. It didn't hurt that I wiped my opponent out, but he was a blast to play against. I have never had a person on the table next to me complain that he can't hear what his opponent is saying because we are laughing too loud. Great game. Also the hanged was a MONSTER. He cut Raspy, the Ice Golem, and Gamin's life in half, and then killed said gamin with his range attack. I won 8-1 in a pretty big slaughter.

(Resuing a pic? lazy ass!)

Round 4
Seamus and same as rd 1 vs Pandora and her crew of cheating hookers.
I was pretty far ahead in the standings at this point vp wise, so I was determined to just get my schemes and not worry about anything else. That was probably a really big mistake since thats exactly what happened. I lost 8-4. It really didn't help that every time pandora cast a spell she did so with a high crow so my entire crew spent the game running away. It was a pretty lame game and against a really lame jerk.

quick edit: The game was against Mike and really was a fun game. I'm just a douche.

So in the end, I won. It was a really fun time. and I ended up trading my prize, which was a boxset of my choice for Mike's Marcus crew, which is fully painted, and means I don't have to paint my own now! good times.

A few thoughts on the Format, which people will be playing at Adepticon. first 4 rounds for 8 players makes pretty much no sense. I ended up facing the Ringer in round 4. Shared stake a claim is assholish to end a tournament on. there are points for 1 person in that mission. Really skewed the standins in my eyes. Hamelin is a tool and the adepticon rules are nerfing the wrong problem. And my final thoughts are, I'm great!

Overal MVP of the Day was The Hanged. this wasn't my initial thought. But he cut down, Killjoy, an Ice Golem, Rasputina, an Ice Gamin, and was instrumental in me getting my Kill protege against Pandora. he was a beast!

Video Games

2011-03-18T14:57:00.004-04:00

Now I have to say I consider Video Games to be one of the lowest form of Gaming. Its not that I dislike them in any way, but in my years as a gamer I have come to the realization that there are stereo-typical gamers for each Genre. And In my experiences the worst of these Stereo-Types are found either in Video Games or Card Games. And often they are the same people. This sums up how I feel I think

That being said I LOVE video games. I was addicted to EQ for years before I finally kicked the habit... I may have timed it end very coincidentally with the day WOW released. Which I then became addicted to. But after a while, and several different MMO's, Guild Wars, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes/Villains, Warhammer Online, and maybe 1 or 2 more that just weren't memorable I have decided that I only really want to play Console Games that have a finite ending to them. I just don't have the free time to play an MMO and honestly I didn't really like how much time I had invested in them.

Anyways enough of that. Point is I've been buying games 1 at a time and playing them in my brief windows of free time each day. My current game of choice is Dragon Age II. I really love this series. And i'm hoping they keep going with the franchise, its a lot of fun to see how the entire world shapes up.

Once I finish it (Or maybe beat it 2-3 times) I will start looking for a new game. here are a few I have my eyes on.

Mass Effect 2. This isn't a new game, but its new to the PS3. Same developers as Dragon Age, and a similar style of game. Its set in the future and you control Colonel Shepard and kill aliens. Sounds fantastic

Homefront. This one is a first person shooter set in the year 2027. The U.S has been invaded by a joint evil Asian nation. And pretty much beaten. You take control of a band of rebels fighting guerilla style for their freedom. Very Red Dawn.

Infamous. Your a guy who was in a disaster and afterwards you get electrical powers. You have to say the world or city or what ever, and along they way you make decisions for good or evil. And your reputation and how people percieve you is all dependant on how you make those choices.

Yeah I'm pretty much Awesome all the time

2011-03-14T10:27:00.003-04:00

So I've had this nagging little voice in the back of my head that tells me I should try to play Archanists in my next Malifaux tournament. I've done really well thus far and I think I need a new challenge. With that in mind, I've been painting them up and I think that while Im not at my best with them yet I should be able to compete pretty well in the... uhhh

So... Yeah im playing Ressers.

Silent Ones

2011-03-11T08:32:00.002-05:00

I finished up the pair of Silent Ones yesterday. I think I have a shot at reaching my goal of a painted Archanist crew by the 19th. We'll see how far I can go with it. Also I've decided that since Im going to be painting them anyways My Coryphee Duet will be my Malifools Month 7 paint contest entry.

The Lovely Cassandra

2011-03-10T08:14:00.002-05:00

In an effort to make my Archanists more desirable to play with Im going to try and paint as many of them as I can before next saturday. I got started last nigt with Cassandra. I felt a Blond wearing Black and Red would look good. Turns out I was right.

In order to get all my stuff painted for the Tournament I will need to Paint:

1 Colette
3 Mechanical Doves
2 Coryphee
2 Performers
2 Mannequins
2 Silent Ones
1 Electrical Creation

Arcanists

2011-03-07T09:18:00.007-05:00

Variety is the spice of live, or at least thats the expression. And for me at as far as gaming is concerned I would say its true. I have been playing Ressers pretty much exclusively for the past several months. Keep in mind that in my book Leviticus is a Resser master. They just misprinted his rulebook entry or something. I own a few other Factions, such as a single Guild crew, The Ortegas, who I play sparingly. And a small Arcanist force. I picked up Rasputina for Ellen since she liked her hat and the Hoarcats which work well with Raspy. I later picked up Ramos for myself, wanting a new challenge to work with. And a Challenge he is. I haven't won too many games with the old man. But they have been relegated to the back burner as I master the ressers I own. I have always been pretty good with McMourning, I have proven I'm pretty damn good with Kirai, winning damn near all the games I play with her. Even Nicodem the Master I used to refuse to play is now in my top tier. I am on a 5-1 streak with the old man, my sole loss coming against an opponent who used questionable tactics. Point is I have a good grasp on my Ressers. Seamus could use some work, but I still feel comfortable with him. Its usually at this point that Gamer ADD kicks in and I want a new challenge. Hence, the Arcanists!

I'm starting with Raspy since I've owned her the longest. She's the Ice witch who can really do a ton of damage to your opponents models. Her best abilites are her Ice Pillars, which creates a blocking terrain to give you cover and force your opponet where you want them. And the damage spell December's Curse. December's Curse can do massive damage and she can cast it over and over again so long as she gets a Mask in her casting total. Its her most reliable way to kill off your opponents models. She is a really heavy hitter and works well with the new release, Silent Ones, who can act as a mirror for her to cast her spells through, thus keeping her further out of harms way. Hoarcats, since they can do heavy damage and work very well with little or no support. And then usually people take a heavy hitter, such as an Ice Golem, Joss, or A Saber Tooth Cerberus. The first two can really take a beating, and the Ceberus is really quick and good at hiding from a beating. All three can do a decent chunk of damage. Rasputina's biggest weakness is speed. Crews that can engage her too quickly give her trouble becasue she really needs to keep them at bay and blast them as much as possible.

On to the next master I bought, Ramos. The old man is a much like his female counter-part a spell blaster. He also has the ability to summon Mechanical Spiders. Ramos likes to let his spiders and his good buddy Joss do the heavy hitting while he picks things off with his long range magic blasts. he has a lot of tricks up his sleeve that can do auto damage. I need to pratice with him more though because I dont really know much else about him. At the moment the biggest weakness is Me. I don't know how to play him right and that usually means he's not doing enough each game. Im gonna practice with him a bit in the coming weeks and see if I can get better.

Ms. Du Bois is the Queen of tricks in Malifaux. her ability to whip her crew all around the Board is uncanny. And every one of her girls has a nasty trick up her sleeve. I've only faced her 3 times and player her 1 time. But I think I have the hang of her abilities. She works well with a lot of Show Girls since a lot of her abilities key off them. She also really likes having a few of her totems, the Mechanical Doves flying around for support. Colette's Strongest spell is Disapearing Act. Its not a sure thing, but if you manage to trigger the 3 Tome ability you one shot kill any non-master in the Game, AND make it into a new Mannequin. Colette never heads to battle with out Cassandra, her body-guard, friend, and Hotty Companion. Cassandra can be a nightmare for some crews. She is hard to hit, VERY fast, and hits pretty hard. Colette also likes bringing her Show Girls to the party with their Mannequins. Colette I think will have a hard time dealing with very heavy hitting armies. They can generally get by her tricks and force her to start burning her soul stones.

The last Arcanist master is Marcus. He is a very strong master in my eyes and is often under-rated. But I don't own him, and Im not sure I plan to buy him. He requires you use Beasts from every faction and I just don't think I want to buy Neverborn beasts to play him.

So thats my brief run down of the Arcanist Faction. Im hoping to get a solid handle on them in the near future so i can start using them as an alternative faction to compete with in Tournaments.

Tournament Report

2011-02-28T08:27:00.009-05:00

So this past Sunday I joined, Bill, Jay, Chris, Dixon, John, Tim, and Brian on a decently long Road trip up to southern Pennsylvania for a 35 Stone Malifaux tournament. I realized as I got there Brian and I had pretty much the same list. So I made a quick decision and went with Nicodem instead.

List
Nicodem +5 Stones, 2 vultures, 2 Rotten Belles, 2 necropunks, Bette Noir, Convict Gunslinger

Its a crew with great objective taking power and moderate to low hitting power, the highest damage in the crew is 5, but most cap at 3-4. Its also got great control aspects to it.

One quick note about the terrain. Every board had a CRAZY event that happened at random intervals and ruined the game. One Board was a total forest where line of sight was completely limited to 3 inches, no idea why.

So Round 1 I get paired up with Bill who is playing the Dreamer with an Alp bomb. I draw slaughter and sigh deeply. I declare Grudge Match on Lelu, and Kill Protege on Coppelius. He does some tricks and I set up my dudes preparing for him to drop on me full bore turn 2. Dreamer goes to pop up his friends and flips a black joker. This causes bill some concern. So spends 2 stones makes a new day dream, kills it to summon Chompy Bits. Chompy then chomps down on the belle he popped into Melee with. My Gunslinger showed chompy bits how Trigger Happy works and shot him a good 5-7 times. Turn 3 I won init and the Gunslinger picked up where he left off and killed Chomy bits. Dreamer popped up and dropped all his nightmare friends off into melee. The Alsp surrounded my belle and Gunslunger, Coppelius went after Nicodem, and the Twins killed something else... can't remember. Nico went next, Paralyzed Coppelius, and then Dropped and AoE off into the huge melee. it ended up targeting the gunslinger (Unfortunate) who took severe damage, but the AoE killed off 2 Alps. Nico then summoned a Punk Zombie. The twins went next and did more horrible things to the new Punk Zombie. My belle went next and lured Coppelius off the cliff and away from Nicodem. The last alp turned and punched down my Gun Slinger.Turn 4 I won Init and Nico started things off by paralyzing Coppelius again. and blasting the twins killing the girl and aoeing on the last Daydream. Lelu ran up and killed the belle which made me remember I have bette Noir in the wings. She popped up and killed Lelu getting my grudge. The alp went and killed my last Belle. Then My neco punk ran up and hit Coppelius actually doing damage to him. Turn 5 started, I won init again and went with Nico. He bolstered and blasted into the Melee. Healing Bette to full and killing off Copeliues netting me my Protege kill. His next AOE killed the Alp. Bill Ran the Dreamer the heck away so he wouldn't love Body Guard. I ended up killing 40 stones of models, he killed 24. So I got a full 8 points to his 4 (2 for Kidnap, 2 for Bodyguard.)

The now Infamous round 2.
Im not gonna go into the mega details here becasue Im really bitter looking back on this game. My opponent was a pretty blatant cheater. He would misrepresent his stats, when he pulled -flips he would pull all the cards look at them, stack them up and only show me the top one. Im also fairly certain he stacked his deck. I had to start cutting his deck after turn 4 becasue he was holding 4-6 face cards every turn. So the game pretty much sucked. I still almost pulled it out. Had I won initative on turn 6 or had he not had the Red Joker in his Hand I would have won the game 6-2. Instead he won 6-2. Lame Ass Game.

Round 3 I played agains the Tournament Organizer who was for some reason in like 6th place. He had Jack Daw, Pandora, twins, and Candy. On turn 2 he had only 2 cards in his hand so I took my opportunity to strike at Daw. I had Nicodem cast at him 3 times. On the 3rd one he flipped the Black Joker and control reverted to me. I then took Daw and attacked pandora, cheated low to fail the WP duel and let him die. It made me smile. Then I proceeded to WHOMP my opponets ass up and down the tabel. Bette killed the Twins. Nico went Mano a Mano with Pandora and did a decent Job the both ended up living though. but he got burned out stones really fast. I called Breakthrough for a scheme. I set my necro punks up on opposite board edges and they ran their butts off for his deployment zone. making it there turn 4 and then just going defensive stance pass the rest of the game. At turn 6 he flipped and we should have gone another turn, he said Im good if your good. I had 8 points so I didn't really care. As I look back I should have made him play it out. Bette would have killed Candy and Nico would have killed Pandora giving me an 8-3 win. But I was tired and not paying attention. so it ended up 8-7.

I ended up tied for 3rd place and only 2 points out of 1st. I know what your thinking, 3rd place is just fancy talk for loser. But give that Bill took 1st Im ok with it. Also its nice since I was the only won who prevented Bill from getting 8 points. And that Had I not faced cheater McGee in round 2 I might have been able to get more points.

MVP of the Day was Bette Noir. She is just versatile and unkillable. I love that girl.

Pandora

2011-02-25T09:25:00.003-05:00

So I know im like 5 years behind the times, but thats just how I roll. So I finally have a Pandora account and we are in that akward getting to know you stage where it thinks that becasue I like Anberlin I like Emo music, or some crap like that. But slowly Pandora is starting to understand that I like a complex mix of Rock, R&B, and Rap songs. But really hate a lot of Rock, R&B, and Rap songs. Its just a rough patch, we'll get through it.

Im not totally behing the times though, I have tried to use Pandora before, but my work computer just wont play songs, it just searches and searches for the "perfect song." Screw perfect I just want a song thats good enough. But now (or maybe 4 years ago) Pandora made a mobile App and that means now, my Droid Incredible is rocking out with badass music for as long as the very short battery life will let me.

The Bracket

2011-02-24T08:47:00.008-05:00

So there is a Malifaux tournament this coming weekend at some store up in PA. And I got a kitchen pass to go on up there so I'm down for the event. Its a single list tournament which is actually rare for Malifaux, but not an issue for me. I decide im gonna take Leviticus since I think I can take any on any foe with him. Its 35 Soul stones so I make up a list, and start testing it out. I lose 2 games and draw 1. Its not a good showing for the old guy. This gets me a bit nervous and makes the wheels in my brain start to turn. I decide I might want to take another Master for the event. But Who?! and how do I decide one master over the others? Simple right? March Madness style Bracket! So the first step was to seed each Master in some order that makes sense. Lets take a look.

1st Seed - Leviticus, he's the encumbant Master and I have tested games for him, so he gets the Edge and the #1 Seed

2nd Seed - Seamus, he's my favorite Master and I have played more games with him than anyone else (I think)

3rd Seed - Dr. McMourning. One of the better Masters in the Game, this guy is strong and I have a few tricks up my sleeve for him

4th Seed - Nicodem, I am on a roll with Nicodem lately. It took a while for me to get his tricks down but I've won my past 3-4 games with him

5th Seed - Kirai, If all I cared about was winning I would take her. She is REALLY good at objectives and tough to beat in a time limited format. But since I have already won with her she gets dropped to a lower seed.

6th Seed - Perdita, most likely my most competative choice. I just don't much wanna play her

7th Seed - Rasputina, A really strong Master and one who is fun to play. I just don't know her that well.

8th Seed - Ramos, I don't wanna play Ramos, so he's 8th seed. Maybe when his new stuff comes out from Book 2. But at the moment, hes my bottom master

So Round 1 Looks like this:

Lets dig deeper into each match up.

4. Nicodem vs 5. Kirai - It should have been the closest match up, but the Nico Streak and Kirai's previous Tourney win were too much to cause an upset. Nico breezed into Round 2

3. McMourning vs 6. Perdita - This was an interesting decision. Perdita is DAMN strong, and the list I made for her would likely taken me pretty far in the tourney. But McM is a strong Master too. In the end I chose the Resser even though I felt if I pitted the lists against each other Perdita would have won.

2. Seamus vs 7. Rasputina - The Upset! Same as above I bet the Raspy list would have beat the Seamus list if pitted against each other. What it boiled down to though is that despite how much I really do love Seamus, I think he's just too weak. Also Raspy is fun on a bun, I just need to learn her rules more.

1. Leviticus vs 8. Ramos - No contest! I don't wanna play Ramos! it may as well have been a bye. Levi has the easiest foe in Round 1.

So with the Round matches in the books it was time for Round 2!

Shall we explore how this happened? yes

7. Rasputina vs 3. McMourning - This was a similar scenario as McMournings 1st round foe. I think Raspy and Dita may be my best 2 Master at slaughtering my foes whole sale. The down side is I have played Raspy at most 5 games, likely less. Mcmourning I am very familiar with and becasue of that he Advanced to the Championship Round.

1. Leviticus vs 4. Nicodem - Tough call here. I;ve been preping with Levi, but the preparations have gone pretty poorly. Nico is on a roll and that Hot streak had to continue here. in the battle of Old men I went with the Resser and the hot streak. Nico would meet McMourning in the Finals.

Now the Finals were a tough call. I couldn't make it myself so I asked the Community at large for some help. And help they did. In a Landslide Victory:

McMourning was chosen to represent this weekend. So the Mad Doctor has called up a few friends and here is the list I will be running.

Dr. Douglas McMourning -- 8 Cache
Zombie Chihuahua [1ss]
Bette Noire [9ss]
Canine Remains [2ss]
Canine Remains [2ss]
Canine Remains [2ss]
Datsue-Ba [7ss]
Rotten Belles [4ss]
Necropunk [3ss]
Necropunk [3ss]

My Own Little Slice of Hell

2011-02-09T08:47:00.005-05:00

So I picked up the corebook for No More Room in Hell, the other night. I also grabbed a bag of 100 "All Flesh Must be Eaten Zombies" they are pretty much too short to be serious zombies next to a 28mm scale model, but what ever there are 100 of them. The coolest parts of it are you get to make your own group of survivors and it can be run as a campaign.

I ended up reading the rules saturday-monday and realized they are pretty simple so I convinced Eric, Tanya, Ellen, and Mike to give it a whirl on Monday. I made up the characters so we could jump right into the game. I asked everyone to give me their ideas on what they wanted to play and here are the ideas that came back to me.

Ellen - The poor football team in Beetlejuice who isn't quite sure whats going on, but is certainly dead. She ended up with 7 guys with axes and pistols who were total yellowbelly cowards.

Mike - The Three Amigos! They ended up with matching stats and gear, but they each had their own unique skill to seperate them. Lucky Day was the leader, he could pass off his bravery to the cowards around him. Dusty Bottoms can dress up like the enemy (A Zombie) and move freely around among them. And Ned was the quick draw shooter with a fast pistol and a keen eye.

Tanya - Asked me to play a badass spy chick who could kick butt. I ended up making her an ambidextrous sword and pistol wielding death machine.

Eric - Wanted to be the Action hero. So he was pretty much Arnold or Stallone. He had a machine gun, wasn't fazed when he saw his comrades eaten, and could a zombie as easily as a regular human.

Dan - I wanted to be Perdita, so I made her tough, strong, and a good shooter. Just your regular badass Cowgirl with a huge ass gun and Machete.

We started with Mission 1: The first night. The Heros have taken refuge in a farmhouse away from the cities as they try to figure out their next move. But they dont have forever to decide what to do as the undead start to swarm the house. Eric, Tanya, and I started shotting the Undead as they made their approach and we were doing pretty well at keeping them off our backs. Meanwhile the Amigos bolted towards the Truck. Dusty was able to get it started right away as luckily the keys were there and the gas tank was full. They pulled up to the House and the football players piled in and were escorted off the Board. As the truck came back for round 2 of the pick ups the Zombies started to break into the house. The Heros were fighting them off as best we could. The last of the Football Players jumped in along with Perdita and were escorted from the House. Eric and Tanya backed away as best they could waiting for their ride. But things ended up going our way, as Eric was mobbed he fought well and only took a minor scratch from it. They jumped into the Truck and we we're outta there just as things would have gotten suicidal.

It wasn't overly late so we went straight to Mission 2. Escape the Highway. We were travelling along nicely piled tight in our Red Pick up when we ran out of gass on a Highway leaving a crowded City. We needed to get off the Table on the far side of a narrow highway festooned with zombies. We ended up splitting up around the middle of the table because there was a growing hoarde of zombie approaching us. The Amigos and Perdita went left, and ended up drawing most of the zombies. The Team and E&T's Heros went right away from most of the zombie hate. It took some slow going and some helpful shooting from Eric's Machine Gun but we made progress down the Highway and were Very close to board Edge. Seeing safety was close at hand, Dusty started shambling and moaning and left his other Amigos behind. The Football Team charged into a group of Zombies and did pretyt well, I believe they killed 2-3 and lost 2 members of their own. A final Zombie stood between the Amigos and Perdita and safety. It charged into Perdita who lost it, flipped out and cut the poor zombie into mush. That ended up being our ticket to safety as we fled. Eric ended up hanging back just a little too long and that "growing Hoarde" I mentioned earlier was now 60 zombies strong and caught up to him. He fought well, killing 2 of them, but somewhere around zombie number 15ish they dragged him down for a nice snack.

game is a total blast, and a little bit creepy. Im looking at getting 28mm Zombies from Wargames Factory or somewhere, but after using 100 zombies and realizing it wasn't enough Im not sure i'll bother. I will however be getting some new 28mm Heroes for this game. Hasslefree Minis is pretty awesome for that kinda thing, they have a section dedicated to Zombie slayers and the like. Here area few that caught my eyes.

Oakley
How many weapons does 1 zombie hunter neer? A lot. There is also a bit in the pack to make his arm a chain-saw, but thats been done, and no one is as cool as Bruce Campbell.

Suzi
Hot girl, sword, mini skirt... nuff said.

Dionne
Badass chick with huge pistols and a trenchcoat.

Ray
Shot-Gun? check... Cricket Bat? check... Awesome dude in a tie killing zombos? thats a big check. Also ray comes with Zombie Ray. Guess he didn't make it too long in the Zombiepocalypse.

Nicodem!

2011-02-04T08:55:00.003-05:00

In honor of the old guys first win, I figured he could use a coat of paint, so without further ado here he is, fresh of his victory... Nicodem!!!!

A couple Malifaux games

2011-02-02T09:04:00.010-05:00

Last night I finally got out to Huzzah to play malifaux. Its my 2nd tuesday of the year, and last time I only played Infinity, so this was nice. Also Bill got in our V2 cards so Im really excited about all that, and Im looking forward to getting them laminated and ready to rock.

Game 1 vs Mike.

I decided to randomize my master for this game. I ended up getting Seamus, so I made a crew for him I haven't used in a long while.
Seamus, Sybelle, Grave Spirit, Belle, 2x Necro Punks, Bette noir - 6 Stone Cache
VS
Dreamer, 1 Day Dream, Coppelius, 2 Stiched together, Teddy - 5-6 stones, Im not sure how the dreamer works all that well.

Our missions were simple, Deliver the Message for me, and Slaughter for him. He added in Kidnap and Body Guard(I think) I took, Framed for Murder (Seamus) and Kill Protege (Teddy)

Turn 1 was the usual dreamer nonsense. I activated a crew, he activated 2 models.

Turn 2. I lured up a Day Dream with my belle, so I could have a shot at killing him. Said Day Dream then scooted up a tad and dropped Teddy on one of my Necro Punks. Teddy then killed, said necro-Punk. I popped bette out right then and took Teddy down to 3 life. Dreamer went next and and did his nightmare trick. Chompy, 2 stiched, and Coppelius came out, and Teddy went away. Chompy killed bette who burried herself. Then he was all done so the Dreamer came back out. I took a shot or two at Coppelius to try and weaken him up, but to no avail.

Turn 3&4 (they are jumbled in my head) Seamus and a Necro Punk started the turn in B2B with the dreamer, so I was in good shape on my message delivery. He won Init and started with a stiched together. He started attacking my hand, rather well in fact, and then tried to gamble lives with Seamus. Seamus laughed in his face and dealt 7 damage to the doll, killing it. Seamus went next, and companioned his Belles, then he gave the boy his message, it read something along the lines of, "Dude there is a party tonight at Zorida's place, you in?" The belles went next and despite attacking Coppelius a combined 5 times didn't kill the jerk. Coppelius went next and dropped paralyze on Sybelle. My necro punk also tried to get in on the kill coppelius action, but he too failed. His 2nd Stiched together tried to gamble lives with Seamus, and met the same fate as his buddy. But he was able to gamble for cards and almost totally replenish his fate hand. Then Chompy popped up and went to town on Seamus, I ended up living through the barrage with 3 life and 1 soul stone left. But it was for nought as Teddy then came in and finished the job (costing me 2 vps as he was not in fact framed for murder) Bette popped back up and finished off the bear. Coppelius went again and paralyzed both Sybelle and my Belle. Chompy came in and killed off Sybelle and Bette (who went underground). My Necro Punk then came in like a super hero and killed off Coppelius.

Turn 5. I won Init and my necro-punk booked it away. Chompy then Ate my belle. and returned to kid form. Mike informed me that killing my belle got him his Kidnap.

Turn 6. We count up vps for slaughter, he is up on me 23-18. Even killing my Necro punk wouldn't net him the points he needed, so we called it there. thinking back on it I should have tried to go for a kill with a Bette Re-pop. I lose nothing by attempting it, and if I killed Chompy or the Dreamer i would have won... but alas, it was a 6-6 draw.

MVP has to go to Bette, she took out Teddy and didn't give up points for Slaughter, honorable Mention to Seamus!

GAME 2 vs John
I again went for a random Master and this time it was Nicodem... ugh.
List time!
Nicodem, 2 Vultures, 1 Dog, 1 Belle, 2 Necro-Punks, Bette - 8 Stone Cache
Marucs, Jackalope, 2 Razorspine Rattlers, 1 Shikome, 2 Molemen - 5 Stone Cache

So the first turn I maneuver around set up a bird to arc through and NecroPunk to grab the treasure. Forgetting who i was dealing with, marcus charged both of them turn 1. the bird lived, thats a poor flip by Marcus. The NecroPunk wasn't so lucky.

Turn 2, the bum rush continued as Marcus ran into Nico, and the Shikome and a Snake got to my belle. Bette popped up as the belle died and cut the throat out of the Rattler. Nico went and arced through a bird back into his combat with Decay. It was damaging Marcus (who prevented all of it with stones) and healing Nicodem. I ran my 2nd Punk and My dog into the 2nd Rattler, but ended up not doing so much.

Turn 3, Things got worse. Marcus kept thwacking Nico with his club and then made him a beast with -1 to his flips. Bette tried to kill off the Shikome, but the spirit thing made it pretty tough, and left it with 1 wound. It too came to wail on Nico, who by the end had only 1 wound. Nico bounced back into the fight with more and more Decays. Again healing Nico up a few wounds and hurting Marucs and killing off the Shikome. he also raised the nearby corpses into Zombies so next turn he could shunt off some hits. The molemen and Jackalope also popped into my dog and Punk. (Who were also backed up by a few zombies)

Turn 4, Things turn around. I won Init and instantly went with Nicodem. I blasted back into the melee and either targeted myself or a Mindless zombie every time. In 3 casts Nicro healed back to full and Marcus bit the dust. We called it there since I had Nico, with full hps, a strong number of corpse tokens, Bette, and he was down to 2 molemen.

That is my first Win with Nicodem. I never really understood just how great Decay is, until last night. Had I more time think I definetly would have blasted Marus with a Riggor Mortis and paralyzed him. But most times I was better off just nuking the Combat.

Game MVP is a toss up between Bette (who really saved my bacon) and the Vultres who REALLY saved my bacon.

Rounding out the guild

2011-01-20T08:25:00.000-05:00

Here is the oldest brother Fransico.

Malifools Month 5 or Ortegas take 2

2011-01-19T09:25:00.002-05:00

So i've been working on a small guild crew for a little while now. I chose Perdita and her Family for a few reasons. First of all they appeal to me most of the guild. And there was a time where I had in my head I wanted to own a crew from every faction. They have the best fluff, and their models are all unique and really flavorful. Perdita herself is one of my top favorite models in the entire Malifaux line. And lastly they are a powerhouse crew. Their alpha strike is second to none in my opinon, and their damage potential is unreal. So I picked up their starter, Abuela, A governors proxy, an austringer, and 3 death marshalls. So I tried to make them my paint contest crew for october, or maybe september, but I got lazy or lost interest or something and it didnt really work out. So here is take 2 of the Ortegas.

Santiago - He was the only model I finished for the first contest, so he won't be eligable for this one.

Perdita Ortega

Nino Ortega

Governor's Proxy

Abuela Ortega

Pulp-City Minis

2011-01-09T00:55:00.004-05:00

I've been working on my Villains. Heres a look at some painted dudes!

The Gentlemen

Sister Bedlam

Tangent

Nuke

The Hellsmith

Apparently Hellsmith loves the camera. He makes a cameo in all 5 pics.

NFL Playoffs

2011-01-03T09:35:00.002-05:00

So the Playoffs are upon us. Im gonna do 2 things. 1st post some predictions. 2nd Write up how to fix the Playoff system.

Round 1:
New Orleants at Seattle - New Orleans
Green Bay at Philly - Green Bay
New York J at Indy - Indy
Baltimore at Kansas City - Baltimore

Round 2:
New Orleans at Chicago - Chicago
Green Bay at Atlanta - Atlanta
Indy at Pittsburgh - Indy
Baltimore at New England - Baltimore

Round 3:
Chicago at Atlanta - Atlanta
Baltimore at Indy - Indy

Super Bowl - Indy vs Atlanta - Winner Indianapolis

Im not sure I actually even believe this will happen. It wouldn't surprise me to see Philly vs New England in the Super Bowl. That would cause me to for the first time ponder whether or not I actually want to watch the game.

Ok! part 2

So Im ready to fix the NFL playoff system, and heres how! "But wait Dan! Whats wrong with the current system?!" Im glad you asked. In a sense the Seattle Seahawks are whats wrong with the Playoffs. At 7-9 not only are they in the playoffs while the Giants and Bucs 10-6 are sitting at home. But they get to start the Playoffs at home. In the Wild Card round, there is only 1 team who is getting a home game and finished higher then the team they are curently playing against. Now a lot of people want to see the divisions re-formed. But these divisions are pretty old. Granted they were changed up when the NFL went to a 32 team league. But there are some historic Rivalries in the NFL. Skins Cowboys, Cheifs Raiders, Pats Jets. And so on. Changing the Divisions might be the answer for a more competative league, but these Rivalries are a neccessity to the NFL. A Rivalry can create drama and fans on its own. So no! do not change the divisions. Change the playoff Seeding. Instead of taking a division winner, no matter their record, let the top 12 teams regardless of Division and even confrence play it out. Here are the top 12 teams in the NFL at the seasons end.

1. New England
2. Atlanta
3. Pittsburgh
4. Baltimore
5. Chicago
6. New Orleans
7. New York Jets
8. Philly
9. Indy
10. Green Bay
11. New York Giants
12. Kansas City

By just seeding the teams you get the best of the best playing each other. Deserving teams get home games and byes, losing teams get sent home. Baltimore had the 4th best team in the NFL this year, but they will likely play every game on the road. In college sports the most exciting event is March Madness. A large Tournament where the best teams play each other. The NFL could mimic this strategy and likely they would have a much more competative and fun to watch post season. Under the Dan Playoff System Week 1 would look like this.

Patriots, Falcons, Steelers, Ravens - Bye

(12)Chiefs @ (5)Bears
(11)Giants @ (6)Saints
(10)Packers @ (7)Jets
(9)Colts @ (8)Eagles

Then you they could either Bracket the playoffs or continue with NFL standard seeding idea. The Patriots would play the lowest seeded team still in contention, and so on, until the Ravens play the highest seeded team.

All that drama, excitement, and No weasley Pete Carrol and his 7-9 Seahawks. Who by the way are a 10.5 underdog at home.

Caps Game

2010-12-29T08:37:00.005-05:00

So last night Ellen and I made the horrid trek into DC to see the Caps play. Her Manager was given tickets by a Subcontractor, but wasn't able to go, so he passed them on to Ellen as a thank you for being the only person at her job sight who does work.

We went to a place called BGR The Burger Joint for dinner. By sheer happenstance I saw the place in the Washingtonian magazine yesterday and it sounded amazing. The place has 8 burgers and 4 types of sides. Thats it. They do milkshakes too I think. I got, "The Burger" with Bacon, Cheddar, Lettuce, Pickle, and Mojo Sauce. I also got their fries. Ellen got "The Greek" which is their famous throwdown with Bobby Flay winning burger. Her's had Lamb, with Feta, Cucumber, white yogurt sauce, a HUGE tomatoe, and lettuce. Both burgers were out of this world, seriously go try them. Its a near religious experience.

So DC Sucks. It took us waaayy too long to get to the stadium, at one point DC has construction set up so people are driving on the wrong side of the road. This was apparently normal since I was the only one who seemed hesitant about this. Eventually we made it in though and Our parking pass was for the Garage at Gallery Place. We parked, under the Damn Verizon Center, it was sweet.

We head straight in and go to our seats. We weren't sure if we were right on the glass, but we were totally RIGHT on the glass behind the goal where the Canadiens were warming up. Right as we sat down a puck smacked in the glass, it was really damn loud, we both jumped a bit.

About 2 minutes later a puck slipped over the glass and fell right under my seat. It was pretty awesome.

So we watched the game, barely getting up from out seats. Ever time guys got smashed into the glass in front of us Ellen and I would bang on the glass. I was on TV apparently too. It was with out a doubt the BEST gaps game experience I have ever had. I have sat in the second row behing the glass once before (when the caps sucked) But this was just totally different. Also being behind the Goal was amazing. And during the 2nd Intermission Slap Shot was skating by and I slap my hand up on the glass and he gave me window love. It was a wierd moment, but I felt like we really connected. And as a bonus the Caps won 3-0. All the Goals went in on our side.

With 2 mins left the Canadiens down 2-0 pulled their goalie and I started yelling Cheap Goal for Ovie! and sure enough he snagged the puck on a break away and got an open net goal. I was thrilled. But nothing beat Mike Green's Goal. I was right there to snap a photo, but fumbled my camera, so I got the guys skating away after the celebration. But they were like 5 feet from me when they piled in on Green.

Picture Time!

Caps Right After Green's Goal

Varly

Ovi

Slap Shot

Varly's Victory Lap, He was Player of the Game

And Lastly, A shot of our Awesome Swag from the game. Tickets, Programs, and My Puck

Pulp City

2010-12-28T13:24:00.009-05:00

So Huzzah has this way of getting in products and then making me buy them. Its like hypnotism or something. Or maybe its just old fashioned gamer ADD. But who cares, Yesterday I went into the store with a few things in mind. First, my Battle Foam Pack MINI arrived after a month on order (yay) next I wanted the Small World Expansions. (got both) next up I wanted to buy the Something Wicked Expansion for Touch of Evil (didn't have it, its on order) and lastly I was pondering picking up a starter for Pulp City. I pondered for about 10 minutes and then remember I had already told chris to reserve me one so I got it. Lets look inside =)

So first things I had to choose between the Villains and the Heroes. Those who know me well enough know that I subscribe to the lord helmet philosophy of the world. "Evil will triumph over good, because good is dumb!" Naturally I got Villains. Mike who agrees with this sentiment in all aspects except miniature games oddly enough grabbed the Hero box set. So my team of Villains consists of 5 dudes.

Guerilla

The Ape with a mini gun. In Pulp there is an entire subfaction of Ape men, who are fighting to overthrow the Humans and take over the world for ape kind. They are also all mercs who fight for either side.

Twilight

A ninja assassin kinda chick. She has a silenced uzi for a weapon.

Hellsmith

Hellsmith is fallen Greek god. He was second only to hephestus as the Forge god, In an attempt to rise in Power he sided against Olympus and was cast down. Now he trolls the streets of Pulp-City with a big ass hammer and a chip on his shoulder.

Nuke

A horrible accident left Nuke a mutated mess. He is mute and psychotic. His powers are emense though, immune to all radiation he is a powerhouse capable of massive damage.

The Gentlemen

My personal favorite. The Gentlemen is a Villain, but works more for money and will work with the Heros for a price. He is a sophisticated hitman, and prides himself on his abilities and is capable of slaying even the most powerful foes. Plus he wears a suit when he kills people.

I have just finished assembling my dudes, and they are ready to cause some serious trouble on the streets of Pulp City.

Random Musings and Christmas Thoughts

2010-12-27T08:32:00.008-05:00

Hope everyone had a great christmas. I know I did. I ended up getting some really cool stuff.

Got 5 models for Infinity, which finishes off my army for it. I now have a full caledonian army ready to rock.

I also got Fallout: New Vegas and Descent the dungeon board game, which is really cool.

Ellen got me A Touch of Evil along with the character pack. We got a chance to play it yesterday, its a really cool game, the Head-Less Horsemen is a real Jerk. He beat my butt into the ground several times throughout the game. But we had the last laugh as Brian cut his 30+ wounds in half on his first attack of the Showdown. I played the School teacher, who I thought might suck, but she scaled up quick once I started getting her some books. She gets +2 combat for every book, so at the Showdown I was laying into the horsemen with 7 dice. So far I have played Invasion 2 times, Last Night on Earth 3 times, and Touch of Evil 2 times. And in that limited experience, Touch of Evil is my favorite of Flying Frog's line-up.

As 2010 comes to a close I am in a bit of a different gaming state then I was at the end of 2009. I am more into Miniature games then I was a year ago, and I contribute that mostly to Malifaux being a really awesome game. My board game collection has grown considerably from the tiny selection of Bang and Munchkin, to include about a dozen games and expansions I have picked up or been gifted with since around august of this year (Yay Gen Con) and I still love role-playing, this year saw me try my hand at my first long term campaign idea. It went ok, I would like to say Mike's wedding killed it, but Im pretty sure it was my poor planning that doomed me.

So what to look forward to in 2011? Well more Malifaux for sure. More of my favorite board games, especially Battle Star Galactica's new expansion. And maybe some new things hitting the table for me. I have been looking at 3 miniature games as the year comes to a close. Here my inital thoughts on them. We'll see how they fair into the new year.

1. Infinity - I own a full crew for this game already, but both test games I've played have ended the same way. I have an uber guy and he will use all my action points this turn to own your armies face. Now your uber guy activates a bunch of times. etc, Im hoping there is more too this game then what Im seeing. But if not, then I have invested $0 of my own money, so no Big loss.

2. Distopian Wars - Another game in Spartan's line of the same game with different packaging. From what I hear its the best of their naval line of games and It sounds really cool. Here are my detracting thoughts. I own FSA already. I hardly play FSA. I have seen this game being played at Huzzah 1 time. Its not cheap and there will be a rather extensive line of models that go with it. If I had all the free time in the world, I would certainly get into this game. I don't, and since I doubt I would play this game enough times to justify the cost of it, I think Distopian Wars will be a game that I just stay out of.

3. Pulp City - Another Skirimsh size game (god how I love them) with an integrated turn system (swoon) and its played with Super Heroes Fighting Super villains (I need new shorts) on a city map where everything is fair game to whomp the crap out of each other. See a lamp post? hit someone in the head with it. See a fleeing citizen? (oh yeah there are citizens fleeing your battle) Throw a car at them and force the Hero to come save the day. Im not really sure how the game plays. It has an action system kinda similar to Infinity, but you get more actions, and each model has a cap for how many actions it can take. Also you need a single D6. Thats all I got for the moment, but the models are super sweet, and It just looks like a boat load of fun. I already have my Villain starter on order at Huzzah. Im gonna swing by and hopefully pick it up today.

And lastly the games I already own: I can see myself playing maybe a dozen games of MonPoc throughout the year. Its a nice change of pace game, and its always fun to smash a town to rubble with giant monsters. I dont really see my 40k, fantasy, WM, or Hordes getting signifigant playing time. And I do see a lot of my spare models for those games hitting Ebay to help Finance my Honey Moon, or just to get them out of my closet.

So thats the end of 2010, most likely. Lets hope 2011 is as awesome as I think it will be... come on october, daddy needs 2 weeks at the beach!

McMourning vs the Dreamer

2010-12-21T10:01:00.004-05:00

Got to get in 2 games at Huzzah this past weekend and figured its been a while since I've posted a battle report up.

Game 1 McMourning vs the Dreamer.

Crews:
McMourning, Chiuahauah, 2 Canine Remains, Sebastian, 2 Necro Punks, 1 Belle, Bette Noir
The Dreamer, 4 Alps, 1 Stiched Together, Copelius, 3 Day Dreams

Missions. I got Deliver the Message, adding Frame for Murder, and Grudge Match. He got Plant the Evidence and added in Kidnap and Body Guard.

He started off slow the dreamer popped up and did a few tricks. I rushed the Center of the board to clog the most terrain pieces and prevent him from getting quick grabs as best I could. The game got under way when McMourning sent a Flesh Golem over to say hi to the Dreamer and a Daydream. Taking major offense to this Chompy popped up and slapped the poor Golem silly. With a message in hand a Necro Punk bounded after Chompy Bits but failed to get close enough to tell him that McMourning wants to stuff him taxedermy style. The turn ended with Chompy in Melee with the Necro-Punk and no other nightmares on the board. Mike won inititive and took the chance to slap the poor necro punk around. This played into my hands as I had called that little guy to be my framed for muder victim. 2 vps! Chompy shrugged it off as Mike has called Kidnap on the little guy (and 2 dogs who Mcmourning was nice enough to kill) claiming 2vps right back. Chompy then reverted back to the cute little child of wonder and threw out a Stiched together. McMourning Ran around and scooped up the body parts of the dead Necro Punk and Flesh Construct, while Sebastian and my last dog tried to corner the Stiched Together. Sensing its impendig doom the Stiched Together gambled its life several times vs McMourning. My hand was rather depleted, and I was forced to use Soul Stoned to keep the Doc Alive. Wasting no more time on the Doll, the Doc, Sebastian, and my Last dog shred it, getting me 2 more VP's for Grudge Match. The Doll being a tough sob to put down got one last go of McMourning with 2 more life Gambles. But a lucky flip by me a black Jocker by him kept the Doc around.

I won the next turns Init and used the chance to have McMouring scalpel sling himself up next to the dreamer and give him the message. +4 Vps! Then I went fast and slashed the kid to ribons. The response was impressive. Every nightmare popped up surrounding Sebastian, McMouring, My Dog, and My Necro Punk. Chompy kicked things off Maiming my Dog and Sebastian. Copelius Then went around paralyzing my Necro Punk preventing him from fighting. With almost my entire crew on Lock down things were turning against me fast. Looking at the Board I had the Doc and my Belle left, with Bette hanging in the wings. But the game was winding down and he hadn't activated the points on the Board. The Necro Punk paralze activated and promptly Died from the Alp Auras, this caused Bette to pop up in melee with Chompy. She then took a slice out of the big monster doing minimal damage, but draining his final stones. The alp team then ganged up and took her out, Luckily she was able to save herself with one with the night.

Turn 6 started and Chompy made mince-meat out of a Copelius paralyzed McMourning. Bette popped back in and with a VERY luck defense flip avoided a blow by Chompy. She then went to work putting the big guy down for good. (Body Guard broken). At this point My ploy was very obvious. Load up mikes awesome new toys with big juicy targets and make sure he has so much fun slaughtering them he wont be able to plant the evidence that proves I am indeed a giant douche bag. The ploy worked and he was only able to activate 2 points. With a single Belle at 4 hps and bette my only two living models I pulled out an 8-4 Victory over the dreamer. My first win against the nasty jerk, and Mike's first loss with him. 3 Cheers for the Mad Doctor and his crazy skillz!

My other game was Leviticus vs Ramos. John was playing Ramos and really played his heart out, but the match up seems very one sided. Levicus kept making sure there were no scrap counters on the board and any time a steam punk died it would drop a corpse counter instead of a scrap counter. It made a very rough day for Ramos. Despite some amazing play, such as nickle and diming Teddy off the board, and Bringing a fully charged Joss up to threaten my Wagon, the disadvantages were too much and Leviticus pulled out an staggering 8-2 win over Ramos. John and I will get a re-match in soon I hope, I believe we are 1-1-1 in our games against each other now.

DONE!

2010-12-18T00:50:00.002-05:00

DISCLAIMER: I can totally change my mind on this at any time

But Im totally Friggin done with the Redskins. Seriously Rex Grossman? what the hell! Either admit the McNabb move was a mistake and move on, or screw it I don't care. This organization is such a mess that I just don't care any more. Im not sure Im ready to jump ship yet, buts been on my mind. I think this off season will be my last chance for the Redskins to prove to me that they have some for of competent people somewhere in the organization and not a bunch of knee-jerk, assholes who jump at the slightest chance to sign a big name player and sell jerseys instead of building a proper team from the ground up like every other successful team. We need youth god damn it. Freaking figure it out.

Monsterpocalypse

2010-12-09T11:10:00.004-05:00

I've been itching to dust off a few of my old favorites and MonPoc ended up winning the fight thanks to D6G talking about it in their last podcast. Yesterday Mike and I e-mailed back and forth and that Helped spark my memory on the rules. So last night I bugged Ellen enough and she agreed to a game after we decorated our tree.

Game was pretty simple We lined up and beat the tar out of each other. The map was called Highway to Hellvue and we placed a ton of buildings on it. She and I stumbled a bit through the rules, (banning a few pieces since I couldn't find out what they did) On turn 2 she had set up an amazing power base. She saw 3 buildings with 2 powerzones near her spawners. Two of the buildings game a bonus power die when powering up so with that little area she was racking up 7 dice each time she powered up. I had to Run Terra-Khan over there, Hyper form him up and blast through it to keep the game more even. We ended up pretty close. She Finished off Terra Khan with a body Slam through a Fire building when she had only 2 HPs left. It was a great time and I think we both had fun. She did comment on how much easier the game was to understand then Malifaux and Warmachine.

So after the Game I pulled out my 3 strategy Guides and started flipping through them. I think Im going to try and Keep MonPoc on the Middle Burner for a while see if anyone else gets the itch to dust theirs off too.

Holy Cow Teddy is Done Already?

2010-12-04T16:17:00.001-05:00

As a matter of fact he is!

Wow Dan thats amazing!

Thank you, I know.

Teddy

2010-12-02T08:40:00.001-05:00

I wanted to do something unique for my teddies base, so I took a ghoul model I got in the mail and made green stuff intestines for him. Should look pretty creepy when its all done.

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Almost Finished with my Leviticus Crew

2010-11-29T09:37:00.002-05:00

First the 4 Steam Punk Abominations. These guys painted up pretty quickly, They looked a lot like my Necro Punks, so I went over them with more highlights and I think they came out great.

And the Hollow Waif, she has been done for a while, but i forgot to snap a photo of her.

Warhammer Fantasy Battle Report

2010-11-26T08:26:00.003-05:00

I played a game Wednesday night. I hadn't planned on being free, but Ellen was very sick and could barely even stay awake, so eventually I left her to sleep it off, grabbed my ogres and hit the GW store.

There was a guy looking for a game and he had 1500 points of dwarves. I pulled out my 2k list, made some cuts and had a nice 1500 list to play with.

His List looked something like
Lord with runes
Thane with Runes
BSB with Runes
20 Long Beards
20 Hammeres with runed banner
10 Gunners
15 Miners
1 Cannon
1 Catapult

My List was
Bruiser with Items
Butcher
5 Ogers
5 Ogers
4 Iron Guts
2 lead Belchers
2 lead Belchers
3 Maneatters

Set up & Turn 1
So I felt like I had a nice advantage. We were playing a mission called mountain pass. You play long ways. Get a 24in deployment zone, and the long edges are impassible terrain. He set his gunmen up on a far flank so I was able to avoid them most of the game. He started moving up very agressively so I moved to match him. He didn't get very good shooting off turn 1. Only managing a few wounds.

Turn 2
I moved my Leadbelchers up and charged my unit of Bulls with bruiser and Maneaters into his long beards, who were joined by the BSB and Runesmith. In the shooting phase I killed a few hammeres, My magic phase was basically ignored since he had a decked out runesmith. On to combat. I wiped the floor with his longbeards, I won by 9, mostly due to the casualties I caused, he fled and I ran down the unit. But the real gem of it was His Hammers Fled from Panic, it was priceless. He was in deep trouble as turn 2 ended.

Turn 3
His Hammeres rallied and stood tall and his warmachines were kicking my butt. I moved as quick as I could to take out the stone thrower, but as I was closing in the Miners popped up and got in my way. They tried to Charge my Maneaters, but failed. His cannon fired off and killed 2 Ogre Bulls, leaving my Bruiser without a Unit. His Gunners dropped a Maneater. I moved a Lead belcher to block the Hammerers from charging my Bull Unit. I shot in with the other belchers and managed to kill a few. In my Magic Phase the Butcher Killed himself with Gut Magic.

Turn 4
So I charged the Miners and failed to wipe them all out with the Bruiser and Maneaters. His Hammerers had their best charge lane blocked by a single leadbelcher, so he charged his lord out of that unit alone and over ran into the middle of my Army. He shooting was hilarious that turn, he failed to wound with ST 10 like 3 times, it was priceless.

Turn 5
I charged his Lord with my Ironguts, and stood ready to shoot more with my last 2 Leadbelchers. His shooting was laughablly bad again, and I was able to Wipe out the Miners and Cause his Lord to run from Combat with my Ironguts. I ran down the Lord and ended up killing 3 more Hammeres from shooting. It was a very good turn for me.

Turn 6
The Hammerers charged and killed the Leadbelchers. I countered with a charge from my last Bull unti and rolled out my butt. On 9 attacks I killed 7. His unit Broke and was run down. He hit my Bruiser with a Cannonball to the chest, but only did 2 wounds. My Bruiser responded by charging into his Catapult and wiping out the Crew.

We ended up playing another turn since he didn't think it was turn 6, but It didn't matter, the Cannon ball killed 1 Irongut, and the gunners were out of range.

So I ended up with a Very strong Victory. My Maneaters lived, I captured 3 banners, Killed his General, and only left him with 140 points of the 1500 he started the game with.

I was thinking about it on my trip home last night. I have played 5 games of Fantasy since 8th Came out. Here is my break down

Vs Dwarves 2-0-0
Vs High Elves 1-0-0
Vs Dark Elves 1-0-0
Vs Skaven 0-0-1

4 Wins & 1 Draw in my first 5 games. *pats self on the back*

The Lament of a Redskins Fan

2010-11-17T13:29:00.003-05:00

So this has been on my mind for a long time and I would say our recent trouncing at the hands of the eagles made me want to get it off my chest. The Redskins are the most frustrating franchise in the NFL. Now that doesn't mean we have the worst team, and its argueable that Dalls is more frustrating to their fans this year, but over the last decade there is no doubt that the Redskins take this mantle. Lets look deeper.

The NFL is divided into 4 sections. Elite, Good, Mediocre, Awful.
Examples
Elite: Indianapolis, New England, Pittsburgh - (Playoff Lock, super-bowl contender)
Good: Tennessee, San Diego, Seattle, NYG - (Likely Playoff Teams, outside superbowl)
Mediocre: Washington, Miami, Chicago, Tampa - (Maybe playoffs, likely wildcard exit)
Awful: Buffalo, Carolina, Detroit - (No playoff hope, maybe building towards future)

You see when you look at Detroit you know they will suck this year. They admit they are rebuilding and are a year or two outside of honestly competeing. But you look at all the young talent they have, Suh, Stafford, Johnson, Best, and you see that they are building to maybe compete in the future. You look at the Steelers, Colt, and Patriots, they expect to be the best every year. They build from within, and keep the talent coming, they don't rest because they have the best at a position, they try to create depth, and youth.

But Washington is very different. every year we expect to be good. And every year we are mediocre. If that weren't bad enough we compete in the toughest division if football. Every year its a crap-shoot which team will win the NFC East. Because there are 3 solid contenders... Washington hasn't won a division title since 1999 when the rest of the division was in tatters. But every year is a new hot Thing! Bruce Smith, Deon Sanders, Albert Haynesworth, Donovan McNabb and all of a sudden expectations soar. And thats the problem. We once again expect to be good. I would be much happier with advanced knowledge that we suck, so long as I saw something solid being set up for the future. Maybe our O-line will start to get some youthful energy. A new center and guard could really help liven things up... but wait we don't have a 3rd or 4th round pick. The likely spot that quality interior o-linemen are drafted.

So finally I asked myself a pretty tough question. "Why am I a Redskins fan?" Its a legitimate question, ask yourself. The best reasons I could come up with aren't really valid.

1. "They give something back to me" - ulcers and rage don't really count
2. "They are winners!" - HA!
3. "They are my home team." - Ok thats valid, but why should I be married to a football team simply because of my geographical location.
4. "The ownership cares about the city" - suing ticket holders... really?
5. "They are building toward a strong future" - Oldest roster in the NFL is... well you know.
6. "Im already emotionally invested in them." And I think thats the big one. It would not be easy for me to break up with the redskins. Sure they are basically the wife-beater of the NFL and I'm the battered woman who tells the police I walked into the door or I deserved to get hit because I didn't listen. I mean lets face it I know more about the team then any person rightfully should, I fully believe they can beat any team in the NFL on any given sunday, and I can't help geek out at any mention of them, just last night I drove by redskins park and I was tempted to drive up and see if they were hiring.

I guess its all moot anyways, If I tried to leave them they would sue me anyways. Plus I can live vicariously through secondary franchises, like the Falcons and Colts who are my other favorite teams. Aww I can't stay mad at you... come here.

Rusty Alyce

2010-11-11T09:36:00.001-05:00

I finished Rusty Alyce... thats about all I got

Malifools Month 3

2010-11-10T07:40:00.003-05:00

I jumped in on the Malifools Monthly painting contest. I chose Leviticus for this one. Here are some pics.

Malifaux Tournament on 11-6

2010-11-08T07:23:00.004-05:00

Mr. Anderson took the time and effort to put together a Malifaux tournament for Huzzah hobbies, and decided to use Wyrd's newest official tournament rules. Basics are as follows. 1 hour games, 4 strategies, 5 schemes, VPS determine standings and pairings. Bill also added in a players choice painting contest.

My Tournament:
So a staple of the Wyrd tournament if that you only need to declare a faction going into a tournament. You are allowed to switch out your entire list each game. I was feeling a strange mixture of lazy and Cocky and chose that I would play Kirai every game.

So here is my list
Kirai, 4 Seishin, Datsue-Ba, 3 Gaki, 1 Onryo - 4 Soul Stones

Game 1 vs Dixon (Leviticus)
He took a list I had never seen with Levi before, 2 belles, 3 spiders, levi, and Alyce. I had a mission where I had to have my guys on his side of the board and he had to kill my people. My schemes were Bodyguard, and get a model in his deployment zone. His were Bodyguard and Assasinate. I basically played a slow moving sacrifice game. I would keep him on his side of the board by summoning and dropping models on his side. he would spend most of his turn tyring to kill my new guys and I would keep him back on his side. The game was running out of time so I super summoned Ikiryo into his deployment zone, but Forgot to move Kirai across the half way point of the Board. So I ended up costing myself 4 vps. and I lost 6-5.

Game 2 vs Chris (Pandora)
Chris only owns Pandora so he was playing a single list too. He got Kill my master and I got the same get my guys accross the board mission I had the last game. He deployed first and was in a single corner. I deployed in the opposite corner. I had one goal, just haul it accorss the board and hope I live. I called Body Guard and Breakthrough again, he called Bodyguard and kept 1 hidden. We played a few turns and then Time was called. I kept Kirai away from Pandoa to prevent him from killing her. And sent a few gaki and the Ikiryo over into his lines to slow him down. It ended up working and I won the game 8-3.

Game 3 vs Rockett (Sonnia Criid)
Ryan got Kill my master and I got a strange mission called get the stuff. You place 50mm bases around the board, but placement is REALLY limited, and I have to take (1) action to get the stuff, then I flip and see how much stuff I get. Kirai can be a very fast crew, so I called Hold Out and Body Guard, he called the same. Our game never really got under way. Turn 2 I had already collected all the Stuff I needed for 4 vps. and part way through turn 3 time was called. So Ryan and I never really engaged in our game, and I basically had no chance of losing much that game. I won 8-4.

Game 4 vs John (Rasputina)
He got slaughter, I got get the stuff again. We both called bodyguard and Hold out. Again I had the Stuff I needed for max vps on Turn 2. So I spent the next part of the game trying to break his Holdout. He ended up preventing it and Time was called again before the game really got under way. Strangely we both got max VP's 8-8

Datsue-Ba was my MVP of the day. She made several new Gaki for me and only died once. She was a major thorn in the side of all my opponents. So big props to the old gal.

So the Top three shook out like this
Dan the amazing - 29
Rockett - 28
John - 26

So I took home the gold, or in this case the gift certificate along with a cool piece of terrain, and I ended up winning the Players choice painting award. All in all it was a damn fine day for Kirai and Me.

Ok, so Bill wanted feedback on the Tournament format, as I believe it is still in Beta. So here are my likes and dislikes.

Likes - VPs for standings. I like this over the 3-win, 1-tie, 0-loss because in the last game John and i each took max points. Had that given us a tie I would be pretty upset. It also means there is always a chance to come back because if the top player losses big, it puts everyone else right back in the runnings.

The Bye system. In this format you take the average vp's won by every player in the round and that is what the Bye player ends up with. It ensures that the player with the Bye isn't screwed out of a chance to win the tourney. Most times the buy player got 5-6 points. Which is a respectable game.

Bill's painting contest. I do not think Painting should decide who wins a tournament. That said I spent a crap load of time painting my models and I was very glad to get some recognition for it. I really liked painting contest as a bonus to the Tournament.

Now the unfortunate side of things. My Dislikes.

1 Hour games. A normal Malifaux game is 6 turns. I got to turn 4 once this weekend. It gave me a serious edge because Kiria is the queen of snagging objectives at the last moment, and VERY tough to kill quickly. This game NEEDS 1.5 hour rounds.

No defined number of rounds. For 8 or less people a tournament should be 3 rounds. Bill said this wasn't well defined. But I think the Ideal tournament would have had 3 1.5 hour rounds.

5 Schemes aren't enough. I only called 3 of them all day, and I used 1 of them in all 4 games. A little more variety would help I think.

Bonus points for preventing called Schemes. Im pretty sure outside of the time limit this is the one that bothers me most. You are already at a disadvantage for Announcing your scheme to your opponent, and now he gets an additional an advantage for stopping it. Rockett got 5 bonus vps for preventing his opponents Schemes. Its pretty lame in my eyes. I could have been a dick and prevented several of my opponents Schemes through out the day, but I decided against it.

Get the Stuff, this mission is butt easy. I never in either game felt I would not get 4 points with it. Its way too easy and doesn't require interaction.

FSA Painting

2010-11-04T08:07:00.006-04:00

So a while back I painted up some Aquan ships for Brian's Birthday. Jay bought him a few more ships, but then Brian decided to became a loser and stopped playing, so I never painted up those last ships. Last night I got the itch to finish off the last few ships, maybe in the hopes that it will re-vitalize Brian's desire to play FSA. Here are the 6 Escorts and the Carrier

Also since I love myself and all things I do I painted up a Gunship for my Sorylians. These guys are amazingly badass, so I really want them table ready asap, especially since Warstore has shipped my heavy Cruisers already and I think they will be in before the weeks ends.

*Super Special Edit!* As of 11pm last night my Heavy Cruisers are in Virginia!

Board Game Review #4

2010-11-03T13:33:00.004-04:00

I think today will be the Long awaited reveiw of Hex Hex XL. At least I've been waiting, I doubt anyone else has.

Hex Hex is best described as a far more complex version of Hot potato. You get a deck of 150 cards and pass 5 to each player. Each person begins the game with 5 voice. You then pass the Hex around using the cards in your hand until the Hex lands on a person who can't play a card to pass it. That person is then hexed, and loses 1 voice. The person who sent the Hex to them gains 1 voice. That is a bare bones easiest possible way for the game to go. You player a number of rounds equal to 1+ the number of players. Giving each player a chance to be first, the last round, who ever is losing chooses the first caster. After that the player with the most voice wins.

But its not so simple. In the 150 card deck are several cards that really offer a great twist to the game. Some cards create new hexes, so there are more than 1 Hex bounding around the Board. Some cards force the Hex to move only 1 direction. Some boost the amount of Voice lost by the Hexed player. There are several dozen cards that pop up in the game that help make it fun, random, and always keep it fresh.

The Large box set called Hex Hex XL, comes with 2 expansions. Hexen Sticks, and Hex Hex Vexxed. The Sticks are added into the main game and play the same with 1 exception. You place a number of sticks in the center of table equal to one less then the number of players. Then there is a New Card called Grab. Once its played there is a mad scramble for the sticks. Once all sticks are claimed you flip a card from the special Hexen Stick Deck. It gives reweards to certain players and penalties to others. Usually the Penalty falls on the player with out a stick. But not always. Its a nice addition as it keeps everyone paying attention to whats going on in the game. Hex Hex Vexxed, adds in the Vex Deck. After each round who ever was Cursed, is then Vexxed. It adds a hinderance to that player for 1 round. It can be that they can only say words like Ping, ZZzzzt, and Pa'keew. Or other random obnoxious things. Its also a ton of fun, but mostly we just use the Sticks.

Hex hex is very fun and random game. Most times we play ditching any ideas of strategy for plays that will cause more chaos and ridiculousness. And at the moment it is my personal favorite of all the games in my Library. Hex Hex is an A+ in my book.

Board Game Reviews #3

2010-10-27T14:35:00.006-04:00

This Week we tackle the old school game that was re-released by Fantasy Flight known as Talisman.

In Talisman you play one of a number of Fantasy style characters. The Warrior, a Wizard, Dwarf, or a Troll. There are around a dozen different characters with uniquq abilities to choose from. The game board is set up with three rings. The outter ring is where you begin the game. each player moves along the board 2d6 spaces and picks up adventure cards. They range from items, monsters, or events such as a market sets up allowing you to buy things. Each player is out for themselves so you can fight your fellow adventurers. Your goal is to become powerful enough to make through the second and third rings, so most of the game takes place in the outter ring.

Once you are ready to cross to the inner ring, you must either fight the Guard at the bridge, or find a boat to cross the water. From there you mush break into the castle of elemental evil, or something. When you finally reach the very center of the board, if you have a talisman card you reciever the Crown of Command, which you then use to kill all the other players and rule the world.

Its a pretty simple game to play. But we have found a fair number of flaws. Its tough to tell when your ready to start making your way into the second level of the board. It can be very difficult to cross the bridge into the second ring. And the game almost always favors the person who gets out to an early lead. there are balancing factors, such as an evil witch who can turn you into a toad. This happened in a game where Mike was crushing. He got changed and Ellen scooped up all his gear and went on to win. Also know before you start it that this game is VERY long. The original game I hear was even longer. Since FF took it over and revised it they added in a few features to speed up game play, such as tokens which allow die re-rolls. I think my main issue with the game, is that there are times when you need to land on a certain space, but the only way to move is by rolling 2d6. I had a game where I was cursed and it kept me out of the main game trying to land on a certain spot to remove it. I spent 10 turns doing nothing but bouncing around the spot I needed. Eventually I was given the chance to have my character die and I did it, so that I could start a new one and have a shot to play the game.

I do enjoy the game, but its not one I want to play as frequently as the others I own. If your into fantasy adventures and the like this game is perfect, if not, I would pass on it. My rating comes in with a C maybe into the C+ range. Overal just not my favorite.

Awesome time at Warstore Weekend

2010-10-25T09:55:00.010-04:00

So Jay, Mike, and I made the trip up to Warstore weekend for some gaming as well as a chance to get away for a bit. Its the first time the three of us have done a gamer thing in a long time. It was pretty awesome.

Saturday I wake up at 4:15am and get ready. I get a text from mike around 4:20 that Jay is picking him up. At this point it takes me 5 more minutes but them in all ready to roll out. I get another at 4:30 saying they are stopping ot get get drinks for the road. All in all I could have slept another half hour, but oh well who cares, they arrive right aroung 5 and we hit the road. Traffic was a breeze we actually got the Hotel before 9am. Which is great since we thought it would be like 5 hours, but it was less then 4.

I don't want to knock on Jersey too much here, but I gotta say, the whole it smells like butt in Jersey thing is totally true, we got out of the car and BAM, ass stink!

Check in isn't for a few hours so we roll into the hotel empty handed ready to demo some games. So the whole thing was laid out in 4 big ballrooms in the Hotel. Room 1 was paint and take, room 2 was mini games, room 3 was the shop, and then there was a room about twice the size of the others where they held what looked like the flames of war, 40k, and PP tournaments. When we arrived, the warstore store hadn't opened yet so we went to each room and scoped them out. In the largest room there was a demo of Heavy Gear.

So we all took about an hour and learned the game. here are the basics, you have a couple minis, roll some dice, use way way way way too much math, and see what happens. Then we demoed their gladiator style combat game, wbich used the same system, but added even more math. So we were looking over the minis and the guy who ran the demo let it slip that our little 5v5 game was two $45 box sets. These models are all metal, but they are about the size of a space marine. So thats $9 piece for small mechs. They did give us free tape measurers so it wasn't a total loss. Also they gave us there little raffel tickets, which I kinda rolled my eyes at, since I basiclly didn't want their stuff even if was free. But what I found out was way better. You could trade the tickets in to Warstore for Swag. That made me a happy Panda.

The demo ended and we strolled over to the warstore store. Hoping to find some cool stuff. The selection was very limited, and I wasn't able to find any heavy crusiers or gunships for my Firestorm fleet. What was awesome was that if you got 40 tickets you could get a free box set from any of Spartans lines. So I set my eyes on the Ralgard Uncharted Seas box set. As we left the store Mike and I realized we had lost Jay. but its not usually hard to find a wookie, and we found him looking for us. The malifaux tournament was trying to get under way, but only 2 people had shown up. So we grabbed our models and joined in.

It was a pretty fun time. I decided to take Kirai all 3 games, since I didn't want to bother thinking of list ideas. I got to play 2 random guys, and then met mike at the final table. My first game was going very well for me, but my opponent was a really slow player. Time ran out as I was in the middle of my 6th turn. It annoyed me because I had only activated 1 model. Had I gotten a full turn, then and 8 point game would have been likely. Instead I got 5. My second game I slaughtered my opponent. He was new, and I tried to hold back, but I just ended up crushing him.

For the last game I ended up facing Mike, and we were pretty tired and didn't want a hyper competative game so we both decided to try something new. I made his list and he made mine. I gave him a swamp theme list: Zorida, JuJu, 2 Slurids, 2 Waldegeitst, and a Terror Tot. He gave me Nicodem, Kill Joy, 2 vultures, a punk zombie, and some dogs. High lights went like this. Zorida obeys punk zombie to hit Nico, he cheats red jocker for damge, and adds a moderatore for 9 damage, I prevention flip and get the red joker stopping all damage. Next turn Kill Joy kills Nicodem off another Obey. The Hanged killed off both slurids and the terror tot. Kill Joy took out a Waldegiest and JuJu. We were playing get to the other side of the board as our onbjective, and ended up with Zorida, a Waldegiest, and JuJu (he came back) in my deployment zone and Killjoy and a hanged in his. He won on scenario and got an extra scheme on me so he won 8-4. Tournament shook out like this - Mike won with 22 points. Some guy who I didn;t play took 21, Jay had 20, and I had 17. So grats to Mike on a big time win. We each got 5 tickets for playing, and Mike got 5 bonus tickets for winning, Jay got 1 bonus for 3rd place. Mike also recieved a pretty sweet metal mini case, with room to hold 200 infantry figs.

After the game, we checked in, dropped out stuff off and grabbed dinner. I just want to say that people in New Jersey are crazy drivers. The food was good though, I got a pot roast.

We got back to the Hotel, grabbed our gear and went back to the minis room for the Firestorm Armada mega battle.

We were hoping for a nice turnout, but it ended up being just the three of us. Around turn 4 another guy jumped in with half a fleet, but he was really just trying to learn the game. So they scored the battle on kill points. 1 for a frigate, 2 for a cruiser, 4 for a battleship, and 4 for holding a planet. We each had 2 deployment zones and set up half our fleet in each. I then proceeded to Whomp their asses. Not really, but I did really well. I can't really remember any of it, since we played for like 4-5 hours, but damn was it a blast. I ended up with a strong victory with 38 points. Jay took 25 and Mike took 21. I really do love that game. I got a $30 gift certificate to an NJ game store for the win. I was preplexed by the prize, but we also got a ton of tickets. 5 for playing, and again 5 for first, 3 for second and 1 for third.

As this ended around midnight, we decided to call it a day. We made it back to the room and then i found I couldn't sleep. I was still a bit wired, and then there some snoring issues, but either way I was still awake. So I stumbled back down to watch some games. I caught the end of a midnight madness Warmachine tournament. The top tables spoke volumes about the games balance issues. 2 skorne, 2 Khador, and 2 Menother players made up the top three tables. The tournament before also had a Skorne Khador finale. But it was a fun time. I chatted with random guys about Wyrd and Privateer, and eventually went upstairs around 4-4:30 I had been up for 24 hours by that point and passed out.

We woke up and got breakfast the next morning and decided our next test game would be, Uncharted Seas. The night before we pooled our tickets and they said it was Ok for me to get the Ralgard box set. We set up our ships I was using the Bone Griffons. About 5 minutes into the first turn the shop opened up, So I ran over and grabbed the Ralgard. I then found out they had reduced the tickets needed to get the box sets to 30. So I gave the 10 spares back to mike, so that he could get a set too. I subbed out the Griffons for the Ralgard and we played a 4 player free for all. I was winning early, then got hammered. the 4th guy was eliminted when Jay blew away his battle ship. As the game wore down it looked like this. Jay had his battleship. I had 2 cruisers, one of which had only 1 life left. Mike and a wounded Frigate and his battle ship. So Mike rammed Jay battleship to battleship, and they beat the crap out of each other. Jay ended up taking mike down, but in the process took a heavy beating leaving with only crew point. I tried to get my last cruiser close enough to board Jay and take out his last guy, But I was killed trying to close the gap. So jay took 1st, me 2nd, and Mike 3rd. With that we got another like 20 tickets and Mike got himself a box set of the Imperial Navy for U.S.

We hung around a bit longer after the game in the Shop. Mike and Jay grabbed some really sweet terrain pieces, and I got a Soda Pop mini. I have wanted to get this one for a while, so even if I never play the game im glad I bought her model.

After that we went to the game store the cash in my certificate. I ended up getting the U.S rule book, since they didn't have any FSA stuff I needed.

It was a really great trip all in all. Im very glad we all decided to it. I look forward to maybe going again in 2012.

Warstore Weekend

2010-10-19T12:01:00.007-04:00

Its been way too long since Jay Mike and i went on a gaming adventure. So about a month and half ago I started looking for a local tournament we could all attend. and the Warstore weekend popped up. I was intrigued, but thought it was more of a pipe dream. So I floated out the idea, expecting to be shot down. Instead they both jumped on it. Then with the ball back in my court I faltered, after some serious pushing by them to get me to take the idea seriously, we decided to sack up and hit the road dark and early this weekend to make the trek to New Jersey for the Warstore Weekend

Right now I know for a fact that my Sorylain Fleet and Malifaux Crews will be joining me on the trip. Im pondering the idea of bringing the Chaos or the Ogres as well, but they might get left on the bench. There is a 500 point 8 man free for all saturday night, and I have a few basass cruisers that want to wreck some face. Im on the fence about the malifaux tournament. Its 35 soul stones, 1 master. I would likely take Kirai for this event and i think I could do well. My hang up is that I want to maximize my gaming time, and Im not sure if I want to play random pick up games and demos or a structured tournament. So I'll have to ponder that one a little more as we get closer to the day.

But either way I'm psyched up and ready for a kick ass weekend and some serious gaming hours. I doubt I will sleep much saturday. Probably suppliment sleep with Redbull and Pizza. or maybe something less cliche.

Malifaux Battle Report

2010-10-13T12:01:00.004-04:00

This is a 2fer as I played a pair of games last night against John, one the chantilly guys who has made the migration out to Huzzah. I played Perdita in both games, taking Fransico, Santiago, Nino, and an Austringer for my 25 point list.

Game 1 vs Ressers.
He took McMourning, 4 Dogs, 3 Necro Punks, A Flesh Golem, and the Grave Spirit. We ended up with a shared Deliver the message as our strategy. This is actually my first Shared objective game. I chose Kill Protege and Assassinate. Figuring killing his models would be my best bet in this game. I ended up falling victim to the strategy. he hauled foward and lived through as much as he could and ended up delivering the message on turn 2. I proceeded to pick him apart pretty badly, but He ran McMourning the heck away from me, and killed his grudge model when the construct got into Nino and dropped him. I was in bad shape based on the objectives so i was force to over-extend Fransico and Perdita in a last ditch effort to catch up on VP's. It wasn't enough as McMourning hid until he had a clear shot, then ran in and burned severl stones and killed Perdita. It was a rough game, but thankfully short, so we decided to go again.

Game 2 vs Arcanists.
This time I faced Collette, who added in 2 corphyee, and Cassandra. Its the only list I've faced with Collette, so I was slightly familiar with it. We got seperate strategies but both flipped Claim Jump, so it was essentially a shared mission again. He took the 2 arcanist specific schemes, I took Body Guard and Raid. He started fast having The Corphyee duet up and ran down my left flank. By turn 2 he had completed both schemes. I was reeling a bit for his speed, but kept my head. the Duet ran in and killed Nino with a red joker flip for damage. I spent my entire turn killing the stupid thing. and he burned several stones to try and keep it alive. Finally Perdita went and put a stop to all that nonsense. The next turn I did the same to Cassandra, but the soul stone spending kept her alive. He was low on stones from keeping cassandra and the duet up longer and I was closing in on Collette. My next turn I threw all 3 family members up and they went to work on Collette. He used his last stones but she managed to live. He then magicians dueled Perdita and hit her a little bit. Things were going well for me at this point. My Austriner was sitting on the claim jump. Cassandra and Collete were pinned to the right board edge with Santiago haning back to shoot and Collete in melee with Fransico and Perdita. I lost init 6-2, but spent my last soul stone for a re-flip, getting an 11. I went for the alpha strike on Collette who managed to stay alive a lot longer then I anticipated. She finally had no choice but to pop out of the combat, killing Cassandra in the process. But the Ortegas did not let up as Perdita and Santiago kept shooting her until she finally died. It was a very good win for Perdita, and she is now 2-1 (both wins vs Collette).

Board Game Review part 2

2010-10-05T09:43:00.006-04:00

For part 2 I have chosen Dominion. This is a pretty interesting game and one I knew nothing about prior to testing it at Gen Con. Its not new, there are like 4 expansions to the original game at this point, its just that its made by Rio Grande and almost every one of their games is a resource management game that either confuses or bores me to tears. Dominion is quite an exception to Rio's normal M.O. Sure you still have to manage resources, but thats not the focal point of the game. The game is focused on deck building. The box set comes with around 500 cards, divided into treasure, victory points, and action cards. So a break down of the game.

There are i believe 24 different action cards. You start the game by picking 10 of them. You can do a random draw or a theme game from the list in the rule book. Place the 10 chosen action cards in the middle of the table, usually in order by cost. Then at the top place the stacks of Copper, Silver, Gold, then the Estates, Duchy's, and Provinces. Each player begins the game with a 10 card deck. Those 10 cards are 7 copper and 3 estates. The Estates provide your with 1 victory point each, but they have no in game effect, so drawing them during the game is a hindrance. Copper each give you 1 point of money, (we usually say gold, but it can be confusing since there is a card named gold.)

Each player then draws 5 cards from his deck and play begins. On your turn you look through your hand, you are allowed to play 1 action and buy 1 card. As you progress through the game you will buy action cards that can give you bonus actions each turn, additional buys, the ability to draw more cards from your deck, or even bonus money. Once you have played every card you are able and purchased a new card, you then discard every card remaining in your hand. Draw 5 new cards and your turn is over. Play continues in this manner until one of the two end conditions are met. Either 3 of the action decks have been bought up or all of the Provinces are bought out. Provinces are the highest victorys point card so people tend to buy them whenever they are able, it has been the most common ending condition for us. Once the game is over you go through your deck, pull out all your victory cards and count them up to see who is the winner.

The game plays very quickly, and we have found it to be a fast favorite among our group. The only issue has been getting the game sleeved, to protect the cards from wear and tear. Dominion is definetly one of my favorite games, we have picked up one expansion. Its called intrigue, and it comes with more treasure and victory cards to allow the game to be played by up to 6 players.

I Have played this game a good 10 times since Gen Con and I am still itching to play it more, so my rating is going to be a very solid A.

Board Game reviews

2010-09-30T09:36:00.003-04:00

Since Gen Con Ellen and I have been on a board game kick. Before we left between the two of us we owned 2-3 board games. Mostly cheap card games such as Bang and Apples to Apples. We do enjoy playing thse games, but have never really gone out and increased our collection. This changed a lot with Gen Con. Since then between the two of us we have purchased 5 new board games. And I really enjoy every single one of them. So I will be reviewing them as I feel like it over the next week or two.

So Game #1 will be Chaos in the Old World.
Its a 4 player game, and not a very quick one, so it can be tough to get the right number of people to play. The game allows each player to take control of one of the Warhammer Chaos Gods and attempt to destroy the old world through corruption and battle. There are two ways to win. Every time you destroy a city you gain victory points. If your point total reaches 50 at the end of a turn you win. If mulitple people reach 50 at once, the person with more points wins. The Second way to win is the corruption dial. There is a different condition for each god to be allowed to turn their dial. Each turn gives you a bonus, and the last space on the Dial says you win. The Dial trumps the points as a win condition. Each god is incredibly unique and play vey differently. There are 3 unit types for each faction, Warriors who do the fighting, Greater Daemons, who do the fighting better, and Cultists, who you use to destroy the cities and corrupt the humans.

Khorne - The god of blood and battle. Khorne has the fewest cultists, making it hard for him to corrupt cities. His easiest win condition is to get his dial clicks. Khorne is allowed to turn his dial once each turn if he kills an enemy model. This is a very easy thing to do so Khorne is usually able to get his Dial turns very quickly.

Nurlge is the god of pestilance and plague. He has the most models, but his warriors are weaker then the others. Nurgle has the most clicks on his dial so he generally tries to win by corrupting locations and getting victory points.

Tzeentch is the god of magic and change. He is able to switch back and forth between the two roles and play the board as it develops. Tzeentch gains dial advancement by corrupting locations with heavy magic. Magic occurs when Tzeentch plays magic power cards or when there are Warpstone Mines.

Slannesh is the god of pleasure and pain. He is like Tzeentch in that he can play either the dial or the points. His dial is the shortest so it a strong way for him to win. Slannesh enjoys corrupting the powerful people of the world so when he corrupts cities with powerful heroes or nobles he gets to advance his dial.

So thats the general break down of the gods. Its a pretty fast paced game and its a lot fun. In the half dozen games I have played I have found that there is a good balance among the gods. I say this despite the fact that Nurgle has never won a game. I still think Nurgle is no more or less powerful then the other 3. It is a very fun game, and even people who know nothing of the world have enjoyed playing this game. In fact most of the people i have played with know nothing of the Chaos gods or the warhammer world and they still seem to enjoy it. The biggest knock on the game is the limited number of players. I understand that there are only 4 chaos gods and that is why there are only 4 players allowed, but I really wish that more then 4 people could play at once, were that the case the game would come of the closet more often.

I will give Warhammer: Chaos in the old World a B grade. The game is fun and the replay value is decent. It suffers from its small play size which is a shame as the game really is great.

Game Report Ogre Kingdoms v High Elves

2010-09-22T13:13:00.002-04:00

I played my first 2k game of 8th ed fantasy yesterady, and what I think is my 3rd overal game of the new edition. I like the new edition and it has helped turn the Ogres from the laughing stock of fantasy to a decent list with some nice options.

My basic list looked like this
Tyrant, Butcher, BSB, 2 units of 5 Bulls (plus hero for 6 man units) 2 units of 2 ledbelchers, 3 Ironguts (plus BSB), 3 Man eaters, and A Rhinox Rider.

My opponent took 20 seaguard with a bsb, 15 phoenix guard with a level 4 mage, 15 sword masters with a named hero, 20 bowmen, and 2 bolt throwers.

His magic was pretty strong, but I was able to handle it with the butcher. He ended up moving his Phoenix guard into a building and I shruged and ignored them the whole game. He set up his sword masters and I olbiged him with a huge charge. I sent in both bull units, with a butcher and tyrant, as well as my Rhinox Rider. His attacks were pretty brutal, but mine were far worse. he was left with only his named Hero and Standard. They fled and I ran them down. On the other side My Ironguts got pincushioned by the bolt throwers and archers, but the BSB made it into melee. He spent basically the whole game slaughtering first the archers, then the bolt thrower crews. The Seaguard were the biggest pain. They shot down the maneaters, killed off the Butcher and his unit until Finally the Tyrant came in and set them straight. The game ended then, he had his Phoenix Guard alive and nothing else. I had my BSB, My Tyrant, My Tyrant's unit had only lost 1 bull, and 2 leadbelchers. The Tyrants had also catpured 3 banners. So it was a nice win for the Ogres. I was shocked by his hiding the phoenix guard the way he did, I was very nervous about them, but was able to ignore them.

All in all I had a ton of fun, the guy was very nice, he helped me with the rules, and really helped give me an even fun game to play with the ogres.