Friday 12 August 2011

Character Restrictions

Having heard some feedback from the GenCon Masters utilizing character restrictions across multiple army lists, I'm really quite intrigued.  Currently the restrictions don't change any of my Mercenaries lists - though I'm still deciding on the third list - but I'm hearing reports of people switching faction at the requirement.  Just think, you won't see Nyss Hunters or Kovnik Joe or Tartarus or the Deathjack in every single list...  It sounds a little bit like heaven.

With the standard 3 list format, that means I'm looking at 3 ways to get damage boosts.  So... Gorten, eMagnus, Durgen, Aiyana & Holt, and the Ragman form the choices for Mercenaries.  Of those, I'm of course taking eMagnus, he's my favorite warcaster and I've pretty much tuned my Bad Seeds list to run as well as it can.  There's currently a two point slot to fill but I'd like to see if my Chain Gun Crew can work first.  Otherwise I'll fill it with... something...

So, that leaves four choices more.  Gorten I'll discard right away due to his small focus stat.  It would only drive me up the wall, regardless of how great his feat is.  Durgen... well I have the miniature, I have Kayazy Assassins, I even have Reinholdt.  His list does lack pathfinder though.  A possible issue.  I'd also have to stock up on Rhulic heavies as I currently have... none.  As for Aiyana & Holt, I dislike their miniatures intensely, but I'd be willing to use them in a Shae themed force.  That themed force is extremely tempting, but does require buying a LOT of pirates.  If I had money to burn, I'd like to pick it up.  Finally we come to the Ragman.  He frees up every other caster available really.  I'd really like a good, Thamarite themed army but I'm afraid I'd be stuck with Fiona and her stupid canon cultists.

Meanwhile however, I'll be testing out Constance Blaize in all her infantry swarming/warded glory over the next few weeks to see if she can stand up on her own.  That army list certainly punishes casters who like upkeep spells, and has a large portion that cannot be targeted by spells.  I'm a bit wary of anti-infantry casters or models, but we'll have to see what the first few tests unveil.  At least all but 2 models have arrived and are now assembled!  I'm missing Rocinante and the Precursor Knight leader model at this point.  I can't wait to see my entire army rampage across the board with Crusader's Call going.

Thursday 4 August 2011

Brawltastic

I'd normally run the yearly two day event during Conflagration but as the QMU is not attached to a shop and I just don't see GUGS outside of university time I believe it's much easier if I just keep going with the Tartan Brawl.  I'm going to attempt to book the second Tartan Brawl on the 10th and 11th of March 2012.  Saying that, I'll have to pick up prize support much quicker this time around.

Not happy with the way Constance's armour has turned out, I think she may be in the queue for some paint stripper.  Then again she looks fine from a distance, so I might just do her at tabletop quality for now and pick up a new Constance once the rest of my army is painted.  I'll just console myself by painting another Sword Knight.

Monday 1 August 2011

Weapons of Mass Constuction

I've discovered a very useful offline army constructor - mkII FCU (Force Constructor Utility).  It's pretty sleek, though there are a couple of issues when you attempt to add attachments or warjacks and haven't selected what you're adding it to.  What is best about it though is that it seems to be constantly updated.  It already has the new eHaley and pSkarre themed forces from the latest No Quarter in it.  It can't print your army lists out unfortunately but it can export all the information into a text format (or HTML or BBL) that you could paste into a word processor.  It's certainly on a par with iBodger, though it isn't as mobile, but it's nice to have available while I work on other projects online (like my impending GW2 journal/blog).

Constance Blaize and Damiano have now both been assembled, though my bajillion other models are still ahead of them in the painting queue.  Unfortunately neither of their lists are quite ready yet as some things just weren't in stock or I forgot to order them.  I'll try to rectify that later this week.  As for assembling these two warcasters though:
Damiano is easy to assemble and has a surprising range of poses you can use.  I'm really quite pleased with how the miniature is built and how solidly it all sticks together.  Constance on the other hand is something of a nightmare.  She's no Mortenebra but honestly, what hassle.  All the joins are tiny and nigh-unpinnable.  I've done the best I can with green stuff and superglue, but realistically she's going to have bits break off at some point in the future.

As I've *finally* managed to get my friends in Aberdeen interested in the game, I'm assembling the Warmachine battle boxes for them.  So far I've built the Protectorate and Khador ones, with the Cygnar one lurking conspicuously in the background.  The plastic warcasters are actually really nice - at least Sorscha and Kreoss are - and the heavies are simple to build.  Not so for the light warjacks.  Goodness gracious (I never thought I'd say that) they are a royal pain in the arse.  Go metal for lights people!  Ignore that plastic stuff, it's such a hassle.  Or pin it like it was metal.  That would probably work better.  The lights also appear to be made of several thousand pieces each - buyer beware!