Feeling Lethargic

Jim and I were supposed to play a 750 game at GUGS today, but alas the QMU was closed due to the Easter holidays (philistines!). Luckily I'd arrived at about the same time as Jim at the QMU and so we migrated to Jim's house to play instead, though without the company of other gamers - I had hoped to return some heavy books to Thomas but he seems to be avoiding me. Perhaps he can sense my epicness shining through now that I'm playing eMagnus.

I'm not really sure my brain can cope with writing a full battle report but I'll see what I can do. This may be filled out in greater detail later.

Game One: Supreme Kommandant Irusk vs Magnus the Warlord
Scenario: No Man's Land (although we both forgot about it)

Jim's List: 750/750
Supreme Kommandant Irusk
*Behemoth (I did ask why)
Doom Reavers
Greylord Ternion
Iron Fang Pikemen (8)
+Iron Fang Officer and Standard
Kossite Woodsmen (8)
Widowmakers
Winter Guard Mortar Crew
Manhunter
Man-o-War Drakhun (+dismount)

Andy's List: 750/750
Magnus the Warlord
+Nomad
+Renegade (bonded)
+Renegade (bonded)
Kayazy Assassins (8)
+Kayazy Assassin Underboss
Lady Aiyana and Master Holt
Steelhead Halberdiers (9)
Steelhead Heavy Cavalry (3)
Eiryss, Angel of the Retribution
Kell Bailoch
Lord Rockbottom, Expedition Financier
Rupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord
Stannis Brocker, Steelhead Commander

Deployment:
The board is pretty heavy with terrain - almost all of it linear obstacles and the like. I win the starting roll and opt to go first. The Kayazy Assassins take the right, eMagnus and his battlegroup are on the left with the Steelheads in the middle. Eiryss and Kell take up positions on the left near the centre of the board. Aiyana and Holt stay between eMagnus' battlegroup and the Steelhead block.
Jim puts his Iron Fangs in a bunch to my left between a house and a fence, eIrusk is next to them with Greylords spaced out evenly behind everything. The Behemoth and the Mortar Crew hold the right side of the centre. The Kossites take up position on top of Jim's TV where we all forget about them. Finally his Doom Reavers go up on the right in front of the Behemoth, and the Widowmakers take positions behind a wall just in front of Jim's deployment zone. I almost forgot about the damned Manhunter in the middle of the table behind a line of barrels.

Turn One:
Stannis gives the Furious Charge order to the Steelhead Heavy Cavalry. The Piper of Ord gives the cavalry March straight away - the Manhunter is in charge range - and away they go. Unfortunately they miss everything against Manhunter and I cry into my non-existent beard. Kell tries to shoot a couple of Widowmakers and fails miserably. Eiryss attempts the same with no success. eMagnus casts Mobilize and Lethargy (targeting my cavalry), everything else pretty much runs forward and towards the zone in the middle, I stupidly turn the Kayazy to face AWAY from the table edge having forgotten Jim has those sneaky Kossites sitting on top of the television (such a cunning place to hide them).

Jim starts things off by having the Manhunter charge Kell, I miss my free strike from the cavalry engaging him due to negative Lethargy still being up. I resign myself to having bad dice all game at this point. Kell dies horribly, though it does look like the Manhunter is going to follow suit on my turn. The Doom Reavers move forward to engage my cavalry but only kill one of them. The Behemoth and Mortar Crew drop some templates on some Steelheads and Renegade A. The Widowmakers come out from behind their wall but otherwise don't see a lot of action this turn.

Turn Two:
Stannis Brocker activates first, tells my cavalry to Furious Charge and then charges the Manhunter almost directly in front of him, Ghengis Khan promptly misses. eMagnus casts Misdirection and Mobilize. eMagnus and his Renegades swing around back towards the middle of the board, while the Nomad advances up the right flank. I quickly realise I've let the Nomad get outside my control area, but oh well. My Kayazy run again up the left flank and ONCE AGAIN turn away from the table edge - immediately afterwards I glance at the television and see all those Kossite Woodsmen sitting there. Eiryss heads very far up the left flank and caps a Widowmaker. The two cavalrymen I have left declare cavalry charges through the Doom Reavers, killing three of them but one makes his tough check thanks to eIrusk.
Jim starts his turn by bringing in the Kossites and killing half the Kayazy Assassins - fortunately the Underboss still lives. eIrusk drops an Artifice of Deviation over a patch of rough terrain and moves forward to activate his feat. The surviving Doom Reavers move through the Artifice of Deviation to mince the remaining Steelhead Heavy Cavalry, most of the Halberdiers and with some help from the Drakhun they disable the Nomad. The Manhunter kills Stannis Brocker with very little fuss and then the Behemoth blows the left arm off Renegade A. The Greylords drop a whole load of blizzards on the Iron Fangs around eIrusk.

Turn Three:
Most of my army is caught by eIrusk's feat, except for Aiyana and Holt, eMagnus, a Renegade, eEiryss and my Kayazy. I can also see a very solid assassination run, except that it revolves around a Halberdier killing a very specific Doom Reaver. I did get the sequence of activation slightly wrong for this.
I allocate one focus to Renegade B. I move Renegade A back and out of the way (instead of forwards and into the Manhunter's way) and the Kayazy on the left move to engage a Widowmaker or two and get closer to eIrusk. eMagnus casts Mobilize and moves forward to spray a few Iron Fang Pikemen, managing to kill the Officer and a normal trooper. I then use Kill Box and select my table edge and Jim's table edge in case my assassination run fails miserably.
The keystone of the assassination attempt comes along, can my two surviving Halberdiers kill the Doom Reaver that's occupying my firing location for Renegade B? evidently... no, they can't. Aiyana and Holt move across to the left and attempt to land Harm on eIrusk anyway, Aiyana fails and so Holt shoots some Doom Reavers instead. Renegade B opts to run to the left and hopefully I can drop a rocket on eIrusk next turn. To herald the end of my turn eEiryss moves forward to kill a Greylord.

I've caught almost all of Jim's army in eMagnus' feat, but eMagnus is extremely exposed. Jim decides to drop bombard shells all over eMagnus and then attempts to shoot poor eMagnus with eIrusk's gun. When the smoke settles he's still got 10 health. Jim tries to get a Widowmaker into a position to shoot eMagnus but one takes a free strike from a Kayazy and then the remaining Widowmaker flees. I chortle happily.
Then Jim activates the Manhunter, who can still charge eMagnus, they're directly left of each other. I ready the marker pen to mark down ludicrous amounts of damage. The charge attack misses! I silently thank the Dice Gods. The second attack hits however and removes 9 health from eMagnus, alas Jim doesn't have anything else left to attack eMagnus with, even though my warcaster is sitting at a single point of health. The Greylords move forward and hose a couple of the Kayazy just out of spite and Jim ends his turn.

We calculated our VPs in the scenario zone this turn since most tournaments call time in the third turn. I had 6 VPs to Jim's 5. Go mercs!

Turn Four:
Well, eMagnus is still alive, eIrusk hasn't moved and now I might just pull it off. Two focus go to Renegade B. eMagnus activates first and moves around the side of the Manhunter so that there's no dispute on free strikes and the like when Aiyana and Holt move past later. I cast Mobilize and then miss both attacks against the Manhunter. No matter, if I fail this I'm so very dead. Renegade B steps up to the plate, moves up but can't quite get into Scatter-Doesn't-Matter range and it still manages to land a rocket on eIrusk. Eat that! eIrusk does not seem impressed with my impressive damage roll either...
eEiryss moves back around a house so she can see eIrusk and shoots him, removing the two focus he had on him. Even with no focus she fails to damage him. Aiyana and Holt move up behind the Manhunter, drop Harm on eIrusk and Holt finishes the job.

Thoughts:
There's so many things that could have gone wrong for eMagnus in this game. If he'd failed a channelling roll and taken a point of damage, if the Widowmaker had passed their command check, if the Manhunter had rolled one more damage... Next time I'll just upkeep Misdirection and figure out how to work with the rest of my focus.
This also heralds my first genuine victory over Jim - in previous victories we'd done such things as swap armies or he was using a gimped warcaster (though I play Mercenaries, so clearly all my warcasters are gimped). I may even break out the Happy Dance.


Game Two doesn't deserve a real report, we can safely say that eButcher with 12 rage tokens and a full unit of Doom Reavers ate eMagnus. Maybe if I give eMagnus a more interesting base then he'd survive the pitiful onslaught of these non-character troopers...
I have started to add snow to my bases, and for the most part they look better! There are some exceptions, but those are mostly because some of the snow broke off or the brush accidentally left some 'drift'.

Kobra Kai

My first 750 game did not go well. Jim took an eSorscha Winterguard zerg and sprayed/CRA'd me to death. Writing a battle report would be a rather moot point for this game, it was over fairly quickly but was long enough to give me some feedback on playing eMagnus. eMagnus died to the Drakhun during eSorscha's feat turn, despite being too beautiful to die the Flying Steel couldn't be denied. Since we both need more practice we'll be playing another game on Saturday (if all goes to plan) - it should be my modified eMagnus list vs eVlad.

First of all, eMagnus is very focus intensive, he's doing things with just about all his focus every turn: casting Lethargy (a tricky, tricky spell), Mobilize, Bullet Dodger, Misdirection etc. This means he's a 'sit at the back' type warcaster, only his feat doesn't let him sit at the back, you need him up front to catch the enemy forces in Kill Box. On any given turn I should be spending 2 focus to cast Lethargy on a new target, then another to upkeep Misdirection (if it's active) and giving at least 1 to my warjacks - that leaves me on ARM 19, 1 below my preferred norm. Alternatively I could spend it all to use Mobilize to make the warjacks (and Magnus) faster, but I find sitting on no focus is an invitation for assassination. I'm definitely going to need a few more games to figure out how he works.

Given that my list is so heavily weighted for the melee side of things I've taken Jim's advice (see comments on previous article below) and swapped around some things in my list. While I would *love* to use a Mangler it's a massive focus hog without Frenzy, so I've opted to downgrade my Mariner to a Nomad and got myself some Kayazy Assassins and Kell Bailoch in exchange for one of the units of Steelheads. It was also tempting to use pMagnus, but I'll give eMagnus a few more tries first. If Kell doesn't work out, then I'm sure I can swap him out for Gorman and fun times will be had by all.

Enter the Warlord

I've just finished painting eMagnus and I'm Very Happy with the results. I've experimented more with two brush blending and I'm starting to get to the stage where I can say Less is More. This is a special stage of development in the painting cycle it seems and I'm beginning to understand what all those Zen Masters of the miniature painting world are speaking about.
There's something definitely satisfying about picking up a painted model that's heavier than it should be simply because it's epic. I should be able to get a picture up tomorrow night or there about.

Now I'm ready to partner with up Sean Murchie (or whichever of the twins is pretending to be Sean that day) and his Skorne since all my stuff is painted and ready for the 1,000 point team games. Granted I only needed to do eMagnus and two Renegades - Sean's providing the other two - so it's a bit of a cop out. At least my eMagnus will be too beautiful to die!

Return of the Traitor

I was supposed to play Sebastien today with his Khador army (of DOOM) but he'd forgotten and instead went to his driving lesson - the bastard. Instead I watched Dermot with his Trollbloods play Penguin (real name... er... Dan?) and his Legion of Everblight. Dermot's entire army was multi-wound models - Champions, Hero, Long Riders, few warbeasts and Penguin's army was... hmm, lacking really. I couldn't see the core of Penguin's army. Anyway, Dermot's Trollbloods dominated everything.

I also got two games against Sean Murchie using his Skorne, the first game was very fast, only two turns each before Ashlynn bit the dust.

Sean's First List:
Lord Tyrant Hexeris
Basilisk Drake
Basilisk Krea
Cyclops Savage (I think, I keep getting confused between the Brute and the Savage)
Paingiver Beast Handlers (4)
Praetorian Ferox (3)
Venators (8)
Ancestral Guardian

I was using my Ashlynn list and made good progress in the first and second turns since Sean probably didn't realise just how far I could charge with my Steelhead Halberdiers (17" threat range including the Reach). I decimated his Venators but had Ashlynn quite far forward with a smoke cloud blocking line of sight to her. Unfortunately I forgot that Sean could just move something in front of her and slam it over her and so poor Ashlynn died horribly to Ferox - though it took two to kill her since the first did no damage. Sean had to clear out a whole bunch of my Steelheads to make the slam lane, but he got it done. The game didn't last very long so we decided to have another one.

Sean's Second List:
Lord Tyrant Hexeris
Basilisk Krea
Cyclops Brute
Cyclops Savage
Paingiver Beast Handlers (4)
Praetorian Ferox (4)
Praetorian Swordsmen (8)
Ancestral Guardian

Against this list I opted to pull Magnus out of the case since he hasn't seen action in a while.

My List:
Magnus the Traitor
Nomad
Renegade
Renegade
Stannis Brocker, Steelhead Commander
Steelhead Heavy Cavalry (3)
Steelhead Halberdiers (9)
Rupert Carvolo

This game went much better for me and was mostly carnage everywhere.

Deployment:
We were playing on the desert map at GUGs with a large plateau on either side of the board - we both ignored of the plateaus - and a nice big open area in the middle, which we immediately rushed into and began killing everything. I had my two Renegades on the right with Magnus immediately to their left next to a gigantic rock. On the other side of the rock was the Nomad and then a line of Steelhead Halberdiers with the cavalry and Stannis Brocker behind them.
Sean put his Praetorians on my left next to the plateau, then a wall of beasts with Hexeris in the middle and finally the Ferox on my right with the Paingivers behind them.

Turn One
I won the first turn and so ran everything forward, I put Frenzy on the Nomad and... that was it really.
Sean put Death March on the Swordsmen, activated the Krea's aura and ran forward too. I believe Sean used one of the Cyclops animi on Hexeris to make me reroll hits, just in case I had some Renegade sneakiness to exploit on my turn.
As you can see it was very exciting stuff this turn.

Turn Two
The first turn of utter carnage.
Stannis Brocker activated, gave the Furious Charge to the Halberdiers and then took a pot shot at a Swordsman with his Hand Cannon. It missed and he was done. Then the Halberdiers charged the Swordsmen and one Ferox who had got too close to the middle area. The Ferox was pasted by three of the Halberdiers and a whole bunch of Swordsmen died, fuelled the Ancestral Guardian almost to full and their Death March attacks killed a couple of Halberdiers in return. My cavalry couldn't get into melee range so I moved them up and only managed to shoot a single free Praetorian with their Blunderbusses. I then moved the Piper forward and used his +1 DEF and Terror thing on the Halberdiers.
I moved the Nomad forward, hoping to be in a position to charge next turn and bunched the Renegades together behind it. I then realised I had 4 focus on Magnus and nothing to do with it so I just ran him left to behind the Steelheads.

Sean activates Hexeris, uses his feat and fires Deathbringer at his Krea, blowing up a bunch of Steelheads who then kill some other Steelheads. This clears the way for his Enrage enhanced Cyclops to charge my Nomad and puts some damage on it, thankfully not all that much. I thought my Nomad had gotten off pretty well until the Ferox charged in and destroyed both the cortex and right arm - the important arm! He then attempts to kill more Steelheads with his Swordsmen but it's a rather pitiful showing. Some Praetorians die to Forfend followed by Death Marched Praetorians killing some more Halberdiers. At this point there's three Halberdiers left compared to four Praetorian Swordsmen. Just to add injury to insult he uses the Krea's Animus on Stannis Brocker - who is standing right in the middle of my army.

Turn Three
More carnage.
Stannis activates first, field promotes a Halberdier and then moves back so the rest of my army isn't caught in the slowing field he's currently generating. Stannis tries to shoot a Swordsman with his Hand Cannon and once again misses. I then activate a Renegade and attempt to shoot my badly damaged Nomad in the back with an Obliterator Rocket. Due to the align of stars and global warming I managed to miss but still knocked down both Cyclops and caught two Ferox in the blast. The blast damage did a total of one damage to a Ferox. Not my best Obliterator Rocket I have to say.
My Halberdiers then activate and the sergeant moves to engage both Cyclops. The sergeant manages a respectable charge against the Cyclops with the shield and the other two CMA a Swordsman who kills another Halberdier with Death March.
Now the Piper activates and uses March on the Steelhead Heavy Cavalry who charge both Cyclops and manage to turn both the Skorne warbeasts to bloody mush.
I had given a focus to Renegade A (the one that still had a rocket) but realised I had nothing to do with it now that both Cyclops were dead and my own cavalry were in the way so I just ran it over to the left instead. Magnus followed fairly closely behind since I couldn't figure out where to put him without him getting charged by the Ancestral Guardian. I totally forgot to use Hit and Run, casting Temper Metal on Renegade A instead since I thought Sean would try to kill it with the Ancestral Guardian. Sean saw the opportunity for assassination and asked if I'd like to go back and use Magnus' feat, I declined since I'd already done all Magnus' other stuff, it's my own fault if I screw up.

Sean moves his Swordsmen past the two Halbderdiers engaging them and I promptly kill all the remaining Swordsmen with a combination of free strikes and Forfend. He uses Death March to kill one of Halberdiers and a cavalryman. His Ferox move around and attack my Steelhead Heavy Cavalry and while they're there one eats the Halberdier sergeant. Another of the cavalry dies and I fail the command check.
The Moment of Truth arrives when Sean activates the fully fuelled Ancestral Guardian and burns two soul tokens to move four inches and then charge Magnus. Luckily the charge attack misses. The Ancestral Guardian still manages to put nine damage on Magnus in a single hit even though Magnus was camping ARM 20 at the time. Unfortunately for Sean the rest of the attacks miss or do no damage to good old Magnus.
The Krea activates and uses its Paralytic Field to hopefully save Hexeris from horrible, horrible death.

Turn Four
DIE BIZNITCH time.
It's getting late and I can see something that resembles a very unreliable assassination run. There's also an angry looking Ancestral Guardian glaring at Magnus. My last surviving cavalryman does his fleeing movement and dies to free strikes after we debate what he'll actually do (since he could actually move somewhere, despite being surrounded by Ferox, he died). This turned out to be rather useful to me since the damaged Nomad was still in the way of my planned assassination attempt.
I allocate two focus to Renegade A (one with rocket) and one to Renegade B. Magnus activates, I declare use of my feat and then decide that's a waste of time, we're going to get kicked out of the QMU after this turn anyway. He casts Temper Metal on Renegade B (without rocket, still on the right side of the board behind the Nomad) and I consider killing the Ancestral Guardian using Magnus, but with only a single focus point on him he's get minced by the retaliation if it didn't die. I opt to see if my assassination run pays off rather than risk dying on my own turn.
Renegade A moves to within five inches of Hexeris and actually manages to hit with the Obliterator Rocket despite Hexeris benefiting from the Krea's aura. I then do a comfortable 9 damage which Sean transfers with his last fury.
Just because I don't like the Ancestral Guardian and I no longer have any units left I opt to charge the Ancestral Guardian in the back with the Piper of Ord, reducing the damned thing to a single health. Curses!
The Nomad activates, moves out of the way of Renegade B's charge lane to the knocked down Hexeris and attempts to swipe at a Ferox with its open hand. It fails miserably, no surprise since it couldn't boost attacks. Renegade B then charges Hexeris, taking a free strike from the Ferox in front of the Nomad. Thankfully Temper Metal saves me from taking enough damage to lose an arm. Renegade B goes to work on Hexeris, killing him with three Shredder attacks.
Victory for Magnus!

Overall a much more enjoyable game with a nail biting finish - if Renegade B had rolled low damage at any point I would have been screwed but the Renegades pulled it out for me nicely. I still enjoy Ashlynn a lot more since she makes my army so very fast, but it's nice having a tough warcaster who can take the punishment.

Painting Blog: Magnus the Traitor

So... some of you know I've been playing Warmachine lately and that I've been collecting a Mercenary army - specifically Magnus the Traitor and his buddies. Originally I was going to collect and play the Trollbloods, but after taking days and days and days of attempting to paint my impalers and then stripping them, repainting them, I gave up on the Trollbloods. They just take too long to paint the way I like. Luckily I found a Magnus the Traitor battle box in a packing crate during the Summer and tada, I'm a mercenary player now.

I had originally finished Magnus ages ago, but there were a few things I wanted to try out on other models and get my painting skills back up to scratch before I tried anything really advanced on him. I've gone back and done a little bit more highlighting on his cloak, gave him a 5 o'clock shadow on his face, touched up his gun (oooo ahhh) and put some battle damage on his sword. I've also gone back and removed the speckling on Foecleaver. Overall I'm quite pleased with how he came out, he's light years ahead of my Madrak.

So far I've done Magnus and one renegade warjack. My mangler and talon from the battle box were both half done and I've finally gotten off my arse to do them. Also, my mangler's wrecking ball chain broke so I had to go find some fine chain and repose the miniature. I've just finished doing the base coats for everything on the mangler, all it needs is some highlighting along the coloured armour plates and hey presto, it's done.

Without further ado however, here's Magnus.