Shopping and Gaming

I have long collected miniatures. Often for use in role playing games. Many of those figures often belong to specific game lines though.

One of my friends bugged me enoug th actually get me into playing. It wasn't hard as several other friends were actively playing Warmachine and Hordes.

My main faction is the angry elves, the Retribution of Scyrah. I like the different design of the models, the high-tech feel of the elves and in some ways, they do remind me of the Eldar, who I also like.

Mind you, my record in playing them is quite terrible but that's about 90% my fault. I tend to have issues with order of activation and not focusing enough on the inherent synergy in some of the models.

But I am getting better.

As I specifically go out to actually play the game now, I've been shopping from a few stores and thought I'd throw out some quite notes:

Advanced Deployment: They are the makers of all things acrylic for numerous games including War Machine and Hordes. My first order with them was slow and missing some pieces. When I say it was slow, I ordered some different things from about five companies at once and these guys were the second to last to ship out my goods. Mind you, that might not always be true in the future.

They're also not fantastic at communication. They didn't pack some stuff that was supposed to come with the level of order I placed and didn't reply to initial efforts. I made another order, as I was pleased with the quality, and noted that if they didn't including the missing goods, they could cancel this order, and I'd talk to my credit card company about the missing stuff.

Strangely enough that worked and that order came very quickly. So fast that all in all, I've ordered from them three times and for the templates and other stuff that they provide, I'd recommend them.

Discount Games Inc: One of my friends hooked me up to these guys. Usually about 30% off, have a fair selection of goods, including bases from Secret Weapon and CoolMiniOrNot and good turn around time on their orders with free shipping at $50. One nice thing? They also sell stuff from Broken Egg Games  So if you get that free shipping, beats ordering directly from Broken Egg.

The free shipping and discount make them a better buy in many ways that my old stand by for online ordering, which is...

Miniature Market: A very good selection, a lot of different things in the warehouse, and often a lot of sales. Free shipping on orders of $100 or more. Very good customer service and very quick to get back to you.

FRPGames: On the outside of stores I normally shop at because they don't offer free shipping and as a matter of fact, the more you buy the more expensive the shipping gets, I still shop here because they do a lot of sales. Sometimes 50% off, sometimes more. They also carry a ton of stuff.

Noble Knight Games: I've been collecting miniatures so long that some of the sets I have, I had before they were sold in the now standard 10 man units. When I finally got into the gaming aspect of it, some units were very hard to hunt down and I thought it might be possible I'd have to just buy whole new units as the prices of the individual pieces I needed was almost what a full unit with discount cost. These guys have great selection and my experiences with them have been good.

So where does everyone else shop? Have I missed any of the obvious places? Any places people should avoid in general? Have your experiences been different than mine?

Not Quite a Battlereport

I finally managed to drag my sorry ass out of the apartment to play a game of Warmachine at the dreaded Dice Dojo. Public parking wasn’t bad but I did forget to add money to the meter. I think Chicago is at the point where you have to keep feeding those bastards till midnight or something in exchange for them not slapping your face on Sunday. That may not have went through yet either though. The good news is that I didn’t get a ticket. That would have stunk.

I watched a game at first between a Cygnar force with a lot of mercenaries and a Retribution force. It was interesting to sit back and watch because I’ve played so few games. It’s also interesting to note that sometimes even a game between experienced people can become a grind.

Another thing I enjoy about watching games, is that you get to see how other people paint up their miniatures. I’m a lazy SOB when it comes to picking out the colors and will almost always go with the ‘standard’ colors. In the Retribution case that meant a lot of white. The guy I was watching? He went with a dark red kind of purple color with black. Worked fantastic. I thought he might have used an airbrush on it but nope, just a lot of glazes. Another reason it’s important to see these things so you can know what’s going on in terms of what people are doing.

Lastly, I noticed that the people playing were using cards with clear backs. That should be a no-brainer but alas, I am senile and didn’t think about that. Mind you that’s not really that important for me as I not only have the cards, but have the program for Android that keeps all the cards for me.

I then went into the actual store itself. I like to try and buy something when I’m doing some gaming in the store. I picked up a heavy warjack for my Retribution forces that I'll turn into a Hydra. I should be like some of the others and just do the whole magnet thing but in this case, the power progression list (from No Quarter 34, back in the day!) has two different models so it would be hard to swap out with a magnet regardless if I need them both on the table.

After going back into the room, John offered to play a game with me. I brought enough figures to hit 15, 25 or 35 points. Mind you my actual game experience is minimal so I’m always hoping to do some low point games just to get the feel of it. Not only that, but those low point games tend to run quicker as well. John wanted a 35 point game though so that he could practice. I figure what the heck, I brought it, might as well use it.

There's John during the set up calmly mocking my own quick set up of Retribution forces.

 

Taking out the mage hunter commander, a unit attachment for the mage hunters, I notice that while in storage, his crossbow arm has popped out. I have yet to fix him. Felix, a far greater master of these games than I, mentioned to me his dislike of that particular figure due to its wide stance. Takes up too much room and the connection point isn’t that deep. I’m going to agree with young man on that one.

The game was a good learning experience. John was running Circle and stomped me into the group. Part of that was my fault, but ironically enough, John messed up a few bits himself so the beating could have been much worse.

Let’s see if I can remember bits that I could have done better.

Well, first off, having a ‘standard’ list with Mage Hunters on it playing against someone using Hordes isn’t that greatest. You lose on of their special features, the extra die on damage against War Jacks. That taught me I should have an alternative prepared if I’m going to be playing people who have Hordes list.

Second off, I didn’t use the Mage Hunters enough. I had them essentially hiding in the mountains. It worked well in terms of providing some cover and what not, but since John had a unit attachment that allowed his forces to regroup after attacking, that was pretty useless overall.

Another aspect was not getting my War Caster in there enough. I was moving along the other side of the board from my two units and thought I could get John in a pincer type move. That failed horribly. Well, not horribly really. It just wasn’t effective.

My war Caster has stealth and I was camped on some serious focus when doing part of the crawl and managed to survive many an attack that way. But I just couldn’t get in range of the enemy enough to do them any serious harm.

Which gets to the other thing I learned. I had a Manticore up against Megalith or whatever that big Stone Walden is called. Massive defensive on that guy. My Manticore actually had a spell on it that would allow it to get to make another attack if it missed. I had three focus on it at the time and instead of say, boosting damage, I boosted my number of attacks. All three hit but all three bounced off of that big boy. Next time, spending focus on damage boost to get some potential damage going on there.

John won by War Caster kill, which was the ‘scenario’ we were going at. He wiped out my mage hunters and my Invictors but I still had all three war jacks as well as a House Shyeel Magister. If I had kept the group a little more together it may have been a slightly different game. I might have taken out a few more of his units . As it was I think I got most of one of his Tharn units. That whole stealth thing is a nice two way street where if the enemy and you have it, it becomes a bit of a hunt and hide.

I’ll be putting that other heavy jack together soon and thinking about some heavy hitters in terms of damage for the poor Retribution.

The good news though, is even though John stomped me into yesteryear, he didn’t it in a gloating fashion. After the game he provided a few bits of advice, such as when I should have popped my caster’s feat. His army was quite heavily into the magic. He also encouraged me to move things around if he thought it was going to be a complete catastrophe for me such as when he thought my War Caster was going to get snipped crossing the field.

Battlereport: Mercenaries Versus Minions

I've been wanting to play Warmachine for a long time. I've had many miniatures for the game, in unpainted form at least, since it first launched at Gen Con. Recently I finally decided to finish painting, or at least knock the majority of, my Retribution force out. My friend Tom said he's 'school' me so I headed over there yesterday.

But a change of plan. See, one of the earliest battle boxes I had purchased was Magnus the Traitor. And I had actually just finished painting Magnus himself. So I took those figures as well as some Retribution in case I could get two games in.

Surprise! Turns out that in the switch over to second edition, that Magnus battle box is a bit more expensive in points so my buddy upped his own forces. But see, he didn't have any Warmachine forces ready so instead he pulls out his Hordes and the Gator forces.  These guys are all hit up with some Flames of War primer and nothing else. I keep busting on him to finish them off. Pick out a few details and a wash and bam, done! I didn't even get on him for not having his 'front' marked. He thanked me by not getting on me for not having my front marked.

Eeek! First game and it's not even a traditional one? It's not even following the standard builds? I used the War Machine app for android and it worked pretty well. Took care of damage boxes and a few other bits. It was a good experience in terms of using it.

We had a bunch of scenery that you don't see here. It was from Warhammer 40K I believe. In my mind, Magnus and Caliban had both been wandering through some ruins and encountered one another and well, a caster kill was the order of the day.

The first round, for both of us, was a lot of movement. Magnus' forces here didn't have a lot of range and Magnus himself has some range but it's not that across the table style. The good thing about that, is it let me use some of Magnus spells on the Mangler, Iron Aggression and Temper Metal I believe. One of Magnus' abilities is free upkeep!

My friend and his gators didn't fare much better, but he did say he needed to start generating focus.

So as we start moving into combat, I forgot several things. For example, to use Iron Aggression when moving to engage the wrestler. Shame too as I could've used that boost. I also learned that the renegade light war jack only has a payload of one.

I also learned that the spell Obliteration is very powerful. A very good range and a good POW and it's AOE? The only bad thing is the amount of focus it takes. I figured it being my first game, go for it. Tom didn't' like that too much thought and had one of his bull snappers charge Magnus. My war caster was still by his renegade though so it had to pass by the renegade which rolled some impressive damage and then when it was Magnus own turn, he finished it off not with the sword, but with the mechanikal arm which also has a knock down effect.

Tom managed to completely smash the mangler between the wrestler and a few of the gator men and the bull snapper. But that mangler tied them up for a long time and again, with the obliteration spell, I was able to wipe almost all of the enemy off the table. The free upkeep of armor on the mangler managed to prolong it's life until Tom realized that his warlock had an ability to nullify continuous spells.

Tom also heavily damaged my talon. The whole shield thing was a little of throwing to me as it has to be taken into account but isn't a part of the permanent defense. Made sense thought as the wrestler quickly busted that Talon down to less than half its damage capacity. Ouch again.

The killing blow came for me when Tom had a clear line of sight from Caliban to Magnus and took it. A few fury induced attacks later and Magnus had been defeated. The shame of it all.

Overall it was an interesting experience. Next time I play I need to have a 'real' battle box together or a 'real' force. Having a few war jacks was fun but at the same time, Tom had more activations and was able to do more just by virtue or having MORE things on the table.

I also need to experiment a lot more with focus. After the first round or so, it was all used to blow things up and never on the war jacks in order to give them more attacks or other things of that nature. I'd also like to actually play against a War Machine army as opposed to a Hordes army. Tom has said he'll look into finding his Cryix forces as he has a pretty sizable force of them as well.

Until next time!

Warmachine: Initial thoughts on Army Selection

When it comes to miniatures, I'm generally a person who likes a few different things. Primarily, they have to fit into my role playing games. Most of the Privateer Press miniatures don't often fit that criteria but... I was one of those people back in the day that had the Iron Kingdoms d20 version and used quite a few things out of it.

Not only that, but my friends tended to run 'gonzo' style games. So while someone may have run the Scarred Lands or Swashbuckling Adventurers, they did so with a lot of leeway as to what was allowed. It may not have been 'purist' but it did allow a ton of variety and enjoyment during the 3.0/3.5 years.

In terms of 'thinking' about an army to build, I've always tended to buy here and there based on visuals and background. The later is highly unusual since I don't actual play but...

Looking over Warmachine, I didn't like Cygnar. They were a little on the 'goody goody' side and well, I'm not a huge fan of the color scheme. I know that's lazy but since I usually go with the 'traditional' scheme for ease of reference and to hasten painting, that's the way it is. The Protctorate is another one I didn't like. Religious nuts are best covered in ye old 40K.  Cryx has some interesting models and I like the whole concept of undead mechanical horrors but a lot of it doesn't grab me.

Now that's not to say I couldn't find points enough to field a 15-25 point group in any instance. One of the things that Privateer Press ahs done well is make enough interesting models that I could easily field a small group with those factions.

I loved the Khador group mainly on it's use of strong reds, large war jacks and the whole 'Russian Fantasy' thing. While I'm not a scholar of such mythology by any means, it was always neat seeing 'the old witch' and other nods. They also did a fantastic job with one of the first war jack war casters and one of the 'must have' units, the Behemoth.

My other enjoyment comes from mercenaries. Ironically enough, that's just my preference due to reading about them and watching anime and fantasy novels based around the concept of mercenary groups. While I have Magnus and a few other figures, including several war jacks, I never really got into the lore of them although I do like how the mercenaries are essentially three or so armies in the form of criminal scum, pirate scum, and mean dwarves.

When the Retribution first came out, I was impressed. They took elves into a whole new direction and more importantly, gave them a distinctive look. Sure, there might be some crossover potential in terms of 'white' with the religious zealots but for the most part, their color and look was unique.

And now Privateer Press apparently does it again with their new book, the Convergence of Cyriss. The models we've seen so far are different than essentially any other army in the game. This makes for a great visual distinction. There are only so many times you can see the same body types over and over again.

I'll be curious to see if they follow up on this type of release. A 'Forces of' book doesn't strike me as being off in any way, shape, or form as the pirates were originally introduced in this methodology. It allows a focused fire of material to judge reaction and then can be worked on or dismissed as necessary.
It's a good time to be a fan of Warmachine.

Dawnguard Assemble!

So here we have some of the Dawnguard Invictors from Privateer Press for their Retribution faction. At this point I've got probably around 35-50 points of figures. Most of them actually painted and assembled even. I have more that need to be done including the colossus that I bought just because it looked like it would be a fantastic end game monster for RPG terms.

In terms of assembly, the Dawnguard Invictors were much easier to put together than the other Dawnguard with the big swords. No shoulder pads for one. Mold lines were still pretty bad in a few places and some of them were so subtle that I didn't notice them until I put down a layer of white at which point I was like.... uh, no, I'm not scrapping that off and ruining the job so far.

One of the things I always worry about with figures like this, that need two points of contact, is that the casting will be warped and not fit. That was thankfully not the case here. One of the models did have a miscast for a connection point. The ball point fitting was not clear. Thankfully I was able to use a knife and hand drill and take care of that problem.

Lot of smooth areas on these guys so if that's not your deal, you'll probably want to steer clear of them. Some nice details though like the pouches. The bases I think are from Micro Art Studio? Ruined temple maybe?

In terms of painting, I used my airbrush for the initial priming and layering of paint with a few touch ups after ward. I'm trying to minimize my time painting while still getting a figure I'm not trying to hide when it comes time to use. I'm happy enough with the figures that I don't think it'll be a problem. I finished basing them and putting some find touches on them.

When I painted them, I decided to move away from some of the advice in the Retribution book. The use of 'aqua' is way too high. When looking at the actual art of the Retribution, most of them have very shinny weapons as opposed to that aqua saturation that the studio models have on their metallic parts.

One of the things I like about these guys, is when I was painting them, they reminded me of Storm Troopers from Star Wars fame. Sure, they don't have a lot of actual physical similarities outside the color scheme but it made me think these guys would be perfect troops for science fiction table top as well. Their weaponry and armor is so different from the steam punk fashion of the Iron Kingdoms that they easily fit in multiple settings.  The one in the middle on the front line in particular, looks like a soldier on the march.  I keep wanting to play Bulkheads and Blasters and these guys would be a good army for that. Still, I'vet never find the time. Heck, I still haven't got a game of War Machine in yet.

And here's my second Dawnguard Scyir. I didn't know I had two. That's okay though as I originally bought it because it makes a fantastic character with a two handed sword. Here I used some of my old GW purple wash with some P3 armor wash to get that 'dark metallic' purple look and I'm pretty happy with it. I'll be using that more often in the future when painting more figures.

One interesting aspect to taking shots of the figures after you're done is seeing the mistakes. As I didn't hold the guy up, I would've never seen that dash of metallic paint under his visor. Think I'll be hitting that up next with a touch of white.

The base here was done with Happy Seppuku and green stuff. The other one I did I put onto a ruined style base and it added some height. With his huge sword, I decided that no more height was needed on this soldier.

More Retribution, Finished Gnolls, and Vallejo Alcohol Understanding

Finished off the gnolls from Center Stage Miniatures. They paint up pretty well but I did find another 'weird' thing about them. The inside of the mouth is like SOLID behind the teeth. Not a big deal as I don't think anyone is going to be picking them up to look. For the most part, painted with Reaper paints from the Heavy Gear set and a few trusty Games Workshop ones.

I touched the initial picture up in Google +. Worked much better than doing so in Facebook which I don't think has any real photo opportunities outside of tagging.

Good old Mage Hunter for my Retribution force. I want to say... Narn? I had him long before Privateer Press threw the figure from the Iron Kingdoms RPG side into the Warmachien side.

And the actual Mage Hunter unit. I don't have the commander with them because he's already in storage. Looking over them, I'm going to have to mark their front soon I suppose. I'm well at the point where I have more then enough for a 15-25 point game.

And my latest works. I'm still doing these guys and I have a 'new' warcaster in the back there. He's the guy with the strange cable connection on his left arm to his back. Yeah, I didn't get that one connected at all. Anytime you have three pieces, two of them separate, it's a difficult thing for me as I tend to be all thumbs. I did the initial priming with Vallejo Panzer Grey and used a Badger 105 to lay down some Minitaire paint. No problem with it. Didn't need to be thinned. I did see some people note that it takes a while to dry, but when I use my airbrush, I also have a hair dryer next to me so I take care of that particular problem at the same time.

Lastly, I wanted to note that in a recent update, I had problems with the Vallejo Alcohol metallic. Turns out I was indeed using them incorrectly. Due to their heavy pigmentation, you cannot use them from the bottle. You have to pour some out into a palette and work with it from there. I've done that a few times now and yes, that works MUCH better.