Warmachine Journeyman League Final Week - Prizes for everyone!

Last Monday was the final week of the club Journeyman league. Only one game left and then results and awards at the end.

The battle was 35 points with no restrictions. I stuck with the starter box as the jacks work well but I changed the caster to have a play with the Witches Coven of Garlghast. The coven has some interesting abilities that I wanted to try, like making a unit have stealth or adding +2 speed, +2 mat and terror.

My opponent was Martin Copperwheat and his Khador. He used some bizarre caster that had to roll each turn to find out how much focus he had. His force had a fair amount of shooty stuff, with 2 squads of sniper things, a sniper solo and some heavy infantry with guns.

Martin was the home player so he got to setup first, he deployed everything in a long line in the pic above. I deployed in a deny flank formation putting everything in the right corner of the board. 

Martins first turn was just moving stuff up towards me.

On my first turn I cast stealth on the deathjack for laughs, infernal machine on my stalker jack, giving it +2 speed for a total of 9. The stalker then ran a whopping 18 inches! I also plonked a cloud aoe thing between my army and his shooters blocking LOS. 

Martin then moved up again right into my charge range, he tried some shooting at my chicken jack but its high def made the shots miss.

For a few turns we had various bundles of combat along the middle line of the board. Deathjack was chopping people to bits, at one point he had 4 focus that he generated himself with his skulls and with soul tokens giving me 13 focus on the board!

We were slowly chomping through each others army until the time was almost up. I frantically thought of a way to end the game quickly and found a way. The chicken on the left of death jack in the picture above was dead at this point. Deathjack was locked in combat with his heavy jack. With a crazy combo of spells I managed to get deathjack into combat with his caster with 5 focus on Deathy. I cast ghost walker on deathy, which allowed him to move out of combat without getting free struck, I then cast curse of shadows on his heavy infantry to make them almost incorporial, allowing me to move through them without penalty, I also cast infernal machine on deathy to give him +2 speed and +2 mat. Deathy then walked around the big jack, going through the infantry and into combat with his caster. After 2 boosted hits with deathjacks fists his caster was dead. Victory.

 After my game everyone's scores were tallied up for the award giving. Congrats to Ian Wardle for getting the most Journeyman points and hobby points with an overall score of 67, he was awarded badges for painting and overall points. I came second over all but first for game points so I got a little badge for it. Carl Sharman actually scored the same amount of game points as me but had painted less so the judge (Barrie) ruled that I beat him even though when the two of us actually played he beat me lol. 

Everyone who played received badges for the points they achieved and a league badge. 

Overall scores were:

 

	GP	HP	JP
Ian Wardle	21	46	67
Michael Towers	27	13	40
Barrie Wardle	24	13	37
Carl Sharman	27	6	33
Adam Eaton	23	0	23
David Copperwheat	17	5	22
Dave Bartley	21	0	21
Martin Copperwheat	16	0	16

  Thanks to Barrie of www.guardiansoftyr.com for organising the league.

Warmachine Journeyman League week 5

This weeks restrictions: 35 points - Caster Swap Allowed - Game length 90 mins. 2 games to be  played.

This Sunday after a week of procrastination on the issue I started painting my Cryx starter box. With about 20 minutes to spare before I had to leave I had managed to finish it. Deneghra, Slayer, 3 death chickens all painted and based. I’ll probably put some finishing touches on them later though, like verdigris and the green glow of Cryx. So I’ve now got 13 hobby points putting me way out in first place for painting stuff……. Except for the fact that Ian Wardle has gone mental and obviously has far too much time on his hands, he’s somehow managed to paint up 30 points worth of trollbloods!!!!!1! Nerd rage ensued when I found this out checking the scores when I got home :( I would have to buy loads of cryx to equal this insane amount of painting and its not worth of for a sew on badge.

My army for the day, starter box, Deathjack, banethralls and mechanithralls

 

Before I start with the 2 games I played that night I should point out that Carl also pulled out some stops and had bought, assembled and almost finished painting the Cryx Colossal, the Kraken. Fortunately for me I didn’t have to play him that night and don’t have to play him in the final week either. Phew.

Game 1

My first game was against Adam Eaton’s Menoth. I was a bit nervous about this game as Adam was effectively undefeated up until this point. He had lost 2 games but this was down to him not being there that night. I had been defeated twice, so simple mathhammer told me I should loose this as Adam is a good player and I know he’s got loads of experience playing the game.

I was the home player so I got to go first.

 I moved my guys up cautiously. I managed to get my Mechanithralls and Deathjack within charge range of the roght flank. I expected to take some flak but thought I’d still have some thralls left and deathjack a bit damaged but I’d be able to put him in combat with squishy guys and heal the damage. I thought wrong. Adam killed all the mechanithralls in one go. I did manage to get deathy into combat and killed 1 man :( Adam then charged in his heavy jack into Deathjack after his choir and caster managed to increase the jacks hit and damage rolls by 3. Deathjack died to that one charge from a super buffed but otherwise normal heavy jack :( I was not a happy bunny.

His caster heroically hiding behind a wall of metal

My Banethralls went up the other flank and managed to get into combat with his other heavy jack. 3 Banes charged in and a 4^th just ran in to surround it and stop it doing the weird running away thing that Adam had planned. 3 charging Banes with 4d6 damage didn’t do anything to it at all.

I managed to get my acid belching death chicken into range of his caster and shot it, I killed one of the choir, did some damage to his caster and got corrosion on the caster and the big dude in front of him. The phase two of my evil plan, Deneghra cast venom 3 times through the death chicken. Yay for arc nodes! Didn't kill him though. He had 6 health afterwards.

Adam then popped his feat which stopped me from doing any focus generating for a turn. Bummer. Deneghra cast her feat and ran away from the enemy.

We didn't get much more done than that. We ran out of time. A draw by default is better than a loss. It was the first game Adam hasn't won in the league. Woo, I didn't die :D

Game 2 

David Copperwheat's Skorne again. This table had a nice pond and wall to hinder movement unless you have ghost walk, which Deneghra conveniently does. David was the home player and had first turn.

I deployed with my main bulk in the middle, my mechthralls on the right and my banethralls on the left. David had deployed his shooty stuff on my left so I put the banethralls there to take advantage of their stealth and negate his shooting a little.


On my turn I ran everything except the banes up the right hand side to hide behind the wall. 

David couldn't do much with all my stuff behind the wall. I managed to get the charge and sent in my Mechanithralls and Deathjack into his big infantry line, smooshing them in the process. 

Both sides ended up bundling into this combat. My acid spray chicken dealt dealth along a long line of infantry all bunched up, catching one of my other chickens but not damaging it.  

David then made a fatal error. He'd kept his caster too close to me and I popped my feat, catching all the skorne. I lowered almost all of their stats by 2. He'd also moved the big beast in front of his caster away from it into combat with my Mechanithralls. David popped his feat which stopped me from allocating any focus. I then finished the game by getting Deathjack and a chicken into combat with his unprotected caster. My jacks had no focus but Deathy deals and absolute ton of damage anyway and managed to pulverise him. Game won. There was only 3 minutes left on the clock, too close for comfort.

Deathjack perfoms the coup de grace.

 
By the end of the night I had won 1 game and drew 1. This put me in 2nd place for overall points and joint 1st for game points. Ian's insane painting spree means he's pretty much guaranteed to win overall unless someone else decides to go nuts. It won't be me that's for sure.

The league score's at the end of this week are:

 

		GP	HP	JP
1	Ian Wardle	20	30	50
2	Michael Towers	24	13	37
3	Barrie Wardle	22	7	29
4	Carl Shaman	24	0	24
5	Adam Eaton	22	0	22
6	Dave Bartley	19	0	19
7	David Copperwheat	14	5	19
8	Martin Copperwheat	15	0	15

Game Points: W3/D2/L1
Hobby Points: Newly Painted Models
Journeyman Points: GP + HP
 
 1 More game to play next week against Martin Copperwheat, will he avenge his father? I know he's using Khador so I'll plan accordingly. 

Random Model Wednesday 2 - Lich Lord Terminus

Lord Toruk doesn't believe in dentists.

I bought and painted this guy years ago, I had no idea what Warmachine was at the time, I just saw him and thought "I have to have that!".

It turned out to be an absolute beast of a kit! All metal and there's almost as much brass pinning as there is model! (slight exageration). 24 separate metal parts, only 2 weren't pinned. The big spikes on the back of the wings are all separate, each one having to be drilled out, then pinned and then modelling putty to fill the gaps. It was a challenge getting this guy to stand up but it was well worth it.

Some many awkward spikes!

You call that a bonesword Mr. Hive Tyrant! This is a Bonesword!

This model was a big and risky experiment for me paint wise. The only style of colour and shading on this model that I had previously done was the red on the cloak. The brass was painted with the help of instructions from www.Brushthalls.com. Its a great website for painting tips. The greens were painted using paints mixed on the fly and I haven't used those particular colours since (can't remember what I did anyway). The necrotised flesh and bone was another experiment that worked quite well, I started with a plain white base and simply used a mixture of pale brown and green washes that were really watered down. I've used the same method on my other undead Cryx models since.

I'm very proud of this model, I just wish I knew how to use him effectively in a game. He's also a bit of a pig to try and transport, I have a little box just for him and the Deathjack filled with packing foam bits.

Warmachine Journeyman league week 4

We're now half way through the Journeyman league. This week we all had only one game to play as our club had an emergency meeting during the evening. The game this week was a 25 point game using the starter set for your faction but you could change your caster.

I actually managed to get something painted for this week and gained some points for it. I painted up my squad of banethralls that have been waiting about 4 years to be painted. The rusty metal came out really well. I started by painting the entire model orange with my airbrush, which ran out of pressure about half way through. then I drybrushed with boltgun metal and highlighted with mithril silver, then an overall coat of devlan mud. The smokey robey bit at the bottom was done simply by starting with black and progressive highlights with mixing in with white.

The Game

My opponent for the night was Dave Bartley of Mephiston's Wargame Blog. He was still using Menoth led by Kreoss. I'd played against him during the first week of the league and won but I wasn't confident about this game because I know he knows how to play this game. He's always the guy who gets asked the rules questions.

My force this week was the same as last week, it had a good feel when I was using it. I really like the banethralls and the skarlock thrall.

The mission for the day was the same as the rest of the league was still the killbox mission.

In my first turn I charged up a deathripper to use as an arc node and cast crippling grasp on one of his jacks. Little did I know that he has a spell that can remove ongoing effects, which he used quite a few times over the course of the game, much to my dismay.

I hid my slayer behind a wall with the skarlock thrall and the rest of my force tentatively moved up the board. The stalker ran up the left flank with the intention of catching his melee unit.

Dave retaliated by charging one of his heavy jacks into my deathripper but failed to do much to it because of the high Def on the little deathchicken.

My skarlock cast ghost walker on the slayer, which then charged through the wall into the large jack trying to beat up my chicken. My stalker managed to charge his squad of heavy melee dudes and I found out just how heavy they are, I barely scratched the one I charged.

Dave popped his feat, this knocked down all of my models that were within his caster's control range. This meant all of my models got automatically hit for a turn, which sucked big time. My stalker died easily, his high def doing nothing to save him as he flailed on the floor. All of my banethralls bar 2 died either from hits in combat of from fires resulting from the combat. Somehow my slayer and deathchicken managed to survive pretty unscathed.

I popped my feat but didn't manage to do much with it, Dave had a buff on his big jack that added 2 to a couple of its stats that negated the -2 I did.

My skarlock thrall ran around the corner of the wall and cast venom on the choir behind the jacks killing them all, mwahahaha!

We ended up with everything locked in melee in the middle for a few turns with our casters hiding on opposite sides, eventually my jacks emerged victorious from the fight in the middle and set their sights on Kreoss.

Dave managed to kill the slayer before it got to him, leaving just the deathchickens. Slowly but surely he picked of my chickens in combat until all that remained was Kreoss surrounded by wreck markers and Deneghra and my skarlock thrall. Kreoss had been upkeeping lamentation for ages, this spell makes me pay double the focus to cast anything while I'm in his control range, I hate it so much!

All that remained was the 2 casters and a skarlock thrall that couldn't cast any spells.

The only thing left to do was charge Deneghra into combat, so I did. Denny had 7 focus on her, failed to hit twice, then struck. I boosted the damage and did enough to finally finish him off. Far too close for comfort. The game was incredibly close..... A tough game is always more fun, thanks Dave!

I won't be able to play next week due to work commitments but I'll hopefully bolster my points by painting my remaining models instead.

The league standings for week 4 are:

Jouneyman Results - Week 4
                                             GP      HP     JP
1. Barrie Wardle                   16        7        23
2. Michael Towers                19        3        22
3. Adam Eaton                      19                 19
4. Ian Wardle                        18                 18
4. Carl Sharman                    18                 18
6. David Copperwheat          12        2       14
7. Dave Bartley                     13                 13
7. Martin Copperwheat         13                 13

Warmachine Journeyman league - week 3

Yesterday was week 3 of the Journeyman League at the Cranfield Conquerors club (temporarily residing in Milton Keynes). For this week we were allowed 25 points but still must include the starter box for your faction. My faction for the campaign is Cryx, so I've got the Deneghra set.

My list for the night:

Deneghra
Slayer
2x Deathrippers
Defiler
Stalker
Skarlock Thrall
6x Banethralls

Game 1

The aim of the game this week is still just kill your opponents caster. The League is meant for new players so it makes sense to keep it simple.

My first game of the night was against Ian Wardle and his Trollbloods.

There was some nice scenery on this board for me to hide things behind and the ghost walk through.

Both our forces moved together and ended up in combat, as is inevitable in this game. I thought he had me on the ropes at the beginning after he killed one of my deathrippers and nearly killed my slayer before I'd managed to do anything to him. But then the rest of my force moved in, my high Def on my bonejacks and stealth on Deneghra and the Banethralls proved to be a problem for Ian and his unlucky rolling was failing to do much damage to me. My units started chomping their way through his trolls without taking much damage. Eventually staring defeat in the face, Ian conceded. While he was greatly outnumbered at the end, I wasn't in a particularly effective position to finish him of quickly. It would have been a protracted exercise with his forces performing a fighting retreat hoping for an opening but with Deneghra having stealth he couldn't shoot me, so it did make some sense as we still had to fight another game that night.

My nearly dead slayer just wouldn't die and just kept punching his big scary beasty in the face, eventually it died.

The Stalkers incredibly high Def of 16 saved it quite a few times, I like this jack.

Game 2

An almost mirror match against Carl Sharman's Cryx. Carl is an experienced player and I'd heard that he had changed his list for fighting against me. The only difference between our lists was that I had the stalker and Skarlock Thrall, he had a Helldiver and a squad of mechanithralls.

Carl has a nicely painted Cryx army, no journeyman points for him for painting models then lol.

After his deployment I used the denied flank tactic that I've practiced well in 40k, his Banethralls with their slow movement then took a while to catch up with events.

It didn't take too long to see that his strategy, or at least part of it, was to sneak in the Helldiver and try to pump out a ton of damage on my caster. The Helldiver is a particularly nasty bit of kit, it burrows underground and can't be hit until it has popped out and starts doing damage. Well it popped out next to my Denegra and promptly failed to kill her, my slayer turned around and gave it what for. 

I forgot that once his chicken hit any further his would be automatic thus negating the high Def of my stalker. He popped his feat, lowered my Def, boosted the first his and then had 2 more automatic hits to finish me off.

Near the beginning of the game we both cast crippling grasp on each other's slayer jacks, lowering most of their stats by 2. This nerfed both our big hitters so we ended up using our bonejacks to do all of the work. Somewhere in the middle of the game we both cast our feats, negating both our force's stats and leading to straight rolls for some things, as he had -2 arm from my feat but I had -2 strength so they both cancelled out. 

Towards the end of the game my Deneghra had fought off a couple of assaults on her successfully and we had both lost a great deal of troops. I made a BIG mistake, I reminded Carl of the killbox as he was measuring his move for his Deneghra, EPIC FAIL! He was just about to move into it! I managed to manoeuvre my Defiler into position to belch forth toxic goo on his Denegra, it did a ton of damage but failed to kill kill her and she shook off the corrosion immediately. He had already sprayed my Deneghra with his Venom spell and I died to corrosion damage after he was running away fast. 

This was an incredibly close game at the end with some real nail biting moments but in the end Carl won. I'm quite glad with my performance though as I'd really thwarted his plans and managed to pull off a nice combo at the end with ghost walk on the Defiler that nearly killed him.

I really need to paint some models now to claim some journeyman points in the league, I've got so much to paint and so little time :|

Warmachine for beginners - Warhahordes Journeyman League

Last week saw the beginning of our club’s Journeyman league. It’s a league designed to get you to try Warmachine/Hordes with a starter box and build up from there. You even get points if your models started off unpainted and you paint them over the course of the league. I’d played Warmachine a couple of times in the current edition and found it a bit of an uphill struggle so this league seemed perfect to get to grips with things.

For those who aren’t familiar with Warmachine; it’s a game where you are a Warcaster (kind of a nasty wizard) who controls a small skirmish scale force consisting of a handful of mechanical monstrosities a bit like steam powered dreadnoughts, some infantry (if you want) and solo characters. The aim of the game is to kill your opponents Warcaster.

Your warcaster gets focus points which allow you to cast spells. Some spells do damage, some do buffs to your stuff or debuffs to the enemy and some do more exotic things like make one of your models ghostly and able to walk through other models and terrain, even out of combat. Warcasters also each get a Feat, which is a once per game ability that usually has a game wide effect. You normally pop your Feat on the turn in which you expect to make a big push.

Warjacks can be allocated some of your caster’s focus so that they can boost their to hit rolls or damage rolls or do other things like charge or run. Boosting means you get to roll an extra dice to hit or to wound.

Basics of how combat works in Warmachine

Your model’s basic statline consists of a move speed, MAT (melee attack), RAT (ranged attack), Strength, Defence (Def) and armour. There are other stats like Focus or Cmd but I won’t go into this.

When you declare an attack on a model you compare your MAT if in melee or RAT if shooting to your opponents Def, normally your MAT will be a fair bit lower than the Def. You then roll 2 d6 (or 3d6 if boosting) and add your MAT, if you equal or beat the Def then you have hit.

Then to damage your opponent you compare the strength of your weapon you’re hitting with to their armour. The weapon’s strength is represented by P+S on your models stats. You roll 2d6 (3d6 if boosted) and add your P+S. How much you beat their armour by is how much damage you’ve done. E.g. a P+S weapon with strength of 16 hits a jack with armour 20, you roll 12 so the jack takes 8 damage.

The League

I’ve already got a Cryx army, I just don’t know how to use it. To start in the league I needed to buy the starter Cryx box anyway as I didn’t have those models. My starter set consisted of Denegra as my warcaster, a slayer jack, 2 ripper jacks (death chickens) and a defiler. I’ve never used Denegra before so I went into the league pretty much as a new player. The 3 little chicken jacks act as arc nodes, meaning I can cast spells as if they’re coming from the jack instead of my caster.

Looking at the spells that Denegra could cast for the first time, I found she does some nasty stuff. She has an ability called Crippling Grasp which can nerf a heap of an enemy’s stats by 2, making it a lot easier to kill. She can cast Ghost Walk on one of your models which lets them move through terrain or models without problems. Her Feat is amazing, all enemies within her control area (14 inches around her) suffer from -2 to their speed, MAT, RAT, strength, armour, Focus and they can’t charge.

Week 1 – Starter boxes only

Game 1

My first game of the league was against Dave Bartley and his Menoth. I won this but can’t actually remember what I did lol. It was a learning experience to get to grips with my caster. I do remember using a combo strike with my slayer jack to great effect.

Game 2

This game was against David Copperwheat’s Skorne hordes army. We had a building in the middle of the table and both of our forces moved up and hid on opposite sides of it. With my arc nodes though I had the advantage of casting spells round corners. I won by using crippling grasp on his caster and Ghost walk on one of my jacks so that it could charge through his big beasty and straight into combat with his caster to squish it.

Week 2 – 15 points but must include starter box

For most players the 15 points allowed them to add a solo or small squad. For my Cryx I only had 1 point to play with and only 1 model that costs 1 point, so I added a machine wraith to my list.

Game 3

This time I was against Martin Copperwheat’s Khador, basically a caster, 2 big jacks and some sniper dudes. I managed to get my shooty death chicken to vomit acid on his caster and rolled a 12 for damage leaving him with only 4 health. In the next turn I again Ghost Walked one of my jacks to charge straight through and squish his caster. He made a mistake in moving his caster nearer to me and running away his big jack that wasn’t stuck in combat.

Game 4

Barry Wardle used a bunch of Hordes crocodile things against me. This bunch just walked all over me. He had a buff on his big beasty that made it nigh on impossible for me to hurt it and I took D3 damage whent I tried, it moved up and I charged it but couldn’t scratch it. My Crippling grasp failed to work twice due to high Def stats.

He cast his feat which knocked down everything I had, he then shot my caster who’s Def was reduced significantly due to being knocked down, my caster nearly died. He then didn’t something beyond what I thought was possible. He charged his other large beast into combat with the first one, he then picked it up and threw it at my caster and she died. It was dirty, very dirty lol. :(

After much thought I think the only way of countering his force is to spread everything far apart and try to pick things off individually, maybe even just ignoring the big beasts as they’re so hard to hurt.

Now I just need to get my stuff painted to get some journeyman points for the league. I know who my opponents are next week. Ian is using his trollbloods and Carl is using Cryx. I expect some dirty shenanigans from Carl as he’s very experienced in doing hard and nasty things in whatever game.

I have to work out how best to spend my 11 points, so many choices.

Edit: I found out that the feat-puddle combo can't work as you can't place them on top of other models. It would have been increadibly overpowered otherwise.