Buh-bye now

The actual construction of the new templates is pretty rudimentary. The template itself is sized at 4" x .75", so I cut the required shape out of a piece of balsa wood I had left over from an old terrain project. A simple cut-out would have been more than sufficient as a template, but I went online and found a fire texture that I resized and printed out to glue to the template. Making a template "pretty" is hardly necessary but the most convenient templates and game aids are those that are immediately recognizable for what they are at only  a glance.

4" x .75" Wall of Fire template

Just like the tokens that I create, I used UHU glue on the templates, since it doesn't warp thin surfaces when applied like PVA glue will. But first I took a sharpie and edged the wood black to make it look more finished. You can do this after applying the label but then you run the risk of marking over it. Edging the template first means you can afford to be a little sloppy.

After that dries, I apply the glue thin enough and make sure the edges are covered (so the paper won't peel up) and then apply the printout, making sure to affix it evenly.

Old & new wall size comparison

I only applied the fire to one side of the wall templates. I could have done both just so I didn't have to bother with flipping the template if I grabbed the wrong side, but if I ever play a faction that has access to the other wall spells - like Searforge - I'll place their wall on the reverse side for convenience.

Vice Scrutator Vindictus

The biggest change I've picked up on is how I layer cloth.  In the past I've started with the darkest shadow color and slowly worked up from there layer by layer.  But recently I've switched to basecoating with my mid-tone and shading down from that in thin coats, falling back to wet blending occasionally just to smooth out some of the larger surfaces.

Vindictus in particular only took a few days for me to do, and for me that's faster than it usually would. If it weren't for the filigree around the armor plates, I expect it would've gone even faster.

I've also spent some time on a reaper figure lately, using this technique primarily on her cloak. A lot of the rest of her is quick-work, but all in all, she'll make a good RPG figure once complete.

Reaper Miniatures #2834 Deladrin, Female Assassin

I'm still refining the techniques, but for now I'm satisfied with how the figures are turning out. Soon I'll be moving on from my recent string of Protectorate pieces to try out the wintery blues of my Legion. Between that and a few side pieces I'm working on, I should have ample opportunity to perfect the new technique.

I spent a few evenings with Hulu on the laptop near my painting desk working on the models' armor and made some decent progress.  I'm still working on some more detailed shading at the moment, but I'm going back and forth between wanting to take the time to do some really detailed shading and getting burnt out working on them.

This has me thinking - I wonder if army painting is causing my abilities to stagnate.  It seems like there's less motivation to push my skill to the next step when in the back of my head I can always fall back to "Well, this just has to look as good as the rest of my models."  Might be time to shake things up a bit.

I also have to clean up a few models and finish assembling my Exemplar Errant Seneschals in case I want to use them later in the weekend.  They definitely won't be painted for Hardcore but I might toss 'em in another list to give them a go in one of the other formats.

Despite being behind, I'm looking forward to the event.  Last two years have been fantastic, and this year promises to be no exception.

Samples, Pre- and Post-assembly

Now that the Forces of Warmachine: Protectorate of Menoth book has been released I finally sat down between applying coats of primer to some miniatures to put together some tokens for my Protectorate force.  I still had my set from MkI but enough abilities were renamed for me to decide to redesign a new set instead of using Youngwolf7's design.

I did a little editing to the graphic used on the Privateer Press gallery page to create the background for my tokens, and added some text layers to create what's pictured above.  I used .75" cubes or .75" faux scrabble tiles I picked up at the local craft store to give the tokens some width and heft.  They can usually be found in the woodworking and scrapbooking departments respectively.  Mosaic tiles are another option, but those are concave and/or have an irregular surface, making these better surfaces for gluing.

Since I started this post talking about the issues I have with the PP and GF9's offerings, I suppose I should go into a little more detail on what I think makes good tokens.

Ease of Handling

I mentioned the materials I used to add some width to my tokens.  One of the biggest complaints I heard against the first generation of Privateer Press's hordes toeksn were the odd conical-shuriken-style fury counters, and the paper-thin spell tokens weren't much better.  GF9's were marginally better, but I heard complaints from some of the local players about those designs as well.

Readability/Recognition

Whoa boy, this one is a biggie, and one I think I'm going to be disagreed with about.  When I put a token down on the table, I and any opponent that see it should be able to immediately know what it represents.  If there's any confusion or wondering what a token represents, it defeats the purpose of using tokens in the first place.

This is the biggest reason I am not a fan of the new PP and GF9 tokens.  Since they have a fixed set of symbols on them, every player uses them to represent different spells and effects, even for the same caster.  For most casters, their spells don't even have appropriate matching symbols.

GF9's first generation of tokens were much better.  Each caster had their own set, with tokens for all of their spells.  The down side was that they used small tokens and tiny fonts, making them almost unreadable at a distance and almost as poorly designed as the symbol-based sets.

Size and Footprint

Tokens need to take up as little space as possible and still be able to convey whatever they are representing.  The original GF9 tokens tried to accomplish this but wound up using a design for their spell effects that were too small to be readable.  Their second attempt keeps the small design, but doesn't need the real estate to just display a symbol.

Then there's GF9's Warclaws.  I don't know what to say - these are perhaps the silliest, most unwieldy, and ultimately worst Warmachine/Hordes token design to date.  I don't really know how to describe how silly these tokens are.  They pretty much compile all that has been bad about the previous iterations into one nice steamy pile for what I assume is some sort of convenience in obtaining maximum crap at once.

So far the .75" square surface area has been plenty for me to write out the name of any of the spell effects necessary for either of my forces.  It's readable from a distance on the tabletop and does what it needs to without being obtrusive.

Cost

Here's the final one, and the kicker.  If someone's biggest concern is putting the least amount of work into picking up something that will work for them, a set of Warcogs or Warclaws are around $12 from GF9.  They're not pretty, they're not the best designs in the world, but since you can re-use the tokens for any warcaster, it's a single expenditure and you've got what you need.

For me, an hour of assembly time and about $5 has purchased all the tokens I'm ever going to need.  When future books come out, it will take about 5 minutes to update my set with no additional monetary cost.  For a little bit more work and less monetary cost, I get what is in my opinion a superior product.

Hierophant WIP

I have a few lists I'm tossing around to play, but I haven't even really settled on if I'm playing the Protectorate or Legion.  The Legion models I'd want to use are already painted, but there's still a few key Protectorate ones - like the Hierophant and Covenant - that I needed to get to.

It's been a while since I last picked up the brush; maybe even a couple months.  Painting has always been an enjoyable hobby for me, but lately it's always seemed like there's something else I rather do with my free time.  Still there aren't many chances to play in a Hardcore event, so it's time to buckle down and get to work.

After assembling and priming my Hierophant and Convenant, I spent a day trying to see if I could make some progress on the former.  I tried a method similar to how the Forces of Warmachine: Protectorate book talked about doing their reds.  I use a little different color so I had to switch up my shading colors but in general the technique is still the same.  I still need some tweaking but overall it's coming allright.

Working all the metallics reminded me how much I hate painting them.  I always look at each miniature as I paint it and think "I'll just bother learning how to paint metallics on the next figure" and rush through it, but I always put it off to the proverbial next time.

Still plenty of work to do, but right now my biggest sticking point is what color to paint the trim on his jacket-ish clothing.  It's the white stripe in this picture - maybe I'll mimic that and make it the same color as his lower robe.

And that's not to mention the Covenant, which has little more than a basecoat on it.  That's a lot of work for me to do in the coming month with as slow as I paint, but here's to trying.  Just gotta try not to get distracted by my other hobbies.  :)

Exemplar Errant Seneschal

I was expecting to see the Exemplar Errant UA in the new No Quarter, but not a new synergy solo for the unit.  Granting Hunter to Errants, as well as having both Hunter and Pathfinder himself, really makes him feel like a Strider Deathstalker type model... but clad in white heavy armor?

Don't get me wrong, I think this guy has some very nice rules that can be especially difficult for an opponent in scenario play.  He can sit just out-of-sight behind/in forests and take pot shots, and since he can sacrifice Errants when he dies, stay in an area far longer than a single 5-wound solo would normally be able to.

In the likely event that the Errant UA grants them Pathfinder,  the unit is going to start feeling a lot like Reeves of Orboros.  My only real concern there is that it doesn't match the aesthetics of this model IMO.  Maybe it's just me, but having them dodge through the woods like that doesn't mesh with the plate armor.  If they had lighter armor sculpted on them, sure...

In the end though, that doesn't really matter.  I think that the addition of Hunter means even fewer effects that are going to work against the unit's effective RAT 6.  No concealment or cover, and already no spell-granted buffs because of Blessed.

But unlike most ranged troops that you engage to shut down, MAT 7 is a big threat, and their P+S 9 Weapon Master swords toss out an average damage roll of 19 (23 on the charge).  They're not going to kill many heavies that way but if their UA grants Assault (or even Assault & Battery!) they're going to pair up a pretty significant attack with their current strength in an attrition game.

Exemplar Errant UA

That's right; I'm doing it.  Even after the last two disappointing Protectorate previews I'm going to talk about my hopes for the upcoming Exemplar Errant Officer and Standard Bearer.  Errant themselves are solid, and if the Temple Flameguard are any precedent their UA will boost them into the realm of teh win.

In Mk I, Errant were known for their outrageous point costs but now a Protectorate only pays a whopping 5 points for a minimum unit or 8 for a max.  For that point cost you can field an efficient jack-of-all-trades unit with at least one ability to help them fill any roll on the table:

• Melee: MAT 7, P+S 9 Weaponmaster means an average damage roll of 19 (23 on the charge).  That's enough to kill even most unbuffed Shield Wall troops.
• Ranged: Although their RNG is only average, RAT 6 is very respectable and Blessed means their crossbows will be able ignore most non-terrain defensive buffs.
• Attrition/Speed bump: ARM 16 is respectable and helps survivability against Shield Wall troops.  Bond of Life means you can keep that one important model alive until the end of the unit.

So what do they need a UA for?  To answer that you have to look at the rest of the Protectorate army, where you'll see the Errants' weakness is that there are units that can serve most roles better.

• Melee: All Exemplar sport the same MAT as the Errant and hit even harder.
• Ranged: Idrians sport better range with better RAT & POW once you factor in Combined Ranged Attack and Prey.  The Protectorate also has a glut of AOE options.
• Attrition/Speed bump: Temple Flameguard are cheaper, faster, and have a slightly better defense.  Zealots as well.

Errant UA Bare Metal

With the Protectorate's cheap warjacks and fantastic support pieces space for units and solos tends to be at a premium.  I can't afford much redundancy, meaning my unit choices have to be able to pull a lot of weight compared to the points I spend on them.  If I take Errant I'm doing one of two things: purchasing an all-purpose unit because it's all I can fit in, or banking they can fill a role "well enough" (comparatively) and hoping to get lucky enough to get some mileage out of their flexibility.

As much as I like Errants I find myself taking TFG+UA far more often if I need a speed bump because I can use their SPD 6 and Reach to run and tie up an opponent and fire off Iron Zeal (and usually Tough from Rupert) to keep them alive for a round.  Bastions have seen play as heavy hitters lately just because of their reach higher-damage weaponmaster attacks.  Redeemers and Vanquishers play the ranged role because of the Choir.

Therein lies my hope for the UA: to make the Errant equal to the top dogs in one of the above categories so that they can better compete with table-time.  For example while SPD 6 Flameguard that advance in Shield Wall may very well be giving up the charge, SPD 5 Errant with an ability like Defensive Line could move forward while firing to help thin out potential attackers before hand and still sport sufficient melee abilities to cause casualties once engaged.  Or just run 10" at ARM 18 - outracing the TFG in Shield Wall by 4" but lacking Reach to tie up models.

I could rattle off the abilities I hope that the Errant will pick up, but the short of it is they're just one or two rules shy of fighting for space in my lists.  Between flexibility and the aesthetics of the Knight Exemplar, the UA could very well turn them into my favorite unit.  But then again, now that I jinxed it...

Rhoven & Honor Guard

First up is Rhoven and the Honor Guard.  I posted some initial WIPs of the Honor Guard a while back and since then I've made some pretty good progress.  The Honor Guards have actually been sitting mostly done for a little while now while I worked on Rhoven himself.

I'm most happy with the lower portion of Rhoven's robes so far, but there's still some work that needs to be done.  I'm going to repaint the stole for starters; the highlights were pretty borked when I did them the first time.  That and some more general cleanup work should make him ready for sealing.

Blighted Swordsman UA

Next up is my Blighted Swordsman unit attachment, which isn't near as complete as Rhoven and the Honor Guard.  I've spent a fair amount of time trying to clean up their leather armor and make it really pop but I'm really happy with the skin tones on these two.

The release of MkII has pushed these guys away from the table a little bit compared to some of the other options in the Legion army.  I've been known to paint models only to have them never see the table again - we'll see if that happens again with these guys.

Reaper 60001: Valeros, Iconic Human Fighter

After the Swordsman UA is Valeros, Iconic Fighter, from Reaper Miniatures' new Pathfinder line.  I wasn't as happy with this model once I got it assembled as I was when I saw it at first, though it makes a good representation for my character in my current Earthdawn game.

I'm still trying to clean up the mouth a little bit so it looks better, but overall he turned out fairly well.  I think I'm going to need to weight the back of the base if I can - the leaning pose makes him want to tip over sometimes if I'm not careful.  I'll be using enough sealant on him to stand up to roleplaying use though so he should be fine.

Dark Elf Corsairs

Whenever we have to hold off on a roleplaying session, my Sunday gaming group usually plays board games to occupy the time slot.  Recently we've turned to Mordheim, which has been a lot of fun.  Back in '01 I started painting a Dark Elf warband but never finished my Corsairs here.  Even though I'm running Reiklanders this time, I decided to get my Dark Elves finished so I could field them as a cohesive force, even if it was standing in for another army.

I'm going the speed-over-quality route to try and get them to the tabletop (they're still being worked on).  It's also an attempt to rely heavily on the Games Workshop washes (Badab Black and Delvin Mud) to see if they can speed things along.  So far those two washes haven't been anything special, but they do save me time in mixing my own so I feel like they've been worth it thus far.

Dwarf Warriors

Last up is another GW sampling from my Mordheim days.  A friend of mine left his plastic dwarf boxed set with me when he left the game.  They have been sitting around for a while now and I finally decided to paint up a collection of them with different weapons for use in various roleplaying or miniature games.

The dwarves painted here are only a sample - there are three of each weapon combinations and a few "officer" types all done in a similar paint scheme.  I went muted for the color scheme on these guys, and it seemed to turn out ok.  The beards, though were a fun shortcut.  I basecoated all of them (except those that would be black) with Reaper Master Series Bleached Bone and then used washes to tint and shade them the desired color.  It was a nice time-saving technique for tabletop-quality dorfs.

The cover is a draft of a flier that was put together for the first Privateer Weekend at DieCon 8.  I have a similar one featuring Lylyth that I'll use when I do something similar for my Legion cards.

In a few days I'll finally have my hands on my MkII version of my Protectorate cards. Even if I'm not completely happy with the layout and design of the cards, they'll still be better than playing off of the printouts that we've been using since the MkII pdf was released.

After throwing around a few possible casters, I decided on some of my lesser-used options to see how they changed in MkII.  I was curious to see if they and their battlegroups would fit my playstyle better now, or if I would be able to change my playstyle to better suit their abilities.

My first selection was to go with Grand Exemplar Kreoss.  Kreoss has always been my favorite Protectorate warcaster from a character perspective, so I felt it was time to give his epic incarnation some more attention to see how it would hold up.

I paired him with the Avatar right away.  The free focus, the spell immunity, and the reach on his sword made him a strong heavy to anchor my lines.  Even if he couldn't wreck face on his own - which he certainly can - he can still act as a tar pit and give the rest of the jacks a clearer path.

Reach was also given to the Reckoner in MkII, which I decided to include so as to allow him to potentially attack multiple jacks under eKreoss' feat easier.  My final heavy choice was the Fire of Salvation - I hoped to surprise some people with it's extra movement and catch them unaware.

My light options were highly dependent on what I owned.  The Devout was added as another Reach jack and the potential Spell Ward if necessary against Cryx.  I wanted to add two more jacks in with my last 8 points to give my opponent more to deal with but I only own a single Dervish.  So ole 'Penty got thrown in as the last bit of filler.

I considered Reznik for a long time but decided to switch to Amon as my second list at the last minute.  As above, jack ownership played a large part of model selection, so instead of three Crusaders I added two and the Fire of Salvation.

To fill out the list, I switched to lights with Reach to add both model count and threat range to the list, going with a Devout and a pair of Revengers.  There was no more arcing Sandblast in MkII but I hoped Powerful Charge would help me start building Synergy early.

Round 1: Brakus' Cryx

My first game was against Brakus, and he brought a pretty hard hitting Cryx force. I knew that using eKreoss, I was probably going to be giving up the charge in exchange for a round of retaliation with his feat, but Brakus could (and did) feat after engaging to mitigate that and give himself a second round of attacks unmolested.

Luckily the Avatar with Inviolable Resolve survived and kept everyone in place with his Gaze of Menoth throughout Brakus' feat turn.  On my next turn, I feated and I was able to wipe out everything but Skarre and the Leviathan.  The Deathjack would have been harder to kill but with the Fire of Salvation's ability to dispel Death Ward, I got the last few points of damage in I needed to wreck him.

Kreoss took some big hits from the Leviathan but I was able to use the Avatar's Gaze to pin him down long enough to get to Skarre and take her down.

Round 2: LegalGun's Cygnar

Round 2 I had to face a heavy-focused Kraye list.  I wasn't looking forward to dealing with it but at least it wasn't the Kraye and triple hunter combo.  Choir should be legal in Mangled Metal.

LegalGun sent in his Hammersmith as his first strike and hit my lights that I had positioned out in front, but didn't quite finish them off.  The Avatar Gazed and ran to hold the Hunter in place while the other jacks wrecked the Hammersmith.  Next turn Kraye feated and sent in the Centurion and Rowdy, while the Defender took some shots, brutalizing my Reckoner but leaving my other jacks functional.  I counter-feated, had the Fire grab the Centurion's shield to deny him that armor, then wrecked him with my forces.  I did some fair damage to Rowdy, and Kreoss one-shotted the Hunter himself, but the big move was Gazing and running the Avatar up to catch Kraye, setting up a next turn Avatar-kill.

Round 3: Rassi's Protectorate

Rassi's always been a huge Amon fan, and MkII has only made him a better caster.  I thought about bringing my own Amon out but I had devised what I thought was a nice way around his Avatar to jump on Amon before he expected it.

As usual, I left my lights out to get charged first and put the Avatar out on a flank with Gaze up, then positioned the Fire where it didn't have LOS to where I thought the Avatar would wind up.  I was right, and it trashed a light, triggering the Fire's ability to move in the Maintenance Phase, still keeping the Avatar out of LOS.

Then, during my turn we realized I was thinking MkI Gaze rules (you having LOS to him, not him having LOS to you) and my assassination run went bunk with Kreoss hung out to dry.   Rassi had his jacks start things up and Amon himself finished Kreoss off.

Final Thoughts

We're going to miss playing at Game On! but they went out with a fantastic event.  I'm really enjoying the MkII rules - things like jacks being able to charge over rough terrain (even if at half speed) just make the game more fluid and it's harder to get pinned in and left out to dry.

I'm not sure how much MkII play will pick up in St. Louis before we get stat cards we can play from, but as a whole the community is ready to hit the ground running.

I've been asked a few times how long it takes me to paint a model.  Most of the time I don't keep track of how much time I spend on a given model - I usually don't want to know how many hours of my life I've spent on this hobby.

Usually I listen to podcasts, music, or DVD's while I paint, and the length of one of the podcast episodes I was listening to happened to correspond to a painting step that shed a pale sickly light on how long I had been at work on my exemplars.

First, a little setup.  Painting exemplar armor is a fairly complex process because I prime in gray.  I tried priming in white on my Knights Exemplar Errant, but the time I saved on the armor plates was quickly lost in the recesses of the model.  From prime to finish, my process goes something like this:

1. Base coat the armor Reaper Master Series Yellowed Bone (usually multiple coats).
2. Two light coats of Applebarrel Goosefeather.
3. Wash the white areas with a thinned 2:1 mix of Goosefeather and Territorial Beige.
4. Blackline the edge of each plate where it has a border that will be metallic.
5. Base coat the metallic areas in GW Boltgun Metal.
6. Paint the metallic areas in a 1:1 mix of Vallejo Game Color Glorious Gold and Vallejo Game Color Polished Gold.
7. Highlight the metallic areas with Vallejo Game Color Polished Gold.
8. Was the metallic areas with a mix of P3 Armor Wash and GW Brown Ink.
9. Touch-ups & final highlights (plates and edges).

The time I spent on step 6 for all 5 Bastions and the Honor Guard pretty much corresponded with the running time of the podcast I was listening to: about 1 hour.  That got my models to this point:

Exemplar WIPs

Unfortunately, I've been able to estimate roughly an hour per coat to get this point; so roughly 8 hours so far.  And there's still plenty left to do, including all of the purple areas after I finish cleaning up the metallics.

Aren't you a little short for an Exemplar?

As a side note, I've found working on the Bastions and Honor Guard at the same time to be mildly humorous.  As medium based models, the Bastions are far and away the largest models in the exemplar ranks of the Protectorate of Menoth, far huskier than any of their compatriots.

On the other hand Juviah Rhoven's supposed Honor Guard are vertically challenged even by Knights Exemplar standards.  Yet as pewter miniatures, the two Honor Guardmen weigh far more than the five Bastions.

Gius and Cassian sure have been packing it away.

I don't play a lot of 1-1-1-1 events, so I didn't have any stand-by lists to bring out for the event.  I decided to build my first list around Feora running as a super-solo, camping on her focus to increase her survivability and let her function as a beat-stick caster as necessary.  For my warjack I went with the Avatar of Menoth for a couple of reasons.  First was the fact that he wouldn't be a focus drain on Feora, and second was that I could use Gaze of Menoth as a form of crowd control to corral my opponents.

Even though Feora's feat does a great job of infantry thinning, I decided to go with the Holy Zealots and Monolith Bearer as my unit of choice.  Their strengths almost go without saying at this point - they're such a strong addition in this format.  They can throw down hard hits, they can clear infantry with their bombs, and Greater Destiny lets them weather almost any assault unfazed.  Finally, I threw in the Vassal of Menoth to support the Avatar.  Ancillary Attack would let me throw down another P+S 19 sword attack but my main plan was to use Enliven to keep the Avatar alive.  With ARM 21, he could take a single hit from almost anything then slide back and away out of reach and position himself for the counterattack on my next turn.

The caster of choice for my second list was Severius, primarily because I don't play him much.  I knew right away that the old man wanted an arc node in his list but I wasn't sure I wanted to give up my beat-stick warjack slot to a light.  The Blessing of Vengeance is good, but I knew I'd be seeing heavies all day, and so decided to risk the additional system and bring a Guardian.  Reach was nice, and I might be able to use some of Severius' ample focus to power it's Ward of Retribution.

Initially I added the Vassal (primarily for Enliven again) and Idrians and their unit attachment but I decided to back them out and re-arrange the list around some less competitive models to see what kind of results I could get with them.  I added a full 10-man unit of Flameguard Cleansers and with the left over points added High Exemplar Gravus to the list, primarily for his mobility and threat range from a flank.

Round 1: Randy's Trollbloods

My first game was against a new Trollblood player who was out for his first tournament.   There was a forest a little ahead of my deployment zone just left of center, so I put the Cleansers on my left flank, the Guardian in the center with Severius and the Vassal behind, then Gravus right beside them.  My plan was to run the Cleansers forward, then run the Guardian where at least one Cleanser was blocking charge lanes to him and arc Holy Vigil on the Cleansers to slow down the Champions.  Meanwhile Gravus ran first turn around the right of the forest to come in from the flank turns 2-3.

In the end the Cleansers did their job of spraying the Champions on the way in, holding them up with Holy Vigil-boosted DEF 16, then stabbing themselves in the back to light up the Champions.  Gravus and the Guardian were able to get the drop on the Mauler, which left Madrak with just his Fellcaller and a couple Champions.  It took a couple rounds to tie him down and get through his armor and scroll but in the end I was able to take him down.

Round 2: Peter's Cygnar

Peter's other list featured Longgunners as his unit choice, so I was relieved he went with the closer combat option.  The game started out with the same opening moves as round 1, then Peter used Arcane Shield, his feat, and the Sword Knights' Defensive Line ability to engage my front line with uber-armor models and start killing my Cleansers.

I retaliated by moving them to tie up as much as possible, cast Holy Vigil on them, and feating to deny him focus on the next turn.  A few lucky sprays killed some of the Sword Knights but not many.  On his turn he split his Sword Knights, sending a chunk of them to go deal with Gravus, which left me an opening to go for the assassination on the following turn.

That turn the Guardian was allocated a full three focus (in case he had to trample into place), Severius threw two Immolations at Stryker for decent damage, and the Cleansers walked around (tempting free strikes, but being near enough to Stryker that that would have been bad) and stabbed each other in the back to catch Coleman in the explosions and finish him off.

Round 3: Stu's Cryx

When I saw Stu's list, I knew I needed to switch over to my Feora list.  I was going to need as much anti-infantry capability as possible to deal with the what was effectively two units of Weapon Masters that would be coming at me.

My strategy switched slightly... without Holy Vigil to increase my defenses, I had to use the Avatar with Enliven and the impending triggering of Holy Monolith on the Zealots as bait to set up a counterattack.  Feora threw down a Wall of Fire to block charge lanes from some of the Bane Knights to help minimize my losses.

Stu countered by trampling Nightmare into the middle of my Zealots and hitting the Avatar with Tartarus.  He Cursed my Zealots as well and the Bane Knights and feat-produced Bane Thralls started hacking into the Zealots.  Fortunately, I was able to use the Avatar to wreck Nightmare, and the resulting explosion lit up almost all of his Banes.  Feora stepped back just out of Mageblight range and feated, catching almost everything else on fire.

From there Stu kept using Mage Blight to prevent me from pulling any tricks and we started whittling down what little remained of each others' forces.  When time was called, the only things left alive were Feora, Goreshade, and a Deathwalker, which squeaked me by on VPs.  It was a very close, well fought game.

Round 4: Brakus' Cryx

For the finals I sat down unsure how I was feeling about facing Brakus' list.  I felt I had enough anti-infantry in my Feora list to deal with the Bile Thralls, but if one of them got through it meant wiping out my troops and leaving me without anything to slow down Terminus and the Deathjack.

Brakus got first turn and ran forward, so I advanced my Zealots in response. It was an attempt to put just a couple in Purge range to try and draw them in close enough to kill the remainder, before they got to the heart of my Zealots.

In short, a lucky deviation caught Rengrave and that an Enlivened Avatar kept running forward to tie Terminus back, while Feora charged the Deathjack with Engine of Destruction up.  After ripping an arm and the cortex off on her charge attack, she missed two more attacks and failed to break armor once, so couldn't finish him off.  The Deathjack received Ravager next turn, managed to kill a DEF 16 Zealot, regrew it's missing arm, and then was able to roll high enough to hit Feora a few times and eat her. NomNomNom.

Concluding Thoughts

I wound up picking up a unit of Bastions with the gift certificate I received for second place.  I've broken them out and have started cleaning and assembly but there are a few pieces ahead of them in my painting queue.  They seem to be roughly the same quality as the rest of the Protectorate line, so I'm satisfied with them so far. Will report again on how they paint up.

It was good to see all of the new players out for the tournament - of the 13 player,s I'd say roughly half were people who I don't see at the table on a regular basis and a few were up for their first tournament ever.  The vets and rookies alike were courteous and every game was fun.  The 1-1-1-1 format isn't my favorite but the event was still a great time.

Crash & Burn

My Repenter is the first warjack I ever painted, back in 2005 when I was just starting Warmachine.  In fact, it was the first Protectorate of Menoth miniature I ever painted, which means it was effectively my test piece for my the color scheme I ultimately decided to stick with.

For the most part I tried doing "razor highlights" for my Repenter, just hitting the edges of the armored plates with thin lines. If you look through the rest of my Warmachine gallery, you'll notice I didn't continue the technique. It just didn't come out as well as I wanted.

Redemption

The Repenter was a big learning experience for me, and although looking back I'm not as pleased with the model, I learned a lot from painting it. I've included the Redeemer here as an example of painting technique evolving. I painted my Redeemer in early 2006, just a few months after the Repenter.

Comparing the two models you can see where my techniques changed. The biggest was abandoning the razor highlighting to return to wet blending. With the size of a warjack's armored plates, just doing edge highlighting didn't work. That changed my approach to every jack I've painted since.

I also got better at determining where on the armored plates to highlight. This has always been one of my biggest weaknesses and after painting the Repenter then looking at it during play, I noticed that my highlights weren't quite where I wanted them. I had to adjust where I placed my highlights to make things look more natural.

The best way to learn to paint is by practice, and that's what each warjack is for the next one that hits your painting table. My Redeemer is definitely an improvement over my Repenter, but if you look at my second Revenger or Blessing of Vengeance you can see continued progress.

For me, that's what's important - I'll be happy as long as I continue to improve. My Repenter might not be the slickest 'jack in my collection but it played an key roll in learning how to paint warjacks better.

Fire of Salvation

First up is the Fire of Salvation.  One of my biggest complaints of the Guardian warjack is the engraved metallic shoulder plates.  When I saw the Fire of Salvation shared that design I was disappointed - I just don't like the way it looks.  I thought about greenstuffing over them and smoothing them out but decided against it at the last minute.

My other issue was with the fire that was sculpted on the top of the mace.  I'm not a big fan of painted fire, so I got rid of it, but that left the mace looking like it was missing something.  After digging through my bits box I decided that since the Fire was Kreoss' jack I'd take a cue from that warcaster's epic form.  I found an old Temple Flameguard spear and clipped the head to attach to the top of the Fire's mace, making it look like it was designed to share aesthetics with its master's weapon.

I still need to do a little work on the Fire.  On top of a little cleanup, his rivets and the Menofixes on his shoulder need painting.  I also have to decide what to do with the "orbs" attached to his collar above his head.  Then it'll be time for sealing.

Blessing of Vengeance

I've also made a lot of progress on the Blessing of Vengeance, who is closer to completion than the Fire is.  The only real change I made to Blessing was to leave off the banners which affix to the bolts on his shoulders.  I'm not a big banner fan, so I tossed them in my bits box with the banners for my Seneschals, Avatar, Guardian, Harbinger, and Epic Kreoss.  Sense any trends there?

I'm not completely happy with the posing on this model.  His spear doesn't hang below his base but I can see it potentially being obnoxious on the table.  I'm not sure how much I can reposition it without breaking the small pistons that attach his wrist to his forearm though.

Last up is Typhon, who I took a little break from for a while.  He's mostly complete now but I'm not happy with him yet.  His mouths just don't look right and I'm contemplating repainting the stretched skin areas around the bone circle at his cheeks blue like his flesh as opposed to red like his gums.

Typhon

I'm looking into a new photography set up so I can get caught up on documenting my finished works, so hopefully I'll have some better lit shots of these models soon.

Typhon WIP

After I finished Epic Thagrosh I took a bit of break from miniature painting. I'm not sure if it was the culmination of the burnout I had been feeling or the stomach virus I had caught but I pretty much put down the brush about a month or so ago.  It wasn't until just a couple nights ago that I finally sat back down with Typhon to try and get back into the swing of things.

Last time I worked on Typhon I had applied the initial wash to his skin but I hadn't gotten any further.  But when I sat down to try to smooth out the base coat, before I knew it I had flown through a majority of the layering and the clock was telling me it was an hour past when I should have gone to bed.

The following night I did some initial work on all of the carapace areas.  I still have a lot of detailing and more highlighting to do on the skin though.  The mouths also need a ton of work but overall things are progressing rapidly.  Before long I should be able to seal and base this multi-headed monstrosity.

I haven't decided what I'm going to paint after Typhon.  Neither the Fire of Salvation nor the Blessing of Vengeance have been touched in nearly six months.  I just haven't been able to bring myself back to painting warjacks since then.  Half of me really wants to get them finished and off my workbench but the other half remembers how un-fun jacks are to paint.  Painting beasts is so much more fun.

Fire of Salvation and Blessing of Vengeance

I'm also considering switching to Rorsch & Brine.  I basecoated Brine's skin a while ago but he he's virtually unstarted.  Rorsch is just primed but if I paint him I'll probably paint my Bone Grinders at the same time just to make sure that all of my Farrow have a consistently colored hide.  There's also a Stannis Brocker that has been in-progress for a while now that I wouldn't mind working on either.

Stannis Brocker WIP

That's just my models that are in progress, too.  One of these days I should make a list of my unstarted models to try and prioritize them.  Damn figmentia!

Fire of Salvation

I worked pretty hard on the models for about a month, making some pretty decent progress.  I decided to use the models to test two new things.  The first was trying a different base color for my off white areas.  I really like the Applebarrel Goosefeather color that I normally use on my Protectorate stuff but that paint's coverage is horrible.  Normally I spend a lot of time putting down countless thinned layers of this color.  This is a very time consuming process on a small model, let alone something as large as a heavy warjack.

This time around I gave Reaper Master Series Yellowed Bone a try.  There's a little more yellow in the color than normal but the coverage is superb.  After laying down a base coat I did a single thinned coat of Goosefeater which helped re-tint the areas more to my liking.  The end result was ever so slightly different from just using Goosefeather but was infinitely faster.  Basecoat completed, it was on to shading as normal.

Blessings of Vengeance

And shading was my second experiment for these models.  Once again I varied my recipe, mixing in some P3 Greatcoat Grey into my usual brown shading mix to add a little more depth to the shadows.  The first results had a bad tint to them that wasn't what I was looking for (nor did it match the rest of my army) but I glazed the shadows a couple times with my usual brown shading mix and that was all the fix that was necessary.

Once the experimentation was over it was on to the usual of jack painting - metallics, my royal purple, and other detailing.  And it was at that point where my motivation started dwindling again.  After trying to rekindle my efforts on these models, I realized my lack of motivation is due to the fact that I just don't like painting warjacks.  The only thing I can think of that it's the big open spaces and the chassis that at this point are just so repetitive that working on them more of a chore than a joy.  And painting shouldn't be a chore.

Added to that the fact that I don't even use too many jacks to often in Warmachine and I wind up preferring to work on something that will see more use like a solo, warcaster, even something from my Legion of Everblight army.

I really want to get these models finished but unless I decide to use them at Privateer Press weekend this year I'm not sure how quickly I'll get back to them.  I still have the scroll-work on Fire to do as well as the weapons (and some edge-work) on both jacks and they should be done.

Now if I can just get motivated to get back to work on them...

About five years ago or so I was starting an Earthdawn RPG campaign for a group of friends. I decided to start the campaign off with the published adventure titled Terror in the Skies which would feature some airships and expose the PCs to that quickly. One character was a Sky Raider so I felt it was appropriate, plus I had run the adventure before and was comfortable with it. The group like using miniatures for combat so I got a crazy idea. The adventure had deck plans for the two large galleons that were in the adventure and would inevitably wind up in a battle in the skies. So one day I scanned the two upper decks into photoshop, resized them to scale for 25mm miniatures, and printed them out. I then took the pages, glued them down to cardboard, and cut them out for use on the table top. The group loved them and they made the boarding actions really fun, but then the ships got tossed into the closet and remained unused until recently. After debating what scenario to play for a little while, Prorpger, Superduck, and I came up with the idea to use the cardboard ships to do a variation of the Smoke on the Water scenario from the campaign in the back of Escalation.

The rules of Smoke on the Water were pretty simple - two barges pass each other on the table. Each barge was its owner's deployment zone and moving d6" during its owner's maintenance phase. Each barge can be damaged like a structure and is ARM 16. When either barge touches the opposite table edge, both barges immediately stop and whichever had sustained the most damage immediately sinks. Whoever holds the last barge wins. If a model was knocked off the barges, it was removed from play.

For Smoke in the Skies, we added a few rules based on the ships we were using.

• The blue edging was deck railing, which provided cover and was effectively an obstacle. It also meant you could get slammed into the wall but not over the edge. However the main deck had weaker railing - no obstacle, and you could be slammed right through it. Basically it was all open ground.
• The red areas were the raised decks and counted as higher ground.
• You could cross between decks of equal height or from higher to lower, but not from lower to higher. So no going from main deck on one ship to the forecastle on the other.
• The green locations were the ships masts that were impassable terrain, provided cover, etc.
• Since the ships weren't flat and weren't going to line up perfectly, a model could cross the distance between the two ships as long as the distance between was less than 2". They were either leaping across or swinging on rope or whatever swashbuckler imagery you wanted to apply there. Yes, jacks too.

With that we put together a couple forces to do battle.

Trollbloods (Prorpger)

• Grim Angus
• Dire Troll Mauler
• Winte Troll
• Impaler
• Champions
• Thumper Crew (proxied: Blitzer and Stone Scribes)
• Fell Caller
• Stone Scribe Chronicler (proxied: primered Fell Caller)

Prorpger's proxied the Chronicler and the Thumper a few times and has liked them so far.

Protectorate (Myself)

• Harbinger of Menoth
• Castigator
• Crusader
• Devout
• Dervish
• Seneschal
• Choir

Finally, a chance to field the Harbinger now that she's been painted. It's about time!

Turn 1
Trollblood
Prorpger's airship started off moving 3"

Prorpger started off by having his Thumper shoot at the Crusader. The cannon hit and did a trio of damage to column four but he only rolled 1 for the bounce and it didn't catch anything else. Then the Impaler threw its spear at the Crusader, boosting to hit and scoring a critical hit. It took another three points of damage to column five but tumbled over a couple choir boys who were flattened by the impact. The Stone Scribe read the first passage for the Champions and they gathered near the side of the deck. The Winter Troll put Freezer on the near champion and Grim gave them Return Fire as well. I'm pretty sure Grim shot the Dervish for a few points of damage, but I can't recall how many.

Protectorate
The slower Protectorate vessel only moved 1" first turn.

I gave the Dervish 3 focus and started off moving up and casting Purification, getting rid of Return Fire and Freezer. Then the Seneschal charged the Impaler, reaching across the small space between boats. The first attack missed and the second hit for about 6 points of damage. The choir moved forward and sang Infuse then the Dervish charged the Champions. His first attack on the one in front missed, but he boosted to hit and damage on the leader with his second attack scoring 3 points of damage. The Devout and Castigator moved up to block the edge of the boat, hoping that no matter how far the Troll ship moved the Impaler would still be in melee and unable to slam a jack off the ship. Finally the Crusader stood up and advanced back to its starting position.

Turn 2
Trollblood
The troll vessel zips 6" towards me. Prorpger's ship's mast makes moving his champions a bit difficult. The Impaler boosts a stab in the Dervish's back doing some good damage. The Chronicler moves back, as does the Fell Caller before giving the Champions War Cry. The Champs then spread out circle the Dervish. Only two can reach it, but they both succeed in hitting and stripping the jack of it's right arm and cortex. The Winter Troll tries to breathe on the Seneschal but misses due to being in combat and hits his own troll in the back for a few points of damage. Unfortunately he critted and froze the poor troll in place for a turn. Grim moves up to the rail and caps the Devout for about five points of damage and sheds some fury down to 2

Protectorate
The slower Protectorate ship again fails to match the pace of the troll vessel, only moving 4". I gave the Devout three fury and started a small push. The Dervish took an ineffectual swing at Champion in front of it before the Devout moved up and tried to get the Kithkar... but it was out of reach. So he spent his attacks on the Impaler, taking out its Mind and most of its Body. The Castigator got as far to the rails as possible and the Harbinger followed behind and threw a Cataclysm on the Kithkar. The POW 18 killed him and the blast damage did 3 points to the Chronicler and Fell Caller and killed the swamp gobber bellows (the crewman was sacced instead). Then she feated. The Crusader turned slightly on the fore deck to enable a charge if anyone crossed to my boat and the choir ran up to the deck to block access and use their reach to just be annoying. The seneschal stayed in place with nothing to do.

Turn 3
Trollblood
Another 4" move for the trolls. The Harbinger's feat really messed with the trolls. The solos and gobber moved down the boat away from her and turned around to make room for the Champions to go. The Champions moved down near the Dervish and finished it off. The one that was frozen was stuck looking at the Harbinger and was killed by her feat. The Impaler tossed at the Castigator and took out a column with a lucky damage roll. The Winter Troll stepped back and breathed at the Harbinger. When he scored a crit I decided to let the Devout take it (he was barely screening her already). He boosted damage and took out column 2 but no systems. Grim moved back from the rail and took the POW 12, then shot the Harbinger for I think three points of damage then tried a Mantrap but missed. Then the Mauler stood up and moved in front of him, taking two damage from the feat. The Thumper crew all took damage, but only one crewman died while the other two made their tough rolls.

And this is the required one turn per game I forgot pictures. 

Protectorate
I finally have a 6" move on my boat and it rockets forward. The Castigator got a couple of focus and the choir runs to the back of the boat to get out of my way and clear a path so the Seneschal can get to the Mauler. He chain attack slams it back into the mast and over Grim, doing a few points to the bounty hunter but not removing any aspects on the beast. At this point I decided to try the ole' holy hand grenade. The castigator repositioned slightly, spend one focus to two-handed throw the Harbinger, and one to boost... and failed miserably. Well, there went the possibility of slicing up Grim. Instead I cast a couple Tremor of Faith's, boosting the damage on one but only doing about six damage total between both spells. Then the Harbinger fell back, staying within 2" of the Devout but getting behind the cover of the mast.

Turn 4
Trollblood
The Troll ship advance to within a few inches of the table, signaling that the game was approaching the end. After Grim leeched his fury, the Mauler stood up and moved to engage the Seneschal. The Imapler turned and threw his spear at the Devout, taking out another column but not slamming and not removing a system. The Thumper crew stood up and moved to the edge of the boat. The Champions ran over to get on the Protectorate boat, only two making it over. The Chronicler and the Fell Caller advance, the Chronicler reading the second passage for the Champions. The Winter Troll walks over to in front of the Champions on the Protectorate ship and sprays on the Devout and the Castigator, only doing a couple points of damage to each. Finally Grim stands up and realizes he doesn't have a path to cross to the Protectorate ship. He steps back and heals the Dire Troll with four of his fury.

Protectorate
The Protectorate ship advances another single inch. The two heavies each get a single focus and the Devout gets three. The Seneschal rotates around the Dire Troll slightly and attacks but misses, ruining a chance for a slam. The Castigator ran over onto the Troll Ship and the Crusader ran down to the main deck. The Devout advanced toward the winter troll, swinging his shield at it and missing, then attacking the Troll ship with his halberd and buying three more attacks on it. Finally the Harbinger skirted up towards the rail but away from the trolls and threw a Cataclysm at the troll ship (which was just under 2 inches away). The two models were able to tally up 28 damage on the Trollblood ship.

Turn 5
Trollblood
The troll ship moves to within .5" of the table edge, guaranteeing it will reach the end next turn. Most of his trolls are blocked on his own ship so Prorpger tries to do what he can to damage the Protectorate one, including two Mantraps from Grim and the Champions beating on the deck at their feet but he isn't able to quite match damage the Protectorate did to his vessel and we call the game, realizing the game would end with a Protectorate win at the start of turn 6.

Summary
The first time we tried this scenario we thought it was going to be pretty boring, but it turned out to just be a lot of fun knocking models around. Obviously with the cardboard ships we play a little fast and loose with rules. There's a gentleman's agreement to just go out and have fun and not abuse the scenario to go for the win.

I think there are two things about the scenario that needs addressing, particularly related to our use of the airships. Making it impossible to go from the main deck of one ship to the upper decks of another really limits how much crossing can happen. I think we need to allow it, but count it as going over an obstacle (so walking and running is fine, just no charging). We should probably try that out and see how it goes.

The second thing is the gap between the ships. Because they don't touch (the ship's sides aren't strait) and since a model has to completely cross the gap to get to the other side, models without reach are winding up SOL if there's no space to cross. I can see two potential ways to fix this for now:

• Allow models to be standing in the space between ships since the barges in the original scenario were flush with each other.
• Allow warrior models/units (maybe non-Warcasters only?) starting their activation within an inch of the edge of the ship to move over models within 1" of the rail on the opposing deck. Basically call it swinging on the rigging, don't let people charge but they could run or advance and do it and no free strikes.

One way or the other people need to be able to get from boat to boat and get in each other's faces.

Problems aside the scenario has proven a nice diversion from regular assassination games and has been fun to just play around with.

After I finished trying out a round of Infernal Contraption, Prorpger asked to play a game and actually commented that he wanted to try the Legion out. I was hesitant to let him borrow my models since obviously once a troll player experiences the awesomeness that is Everblight, they'll never want to go back to their old faction. But what kind of a friend would I be if I didn't give Prorpger more and more reasons to spend money.

Protectorate of Menoth (Myself)

• Severius
• Castigator
• Dervish
• Devout
• Revenger
• Vilmon
• Seneschal
• Choir x6
• Choir x6

My theme for the night was "things I never get to try." The Castigator and Dervish don't see the table much and I hadn't played Severius in a while. I decided to take those models, throw in a node and a Devout (I was playing against Legion after all) and go jack-heavy. Adding two choirs meant I could be combining Infuse with Eye of Menoth to get +3/+3 on my jacks... MAT 8 P+S 16 light jacks aren't anything to sneeze at. Vilmon and the Seneschal were added to fill out the list - Vilmon to act as a distraction and the Seneschal to slam if needed.

Legion of Everblight (Prorpger)

• Lylyth
• Carnivean
• Seraph
• Shredder x3
• Forsaken x2
• Warmongers x5

Prorpger decided to bring Lylyth and brought a Carnivean flavored beatstick go along with his Seraph's ranged capabilities and the small Shredder swarm. A couple Forsaken added some much needed assistance in the Fury management department given Lylyth's low Fury and the number of beasts. Finally a full unit of Warmongers was added to give him a good punch as well as act as linemen while the rest of his army outflanked me.

I won initiative and decided to deploy first. I knew that I really needed to keep Prorpger from getting the first charge on me, so I needed to get up field in a hurry. Vilmon was quickly assigned the task of slowing the Warmongers up and preventing them from killing my jacks too quickly. Sevy and the Jacks were plopped down in the center of the table, the choirs were split up behind them, and the Seneschal was tossed off to one side. Vilmon was put out on the right flank where I hoped he'd have a clear run at the Legion lines.

Prorpger placed Lylyth and her Shredders centrally. The Seraph was placed Vilmon's flank and the Carnivean on the opposite side. The Warmongers were placed just to Lylyth's right where they could run forward first turn to get in the way.

Turn 1

Protectorate
Nothing too fancy here. Severius gave the Castigator and Dervish a focus each, keeping the remaining 6 for spells. Those two jacks ran forward to either side of the linear obstacle in front of my deployment zone so they wouldn't have to try to charge over it. The Revenger walked up behind the Dervish and arced Holy Vigil onto the sword wielding jack, raising it's DEF to 18. I hoped that with Riposte would make attacking it seem like a bad option. Severius also cast Eye of Menoth and upkept it the rest of the game (big surprise). The old man then walked up behind the wall, giving him cover (the one thing that would help against eyeless sight). The Devout ambled up after him and the two choirs advanced and sang Safe Passage. Finally Vilmon went into Impervious Wall and ran to the nearby hill, getting a slight DEF bonus for elevation.

Legion
Prorpger's Shredders moved up field to behind his linear obstacle, each throwing Tenacity on a Warmonger. The 'mongers themselves ran forward, getting in front of the linear obstacle to open charge options. They stayed far enough back from my lines that I wasn't going to get a charge on them next turn, much to my dismay.

The Seraph flew forward through the woods and his Forsaken followed behind, consuming the two Fury that the Seraph had been riled for. On the opposite flank the Carnivean advanced and put Spiny Growth up, then his Forsaken followed and consumed those two Fury as well. Finally Lylyth advanced and cast three Tenacities... two on the remaining Warmongers and one on the Seraph's Forsaken. That left her with two Fury left and three on the Shredders to leech next turn.

Turn 2

Protectorate
I didn't like Prorpger's setup.
Priority 1: slow the Warmongers.
Priotity 2: Dull the Carnivean's charge.

One focus on the Dervish, one on the Revenger, one to upkeep EoM, Severius keeps the rest.

The Dervish ran forward first, but didn't go far. I realized I couldn't reach on a charge but didn't want to leave the Focus on the jack, so he ran a big bad 4 inches. The Seneschal ran over behind him - the Dervish was bait and the Seneschal was posed to counterstrike if he took it.

The Revenger ran up in front of Severius to be my midfield blocker. Sevy stood still and arced Holy Vigil onto the Dervish again and sat on the rest of his focus. The Castigator advanced to the right outside of the Carnivean’s charge range and Combusted just to dissuade a Shredder charge and the Devout camped near Severius.

The left Choir advanced behind the Dervish and only 3 contributed to an Infuse chant, catching just the Dervish while the other choir sat still and threw a max distance Safe Passage, catching the rest of the jacks. This meant that the Dervish was going to be shootable, but at DEF 18 I thought he'd still be relatively safe from everything except Lylyth (who would be distracted by my next move). Infuse + EoM meant if a Shredder did charge the Dervish and missed (likely even when boosted), my Riposte would be at MAT 8 P+S 16.

Finally Vilmon addressed Priority 1 by going into Impervious Wall and running right into the Warmongers front and center.

Legion
Prorpger was unhappy with Vilmon, and who could blame him. He actually hadn't faced the High Paladin before and started talking out the options. He quickly hit on how using Witch Mark effectively meant she was casting spells at a Fury stat of 7 (her RAT) instead of 5 (her Fury), but since Impervious Wall ignores damage AND effects, Witch Mark wouldn't be applied to him even if she shot him. That meant either casting a spell a Fury 5 vs. DEF 13 +4 (in melee) +2 (screening) OR giving up boosted RAT 12 POW 16 Weaponmaster free strikes on each Warmonger as they moved away to give Lylyth a clean shot. Prorpger had a good grasp of what he could and couldn't do so after he tossed out ideas and realized his options weren't good, I volunteered a little trick to him I've picked up.

The Warmongers activated first and received a run order. The one just to the left of Vilmon stepped up to beside the Paladin, touching his base and bridging the edge of Vilmon's melee range. The others then Ran around him, exiting Vilmon's melee range at a point where I couldn't draw a line from my base to his to take free strikes.

Prorpger then activated the Seraph, forcing it for slipstream. The Seraph flew up 3" to get within 2" of the last Warmonger then flew 3" to the side, getting out of Vilmon's melee range and avoiding a free strike due to its Wings ability. Using Slipstream he then placed the last Warmonger 2" forward past Vilmon and out of his melee range, tuning him so as to not engage the paladin. The Seraph shot at my right Choir but was out of range, then one fully boosted Eruption of Spines later (that costs 5 Fury to do!) Vilmon was off the table and out of Prorpger's hair.

After that Prorpger decided not to take the Dervish bait with his Carnivean and instead Assaulted my left Choir. His spray caught three models (including the leader) and he boosted each attack roll, killing all three. The remaining Choir members had to take two command checks - one for the Carnivean's Horrific Attack ability and one for mass casualties. They were close enough to use Severius' CMD 9 but still failed the second test.

One Shredder went Rabid and charged the Dervish. It missed its attack but the Dervish couldn't connect on the Riposte either (D'oh!). The middle Shredder went rabid and advanced, putting Tenacity on the Warmonger leader and the last one advanced and threw Rabid on the rightmost Warmonger. Finally the Forsaken activated. The right one consumed fury off the Seraph but the left wound up too short to consume from the Carnivean. That meant Lylyth was going to have 9 Fury on the table next turn barring any deaths.

Turn 3

Protectorate
Vilmon was dead and Prorpger was in my face now so I needed to lay some smack down if I didn't want to get overrun. First things first, the fleeing Choir ran far enough to ensure that they would be leaving the table next turn, so we just moved them out of the way.

Sevy gave the Castigator 2 Focus, the Revenger 2 Focus, the Dervish 1 Focus, and upkept Eye of Menoth. The Choir went first and shuffled forward then Infused like they never Infused before. The Seneschal then charged the Carnivean to slam it back out of my hair.

Quick basic math break here. A Seneschal has a MAT of 8. With EoM up that becomes a 9. The Carnivean has a DEF of 11. So what does he need to roll to hit? Only a 2 - no problem. Except for the rule that if you roll double 1's you automatically miss. Anyone want to guess which rule of Warmachine was applied to the Seneschal's first attack? The second attack wiped the beasts's Mind branch.

Fortunately the Carnivean wasn't engaging the Dervish so it shuffled around to engage both the Warmonger leader and the Shredder. He then unloaded on the Shredder, killing it with three attacks after missing one (Prorpger doesn't reave). Then the Revenger walked up to engage as many Warmongers as possible. He started attacking the one he really needed to kill - the one engaging the Castigator. Even with Infuse and EoM the Revenger had to use a Focus for an extra attack to finally kill the damn ogrun, so I spent the last Focus to attack another Warmonger... and killed it in one blow. That freed the Castigator to cheerfully walked up to the Seraph. It nailed the beast with a left hook that both dazed and ignited the poor creature and after a few more quick jabs and the Seraph was nothing more than a charred corpse. Good thing, too. I definitely didn't need that thing shooting the crap out of my frail old man.

Sevy himself moved back a few inches and the Devout followed, just to make sure he'd be safe while his ample control radius insured he's be able to manage his jacks next turn.

Legion
This would be the part where I applogize for forgetting to take pictures of this turn. :/

Prorpger pulls all four Fury from the Carnivean and one from a shredder and made all his threshhold checks. Lylyth started out by moving forward, feating, and boost to hit capping my remaining Choir leader even with cover. She then poured Fury into the Carnivean, healing it up. The Carniven then sidestepped around the Seneschal to engage both it and the Dervish. The first claw attack took care of the Seneschal and then he went to town on the Dervish. A few fury later the Dervish was a pile of scrap.

The Warmongers shifted around, the leader engaging my Reventer while the other two moved over to the Castigator. The Castigator lost a six or seven boxes out of the middle of its grid and the Revenger took some damage to the right side of its grid but kept a hold on its Halberd. The Shredders split up and each went rabid on a jack but both ARM 19s held up and only let a couple points through. Finally the left Forsaken filled up on Fury from the Carnivean and the right Forsaken ran towards the middle of the table to get into better position. She already had five 5 and was waiting for a chance to get close enough to Severius.

Turn 4

Protectorate
1 Focus upkept EoM, 3 to the Revenger, 2 to the Castigator. The Castegator moved up to engage both Warmongers and the Shredder and started swinging, killing a warmonger and a Shredder. The Revenger spent his Focus to try to kill the Warmonger leader and wound up doing 7 points of damage on with his halberd through the ogrun's armor.

Sevvy then gave the choir the charge order before backing onto the hill for a small DEF bonus. The Devout followed him back and the Choir charged the Warmonger. Two were able to make charges (passing their CMD check using Severius' CMD 9) and the other three fanned out to get between the beasts and the old man. Both choir boys hit but neigher broke the Ogrun's armor.

Legion
Lylyth leeched all four fury she had on the table. The left Forsaken ran into the midst of the Choir (they passed thier CMD check) and blight shrouded, killing the left four. Lylyth slid around behind the Forsaken and capped the last choir boy (boosting to hit). The shredder went rabid. maneuvered so that his base was in contact with both the Revenger and the Warmonger Apostle, and attacked. With his positioning the Revenger's shield wouldn't push him out of melee but unfortunately the Shredder failed to get through the jack's armor on either attack. The Warmonger leader moved up and attacked the Revenger, tearing into columns 2 and 3 but leaving his systems intact and getting pushed back. The other warmonger beat on the Castigator, disabling its movement.

The second Forsaken circled back around the Warmonger to get out of range of my spells and jacks. Finally the Carnivean was forced to run back behind the linear obstacle, staring down Severius.

Turn 5

Protectorate
1 Focus upkept EoM, 3 to the Revenger, 2 to the Devout, 2 on Severius. The Castigator circled as far to the side of the warmonger engaging it as a 1" move would let it then punched it twice, killing it. The Revenger then circled around the Shredder, staying it its melee range and engaging every damn thing on the table. I decided to go for broke and swung at Lylyth, boosting to hit and doing 7 damage, which she took. I then hit the Shredder with my shield, taking out its Spirit and bought another attack on Lylyth, hitting again for 9 damage. She sent the second hit to the Carnivean.

The Devout then moved in on the Carnivean and kept buying attacks with its halberd, the final one bringing the big boy down to two boxes left. Sevvy decided what the hell and charged in himself to finish it off.

Legion
Lylyth took the two Fury from the Shredder and with the three she had maxed out at five. Then the Warmonger moved back to 2" and swung at the Revenger, finally ripping its halberd off but getting pushed back another inch in the process. The Shredder went rabid and attacked (we forgot it had no spirit) and did not damage but got pushed away as well.

Lylyth dashed for the nearby woods and launched an arrow at the Devout (boosting to hit), hitting it for 1 damage. She then cast Eruption of spines and did no damage to the Devout but boosted and rolled 14, doing 10 points of damage to the old man! The empty Forsaken ran at Severius to engage him but forgot about the Devout's Defensive Strike and got killed. The other moved in front of Lylyth to get in the way and be ready for a blight shroud if Severius got closer.

Turn 6

Protectorate
Um, Ow? Not good, but I had a shot. Severius kept all his focus for himself, since the Revenger was currently unengaged and had LOS to Lylyth. Severius lobbed two boosted Immolations at Lylyth, but neither was a critical hit and both damage rolls were low enough to leave the crazy woman with five live left. Damn!

The Revenger stepped up and bashed the Warmonger with his shield, missing, and the Castigator advanced 1" towards the Shredder and Combusted. Unfortunately the Shredder was just out of range. Sevy's Devout advanced just a little and I ended my turn with no focus.

Legion
Lylyth took one Fury off the Shredder and cut herself for 4 more, leaving her with one wound left. Just like last round - boost to hit the Devout, a few points of damage, Spiny Growth... but this time she only does four points of damage, leaving Severius with two left. The Forsaken moves up staying away from the Devout and blight shrouds, but only does one point. Severius lives!!

The Warmonger attacked the Revenger, breaking its Cortex and the Spirit-less Shredder snuck up behind but didn't do any damage. Prorpger then ended his turn.

Turn 7

Protectorate
Severius limped forward, boosted to hit with an Immolation, hit (still no crit) and boosted damage, finally killing Lylyth and driving Everblight's forces off the table!

Sevvy the Burninator...

Summation

Protectorate
MVP was the Revenger. Or more specifically, it's Repulsor shield. That blessed device raised the jack's armor high enough that it could take a few hits and pushed people back when it the arc node was really needed. Good job, little fella.

The Dervish + Holy Vigil combo was nice, but once the fight was really joined I couldn't afford to keep it up. Casting Holy Vigil was 3 focus that I needed to give to jacks to boost attacks and the Dervish never had a chance to stand in one place to the spell could be upkept.

And finally Severius's killing of the Carnivean in melee was just entertaining.

Everblight
Had Prorpger been able to get the charge with the Warmongers, I think the game would have gone a lot differently. Luckily for me Vilmon was able to keep that from happening, even if it did cost him his life. Prorpger made some good calls at the throughout the game - using the Spiny Growth to get around the Devout's Shielding ability and Severius' staff was damn near fatal.

He got a little unlucky with the Carnivean going down, but by the last couple turns we were both on our last legs. One good roll on either side would have ended the game and I just happened to finally make that good roll first.

Exemplar Vengers

The biggest reason for how little I've actually gotten painted as of late is my Exemplar Vengers. I don't even want to try to total up how many hours I've spent on these models up to this point, but I'm sure it's no small number. The gold edging on the armor plates - present on both the mount and the rider - was probably the biggest time sink. Between a black base coat, a coat of silver, a couple coats of gold, and a blackline just inside the edging, I spent a few evenings on that alone. But all in all I'm happy with how the cavalry turned out and I've enjoyed fielding them.

Dervish WIP

My most recent work has been on my Dervish light warjack, pictured to the left.  After as much time as I spent on the cavalry, this model was actually pretty quick to paint.  I did the purple and tan in one evening, then the metallics in another.  A third evening was spent basing and some general clean-up and now he's just about done. I'm not exactly happy with the menofixes on the forearm plates yet, but once I get them how I like them I'll be ready to seal this miniature and call it done.

Custom Base

I've also been doing a little work on a base for another miniature I'm assembling at the moment. I started by taking a cast of a Cryxian bonejack (sans head) and putting it on a base.  After that I drilled some holes where the leg would be and added some wire and brass tubing to look like a broken leg joint system. Then I smoothed some greenstuff in a pool at the neck which I'll paint up as necrosludge. I have some plans for this jack's head, but you'll have to wait for the finished product to see that.

Harbinger Skin Tone

Last night I finally started on my Harbinger of Menoth. I've had this model for some time now but have been hesitant to start painting and assembling as I wasn't sure just what I wanted to do with her. Now that I've got that all settled in my mind, I assembled her torso (including the brass rod which replaces the flag pole) and started painting her flesh. Instead of using one of my standard flesh tones - I have a yellowy one and a more pink one - I decide to mix the two. I'm pretty happy with the results so far and am anxious to see how it looks once the rest of the miniature is painted.

Finally I had to do a repair job on my Gorman di Wulf miniature. I loaned it to another gamer to use in a game a few weeks ago and he dropped it, chipping the paint on the helmet and the cloak. I didn't get a picture of it after the fix, since it really looks the same as it does in my miniature gallery.

So that's what I've been working on lately. I'm going to be concentrating on the Harbinger in the near future and hope to have her done in the next week or so. I'll be taking my time with her and hopefully she'll turn out well.

Although I debated between the Protectorate and Legion until the last minute, I ultimately decided to go with the Menites to try to round out faction representation. I decided instead of bringing lists built for various scenarios, I'd build separate lists for Warmachine and Hordes opponents. With that in mind I put together the following:

vs. Warmachine

• High Exemplar Kreoss
  • Devout
  • Redeemer
• High Paladin Dartan Vilmon
• Knight Exemplar Seneschal
• Paladin of the Order of the Wall
• Rupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord
• Choir of Menoth x5
• Holy Zealots x10
  • Monolith Bearer
• Knights Exemplar x6

Typically I have two lists to try and deal with the differences in styles between armies like Cryx and Khador but since I wanted to take one list against both I had to build a little more conservatively. The Zealots were my hard hitting unit that could go anti-spells to mess with Cryx a little. The Knights (escorted by the Piper) were my hard hitting flank and the solos would run around to fill in where necessary. The Devout would let me set up my defensive island if needed (using the Choir's Safe Passage song and Kreoss' Ward spell) and the Redeemer added to the threat of Kreoss' feat.

vs. Hordes

• Feora, Priestess of the Flame
  • Devout
• High Paladin Dartan Vilmon
• Knight Exemplar Seneschal
• Rupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord
• Alten Ashley, Monster Hunter
• Choir of Menoth x6
• Exemplar Vengers x4
• Temple Flameguard x8
  • Preceptor & Standard Bearer
    

My Feora list was all about speed and fire, both of which turned out to be useful in my two Hordes games. Feora's feat would be deadly to most Hordes infantry and troublesome to some beasts. By taking SPD 6+ units (with obvious exception of the Choir) I was ready to try to counter some of the Hordes factions' maneuverability with a little of my own. In addition her higher armor would make her a little less susceptible to the Hordes' assassination techniques that require a lot of smaller power hits instead of a couple big ones.

Round 1: Assassins - Bye

I actually had a bye for the first round so I got to walk around and see how some of the other games were going. I chatted a bit with the Pressganger and a few players as games got done and got ready for my second game.

Round 2: Pendulum vs. Skorne (JoeJones)

Second round was against a relatively new Skorne player in the scenario that is probably the worst for their faction.

• Makeda
• Titan Gladiator
• Basilisk Drake
• Basilisk Krea
• Cyclops Savage
• Cataphtact Cetrati x6
• Paingiver Beast Handlers x4

So Feora it was. I was hoping that her list would let me capitalize on the speed advantage and press the attack early. The Krea looked like it was going to be problems, but at least I didn't have any real ranged attacks I had to try to punch through its aura with. Joe won the initiative roll and opted to go first. He ran forward first turn to get to the line quickly. On my turn I piped March on the Cav and ran them 20", deep on to his side of the table. The TFG ran their full 12" to approach and Feora used Engine of Destruction and to keep up.

Joe diverted all his beasts except the Cyclops (which was coming up the other flank) to deal with my cav, killing two in the first turn. The Centratii charged my TFG's flank killing a couple but getting them stuck in with me. My Devout and Vengers retaliated by killing the two Basilisks quickly and a Seneschal kept the Titan tied up (and eventually slammed) when Joe maneuvered Makeda so that it was out of her control area so she could try and kill Vilmon. Feora's feat and Ignited TFG started thinning the Cetrati's ranks, and at the end of turn four I had killed the last one on my side of the table, ending the game.

Joe's army just wasn't quite equipped for Pendulum, but throwing Vilmon up a flank and forcing him to use Makeda all the way to that side to deal with him just compounded the issue. He could have prolonged the game by throwing the Cyclops across the line and keeping it away so I couldn't kill it, but the VP difference means he would have had to kill Feora to win, and I would have made that as difficult as possible.

Round 3: Invasion vs. Legion of Everblight (Neomorte)

I've played Neomorte in almost every event I've been in and every game's enjoyable. Ray brought out the following list for our Invasion game:

• Thagrosh
• Carnivean
• Seraph
• Harrier
• Shredder
• Shredder
• Shredder
• The Forsaken
• Blighted Swordsmen x10

I chose my Feora list to play (as I had planned) but there was still one problem I was going to have to deal with - even with my higher speed units, the Legion could still run circles around me. That meant blocking access to the control point on my side of the board - a task made infinitely more difficult by the Seraph and Harrier's wings.

Oddly enough I found the idea solution in Fire Wall. Throwing it between my TFG and his Swordsmen kept them from charging - the POW 12 would have killed them. So instead the first couple turns were spent with us jockeying for position as my TFG and Vengers and his Swordsmen circled each other. Neomorte had a spot of bad luck early when his Seraph frenzied. It didn't do any damage to the Carnivean it charged but that meant a round it wasn't moving towards me and a Slipstream he couldn't use that turn. It was a real hit to his tactics.

Eventually Neomorte pounced on my Vengers first killing two, but the remaining Vengers, IFP, and Vilmon were able to bring his unit down to half. Combined with the Shredder that the Devout killed on a Defensive Strike and the Harrier it charged to keep from reaching the point, I was able to squeeze out a win on VPs.

Round 4: Assassins vs. Khador (DarkPrince6)

The final round was against DP6 and his Khador forces. I had actually discussed the list he chose with him in the week before the tournament, so it was no surprise when it hit the table. Still, that didn't make it any less intimidating.

• Sorscha
• Man-o-War Drakhun (with Dismount)
• Doom Reavers
• Iron Fang Pikemen x9
  • Officer and Standard Bearer
• Iron Fang Uhlans

There are a few things Sorscha hates more than anything: Fire, being Stationary, and Lamentation. So I hit the trifecta when I pulled out Kreoss. I won the initiative roll and decided to go first, figuring I needed to get set up before Sorscha came in at me. The ploy succeeded, but not in the manner I intended. After running the Zealots and Knights forward (with March on the Knights), I used the Redeemer to kill a couple Doom Reavers and put up Lamentation. But on Tim's turn he Windrushed and charged my lead Knight before feating, catching my Knights (except one), my Seneschal, and my Paladin. Sorscha killed one knight in melee and her mounted troops ran forward to get into charge position. The Doom Reavers charged my Zealots (who weren't caught in the feat) and killed one, engaging a few more and Vilmon. The IFP ran up the middle to get into position.

My turn I tried to get a few people between Sorscha's stuff and Kreoss, having him upkeep Lamentation and camping on the rest of his focus. Vilmon used Impervious Wall and ran to engage almost the entire IFP line then the Zealots disengaged (losing a few to free strikes) and bombed the Doom Reavers off the the table.

On Tim's turn the Cav tore into my Knights, but failed to kill the leader when the one going after him missed an impact attack. The Drakhun killed my Seneschal and Sorscha fell back, wanting to get out of range. The IFP formed up into Shield Wall, not wanting to let Vilmon take free strikes.

On my turn Kreoss charged the Drakhun for distance and feated, catching Sorscha and the rest of her army. The Redeemer got infused and shot a couple rockets at her but bad damage rolls left her with most of her health boxes. Vilmon ran around to engage the Drakhun and the Zealots advanced and threw bombs at the IFP, killing all but a few. The surviving Knight Exemplar (the Warder) got March (for the extra attack) and charged the Drakhun, killing the horse and bringing him down to a couple boxes left. Then the Devout headed over to hope for the Defensive Strike to protect Kreoss on the following turn.

Tim activated the Drakhun first, and it died to the Devout's Defensive Strike. Then she Razor Winded Vilmon but left him with 2 health. She then fell back and had her army get in front of her to block access - two IFP then all five Uhlans lined up side-to-side.

Being down on VPs, I had to go for it. The Redeemer with a couple focus rocketed the IFP, killing the one in the middle. Kreoss charged the one between Vilmon and Sorscha and killed it, then Immolated her scoring the Crit Fire and reducing her to three wounds. Vilmon charged her, but only got 1 attack from Flying Steel and rolled a 6 (needed 7 to hit).

Menoth love his fire, and Fire loves Menoth. On Tim's turn the Fire on Sorscha didn't go out and did the last three points she had left, killing her and ending the game.

Results

Since this tournament had both a Warmachine coin kit and a Hordes Coin kit there was a fair bit of hardware handed out at the end of the day. As far as game success went, Warmachine wound up doing a bit better than Hordes. I don't know what all the records were but all 3 of the 3-0 players going into the final round were fielding Warmachine armies.

Faction Awards:

• Cygnar: (One of the out-of-towners; I don't recall his name)
• Protectorate: Myself (Also Tournament and Warmachine Champion)
• Khador: DarkPrince6
• Cryx: Rgrayua (I believe)
• Trollblood: F-Bomb
• Circle: Omnipotent (Also Hordes champions)
• Skorne: JoeJones
• Legion: Dhow Tocor

The event was a lot of fun - hopefully we'll have another 500 mixed even soon and I can try it from the Hordes perspective.

Cygnar boasted highest representation with 11 players (4 teams). Cryx and the Protectorate both had 8 players (3 teams each) and Khador trailed with 7 players (also 3 teams). Our final player was the organizing Pressganger who occupied a virtual spot on the ladder for the purpose of bonus points and accepted any challenge, playing whatever faction the other player chose.

One of the Cryxians, D.Vader, took the Champion pin, and his team Dead Men Walking (also including Saultydog/Superduck and AslainKheog) won the best team award. One of my Protectorate teammates, Rassillion007, snagged the Relentless award and Patman, a Cygnaran, scored the Tactician award.

Overall the league was a very enjoyable experience. I was able to play a lot of very enjoyable games against both new and old opponents. I also used use some warcasters that I hadn't really used before to try out new lists and new strategies. I've learned the joy of the POW 14 Fire. However while the members of the local gaming group make the league a very enjoyable experience, I'm not 100% happy with the way that Privateer Press set up the rules for the league.

The biggest issue I had with the league was the emphasis on quantity over quality. It was quite possible to finish near the top of the ladder just by playing (and losing) game after game after game. Now I recognize that Privateer Press wanted the league to be a more casual less intense form of organized play than their Steamroller tournament rules, but in my opinion the rules as they are set up give too much of an advantage to the person who can make it to the tournament venue more days/week than the others.

As part of t he weekly rules, Privateer Press provided a scenario for each pair of factions that games between members of those factions would play every time they met up that week. While they originally promoted these scenarios as new an interesting settings, most of them have been only slightly altered versions of their Steamroller scenarios. In addition the scenarios were recycled over and over so that your faction was scheduled to participate in some of the same scenarios over and over, to the point where it got repetitive.

Granted with four different teams over six weeks of league, there'd need to be quite a few scenarios per season to have no crossover but it'd be nice if there was no repeat from one week to the next. Some of the scenarios were rather annoying and seeing them for a second time was disappointing.

Despite those quibbles, the league was a very enjoyable experience and I look forward to when the Spring season starts up here in a week and a half. We've adjusted a few league rules to try to balance things out - limiting league games to a few nights per week and randomizing teams to try to spread out the skill. Things should be very interesting this time around.

With our league starting up next week, this was most likely to be the last America Hill game we'd be playing for awhile. In addition it may be my last battle report for a while. While I'm playing a league game I'm not going to be able take the time to take pictures of everything between turns. So don't be expecting a new post every week.

This time around we went with some changes to the hill rules. To emphasize getting to to the hill even more, we required

• At the end of each turn, the player with the most models on the hill gains 1 VP.
  • A unit counts as 1 model, regardless of the number of members on the hill
  • In the case of a tie, VPs are awarded to all players tied for most models on the hill
• At the end of a turn where a player has his warcaster/warlock on the hill, the controlling player rolls 1d6 and gains the following bonus:

1. Immediately activate the Yellow Woldwomper
2. Immediately activate the Blue Woldwomper
3. Immediately activate the Red Woldwomper
4. Place any one model currently on the hill or within 3” of the hill within 6” of its current location. Model may not be placed more than 4” above the table surface. There must be room for the model’s base at the destination.
5. Place 1d4 3” cloud effects in play anywhere completely within the warlock/warcaster’s control radius. These clouds remain in play for one round.
6. Place 1 3” fire storm template anywhere within completely within the warlock/warcaster’s control radius. The warcaster/warlock must make a magic attack roll against each model in the AOE ignoring LOS, cover, concealment, elevation, Stealth, Invisibility, or intervening models. Each model hit suffers an unboostable POW 12 damage roll and the Fire continuous effect.

We also decided to fight it out on a large molded plastic terrain board and had to use a smaller hill for the center of the table. Most of the rocks and rubble provided cover, and we let people move out of their deployment areas without movement penalties on the first turn because it would have been too unfair to a couple players.

James, the Cryxian player, opted to go last so I wound up going first. We deployed and set up in the following order:

Protectorate (Myself)

• Kreoss
• Crusader
• Crusader
• Vilmon
• Paladin
• Paladin
• Choir

Cygnar (Patman)

• Siege
• Centurion
• Lancer
• Junior
• GMAC
• Reinholdt

Trollbloods (Prorpger)

• Grissel
• Dire Troll Mauler
• Pyre Troll
• Scattergunners

Prprpger was trying out some Trollblood models he didn't own, so Madrack was standing in for Grissel and he had a couple bonejacks for use as Scattergunners.

Cryx (James)

• Skarre
• Helldiver
• Helldiver
• Bane Thralls
• Mechanithralls
• Skarlock
• Necrotech

Turn 1

Protectorate
When setting up, I noticed that Skarre had no arc nodes so I decided to throw Vilmon over in that direction to force James to have to deal with him with Skarre. I started the turn by running both Crusaders forward, then Kreoss put Protection of Menoth on Vilmon and moved forward. Vilmon activated Impervious Wall and ran to the hill, claiming it in Menoth's name. The Paladins moved up to flank Vilmon and the Choir advanced in the rear and put Ward on the Crusaders.

+1 VP Menoth for models on the hill.

Cygnar
Cygnar's gunmen moved forward but were just short of range to the choir near Kreoss. The Centurion moved towards the hill and the Lancer ran, getting on the hill. Siege lobbed a Shockwave through it at Vilmon and hit, doing 2 points of damage and pushing him 6" back off the hill. Junior cast Arcane Shield on Siege.+1 VP Cygnar for models on the hill.

Trollbloods
The Mauler raced to the hill, getting his base up on it. The Pyre Troll then advanced and boosted an attack and damage roll against the lancer, dishing out about 5 points of damage. Then the rest of the troll troops walked forward, with Grissel dumping off some fury so she could leech next turn.

+1 VP Cygnar, Trollbloods for models on the hill.

Cryx
Seeing Vilmon knocked back off the hill and closer to her, Skarre decided to take care of the Paladin. After giving a focus to each Helldiver so they could run onto the hill she cast a fully boosted Hellfire at him, then walked up towards the hill.

After Skarre finished, the thralls spread out massing forward. The Mechanithralls spread out on my flank and the Banes positioned themselves to face Prprpger. The Skarlock Sac Lambed a Mechthrall, rolling a 4 for focus.

+1 VP Cryx for models on the hill.

Score

• Protectorate: 1 (+1 Hill)
• Cygnar: 2 (+2 Hill)
• Trollbloods: 1 (+1 Hill)
• Cryx: 1 (+1 Hill)

Turn 2

Protectorate
I felt dirty, but, well, it was either this or eat a Skarre Bomb next turn. Kreoss put three focus on his left crusader then walked up and feated, catching the Centurion, Lancer, Mauler, and all of the Cryxian forces except four Bane Thralls in the very back. He then walked forward. The focused Crusader then charged the knocked down Skarre (who had spent all her focus killing Vilmon), Inferno Mace insuring she was done for the day.

The other Crusader moved forward to catch the edge of the hill and the Choir moved up to block access to Kreoss before singing Ward on the Crusader on the hill. My left Paladin charged the Mechanithrall leader, killing him and the right Paladin stepped out towards the Cygnar line to serve as a distraction.

+1 Protectorate, Cygnar, Trollblood for models on the hill.

Cygnar
Siege moved a bit towards Kreoss, putting Explosive on himself and Jr. He used Ground Pounder to take out the Choir around Kreoss, killing the only one not in the template by using the Exoplosivo attack on the one next to him. GMAC shot and killed the Paladin. The Centurion continued its advance towards the hill. Jr moves towards the trolls to put some threat on that side of the table. He shoots a Scattergunner (with Explosivo), killing one.+1 Protectorate, Cygnar, Trollblood for models on the hill.

Trollbloods
The Scattergunners move up and start spraying banes, killing two, missing a few because of stealth, and actually rolling low enough to fail to kill a couple. The Mauler stands up and Walks to the middle of the hill, and the Pyre Troll walks onto the hill and boosts a shot at the Lancer, missing but doing minimal damage on the scatter. Then Grissel goes, walking towards the hill and putting Hoof It on the Scattergunners, who shuffle up so a couple of their members are on the hill as well.

+1 VP Trollblood for models on the hill.

Cryx
With most of his forces knocked down, his Banes surround my Crusader and his Mechanithralls surround the Paladin. The one Bane able to attack takes five points out of the Crusader.+1 VP Trollblood for models on the hill.

Score

• Protectorate: 10 (+2 Hill, +5 Skarre, +2 Helldiver x2, )
• Cygnar: 5 (+2 Hill, +1 Paladin)
• Trollbloods: 3 (+2 Hill)
• Cryx: 1

Turn 3

Protectorate
With Siege and his gunmen so close, I needed to keep focus on Kreoss to try to live out the turn, but need to clear the hill a bit. So Kreoss placed two focus on the Crusader on the hill and kept the rest. Said Crusader slammed the Mauler, but only knocked it back one inch, killing a single Scattergunner. I needed him to go further back but it didn't work out for me. The Paladin actually missed a Mechanithrall with his MAT 8 but the Crusader hit with both attacks, rolling too poorly on his open fist but killing one with his mace. Kreoss activated, telling the last choir boy to run before walking to the edge of the hill and casting Protection of Menoth on himself. Then the choir boy ran to the hill to give me three models on it.

Finally, someone got a caster to the hill. I rolled on the chart and got a 4. With Cygnar going next, I decided to move the Centurion 6" away from Siege so it couldn't get focus and couldn't attack Kreoss. That Piston Spear would have been painful.

+1 VP Protectorate, Trollblood for models on the hill.

Cygnar
The Centurion wound up just out of Siege's control area, so it wasn't able to get any focus this turn. Siege started by feating then channeled shockwave through the lancer at a nearby Scattergunner, sending them bouncing off each other and killing three in the process. Then dropped a ground pounder on Kreoss and the last Choir member, killing the choir boy but missing Kreoss. He then tried shooting Kreoss but missed when we realized Kreoss was within 2" of the Woldwomper, thus engaged by it and in melee. GMAC and Jr. tried to shoot him as well but both missed. The Centurion walked up onto the hill, bashing the Pyre Troll with his shield but missing with the spear.

With the loss of the choir, the trolls owned the hill with 3 models.

+1 VP Trollblood for models on the hill.

Trollbloods
Prprpger had a good turn, despite the Pyre Troll frenzing on the Centurion and doing no damage. He started out by having Mauler stand up and walk to the top of the hill. The Scattergunners walked around the Mauler, shooting a Bane Thrall and otherwise getting between the Crusader and Mauler. Then Grissel walked to the Centurion, put Calamity on it, and whacked it with her maul, deafening it. After that she used Hoof It on herself and walked away and up onto the hill, ignoring free strikes.

With Grissel finally on the hill, he rolled on the chart and got to activate the Woldwomper next to the Centurion. With the jack still deafened and unable to take free strikes, Prprpger walked the Woldwomper back behind it and between bypassing its shield and Calamity still being up, the Woldwomper wrecked the Centurion.

+1 VP Trollblood for models on the hill.

Cryx
The Mechanithralls on the Paladin finally killed him. The Necrotech walked up and immobilized the Crusader and the two surviving banes did a few more points of damage to it (one actually missed its melee attack).

Score

• Protectorate: 11 (+1 Hill)
• Cygnar: 6 (+2 Choir)
• Trollbloods: 9 (+3 Hill, +3 Centurion)
• Cryx: 2 (+1 Paladin)

Turn 4

Protectorate
Kreoss dropped his upkeep spells and charged Siege, making sure to engage the GMAC as well with his reach. Thanks to Spellbreaker's Dispel ability, the first hit nullified Arcane Shield and Kreoss was able to kill Siege (though it cost all his focus to do so). The crusaders flailed at the various infantry around them without killing any and I ended my turn.

+1 VP Trollblood for models on the hill.

Cygnar
Rineholt fled with his caster dead, dying to Kreoss's free strike. Jr charged Kreoss and hit him (boosting), doing 8 points of damage. His second attack hit but didn't get through armor. The GMAC sidestepped around JR to get out of melee without taking a free strike (using Jr. to block melee access to him), but couldn't hit Kreoss with the defensive bonus for being in melee.

+1 VP Trollblood for models on the hill.

Trollbloods
Grissel leeched the only two fury she had on the table from the Pyre Troll and Feated, then put the Mauler's animus on himself. The Mauler then charged Kreoss (taking a free strike from a Woldwomper but not loosing an aspect) and ate him.

+1 VP Trollblood for models on the hill.

Cryx
We had to pick up and turn in at this point, so the Cryx player didn't bother with his last turn.

Final Score

• Protectorate: 19 (+5 Siege, +2 Lancer, +1 Rineholdt)
• Cygnar: 6
• Trollbloods: 23 (+3 Hill, +5 Kreoss, +6 Crusader x2)
• Cryx: 2

My Thoughts

Protectorate
Vilmon was a huge distraction, and I think he knocked the Cryxian player off his game enough to leave Skarre out infront of the Crusader. I'm going to enjoy using him in the league. I got lucky when I accidently engaged the Woldwomper with Kreoss's reach - that extra defense saved his butt when Siege feated.

Cygnar
I don't think Patman realized how powerful having a caster on the hill was. When I was able to move the Centruion out of his control area, that really hurt his plans for the following round and really blunted its use. He spent most of the game trying to eliminate my ranks and he did a good job with most of it, but in the end Kreoss's melee ability proved why it's so underrated. MAT 7 POW 14 Reach that dispels upkeeps? Yes, please.

Trollbloods
Talk about getting the roll when he needed it, by activating the Woldwomper on turn 3 Prprpger was able to kill the Centurion instead of just deafening it, taking VPs I would have otherwise earned when I killed Siege. That 3 point swing would have made the difference in the end.

Those damn trolls are resilient. Prprpger's growing fond of them as well, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him fielding a Trollblood army before too long.

Cryx
James had a bad day. He was getting himself ready for a big turn 2, unfortunately looked too far past turn 1 and made a mistake. I felt a little dirty killing him after he only got one turn, but I think he'll be more concious of his placement when he plays in the league after having suffered that, so I hope it was more of a good lesson than a jerk Protectorate player.

America Hill
The terrain on this table sucked. We really should have put down more terrain between the armies to force most of the fighting to take place on or around the hill. The rules however worked pretty well. Accumulating hill VPs on a tie meant people who dedicated forces to it would pull ahead of those who didn't, even if they were fighting each other for most models. And the randomness of the Hill benefits meant that no one would get two extra Woldwompers fighting them but at the same time the benefits that were given proved very effective. There's defintely an incentive to get to the hill quickly. And with the game going past caster kill, you could risk him/her to do so if you wanted.

This week we discovered that the hills we had been fighting over were really the wrong hill. Luckily we finally found the right one this week.

Before I get started, I have to make a couple notes:

• It's been a while since this game was played, so I'm a little iffy on all the details. I'll try and fill in as best I can, though.
• This took place before Remix and we played throws the old way when they happened.

Here's a copy-paste of the rules from the last hill fight:

To help encourage people to take the hill, we added Woldwompers. Woldwompers were independent models that could be activated by various warcasters or warlocks if they were in control of the hill. Woldwompers had the same stat line as a Woldwarden but with -1 SPD and -1 ARM. They also had a fury of two and could be forced by any controlling warcaster/warlock, and the fury would dissipate at the end of each player's turn. Woldwompers had no animus, no chain attack, but maintained All Terrain, Elemental Construct, and Spell Strike.

• At the end if each turn, the player with the most models on the hill gained 1 VP. This is turn, not round - we went this way to place more value on the hill.
• At the end of a turn, if a player had their warcaster/warlock on the hill, they could activate one of the three Woldwompers immediately.
• At the end of a turn, if a player had their wracaster/warlock on the hill and had or tied for the most models on the hill (units counted as 1 model), they could activate two of the three Woldwompers immediately.

Despite the steps we played the hill as "smooth" so it could be climbed freely. We didn't want to overemphasize the steps too much.

= = = = =

Khador (Mark)

• Irusk
• Kovnik
• Kodiak (on Kovnik) x2

This time Mark changed up his list just slightly, swapping out the Butcher for Irusk. After seeing how slow the Butcher was, he decided to try to rush the hill and use Inhospitable Ground to protect it this time around.

Everblight (Myself)

• Thagrosh
• Carnivean
• Seraph
• Shredder x3

With four opponents on the table, I decided to bring my hardiest warlock - Thagrosh. I hoped his Death Shroud would keep my beasts alive long enough to take control of the hill.

Protectorate (Phenominal_1)

• Kreoss
• Revenger x2
• Choir
• Exemplar Seneschal
• Knights Exemplar
• Wrack x2

P1 brought out Kreoss for this game, and decided to go with more infantry than jacks, specifically the hard-hitting Knights Exemplar. Those relic blades could hurt a lot, especially if they were auto-hitting after Kreoss' feat.

Trollbloods (Aslain Kheog)

• Horluk
• Dire Troll Mauler x2
• Fell Caller
• Kreilstone Bearer

I'm not a fan of the big trolls - I was just glad that AK was wedged between the Protectorate and Cryx.

Cryx (Gary)

• Deneghra
• Deathripper x2
• Nightwretch
• Skarlock
• Ogrun Bokur
• Pistol Wraith
• Mechanithralls x10

Gary brought a nice little force to America Hill - Denny and three arc nodes was pretty core, but the a Pistol Wraith, Bokur, and a unit of Mechanithralls to tie up his opponents looked pretty solid.

Turn 1

Khador
This time Mark decided to run his forces all out, and reached the hill first turn. Irusk walked so that he could put up Inhospitable Ground and everyone else hit the hill.

+1 VP Khador for most models on the hill

Everblight
I decided to risk not casting any spells this turn by just running Thagrosh up onto the hill to activate Woldwompers. He barely made it with Slipstream and running to get through Inhospitable Ground. A Shredder went Rabbid and joined him while the Seraph (who did the Slipstreaming) and the Carnivean move up to Thagrosh's right. The final two Shredders trail behind. I ended the turn with Thagrosh still at 7 fury, one shredder at 2, and the Seraph at 1.

I activated the Woldwomper between Khador and I to throw the Kodiak off the hill, then I activated the one between the Protectorate at and I to try to Spell Strike the Choir Warpriest, but it was out of range.

+1 VP for the hill

Protectorate
Phenomenal_1 decided to split his forces and sent his Exemplar and his Seneschal up the left flank towards the Trollbloods. The Choir stepped back by the woods and the Revengers ran forward to get in the way of the Woldwomper. Kreoss moved up behind, putting Retribution on one Revenger and Protection of Menoth on the other.

+1 VP Everblight for the hill

Trollbloods
AK sent one Mauler and the Fell Caller towards the Exemplar line and moved the second Mauler towards the hill. Horluk advanced, dumping fury in the Kreilstone which also advanced and put up its protective aura.

+1 VP Everblight for the hill

Cryx
Gary's mess of Cryx went to the hill quickly. The Mechanithtralls rushed toward Khador while one of the Bonejacks and Deneghra ran to the hill. The bokur and pistol wraith fell in behind the Mechanithralls while the Skarlock brought up the rear (after Ghost Walking Deneghra so she could run through models).

Since he tied me for most models on the hill, Gray picked the two Woldwompers near Khador. They each attacked the Khodiaks, taking out about a column apiece.

No Hill VPs.

Score

• Khador: 1 (+1 Hill)
• Everblight: 3 (+3 Hill)
• Protectorate: 0
• Trollbloods: 0
• Cryx: 0

Turn 2

Khador
Although he had gotten stuck in, this is where Khador shined. The Kodiak nearest my side of the table stood up and grabbed the Woldwomper, tossing it away. The second tried to throw the second Woldwomper at Deneghra but deviation caused it to knock into his own base, knocking them both back down. That was a tough break or Mark and really hurt his plans. The Kovnik cut down a couple Mechanithralls, but there were plenty left on the table. Irusk moved up a bit, shot another Mechanithrall with his gun, and put up Inhospitable Ground again.

No Hill VPs.

Everblight
It was a gamble last turn, and sure enough my Seraph frenzied first thing, going after my Carnivean and laying down the Poison Tail. Luckily it only did about 3 points of damage, but worse was the fact I couldn't do anything with the Seraph this turn. I spent the rest of my turn fortifying my claim on the hill. The Carnivean moved up next to Thagrosh and put its animus on itself. The two most forward Shredders moved up in front of and beside Thagrosh, turning to face the Protectorate lines. Thagrosh turned a bit and put the Carnivean's animus on himself then cast Death Shroud, blanketing the field in the blessing of the better dragon.

Four models on the hill let me activate two Woldwompers. The one that Khador had thrown away went first, moving back into melee. The second moved up and threw one of the Protectorate Revengers back into Kreoss, doing a bit of damage to both. Death Shroud really messed with the Woldwompers' strength scores, making them less effective.

+1 VP for hill.

Protectorate
Out on the flank, the Knights Exemplar charged the Mauler and Fell Caller, leaving space for the Seneschal to get to the Mauler if it survived. The three Exemplar took down the Fell Caller without any problem, but the Seneschal had to come in to help out on the Mauler. He couldn't finish it, but he did chain-attack slam it back into Horluck, which was rather entertaining. The Mauler wasn't dead, but it would be stalled for a round.

Meanwhile the unthrown Revenger whacked on the Woldwomper a few times, doing a fair bit of damage (but not as much as it would have without Death Shroud). Kreoss moved behind the Choir and the other Revenger moved forward to re-engage the Woldwomper.

+1 VP Everblight for the hill

Trollbloods
The Trolls turned their attention of the Protectorate forces, not wanting to get attacked from behind. The Mauler that had gotten slammed ran up to re-engage the Exemplar while the second Mauler turned to engage a couple more, killing three. Horluck tried to cast Vexation on the Seneschal but missed. The Kreilstone put up its aura again.

+1 VP Everblight for the hill

Cryx
Deneghra and her bone jacks jocky a bit up on the hill. The War Witch steps back from the Kodiaks, putting an arc node between her and my forces. The Bokur hits the hill as well, and the other two arc nodes and the pistol wraith fill in around them, netting Gary the most models on the hill. I believe Deneghra cast Parasite on the Kodiak nearest her as well. The Pistol Wraith Death Chilled the Kodiak with arms on it.

The Mechanithralls swarm the Kovnik and Kodiaks, but between Inhospitable Ground preventing charges and Death Shroud lowering Strength, they're not able to kill either. However one of the Woldwompers that Gary activates does manage to rip off both arms from the Kodiak nearest him.

+1 Hill VP Cryx

Score

• Khador: 1
• Everblight: 6 (+3 Hill)
• Protectorate: 1 (+1 Fell Caller)
• Trollbloods: 1 (+1 half the Exemplar)
• Cryx: 1

Turn 3

Khador
The armless Kodiak wasn't quite defenseless and vented steam, catching a couple Mechanithralls and damaging the Woldwomper in front of it. The Kovnik killed another Mechanithrall and Irusk shot a third before putting Inhospitable Ground back up. The other Kodiak tore into the second Woldwomper, but with its strength lowered with Death Shroud it left the construct with just a couple boxes left.

+1 VP Cryx for hill

Everblight
I decided it was time to try and pounce. Deneghra was hiding behind a bone jack, but I had two things in my favor - the ability to slam the bonejack and Eyeless Sight - so I decided to go for it. The Carnivean needed a 12 to slam the Bonejack, but I managed to get it, sending the node over Deneghra and knocking her down. I sent a Shredder up to attack the Pistol Wraithon the Cryxian side of the hill and killed it. Then the Seraph stepped up and attacked the knocked down Deneghra, hitting and rolling 6 additional attacks, sealing her fate. The Shredders moved to face the Protectorate forces and Thagrosh threw up Death Shroud, Spiny Growth on himself, and dumped fury down to 1.

The first Woldwomper activated was the one near the Protectorate lines, which threw the Revenger over the choir at Kreoss. A perfect deviation roll insured every model was hit, killing the Choir and knocking down the caster. I then activated the Womper near the armless Kodiak and finished it off.

+1 VP for hill.

Protectorate
The remaining Knights finished off the wounded Mauler while Kreoss's unthrown revenger beat on the Woldwomper some more, but couldn't kill it with -2 strength.

+1 VP Everblight for the hill

Trollbloods
The Krielstone moved over by the remaining Mauler, which used its animus on itself and two-handed-threw a stone scribe over the entire line of knights. Each knight (including the Seneschal) was killed and the stone scribe actually made its Tough roll upon landing.

+1 VP Everblight for the hill

Cryx
Without Deneghra, the Mechanithralls still couldn't quite get through the Kovniks armor. The Bokur attacked the Shredder but missed it's one attack (rolled bad on Flying Steel) to end the game.

+1 Hill VP Everblight

Score

• Khador: 1
• Everblight: 22 (+4 Hill, +5 Deneghra, +3 Bonejack x3, +1 Pistol Wraith, +3 Kodiak)
• Protectorate: 4 (+3 Mauler)
• Trollbloods: 3 (+1 other half of Exemplar, Seneschal)
• Cryx: 2 (+1 Hill)

My Thoughts

Khador
Mark got teamed up on and it hurt. It seemed everyone was always picking on his jacks with the Woldwompers, keeping them out of combat. He was resilient but just couldn't mount the offense he otherwise would have been able to.

Everblight
Thagrosh's Death Shroud was just mean this game. It really hurt everyone on the table so much more than just a 2-player game. I'm not sure I'll take him anymore in this format because of that. He's just vile. Other than that, my early gambit to take the hill first turn and keep fighting for it was paying off. Even if I hadn't gotten to Deneghra, I was building a lead on hill VPs that I should have been able to maintain.

Protectorate
Phenomenal_1 hurt himself a bit when he split his forces, sending most of his offense around the flank. He basically yielded his claim on the hill, which cost him VPs. He did fairly well against the Trolls, though.

Trollbloods
Because he had a load of knights heading his way, AK couldn't afford to go strait for the hill or they'd just come up behind him. Because of that, he got punished a bit and had to split his force, then allocated his whole force towards the Protectorate, missing out on the hill.

Cryx
The Cryxian swarm was nasty. I think Death Shroud was the primary reason Khador lasted as long as it did against all those McThralls and Womper attacks. Gary realized as I started my turn he should have had Deneghra feat to deny me the slam, but it was a bit too late.

America Hill
I'm looking at some changes to the hill to make it a bit more fair:

• Weakening the Woldwompers just a bit, probably by lowering their POW on their fists and maybe taking away another point of armor
• Making which Woldwompers get activated random each time. That should make it a bit harder to pick on one player to much.
• Maybe making it so you only activate one per turn no matter what.

Chad's challenge for this Wednesday may be the last hill fight for a while once we start the league. It also might be my last battle report for a while, since I probably won't be worrying about taking pictures and what not during my league matches. If I'm not playing and one of the forum goers asks, I might be able to do some pictures of their match as they play but I don't want to be disruptive. We'll just have to see what happens.

Prorpger and I decided to play a mirror match for this one, so I built a force to match his usual Menoth list and we both fielded the following:

• Severius
• Avatar
• Revenger
• Revenger
• Paladin
• Knights Exemplar
• Choir (x5)
• Wrack
• Piper of Menoth

One of Prorpger's Revengers is still unassembled so a Repenter filled in for this game.

The table had some hills and woods spread out, but featured some standing stones in the middle of the table with a small plastic corpse in a coffin on it. Since there was no central hill, the table was dubbed Dead Man Flats. We played out on the table in front of the window, resulting in the following view from the mall:

In "the Fishbowl"

Deployment

Prorpger opted to deploy his forces in the wedge formation he typically used with this army - Jacks leading the way with Knights just behind and the Piper and choir then Severius. Prorpger decided not to get stuck around the stones in the middle of the table so opted to deploy at the extreme right flank (from my perspective)

I opted for a more spread out deployment, lining up a Revenger, the Knights, and the Piper to take me left flank while the other Revenger, the Avatar, and the Paladin set up ready to head towards the other. Severius and the choir sat on the hill. I was hoping with a wider spread I would be able to sweep around at least one of Prorpger's flanks.

For advanced deployment Prorpger placed his wrack in an obstruction in the center of the table and I placed mine back behind my lines where Severius could pull from it safely.

Turn 1

Prorpger
The Avatar got a couple focus so walked forward and gazed. The other jacks and the Knights followed suit, followed by the musical brigade. The Choir placed Ward on the jacks. Severius placed Holy Vigil on the Avatar and cast Eye of Menoth.

Dankelzahn
Each Revenger got one focus and the Avatar generated a couple. Piper advanced and Marched the Knights, who ran forward. The left Revenger then ran as well, staying a bit behind the obstruction between our forces. The Avatar Gazed then ran and the right Revenger ran to be the extreme right flank. The Paladin ran to join them, then the Choir came down off the hill and put up Ward, missing the right Revenger but catching the others. Severius walked forward and cast Eye of Menoth and put Blessing of Menoth on the Avatar.

Turn 2

Both of us upkept Eye of Menoth for the rest of the game.

Prorpger
Prorpger's Right revenger (from my perspective) moved forward and Severius advanced and tried to Immolate my right Revenger, but it was out of range. The rest of his army advanced to fill in the wedge and the Avatar put up Gaze of Menoth again. The Piper put Heroic Call on the Knights.

Dankelzahn
I decided to shift my entire forces a little to the left and try and use the obstruction to my advantage. Each Revenger got a focus, and the Avatar generated either 2 or 3. The Piper advanced and gave the Knights Heroic Call to make them Tough. Then they Ran up the left flank, staying far enough back that Prorpger's knights would be just out of charge range. Then the left Revenger ran up near them. The right Revenger used its focus to run to the left and get behind the obstruction, then the Avatar used Gaze and ran to follow suit. Doing so put Prorpger's front lines in Gaze but the obstruction prevented them from getting to him, which was meant to tie him down a bit. The Paladin moved up to be able to charge anything that came around the end of the obstruction.

The Choir walked up and forgot to sing anything, then Severius advanced and threw an Ashes to Ashes at a Knight. I hit four and the Revenger, but only killed two as the other two made their Tough rolls. At least being knocked down would prevent the ones that were out of Gaze from charging this turn.

Turn 3

Prorpger
Prorpger gave his right Revenger focus and the Avatar generated a couple himself. His left Revenger advanced towards my Knights and their Revenger. The Avatar put up Gaze and ran to engage my Avatar, hoping to tie it down. The remaining Revenger ran up near his Avatar to form a defensive position and block my flank from getting around him. The surviving knights (with March from the piper) stood up and walked around between the Avatar and Revenger, ready to spring the following round. The Choir moved up and Warded his jacks. Severius dropped Ashes to Ashes on my Knights, hitting 5 but with horrible damage rolls only killed 3... but 2 made their Tough rolls. Finally his Paladin charged one of my knights, destroying it... until it made its Tough roll.

Dankelzahn
A lucky roll on the Avatar generated 4 focus. Severius put two on his left Revenger and kept the rest. The Choir activated and Infused my warjacks. The left Revenger slammed Prorpger's left revenger, knocking it back 6". Then the Piper put March on the Knights (for the extra attack). The knocked down ones stood up and the one engaged with the Paladin took two attacks, killing him. The others advanced forward to move towards Severius.The Avatar activated and spent 3 focus to demolish Prorpger's Avatar, and the resulting explosion set his Knights on fire. The Paladin charged Prorpger's right Revenger and did a bit of damage but didn't destroy any systems. At that point I thought I had the flanks mostly protected so Severius walked up and feated, catching Prorpger's Severius in his control range and denying him focus next turn.

After turn 3 Prorpger decided to conceded the match so we would have time to play another game before the store closed. Our second game was a team battle-box game where Prorpger's trolls and Gary's Cryx took on Patman's Cygnar and my Everblight. It was a close match that only ended with a 1VP victory margin for Pat and I. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures during that one - it would have made a much better Battle Report.