Monday, February 19, 2024

Rustier Than I Thought

Another game of Warmachine Mk4. I decided Alexia1 wasn't working for me, so I swapped her for Alexia3 and a unit of Mechanics; this would give me repair, shield-guards, and a point left to upgrade my Marauder.
Khador Unlimited 50pts
Strakhov 1
-Juggernaut
-Marauder
-Sylyss
Nyss Hunters
Cutthroats
Battle Mechanics
Ol' Grim
Alexia 3
Blessing of the Gods
Grave Robbing
Hit & Run
Old Faithful
Power Swell


Karas had just aquired The General. He's always hated my snipers, so this game he tried to counter Ol' Grim with his own Sharpshooter.
Storm Legion 50pts
Athena (Electrify, Jackhammer)
-The General
-Stryker (Relentless Charge, Voltiac Javelin, Power First)
Stormblade Legionnnaires
Stormthrower Legionnaires
Arcane Mechanics
Sharpshooter
Careful Reconnaissance
True Inspiration
Hit & Run
Old Faithful
Power Swell



Pre-Game:
We glanced at the Steamroller 2024 document, but all the scenarios seemed quite complicated, and a had a lot of scoring elements for a 50 point game. However Karas had a version of the Mk4 rulebook from 10/01/2024 that included a scenario called "Split Decision", which we decided to use as it was simple and had a more reasonable number of scoring elements. Karas won the roll and chose to go second.


Deployment:
I decided Strakhov would live in the forest, giving him constant Stealth. The Kodiak would come out of the forest to threaten the zone, and the Juggernaut would be more central. Ol' Grim would take advantage of the forests on the right. I put Alexia in the center so she could move to get my infantry in her bubble as needed. Support went behind my battlegroup. Karas bricked up in the center of his table. I put the Cutthroats on my left and the Nyss on my right. I believe I declared the Cutthroat's Prey to be The General.

Round 1
The Nyss headed for the trench. Strakhov put Assail on the Kodiak, walked into the forest, and spent the rest of his focus putting Return Fire on himself and a bunch of Nyss Hunters. The Cutthroats stepped into the zone. The Kodiak ran through the forest, while the Juggernaut ran around it. Ol' Grim got a Soul from the Grave Robbing command card and headed to the right. Alexia killed a Mechanic and replaced him with a Thrall... which we later realised I couldn't do, so later on you'll see the Thrall disappear and a Mechanic reappear.

Karas put Hallowed Avenger on the General - which it turns out was redundant because The General already has Righteous Vengeance - and Electrify on the Stryker. Everything moved up in his big brick.

Round 2:
I popped Strakhov's Feat, then pushed him up a little to try to take advantage of the part of his feat that nerfs the enemy's gun's range. I did camp all his focus just to be on the safe side. The Cutthroats shot at the Stormblade Legionnaires, but couldn't do any damage. I spread them out with the Repo move to avoid AOEs and electroleaps. The Kodiak ran in the middle to bully the zone. The Nyss Hunters moved into the trench and rolled like fire, killing five Stormthrower Legionnaires with five shots. Which is kinda insane; these are the guys who almost always disappoint me, consistently missing and dying without actually achieving anything.
Reeling in shock, I left them in the trench to try to push the lines past my flag. The Juggernaut pushed up to stop anything from contesting my flag as well. Ol' Grim moved behind the forest, then spent a soul to shoot at a mechanic with his double-boosted Fantom Seeker shot. Even with a boosted POW 12 damage roll, he wasn't quite able to kill a single mechanic, leaving it on one box. Which is crazy to me. Alexia based the flag.

Thanks to the Nyss' amazing performance, The General was able to take his Righteous Vengeance move and get into charge range of Strakhov. Athena Feated and swapped Electrify to The General, the Stryker killed all my Nyss (and the Thrall that Alexia created from a Nyss corpse), and The General managed to take down Strakhov with his last bit of Focus. The Stormblades could have gotten three or four men into Strakhov too, so it wasn't exactly close.


Post-Mortem:
Funny how my Nyss actually doing a great job was what lost me the game... alright, seriously, my carelessness is what lost me the game. I just kinda eyeballed Strakhov's position and said to myself "That's probably fine". I didn't measure any ranges or anything. And I completely forgot about Righteous Vengeance. I feel like I'm very rusty. I need to start paying attention and trying to remember how to play.

Seriously though, The General is kinda silly; SPD 6 with a MAT 8 RNG 2" POW 19 weapon is already very strong, but then he has a built-in 3" threat extension? Why are Cygnar heavies SPD 6 anyway? And why are Mechanics ARM 17 with 5 boxes? Maybe I need to bring Destroyers or something.

So far I just feel like Mk4 is worse than Mk3. Unit movement is faster... as long as you're not doing anything interesting. The moment your movement interacts with anything on the table, it becomes unintuitive and you have to learn a whole new set of rules that you didn't need to know before. And units have to be so bunched up all the time; I've always liked spreading out my grunts a bit, but now you can't really do that. The legacy themes are boring and extremely restrictive: there's some essential options that are missing from some themes, we barely even get to use any warcaster attachments! Unlimited is better, but all my units are half the size and since I run a lot of character units I can't just double-up. Power attacks were a fun part of the game even if they were rarely worth actually doing, but they've been nerfed so badly that all the fun is just gone. And hell, I can't even attack my own models with basic attacks now! Nevermind that they took a lot of the fun out of my favourite warcasters (Strakhov, Karchev, Butcher2).

I'm not sold on the command cards either. I feel like they de-value a lot of rules: if you expect Stealth to do anything, you probably need to bring a lot of it because just one Stealth model is easy prey. Ditto for ARM or DEF buffs, what with the Blessed command card. And of course rules that counter Stealth or Blessed aren't as useful since you can just bring a card instead. Yeah, the card is single-use, but that could be all you need (if you need it at all). Tough, Repair, all can be covered with cards instead of models.

Also Focus management used to be a core part of the game, but there's so much easy access to Empower now that you don't really need to allocate focus anymore, so managing it as a resource isn't that important. Between Power Up, Accumulator, and mechanics having Empower, the Cygnar heavies technically didn't need any allocation to be at max focus.

I dunno. I'm trying here, but I'm starting to sour a bit on this new edition. Well, maybe dusting off my brain and figuring out how to play again will make me feel better about the game.

Monday, February 12, 2024

He's Not The 'Hoff Anymore

It's hard to believe it's been a whole year since I've played a game of Warmachine. PP has released Mk4 rules for old models since the last time, so list building is a lot more interesting and fun to me now.

For this game I just brought my standard Merc infantry with a couple of cheap jacks and some solos. I did try to prioritise playing models that are actually painted, like Alexia and Sylyss. Also I figured I should really play Old Grim; he's the last WMH model I painted but I never got a chance to use him.
Khador Unlimited 50pts
Strakhov 1
-Juggernaut
-Marauder
-Sylyss
Alexia & the Risen
Cylena & the Nyss
Croe & the Cutthroats
Jolly Ol' Saint Grim
*Blessing of the Gods
*Grave Robbing
*Hit & Run
*Old Faithful
*Power Swell

Karas had picked up the Mk4 Cygnar Storm Legion starter.
Storm Legion 50pts
Athena 1 (Electrify, Jackhammer)
-Stryker (Plasma Nimbus, Voltaic Javelin, Space Marine Power Fist)
-Courser (Shield Guard, Mag-Bolter, Electrified Shield)
Stormguard Legionnaires
-Standard Bearer
Tempest Thunderers
Arcane Mechaniks
Legionnaire Officer
*Hit & Run
*Infiltration
*Old Faithful
*Power Swell
*True Inspiration


Pre-Game:
We wanted to get straight into it so we tossed some mousemat terrain on the table, put down a couple of buildings, and settled for a basic caster-kill game. I won the roll and chose to go first.


Deployment:
The buildings essentially split the table into three lanes. I wanted Strakhov to be somewhat central, but positioned Ol' Grim to apply pressure from a flank. I chose to not to ambush my units, relying on advanced deployment instead. After Karas bricked up in the center I kept my infantry relatively central as well. Cutthroats declared Prey on the Thunderers.

Round 1:
Strakhov cast Assail on the Marauder, and Return Fire on himself. I played Grave Robbing on Alexia, who advanced and crafted a Thrall. Everything else just ran.

Karas moved his entire army laterally, hiding behind a forest. Athena put Hallowed Avenger on the Courser, and Electrify on the Striker.

Round 2:
Strakhov Feated and ran. Alexia crafted another Thrall. Everything ran forwards while staying in Feat range.

In true Cygnar fashion, Karas moved all his models backwards.

Round 3:
I pushed further up. Cast Return Fire on Strakhov again. Ol' Grim killed a couple of Legionnaires and claimed their souls. The Nyss killed two more. Alexia crafted a Thrall.

Athena popped her Feat. The Legionnaire Officer killed Old Grim. The remaining Legionnaires put some damage on the Juggernaut, wiping out the Nyss with the AOEs. Something else shot the Juggernaut but finished off the Legionnaires with AOEs or Electroleaps or something. The Courser did some more damage, then the Striker finished off the Juggernaut, and also shot down Alexia. Which was annoying; she had like 6 or 7 corpse tokens on her at this point.

Round 4:
This was the second turn I had failed to keep Sylyss in range to give Strakhov a free upkeep. Oh well. Strakhov loaded up the Marauder, then cast Hand Of Destruction on the Striker with a boosted attack roll and Arcane Secrets. Being under Athena's feat meant I rolled 5 dice and dropped the lowest AND the highest. The spell hit. I then rolled two shots on Strakhov's Riot Gun; with no focus left to boost, the attack and damage rolls were four dice each, dropping lowest and highest. This did some damage, then Strakhov repo'd backwards. After this the Marauder charged in. Because of Electrify's Repulsor Field, I decided to go for the combo-smite. Sadly the Marauder lost the +4 damage on the Combo Smite in Mk4, which... actually kind a makes him a MUCH less attractive choice now than he was before. I boosted the attack and damage rolls, so again I was rolling 5 dice and dropping two. The Striker's left arm was crippled, but that was about it. The Cutthroats charged in, but were only able to kill one Mechanik. This triggered Hallowed Avenger on the Courser, so I ran a Thrall to box him in. The other two thralls moved up to be in charge range next turn, and the Risen put themselves in front of Strakhov.

Everyting piled into the Marauder. Somehow the Courser actually managed to miss an attack...
Still, between the Thunderers, the Legionnaire Officer, and the Striker, Karas killed everything and put 7 damage on Strakhov with an Open Fire shot of the Courser's Armour-Piercing gun.

Round 5:
Strakhov used Power Swell for a focus and moved up to get LOS on Athena. She was in a trench and in base contact with the Courser, putting her at DEF 18 ARM 19. I cast a boosted Hand of Destruction, but it missed. I rolled three shots on the Riot Gun; the first boosted attack hit but was shield-guarded by the Courser. The next two missed. I cast Convection and missed.
Another unboosted Open Fire shot from the Courser did 5 more damage, leaving Strakhov at 5, but a boosted attack during it's activation missed. The Thunderers missed their attacks, and their AOE damage did nothing. Finally the Striker charged in and managed to connect, finishing off Strakhov.


Post-Mortem:
I think we played much better than last time, I felt more confident about my understanding of the rules; I think we still made mistakes, but probably less than last time. Not playing a scenario obviously was an issue, but we both played to our faction's characters: I charged forwards agressively as befits a Khadoran while Karas cowered in the corner like a typical Cygnaran.

I still can't believe how much they changed Strakhov. He's a completely different model now. I don't think he's bad or anything; he has some good tools, and a LOT of rules on his own card. But he's lost a lot of the things I liked about him in Mk2 and Mk3. He just feels a bit boring now; he has a basic warjack speed buff, a single-target debuff, a mostly-defensive feat, and a good gun with some rules and stats to allow him to use it. It's just not that interesting; he doesn't make his army dance around like he used to, he won't wreck face like a Butcher or a Karchev... I dunno. I just don't feal anything when I read his card.

I'm going to stick with Strakhov 1 for now; he'll probably work better when playing a scenario. I'll make iterative changes to my army as is my preference, rather than changing the whole list all at once. This is also partly because I do want to try to put painted models on the table. Unfortunately my painting queue is a little full right now with non-WMH stuff, but hopefully later in the year I'll be able to get some Khador stuff painted and start to run some new lists.\

Saturday, January 20, 2024

He Is Legion... Naire

I painted up Legionnnaire for a friend. I used the official colour scheme as my inspiration, but using glazes over metallics for the colours. The teal came out quite nicely. The orange basically ended up as copper, which looks nice enough (if a little patchy in places). I considered yellow for the glows, but ultimately stuck with blue like the studio model. One thing I realised was that a lot of the larger areas that looked like they should be glowing were actually pointing downwards, meaning the glow doesn't really show up that well when viewing normally.
Legionnaire
In the past I have painted my Monpoc models before glueing them to the clear bases, but that can be a hassle so I've changed the way I work. I glued Legionnaire to his base using superglue mixed with Green Stuff World 2400 Dye For Resins Black. After fixing the model in a painting handle I modified from Aktalion's painting handle, I applied a protective layer of Talens 052 Liquid Masking Film over the base (top and bottom). I used a grey primer, most likely Tamiya 87064 Fine Surface Primer Light Grey.

I airbrushed a basecoat of Vallejo 71.073 Model Air Metallic Black thinned with Green Stuff World 1880 Airbrush Retarder. This was a very frustrating process as the airbrush kept getting clogged; I think the paint was getting old and a bit lumpy, perhaps I needed to shake the bottle more? I ended up using a printer resin filter to filter the airbrush paints after that to try to avoid any more stoppages.

After the basecoat I applied a zenithal of Vallejo 71.072 Model Air Metallic Gunmetal, which I over-thinned with the airbrush retarder, required the addition of some P3 Mixing Medium to get a useable consistency. I think I airbrushed this from too low an angle, maybe 75 degrees, as it covered too much of the model and didn't leave enough of the black metal basecoat. I followed this with Vallejo 72.052 Game Color Silver (again with airbrush retarder and mixing medium used together to try to get a useable consistency) from around 15 degrees above.

I edge-highlighted the whole model with Scale75 SC-66 Speed Metal. This is a very bright, whitish metal, that I use for my highlights because it's brighter than most silvers. However I do find it hard to manage the consistency to get a fine enough flow for delicate highlighting; at least that's one reason why my highlights were a bit thick and rough. I found I needed to use low-magnification reading glasses just to be able to focus enough on the model in front of my face to be able to do highlighting; my vision has deteriorated somewhat and it looks like I'm going to need reading glasses to paint from now on. It's a little depressing, but hey: it could be worse. Trying to match the studio model's teal colour, I mixed together around 10 drops of P3 Turquise Ink and 14 drops of P3 Blue Ink, with at least 20 drops of Vallejo 73.596 Glaze Medium. This gave quite a nice teal, and the flow was very manageable for laying down a thin consistent glaze in a single coat. For the orange, I experimented and ended up with a mix of P3 Red Ink, a little P3 Blazing Ink, and a lot of Glaze Medium (at least as much glaze medium as ink). I wasn't able to control the quantites as well so I don't know exactly how much I used. I also used a touch of unthinned Blazing Ink for the golden badge on Legionnaire's waist.

I picked out a few spots of the remaining steel to shade with a roughly 1:1 mix of Citadel Shade Nuln Oil and Glaze Medium, just to add a touch of definition to some of the more detailed areas where I didn't think any of the previous colours made sense. Iirc this was basically the small barrels on each side of each hand, and the turbine-like details in the feet (which I decided I didn't want to try to apply a glow to). I made a very thin black using a mix of Vallejo 72.751 Game Air Black, Glaze Medium, and P3 Mixing Medium, which I painted into the panel lines and recesses. This gave me more control than a black wash like Nuln Oil, without being too dark. To be honest a lot of the panel lines were deep enough that they looked pretty good without the additional shading, but I did it anyway because I felt it would improve the contrast and make some of the boundries look a little cleaner, and it might have looked a bit strange if I shaded the areas that did need shading but then left the panel lines unshaded. One thing I found interesting is that the copper areas ended up feeling less orange-y after shading the recesses, as the recesses had ended up more intense and saturated than the raised areas. You can see the effect in the photos below, which were taken part-way through the shading process: I basecoated the glowing areas with Vallejo 72.021 Game Color Magic Blue. I then applied a wash of Citadel Colour Shade Drakenhof Nightshade, which may not have been necessary. I painted a layer of The Army Painter WP1114 Warpaints Crystal Blue, then I drybrushed the glows and the surrounding areas in the Magic Blue. This was followed by a layer of The Army Painter WP1432 Warpaints Ice Storm. I felt the Crystal Blue was too close to the Magic Blue to be worth drybrushing, so instead I drybrushed a mix of the Crystal Blue and Ice Storm (over a smaller area). This still didn't work too well tbh. Anyway, I followed it with a layer of Formula P3 Morrow White, then a drybrush of just Crystal Blue (over an even smaller area).

I had intended to stop here, but I wasn't happy with how it was looking. So I went back over everything with a very light drybrush of Morrow White. I think this helped a lot; not only did it noticeably brighten everything, it also caught the edges around the glowing areas, significantly improving the "cast light" effect. I considered trying to apply a shade of dark blue to recesses immediately around the glows to increase the contrast (a surprisingly effective little trick I picked up from a fellow going by GuitaRasmus), but I decided it wasn't needed. Then (actually after the first varnish) I decided it actually was needed in some spot, so I carefully applied a pinwash of Drakenhof Nightshade into the recesses around many of the glows. And I'm glad I ultimately went back and made the effort because I think it did significantly improve the look of some of the glowing areas, such as the eyes and the gun. After all this I varnished with Mr. Hobby GX 112 Mr. Color UV Cut Gloss then Mr. Hobby GX 113 Mr. Color Flat (both thinned with Mr. Hobby Mr. Color Thinner 110). Finally I removed the liquid mask from the base, giving brushing it under a bit of running water to clear off any residue.

The glazing was quite experimental; last time I tried to glaze colour over metals (on my Exo-Armours) it didn't work and I ended up stripping the paint. So I actually applied a layer of matt varnish after highlighting the bare metal, before starting the gloss, so I would at least have a chance of removing the glaze without having to strip the whole model. And I'm glad I did because that helped me fix a couple of problem spots later, using a touch of Masters Brush Cleaner on a fine brush to slowly clean away some mistakes so I could repaint the areas.

Luckily the glazes did work quite well. I think a lot of this has to do with the Vallejo glaze medium; not only does it help achieve a good consistency/flow for glazing, it also SIGNIFICANTLY increases the drying time. Which helps a lot because it makes it much easier to get a consistent thickness of paint over larger areas; most acrylic paints would start to dry too quickly to go back and move paint around on a larger area to even it out. Also, it was TREMENDOUSLY helpful for keeping the work neat - very important when a zenithal means matching the exact tones to fix mistakes is quite hard - as any mistakes did not dry for quite a while, so it was usually very easy for me to go back and clean any spillovers mid-layer, and then go back and continue working on the layer without it drying out.

Funny thing is I had previously written of the glazing medium because of the long drying times; these had been interfering with my attempts to build up transitions by layering glazes. But it was absolutely the secret ingredient in this particular paintjob. Which is very cool; it's another tool in the toolbox, you know?

The glows didn't turn out as nicely as I would have liked; the rest of the model is pretty bright, which makes it hard for the glows to stand out, and the blue colour blends into the teal a little bit. Plus it just looks a little desaturated; more whitish that blue, you know? Still, I think that final white drybrush and dark blue shade basically rescued the glows. Ultimately I think they look OK.


Overall I do think he looks pretty nice. The glazes did not give me as intense a metallic colour as using straight coloured metallics have in the past, but they do allow me to apply a single zenithal coat over the whole model then tint the areas as needed. Trying to get shading/gradients across multiple areas using actual coloured metallic paints would probably be a much bigger and more challenging job. So I would say it was a successful experiment, and I leaned something I can use in the future.

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

The Double-Team

This was my first two-monster game of Monsterpocalypse. Since I don't have any faction with two painted monsters, I went for the classic team-up: the two monarchs, King and Khan! Karas was running Sky Sentinel and the typical fifteen Guard units, so I chose my four Bellowers for ranged attacks, four Carnidons and four Assault Apes to leverage Khan and Kondo's Blood Rage, the Pteradactix and the Command Ape for some movement tricks, and my cute little Brontox to help me push my lines up the board.

Game 1:
Karas won the roll and chose to go first. Again we treated all the buildings as apartment blocks. The triple foundations scared me so I tried to avoid filling them.

Karas made sure to grab some buildings and power nodes, while I focused more on getting models out and pushing them up the board.

Defender and Sentinel shot down a couple of high-priority units.

I tried to position my monsters to be hard to line up with.

We pushed up our units again.

Defender and Sentinel chained their throws to knock Khan into Hyper. I think Sky Sentinel took a point of damage for stepping into the hazard, which he shouldn't have.

Khan hit Defender with a melee attack with Super damage, then threw him into two buildings for five damage with another point of Super damage, for 8 damage total. Kondo then took damage to step into two hazards to throw Defender into another building, for three more damage, one-rounding him from full!

Karas split some attacks between Khan and some units, not quite managing to break Khan's DEF.

I responded by combining some melee attacks into Sentinel (I don't remember if they hit though).

Sentinel threw Khan into a building.

Khan returned the favour, then Kondo took another point of damage to line up for a power attack, but I think he missed the attack.

Karas focussed all his units to make two attacks on Khan; one hit, leaving Khan on one health.

Sentinel took his Rapid Fire attack into Khan, finishing him off, then threw Kondo into a Hazard. Kondo bounced away from the flames.

At this point Kondo was very low on health; I didn't want to take any more damage from stepping into hazards, and I didn't want to make it easy for Sentinel to land more power attacks, so I moved him to a safer position and used a Swat to throw a Strike Fighter into Sentinel.

Karas sent in his Strike Fighters to swarm Kondo, doing another point of damage.

I tried to get some damage onto Sentinel with my units, but with Khan gone the Terrasaurs were no longer getting Blood Rage and my Apes were all on the table and too far to help out, so I wasn't able to break his DEF of 9.

Sky Sentinel used Rapid Fire and a Fling to put two more points of damage on Kondo, leaving him on one health. Kondo could only do one damage in return with a single Fling.

History repeated itself once more as a swarm of human planes gunned the majestic beast down. Truly, it was human engineering that killed the beast.


Damn, that 11-damage turn was insane. We both thought it was basically over after that, but with no buildings left on that side of the board Sky Sentinel was able to live long enough to finish off the wounded Terra Khan, leaving him in a slow battle of attrition against King Kondo. With two attacks a turn and an army getting extra boost dice, against Kondo's limited one-on-one tools and no units able to take advantage of his buffs, I slowly fell behind, and Karas was able to grind out a win.

I don't really "get" King Kondo; I can see how he has a bit of extra survivability, and High Mobility helped to set up combos, but he just feels to me like he's missing a rule or two. I was a bit starved for power at times; I didn't focus enough on generating power with my units, and I kept forgetting about Kondo's Riled. I also struggle to make the most of melee units; ranged attacks are just easier to get value out of, even if they can struggle a bit with Cover.

While actually running Kondo and Khan alongside each other was very cool and thematic, it felt a little awkward in terms of unit selections and buffs. I dunno, I guess mono-faction just feels more natural to me right now. Guess I need to paint some more monsters.