Ruin Painted Model Picture

A quick addendum to the Ruin rule post: we now have a picture of the painted model!

That is a pretty damn good looking warjack.

Initial Convergence Impressions

I've been working on getting a Convergence army up and running for awhile now. That project has been side tracked a few times (especially the painting aspect of it) but I have managed to put together enough models to run a 50 point Syntherion list. I recently had the chance to put those models on the table (well, most of them, but more on that later) and actually play a game, which was very enlightening.

Join me after the break for a quick rundown of how the game went, along with my first impressions playing Convergence.

Ruin Rule Rumor (w)Rapup

Alliteration, ho!

As time passes, more and more rumors and speculation arise regarding Ruin, the newest Khador character warjack. Join me after the break for a quick recap of what we know, what we think we know, and when we'll know what we know for sure.

Yeah.

SmogCon - PP Presenation Recap and Thoughts

As hinted at the end of the recent TempleCon keynote presentation, PP gave a presentation at SmogCon that was meant to parallel the...huge announcements (sorry) they made during their previous presentation. This presentation was supposed to be Hordes oriented, and since the last presentation announced a second set of colossals for Warmachine, everyone was expecting this presentation to reveal a second set of gargantuans for Hordes.

Turns out, everyone was right! Watch the reveal here:

Privateer Press SmogCon Presentation

Join me after the break for a quick recap of what was revealed, and my thoughts about what each new gargantuan might have in store, along with some other little tidbits PP snuck in at the end of the presentation.

Infinity N3

Like most gamers, I rotate between a number of different games. Part of the reason for that is the desire to keep things fresh, and part of that is the lure of sexy new models. I've gone on record of saying that I'll try any miniatures game once, and as a result I've tried a number of different games over the years. Some - like Warmachine and Malifaux - have proven to be games that are worth sticking with and devoting lots of time and energy to. Others have been fun, but not necessarily worth a lot of repeat attention.

One game that straddled the line for me was Infinity, the sci-fi skirmish game from Corbus Belli. Infinity is a game that has grown in popularity over the past several years, and it is generally well regarded by those who play it a lot. A few players in our group became interested in it, so I played a few games to see how I liked it.

Join me after the break for my thoughts about the previous edition of Infinity, and how that compares to my experiences with N3.

Butcher3 vs. Rasheth - Too Many Titans

A friend of mine and I managed to meet up for a practice game last week. He was looking to try out one of his Skorne lists for an upcoming tournament, and I'm trying to get more practice with Butcher3 (and more practice against Skorne in general).

Join me after the break for the break for the tale of a titan herd, the man who loved it, and the man who hated it (and everything else.)

Khador's New Colossal - Victor

Behold, the newest colossal addition to Khador's arsenal: Victor.

I've already gone over my thoughts on the TempleCon presentation in general, so without further ado, lets dive right into talking about Victor!

TempleCon - PP Panel Recap and Thoughts

There are many milestones in the yearly cycle of Warmachine and Hordes. Most of them are marked by big conventions - Lock & Load, GenCon, Warmachine Weekend are some of the most prolific and more come on the scene every year - but some are also marked by time. We're heading out of one of the most difficult periods to be a fan of WM/H: the Winter Doldrums Season.

Join me after the break for a little more musing about Winter Doldrums Season, TempleCon's annual relief of that phenomenon, and a quick recap of the panel's contents.

Recent Ten Thunders Model Experiences

Our group has taken to playing Malifaux again. Between the highly competitive nature of Warmachine/Hordes (which makes it a poor choice for unwinding during the week) and the recent kick off of the Wave 3 beta it's been a pretty great time for us to dust off our card decks and get back to tempting Fate.

Malifaux is a game I sort of stumbled into, and I never really "picked" a faction per se. I started off playing Lilith because she seemed neat (turned out: she was a complete monster in M1E) then eventually found my own Mailfaux Harkevich with M1E Marcus. Throughout all of those games, I never really set myself on a Faction, just a set of models that I liked.

Moving in M2E, I wanted to focus more on Factions than individual Masters. I've grown my Arcanist, Neverborn, and Ten Thunders collections up to the point where I have a few Masters for each of those factions, and a decent distribution of models for them to work with (though I'm still working on growing them as the M2E releases trickle out.) Of the three, Ten Thunders is the faction I'm most interested in focusing on, so I've been trying to play them more and more often.

It's been very fun - Ten Thunders is an extremely diverse faction, while still possessing some solid themes - and I wanted to share some of the thoughts and impressions I have from the models I've been using. Musings begin after the break.

Bradigus - First Encounter Thoughts

The newest Circle Orboros warlock, Bradigus Thorle the Runecarver, has made quite an impact on the metagame of Warmachine/Hordes in a short time.

He got his Synergy count up to +6, then beat the meta to death.

Bradigus' initial reveal (i.e. full model rules spoiled) was met with a resounding shrug. His spell list and feat are pretty interesting, but his restriction on only being able to run Wolds left many players that tried him out feeling unimpressed (probably not aided at all by some of the top-flight warlocks Circle already possesses.) Players were more focused on the other warlocks in the book (especially powerhouses like Xerxis2) and Bradigus was sort of swept under the rug.

Then the actual Hordes: Exigence book was released, which contained the theme lists for all the warlocks contained within, and the community exploded.

Players cited different reasons as the weeks went on, but the reaction was consistent: Wold War (Bradigus' excellently named theme list) fixed pretty much all the problems that he had on his own, and rocketed him up from "meh" tier to possibly the best warlock in Circle.

After experienced Circle players worked more and more with his theme list, the evaluation of Bradgius and his theme list shifted (har): when played well, Bradigus is supposedly the most powerful Circle warlock by a country mile, and he's absolutely in the discussion for "most powerful 'caster/'lock". 

Anyone remotely familiar with WM/H's competitive scene should be familiar with Bradigus' recent rise to prominence (and infamy). It's all anyone talked about on podcasts for probably a solid month, and forum threads about about Bradigus' power, "how can our faction handle him", "should he be nerfed", etc. 

I'm not interested in rehashing those discussions or debates; the act of discussing Bradigus almost has a metagame built around itself at this point. What I am interested in is sharing my (extremely limited) experience playing against Bradigus and his theme list. Like many players, I've heard and read a lot about Bradgius and his theme force prior to facing it, so I wanted to share how those expectations compared to actually seeing the list in practice.

Join me after the break for a quick rundown of my thoughts after fighting against Wold War.