Tactica: Thagrosh, the Messiah

ByDankelzahn
Thagrosh, the Messiah
Thagrosh, the Messiah

On Episode 29 of Iron Agenda I gave my initial impressions of Epic Thagrosh, along with the rest of the new models the Legion of Everblight received in Hordes: Metamorphosis.   Ever since I saw the sculpt I knew that I wanted to be able to play the Messiah with confidence, and that meant a lot of practice to get a good feel for him and what he can do to overcome his weaknesses.

My experience with the Messiah has confirmed many of my earlier opinions regarding some of his deficiencies, but with a few tournaments (including an official Hardcore) utilizing him under my belt,  I feel confident enough to talk about him in more depth.

Fluff

I had been waiting for Hordes: Metamorphosis ever since Hordes: Evolution was first released, primarily to see how an event as epic as Everblight consuming Pyromalfic’s athanc would be handled while maintaining balance on the game table.   We’ve always known that some personalities in the Iron Kingdoms defy tabletop rules.   Was Thagrosh to be elevated to those ranks, already occupied by the likes of Voyl, Toruk, and Vinter? Fortunately for Legion of Everblight players and modelers the answer was a resounding no.

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St. Louis Privateer Press Weekend II: June 5th – 7th, 2009

ByDankelzahn

ppw09-reznik

ppw09-rhyas

The St. Louis Riverdogs are pleased to announce our second Annual Privateer Weekend at Diecon 9.   This will be the premiere event for the Midwest prior to Gen Con 2009.   Privateer Weekend contains 3 days of spine crushing, cortex smashing fun over more than 8 events.   The terrain is amazing and includes specialized scenario tables.   The competitors are top tier in both skill and personality.   The gaming will be second to none.   Featured events over the weekend include three steamroller competitions, an ongoing Tide of War competition, Iron Kingdom knowledge tests hosted by Capt. Saulty Dog, and our main event, an official Hardcore tournament on Saturday.   If this wasn’t enough, monsters will also be running loose throughout the city as we host 3 monsterpocalypse events over the weekend.

Check out http://diecon.gamestlouis.com for our complete event schedule and follow the link to Diecon 9 to see other convention activities and pre-register.   Or check out http://www.diecon.com for a summary of all convention events and to preregister.   Preregistration can be done by paypal for $26 for the entire weekend!   Those wishing to participate in our Saturday’s official Hardcore tournament should select PP Hardcore under the list of Sat Events. There is an additional $5 fee for the Hardcore event that will be paid on site but those who play in hardcore will receive a specialized dog tag for participation.   A summary of our event schedule is below.

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Introducing the Iron Agenda

ByDankelzahn

Iron Agenda: The podcast about Warmachine, Hordes, and whatever else is on our minds.

We’re finally ready for an official announcement!   The Iron Agenda Podcast is an hour long discussion in which we will try to cover two topics – one strategic topic and one more meta-related topic – when discussing Privateer Press miniature games. That said we’re certainly going to stray from this format from time to time. In fact we’re occasionally going to stray from PP games entirely – we already have plans for a Pulp City episode for example.

In addition to the regular hosts you’ll hear other voices from time to time as we have some of the other locals on to provide additional views on whatever topics we happen to be discussing.

Our first episode has been released on our web site as well as an initial Episode 0 designed as an introduction to our show. Episode 2 and Bonus Episode 1 have both been recorded and are currently being edited – our feed will be updated as soon as they drop.

We’re still finding our voices and settling into things but we’d love to get feedback from anyone who cares to listen.

DieCon/Privateer Press Weekend Wrap-Up

ByDankelzahn

Privateer Press Weekend 2008 in St. Louis, MO

As exhausting and draining as it was, Privateer Weekend was a phenomenal success. The PP Weekend committee did a fantastic job organizing the events and putting the weekend together. We had a number of great players come in from the surrounding areas and every tournament that was run was packed. And to top it all off we were able to reach the 32-man requirement for our Official Hardcore tournament and still had about a dozen people playing in a Hordes Steamroller event that ran simultaneously!

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St. Louis Privateer Press Weekend: May 30 – June 1, 2008

ByDankelzahn

Privateer Press Weekend 2008 in St. Louis, MO

The St. Louis Riverdogs are pleased to announce our first Annual Privateer weekend at Diecon 8. This will be the premiere event for the Midwest prior to Gencon 2008. Privateer weekend contains 3 days of spine crushing, cortex smashing fun over more than 7 events. The terrain is amazing including specialized scenario tables. The competitors are top tier in both skill and personality. The gaming will be second to none. Featured events over the weekend include three steamroller competitions, an ongoing tour of duty competition, painting competitions, Iron Kingdom knowledge test against Capt Saulty Dog, and our main event, an official Hardcore tournament on Saturday.

Check out http://diecon.gamestlouis.com for our complete event schedule and follow the link to Diecon 8 to see other convention activities and preregister. Or check out http://www.diecon.com for general convention information. A summary of our event schedule is below.

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Bloodstone Marches Campaign Wrap-Up

ByDankelzahn

On January 10th we finished up our Bloodstone Marches Theatre of War campaign. Although the other factions fought hard the Legion of Everblight managed to win their third strategic objective, allowing Thagrosh to escape to recover from absorbing Pyromalific’s athanc in safety.

Everyone seemed to have had a good time during the league and the rule changes we made seemed to go over well. A few more were proposed for the next time – things like doing away with detachments completely. I can see where detachments were initially intended to make sure participants didn’t change lists mid-round but we play all our games in one day. On top of that the campaign is meant to be very casual for us, so it seemed like a fair suggestion to just let folks bring their lists to play on campaign night. It’s less record keeping for the campaign organizer and less work for the teams to get all the lists together early, so it’s win-win for everyone.

There were also a few inconsistencies between scenarios and some of the rules that seemed a bit confusing at time – things like columns that need destroying varying in rules between scenarios. I’m not sure how much can be done there without adjusting balance. There were also some complaints (from both sides) that a few scenarios seemed unbalanced. We’ll definitely have to look at the scenarios a little more closely if we run the Bloodstone Marches again.

But all in all the campaign seemed to be a success and I look forward to giving another Theater of War a shot in the future.

Ternon Crag Dispatch, Issue 1

ByDankelzahn

Death Soars over the Marches!

Until recently the rumors of miners spotting reptilian creatures flying overhead have been dismissed as conjecture, but now we know them to be fact. These creatures have been seen en masse north of the Crag, around the Scarleforth Lake and along the Hawksmire River.

We at the Dispatch doubt the rumors that these creatures are in fact dragons. Everyone knows that dragons are massive creatures with wingspans that would block out the sun. However even though the creatures seen have appeared much smaller in size, what they lack in size they make up for in quantity and destruction.

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Return to the Bloodstone Marches

ByDankelzahn

Call to Arms: Bloodstone Marches MapStarting December 19th a dozen of the local Hordes players, myself included, will be starting up another Call to Arms campaign set in the Bloodstone Marches at one of the local gaming stores. Saultydog and Prorpger will also be joining in on this one, and that combined with Manaburst may wind up meaning we don’t get back to our initial campaign. We’ll have to wait and see if we get a chance to finish it up some time in the future.

As for the new campaign, we learned some lessons based on how the first attempt went and have made a couple minor rule tweaks to try and help even things out a bit. These changes should help us finish the campaign before the first tour of the 2008 Call to Arms league starts while while also combating the “snowball effect” that can help one person run away with the lead. So with the following changes, the Legion of Everblight prepares to conquerer the Bloodstone Marches. 🙂

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Foodmachine St. Louis, 2007

ByDankelzahn

Creamed CornLast year one our local Privateer Press Pressgangers and his friend in Indianapolis got together and devised a competition between our two cities to collect canned goods for our local food pantries, with the city donating the most cans per player to take ownership of the Harvestthrall Trophy.

This event, dubbed “Foodmachine,” featured interesting twists on the typical Warmachine rules to help encouraging food donation – in addition to having the entry fee replaced with a required can donation by donating additional cans during a match a player could have a number of effects on the game such as generating extra Focus points and re-rolling his or his opponent’s dice.

After the success of the event Privateer Press provided coverage of that event in No Quarter Magazine and promote the second year of the event nationally. In 2007 the Foodmachine event, organized on the Harvestthrall web site, featured nearly fifty competing local communities across the globe.

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Bloodstone Marches – Destroy Supply Fortress

ByDankelzahn

Destroy Supply Fortress
Sunday, October 28th, 2007

With a number of Trollkin rescued from the Skorne at Ternon Crag, the Trollbloods were in desperate need of supplies to feed the newly freed hungry mouths. To assist their kin fighting in the area, Madrak had decided to lead an attack on an recently constructed supply fortress south of the town. Unfortunately unbeknownst to Madrak Everblight had claimed the supply depot as his own only shortly before. At the Trolls push for the fortress the blighted Nyss stationed there rally to defend their newly claimed prize.

Prorpger declared his first attack on one of his Strategic Objective deep in my territory for round 2. The fortress itself was a 6″ x 10″ structure located in the middle of the defender’s deployment zone with a lone door facing the defender’s table edge. The Trollbloods had two opportunities to win: destroy the structure (ARM 18, can take 10 damage per 1″) or hold the structure for one round.

Table Layout - Defend the Fortress

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