America Hill, the Final Solution

ByDankelzahn

America Hill, the Final Solution
Wednesday, January 24, 2007

This week we decided to try another tweak to the America Hill rules. We discovered that the hills we had been fighting over were really the wrong hill. Luckily we finally found the right one this week.

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.

America Hill

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.

After rolling to determine order, we arranged ourselves around the table as follows:

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Team Game – Fanatic Alliance vs. Cygnar

ByDankelzahn

Team Game – Fanatic Alliance vs. Cygnar
Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Although we took a week off from the free-for-all game, Renwolf, Patman, Jgoewert and myself wound up playing a multiplayer team game, 350 points per person. Turns out a couple of arch enemies but aside their religious differences to do something important – try to beat up on some Cygnar.

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Getting some Hordes off my desk

ByDankelzahn

One of the original intents for this site was for me to chronicle my miniature painting, and now that I have a digital camera I can attempt to do so. Although I’ll try and share any tips and techniques when I get the opportunity, the real goal is to help motivate myself to continue to progress through my unpainted figures. The pictures here aren’t as good as in my finished gallery, but they’ll suffice for WIPs.

Shortly before the holidays I started assembling some of the Hordes miniatures I had recently picked up second hand to try to get a small army. Although I knew I wouldn’t have everything painted right away, I wanted to at least get things assembled to the point that they could be fielded. For the Seraph that meant painting it completely as I didn’t want to try to paint that thing once it was fully assembled and on its base, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

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Fear the Boot and the Fight For America Hill, Round 2

ByDankelzahn

Fear the Boot and the Fight For America Hill, Round 2 (350 pts.)
Wednesday, January 3, 2007

After the fun we had with the first attempt at the Fight for America Hill we decided to try to tweak the rules to encourage people to take and hold the hill instead of hiding on the edges and sniping adjacent opponents. Our first try was to add VP rewards for claiming the hill.

Scoring:

  • Having the most models on the hill at the end of your turn scores 1 VP
  • Having the most models on the hill at the end of the turn of the player across from you scores you 1 VP

With those changes we rolled for initiatve and picked starting locations for the second try at taking America Hill.

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Fear the Boot and the Fight for America Hill

ByDankelzahn

Fear the Boot and the Fight For America Hill
Wednesday, December 28, 2006

It was a cold and dreary night, but none of us cared because we were all crammed in the back room of the local gaming store, crowded around a table moving our little pewter figures around foam we called โ€œhillsโ€ and felt we called โ€œforests.โ€ Somewhere in the midst of our madness we had a wild and crazy Warmachine/Hordes King of the Hill style game between myself, Eye Tyrant, Prorpger, and Patman while Superduck (aka the Breadstick King) watched on).

We decided to have a 350-point four-way King of the Hill style match. Instead of scoring on every turn, each player would earn a victory point if they had more models than anyone else on the hill at the end of their own turn starting with the second turn. The board was dominated by the hill in the center, but there were a few other terrain pieces scattered around the board. Only the hill in the middle and the forest between the Patman and my own deployment areas got any use. The hill itself had some rough edges but to be fair we decided the whole thing was a smooth surface and a model only had to get on part of it to be โ€œon the hill.โ€ Prorpger threw a plastic American Flag that was sitting around on the hill, giving it its name. Which was fine until we realized this must be Early America Hill since there were only four stars and three stripes on the flag. Regardless, the battle was soon joined…

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You don’t have to paint to play

ByDankelzahn

At the beginning of the year there was a movement on the Privateer Press forums to only play Warmachine and Hordes with painted miniatures for one year. I didn’t blarg back then; the only opportunity I had to express my opinion on painting and gaming was on a smaller fan forum I’m a member of. Now that my opinions are read by… well… three if not four whole readers, I’d like to take this opportunity to express my thoughts on wargaming and miniature painting.

The Fully Painted 2006 movement was started by the members of the Brushthralls – a group of fans who promote miniature painting with an emphasis on Privateer Press products. Let’s make this clear first: The Brushthralls are an asset to the Privateer Press community and their website is a great resource for miniature painters. The goal they set with their movement is lofty one, and I’m not about to begrudge someone for attempting. But in the thread where they announced Fully Painted 2006 there were posts from other community members referring to playing as unpainted miniatures as somehow substandard, as if those that played but didn’t paint were lesser individuals and were unworthy of playing against them.

I love painting. I would even go so far as to say it’s one of my passions. If I was forced to rank my hobbies, I’d say I’m a roleplayer first, miniature painter second, and wargamer third. That said I have to take issue with the attitude that if I place an unpainted miniature on the table then I’m somehow less of a player.

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12/9/2006 Warmachine Tournament Report

ByDankelzahn

Last Saturday I attended a local Warmachine tournament at the Clicks in Crestwood Plaza – a 500-point Steamroller event. This was only the second event I’ve been able to attend since I started getting involved in the local scene. Most events lately have been 750-point events, and I’m just not as big of a fan of the larger games. The few 500 point events that have taken place have been on days I had prior engagements, so it’s been a while since I was actually able to play in a tournament. Fourteen players showed up for the tournament, so it was a pretty good showing. Faction representation was relatively even, with the exception of the Cryx; there were two Cygnarans, three Menites, three Khadorans, five Cryxians, and a merc player. All are members of our local forums.

In addition to the standard Steamroller rules, the Pressganger added an additional rule to try to finish the tournament quickly so everyone could make their holiday events. If it was your turn when time was called, you had five minutes to finish your turn. If you had gone first, your opponent then had five minutes to take his last turn. Personally I wasn’t a big fan of this rule at all – it meant the last player may have five minutes to try to counter his opponent’s ten-minute previous turn, but the majority wanted it so it was put into place.

I decided to give the Harbinger a shot in this tournament, but mine is still in pieces. There’s a few conversions I’m toying around with, and I didn’t want to do a rush job to get her on the table so I borrowed a fellow Menite’s figure instead. My initial choices for my other caster were Kreoss and Amon, but the lists I had come up with were both similar builds, and I needed something to cover the Assassin scenario better, so I went with Severius. My lists were as follows:

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Warmachine: The Vermillion Menofix

ByDankelzahn

It’s time to switch gears a little bit and discuss my wargaming and painting hobbies to fill out the blarging categories I had planned to start with.

Roughly a year ago a friend and I picked up Warmachine, a miniature wargame by Privateer Press. Since then we’ve played roughly weekly and have added a couple of players to our little group (though one has gone MIA after becoming a father). Since I’ll likely talk about the game and the miniatures in the future I’m going to take this opportunity to talk about why Warmachine is my game of choice, why I play the faction I do, and finally how I came up with the color scheme I chose for my army.

I enjoy the warcaster-centric style of play that Warmachine features. Especially since while being the most powerful model in your army, the warcaster is still far from invulnerable and in most cases requires protection to keep him safe. And with good reason – in many cases killing your warcaster is how your opponent wins the game. To use a chess analogy, your warcaster is a combination of the king and the queen. This dichotomy forces you to balance using the piece as an offensive weapon with keeping it safe from your opponents. Read More “Warmachine: The Vermillion Menofix”