Mitsuharu on Bat Reps - Intercessor Kreoss vs Constance Blaize

As promised I had my first game using Krehorse recently, testing out my first draft list with him at 50 points. I'd chosen quite a heavy list that included a lot of heavy hitters:-

Intercessor Kreoss +5

-Vanquisher -8

-Reckoner -8

Avatar of Menoth -11

Min Choir -2

Vassal of Menoth -2

Gorman di Wulfe -2

Max Vengers -11

Daughters of the Flame -5

Dartan Vilmon -3

Paladin -2

The list is very low on models but hits pretty hard, especially on the charge. The daughters are in the list since they're fast enough to keep up and with Holy Ward hit DEF 17 which makes them a surprisingly good jam unit. The Vengers are really cranked up by Kreoss since he grants them Divine Inspiration for free (additional die on all melee attack and damage rolls dropping the lowest). The Avatar is a great melee jack with some of the best focus efficiency and gaze helps to herd the enemy army. The Vanquisher provides a degree of crowd control alongside Gorman (who can also drop smoke near Kreoss early game too). Like in a few of my lists the Paladins are purely to lock up zones and contest flags and generally help me to not lose the game. 

My opponent was playing a list he'd not really used before either, and so we agreed to play untimed to help us get to grips with the ins and outs before playing more competitively. He was fielding Constance Blaize with Gallant, a max unit of Precursor Knights and UA, a max unit of Boomhowlers with Jonas, Aiyana and Holt, a unit of Trencher Commandos, Lord Runewood, Maxwell Finn, a journeyman, squire, Anastasia Di Bray and epic Eiryss. Lots of bodies on the table on his side and most of them with sneaky abilities to overcome armour too. 

We were playing Incursion and I won the roll for the start of the game and decided to take the first turn, sacrificing the better board edge to be able to safely get all of my upkeeps out. This meant I ended up with a large forest right in front of the centre of my deployment zone. On the other side of the board were a couple of walls to provide some shelter for my opponent's army. 

I got my upkeeps out, Holy Ward on the Daughters and Ignite on the Vengers and Warpath on Kreoss. My army advanced quickly across the board to contest the flags. Following this the Cygnar army also moved up, spreading his masses of infantry out to avoid getting hit by AOEs. The flag on the side with the majority of his infantry disappeared. 

In my second turn I moved the Daughters into contest the remaining flank flag. I was lured into charging a couple of Boomhowlers with my Vengers, killing them but exposing myself to retaliation in the following turn. My jacks advanced up and took some pot shots at the enemy to little effect. Avatar moved up and used Gaze to lock a large chuck of the army into moving towards him. 

On the Cygnaran turn Aiyana and Holt, two Precursors and the Boomhowlers made light work of the Vengers. Five other Precursors made a charge into the Avatar (using the Mini feat) but after the first attack doing a couple of boxes I Enliven'd him backwards to avoid taking further damage, and left them clumped together. The Trencher commandos threw point blank grenades at the Daughters to kill enough to force a command check, which they failed. Gallant charged the Avatar and did a reasonable amount of damage, crippling movement and the Shield. Finally Constance threw up her feat to offer some more defence. 

On my turn the Avatar and the Reckoner scrapped Gallant between them while the Vanquisher and Gorman killed three of the Precursors and left two knocked down, corroded and on fire. I chose to use an ancilliary attack to take another shot at the Precursors, killing the standard bearer, and hurting the UA. The following turn the fire finished off the UA and the other two knights. Constance nuked Dartan and the remaining precursors used their magical maces to kill the other paladin. The Boomhowlers charged the Vanquisher but barely hurt it and the commandos finished off the daughters. Anastasia moved on to the field to my side. 

With little shielding Kreoss, who'd been hanging back all game, he ran around the forest that was in front of my deployment zone, getting close to Constance. The Avatar moved up and used Gaze to lock her in place. The Reckoner charged a group of 4 commandos and killed 2, failing the to hit roll on the other two. The Vanquisher had lost cortex last turn and so took out a single Boomhowler of the 5 engaging him. Gorman moved up and stuck black oil on Boomhowler and one of his buddies, also contesting the flag, since the Cygnarans had scored a point last turn. In the following turn Eiryss shot my buffs off Kreoss and he then took a couple of pot shots from the commandos that mostly missed, and the two engaging the Reckoner failed to damage it. Maxwell Finn used his gun to finish off the last few boxes on the Avatar, freeing Constance to run away behind a wall. The Boomhowlers continued to smack at the Vanquisher, taking some more boxes off it. Anastasia then used espionage to make the Boomhowlers, remaining precursors, and commandos able to advance and attack a second time, putting more hurt on the Vanquisher, killing all but one Choirister, and having three commandos put some anatomical precision damage on Kreoss. 

I started my turn by feating, placing Holy Ward on Kreoss, and putting ignite on the Reckoner. I then charged Kreoss into the Junior hoping to get Eiryss in my reach, but had to move over 2 large wreck markers (the Avatar and Gallant) and so didn't quite make the range, but did crush the junior with the charge attack. I then pulled a focus off the wrack to put me at Def 16 ARM 25. The Vanquisher then took a weak swing at a Boomhowler. Cygnar then started the turn by having Eiryss aim and shoot at Kreoss. He came up an 8, but since I had my toe in the Avatar's wreck marker Kreoss was at DEF 20 vs Shooting, and so this missed by 1, leaving my Holy Ward and full stack on Kreoss. The three commandos then charged, using anatomical precision to get a couple of points on my caster, then ran a Precursor into B2B with Kreoss to get the Flank bonus for the charge with Constance Blaize. She charged in and thwacked at the Intercessor with lots of boosting but left him on a single box. Then Anastasia activated, placed espionage out and one of the Commandos connected for an anatomical precision assassination. 

Looking back at the game retrospectively it's clear that there were several issues for me from this game. The first is how bad a match up this game was for my list, which is designed to crack armour and not wipe out infantry swarms. Secondly I made some very simple errors throughout the game, especially over committing the Vengers and losing them early game, as well as forgetting both Dartan's Commander ability that would have saved my Daughters and Kreoss' Imperisable Conviction ability that would have really helped Kreoss survive the last round. 

The other major issue I noticed with the list is that it doesn't have a conveinient method of disposing of enemy solos, and that let Eiryss and Anastasia run roughshod over my caster in the late turns. Considering this I'm thinking of swapping out Dartan and the Paladin for Nicia and an Allegiant, or just swapping Dartan and Nicia at least. 

Hopefully in my next game I'll be more aggressive with Kreoss, less careless with the Vengers and more able to deal with annoyances. I felt that Kreoss himself was very impressive, being able to camp and dish out focus to his jacks made him versatile and survivable, especially late game. I want to try out this build another time to see if it might be worth swapping out a jack for another unit. What I'd ideally like would be to play it against an armour list where it could play the way it wants to. 

Hopefully I'll have that for you next time!

-M

Happy New Year - What's coming up

Hi blogosphere. Mitsuharu on Minis took a bit of an unexpected holiday break over the last few weeks! But no worries I'm happy to tell you I'm back and will be getting deep into the hobby in the coming weeks. I'll be happy to report it as I go. 

My hobby club is starting to run regular Warmachine tournaments, with the next one being in mid February. I'm going to be playing some practice games. Principally with Intercessor Kreoss (since I caved went into cavalry as part of my Christmas this year). I'll be posting my battle reports and thoughts on my lists as I develop them; as well as obviously the tournament itself once it's all done. 

Also come February I'll also be getting a batch of new models for my Legion as well so I'll post some more painting updates then too. 

Look forward to my first battle report using Intercessor Kreoss in a couple of days time!

-M

Tourney Tales - Journeyman League 35 point Tournament

Following the Journeyman league recently my local gaming group decided to run a Tournanent for the participants. Two 35 point lists, divide and conquer with one list using one of the casters and the battle group from the league. I played a number of practice games using a pSevvy list, but on deciding I was lacking a good answer to a heavy armour list I swapped this at the last minute for a variation on my eReznik list from my last tournament, which ended up with two lists:

eFeora +6

-Vanquisher -8

-Dervish -4

-Repenter -4

Vassal -2

Wrack -2

Nicia -3

Carvolo -2

Paladin -2

Min Choir -2

Daughters -5

Max TFG with UA -8

eReznik +4

-Devout -5

Avatar -11

Vassal -2

Wracks -1

Mechanic -1

eEiryss -3

Min Choir -2

Max Bastions -8

Min Zealots with UA -6

After the random pairings I was placed against one of the most experienced players in the tournament, Nick, whose legion I played frequently during the league. He chose a list of Thagrosh, accompanied by a Carnivean and a Scythean, with a max unit of Warspears and UA along with two Deathstalkers and a shepherd. His other list was a beast heavy Saeryn list and I knew that my melee heavy Reznik list would be shut down by her feat and so I elected to take my Feora list. The scenario we were playing was close quarters and I deployed with a mind to protecting my own flag. I made a number of mistakes throughout the game that an experienced player like Nick was more than capable of taking advantage of. After the initial movements in turn two my Daughters (the Warspears' prey) were wiped out to a single model, who I should have run away to the far edge of the board to deny him the prey but who I instead threw away to tie up a Deathstalker. My Vanquisher took a couple of punishing shots at the Scythean but failed to destroy it. The counter charge from the heavy beast similarly hurt my jack and the two slapped at each other for the rest of the majority of the game. The middle part of the game was mainly me jamming my own flag (and making a ridiculous number of tough checks) and putting some wounds onto the enemy army. Nick was punishing me throughout the game but his clock was running low and I had plenty of time. I made another stupid mistake and charged my paladin into Thagrosh instead of jamming the flag and wasting his clock. This allowed him to kill off the paladin and move into dominate his own flag. I had nothing on his side to contest and so I charged Feora across the table to try for a risky assassination but came up half an inch short. She managed to survive the retaliation but couldn't put Thagrosh away the next turn with almost full fury and so I lost to scenario, with less than a minute on Nick's clock. 

My second game was against a Cryx player who hadn't had a lot of time to practice with his lists and so made a few critical mistakes and oversights. I chose to go for Feora again as both of his lists were fast an infantry based and pretty dangerous for Reznik. This left me locked into Reznik for my next game but I was hoping for a better match up. He took pDenny with a max unit of Bloodgorgers and Slaughterborn, and a max unit of blood witches, alongside a pistol wraith and skarlock. Denny was accompanied by a Slayer and three chickens. 

He took the first turn and, as we were playing Outflank he moved strongly into the zone with the bloodgorgers on one side and ran across the board into B2B with the TFG with the witches, which meant he was unable to use the mini feat and basically fed them to the guards who promptly killed all but one of the unit. Meanwhile the Vanquisher splashed the bloodgorgers killing 5 of them with a single shot as they were bunched together. The daughters then killed the last few and engaged Slaughterborn. This basically crippled his army but I hadn't been able to move anything into the zone to my right and so he controlled it for a point. Taking advantage of my mistake he moved in his caster and feated, dominating for a further two points. Gerlak took a swing at a daughter but missed, derailing his slaughter. On my turn I moved a trio of TFG into the zone to contest and save the game, along with Nicia and a Repenter. The Repenter took a shot at a bone chicken, missing but boosting the shot on Denny who was stood behind it, dealing little damage but setting her on fire. The daughters combined melee'd Gerlak to death and the paladin moved into melee with the pistol wraith but stayed in stance. Next turn he spent all his resources to clear the zone but couldn't quite manage it. The pistol wraith ate a free strike trying to kill the last choir member and died. He'd left Denny exposed trying to kill Nicia and finished on no focus, and so the Vanquisher moved up and squished her in short order, netting me a win and basically tabling him and scoring two control points to boot. 

In the final round I played against a Circle army which was a terrible match up for my list locked eReznik army. He chose to use eMorvanna. I started strongly, wiping out his Wolves of Orboros and Skinwalkers with the feat but I was forced to expose Reznik. He then used shifting stones to move a Stalker into Reznik and promptly ripped him apart. 

I ended the tournament with the highest Strength of Schedule and was the highest scoring single game winner, placing me near the bottom of the middle of the listings. Overall it was a fun day and I regret not taking the pSevvy list I had been playing with in practice games but I did enjoy blowing up a swathe of Druids with Reznik's feat. My local club is deciding to run a similar tournament each month and I'm looking forward to playing some more tournaments in coming months and writing them up for you to read!

-M

Sword<Pen<Brush - Continuing the Legion

Following my last article about having started to paint my Legion of Everblight forces I've managed to get a bunch more models painted up starting with a max unit of Legionnaires including the UA:-

To be honest my technique for metal is pretty easy on this army and these guys are pretty much 80% metal so it wasn't especially hard to plow through them. 

I followed up by completing a full unit of the Spawning Vessel:-

I enjoyed painting this unit but it didn't come together as a unit until the last lick of paint but then I ended up quite happy with how they looked, especially the pot itself. 

I then knocked out the Incubi solos:-

I decided the paint the flesh of the unfortunate hosts in Elf Flesh with a blue wash, highlighting this with more Elf Flesh. I had wanted it to come out a little differently but I also wanted a good contrast with the draconic Incubi skin which it did so I can't complain at the result. 

I then painted my pair of Strider Deathstalkers. With a number of Legion players in my current meta there are a number of very nice Deathstalker conversions. I've never been much good at anything beyond the simplest swaps so I stuck with the usual sculpt:-

I think the bows and cloaks both came out just like I wanted them to and they have the right balance of dark and light for the army. 

I then painted up the Twins, Saeryn and Rhyas:-

I was debating for a while what colours to do the long scarves in but I wanted them to stand out while not clashing and I felt that the red was the best option for them, and again I feel it worked well. 

Finally I managed to squeeze in one more model and it just had to be Epic Absylonia:-

Much like when I first painted the beasts I was a bit taken aback by quite how blue she was by the end, but the model is gorgeous and detailed without being too complicated. 

I'm really enjoying diving into a new army and I'm excited for next year when I can start buying more models. 

-M

Mini Thoughts - Reznik

Continuing my long overlooked Mini Thoughts articles I would like to talk a little bit about the High Executioner of Menoth himself - Servath Reznik. Reznik is probably one of my favourite casters in the fluff, with a lovely model to boot. It's especially nice when all that loveliness is also tied to a brilliant rule set to go with. 

The first and most important thing to know about Reznik is he is a bad-ass, smash mouth take-no-prisoner type caster. From his spell list and abilities to his feat Reznik is designed to kill people, hopefully enemy war-nouns. His stat line is impressive on its own and he can clearly bring the hurt to virtually any opponent, but that can easily be coupled with his spell Engine of Destruction (EoD) to bring him up to ridiculous levels of smashery (MAT 11 P&S 18 anyone?) and at a cost of two there's plenty of focus left after using it to really lay into someone. You can then couple that with his Purgation ability on his sword (giving addition dice on melee attack and damage rolls vs a target with an enemy upkeep on them) and his feat (stripping focus and fury from everyone in his control range) to handily murder anyone in his 12" threat range (under EoD). 

As well as the blunt force aspect of his rules Reznik also has some nice movement shenanigans for his battlegroup to further facilitate his assassination focused play-style. First up he had the ability Witch Hound allowing one model in his battlegroup to advance and make an attack each time a battlegroup model is hit by a spell. As well as that he has Perdition, a damage spell that allows a warjack in the battlegroup to advance if the spell does damage, once per turn. These abilities are circumstantial at best but against the right armies are devastating. 

He also boosts a pair of upkeep buffs, the typical Menite staple of Ignite, giving +2 to melee damage rolls and critical fire and the devastating Iron Agression, hands down one of the best warjack buffs in the game. This spell lets one jack run and charge for free as well as giving an additional die on melee attack rolls, and can crank a great jack into one that makes your opponent cry, especially if it's stuck on a jack like the Avatar. 

Generally Reznik's gameplay is brutally unsubtle, plodding up the field until you can get close enough to deliver Reznik to your opponents face. Even the toughest war-nouns in the game get squished pretty quickly when charged by Reznik under his feat and EoD. Moment of anecdote, just this week I managed to kill Terminus on the turn after his feat using Reznik. Ouch. 

Now I'm a big Reznik fan boy but I'm not blind to his weaknesses. First of which is his low Focus. 6 is fairly average as these things go but with so many battlegroup effects on his card he wants to take a jack heavy list and also wants to be quite greedy with his focus meaning he feels pretty starved most games. Really he wants to be taking a focus efficient battlegroup and a Heirophant. And Wracks. And maybe a Reclaimer. Seriously that 6 does not go as far as you'd really like it to. 

The other issue with Reznik is that his aggressive play style means he's often pretty far up the board, increasing the risk that someone else will get to him for the assassination first. With Def 14 and armour 17 with very little to camp he has a solid defence but not enough to be dependably survivable, especially against an opponent who can boost rolls. 

On top of this in a meta game sense Reznik does have a whole lot of tricks and sneaks but they come with caveats that, to a knowledgable oppenent, are pretty easy to avoid triggering, and he doesn't play to scenario very well. When I'm making a list for the Executioner I generally just make an assassination delivery system for Reznik to reach the other carter with enough jam units in there to keep me from losing on scenario before he can get the killing blow in. 

Overall I think that Reznik is a characterful and (perhaps more importantly) fun caster to play. He's also simple, and doesn't require much finesse to play well, but can really shine in the hands of a canny oppenent who can set up some strong charge lanes to score the win. 

He's definitely a big favourite of mine and hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll put up a battle report using him at 50 points after the tournament I'm playing next week. 

-M

Sword<Pen<Brush - Joining the Legion

Having finished (ish) my Menoth I've started a new project. I put aside my army of crazed, fanatical, God-bothering zealots and have started up a new army of crazed, fanatical Dragon-bothering zealots. Big difference is these zealots also come with their own giant, gribbly, land-shark dragon-monsters. Ooooh pretty. 

That's right I've been seduced by Everblight over to the Legion. Switching out to Hordes to try the other side and getting to play with some models I love and with characters I enjoy. Yay! I started myself off with the Battlebox and a Forsaken, but have since had a big ol' box of models delivered to my door including some legionaries, some Nephalim, and a bunch of solos, along with the Spawning Vessel (recycling is good) and some casters (eVayl, eAbsylonia, Saeryn and Rhyas). 

I have a long standing tradition of painting my armies using alternative paint schemes. I like to take the normal or studio approach to an army and put my own spin on it, usually just shifting the colour scheme slightly (see my cream Menoth) to add a little individuality to my painting. On top of this I like to pick out a palette of colours for the army and stick to those paints on every model in the army to tie them together. If you look through the army books for most miniature games the paints for different models will shift slightly as different times and different painters or techniques show through, but I like to paint my generals with the same colours as my fodder to keep them unified. This was a bit of a problem with Legion for two reasons: 1. There is a big difference between different studio approaches meaning there is no real set way to paint the army (which seems to be a trend in Hordes where the factions are inherently less cohesive). 2. I don't really like the studio paint scheme anyway. Too pale. 3. Also I have a bunch of Citidel paints that I have no intention of swapping out and most of the paint guides are for P3. (I know I said two reasons. Sue me.) 

The other thing I wanted to do was nice bases. For anyone who's seen my Menoth army the models are decent but the bases suck. I'd decided to try out the latest Citidel 'cracked earth' magical paint and to be honest it was a huge flop. It hardly did what I wanted (cool dry cracked desert?) and just ended up looking like I'd slapped some light brown on and said 'good enough'. I was both thoroughly disappointed and also commited to using the stuff on the rest of my models. Not this time. Not for my Legion. Did I mention my friend recently started making gorgeous resin bases? Well he has! Check them out: http://solidgroundstudios.co.uk. I decided to do his Rocky Bases as thematic snowy bases and bought a whole bunch. 

I started on the four Shredders from the Battlebox first, as they were the easiest and most 'expendable' if I didn't like my paint job. Truth be told by the time I finished they were a lot bluer than I had intended but the more I looked at it the happier I was with them. The way I did it was by starting with a base of Fenris Grey, painting up to Ice Blue by way of Shadow Grey, before adding a highlight of Space Wolves Grey (yeah some of these paints are ooold). I was also especially happy with how the models came out on the jaws which were a simple Elf Flesh layer with a red wash which I think contrasted well with the teeth, which again, were very simple with Ushabti Bone leading up to pure white:-

With them completed I turned my attentions to the lovely Forsaken. I initially didn't like this sculpt when I saw it but this is definitely a model that I didn't like on paper but really liked once I had the bare metal in my hands (see prime Feora as another example).  I decided to leave the darker undercoat showing on the membrane of the wings but otherwise it was the same technique;

Next I threw out the big guy - the Carnivean. Sticking to my main approach I kept the paints the same. The chitin armour is much more prominent on this model, and took some more effort to achieve a good effect. I wanted a dark brown for the scales to contrast with the vivid blue of the flesh and so I started with a cover of Rhinox Hide for the base and then gave each scale and plate a highlight on pretty much every edge I could find with Mournfang Brown before touching up the most raised areas with a touch of Khemri Brown:- 

Finally for the battlebox I painted Lylyth, one of my favourite narrative Warlocks. Unlike the bulk of the army Lylyth has equipment and such to paint. For the metal I based the whole area using Chainmail, then washed it heavily with Asurman Blue to almost completely stain the recesses before painting the raised areas with Chainmail again to get a dark/light contrast I was pleased with. The cloak was a base of black painted up to Necron Abyss with a highlight of Regal Blue to finish. The leather straps were painted in the same brown as the beasts' scales while her hair was the same paints as their teeth, and the same blue tinted skin across the army:

I left it at that for a while due to a (temporary) lack of models combined with moving home. I've resolved both issues now, and have started to make some more headway with my Legion by churning out another couple of Nephalim using the above techniques, first a Bolt Thrower and most recently a Soldier:

I'm really enjoying the change of pace and I'm looking forward to getting them on the table once I've built my forces up a bit more next year, but for now they're a fun hobby side project to keep me occupied while I keep playing my Menoth (to whom I fully intend to keep adding). 

Thanks for reading I hope you can take something from my humble paints (though if you only take one thing away it should definitely be that http://solidgroundstudios.co.uk has awesome bases you can buy!). If anyone has any questions or comments feel free to let me know!

-M

Apologies

Hey readers, sorry for the long break, I've just moved house and unfortunately my hobby stuff got knocked back a little bit. But don't worry I'm back in full swing so expect a couple of Sword<Pen<Brush articles about the Legion I've just broken in as well as more battle reps and hopefully a Tourney Tales in a couple of weeks!