Hordes tournament

This weekend The Comicshop held its first Hordes tournament. The turnout was a bit low (only six people) but I think that this was mostly due to timing. The summer is usually a bad time to be holding events as the weather is usually good and someone is invariably having a wedding on the weekend.

All four factions were represented; two Everblight, two Trollblood, one Skorne and my Circle force. Both Everblight armies had Thagrosh and a Sereph and the Skorne army used Makeda. My Cirlce force was

• Baldur
• Warpwolf
• 2 x Argus
• Woldwarden
• Totem Hunter
• 8 x Wolves of Orobrus

I took Baldur mostly because I thought that he would be the one Circle Warlock that people wouldn't have much experience with. Most people will have played Kaya on numerous occasions and I wanted to unbalance people a bit with a new Warlock.The tournament was a three game event using the recent Steamroller rules.

Game One
My first game was a King of the Hill match against Lucas and his Trollblood army using Madrak, two Impalers, the Mauler, the Axer and the Trollblood Champions. The game went down to the final turn(s) and in the end I was able to kill Madrak and then reduce Lucas down to a single unit (a lone Champion) so that there was no way he could contest the hill and then we called the game on VPs. I got some lucky results and was able to basically stop his Mauler from getting a charge which saved me from having to take a lot of damage. The Mauler really does need to have boosted attacks as in most of the games I have seen it misses unless the additional Fury is spent to boost attack rolls. With Lucas' forces on the hill I was able to pick my attacks and I had a flanking force that consisted of the Totem Hunter and the two Argus that swept around to threaten him from the rear. I think that managed to stop him from just piling everything on the hill and making it impossible for me to win.

Game Two
Game two was an Assassination game against Shane and his Everblight force consisting of Thagrosh, four Shredders, the Carnivean, the Sereph, a unit of Blighted Swordsmen and a unit of Blighted Archers. I sent the Totem Hunter and the Wolves to take care of the Swordsmen and the Shredders and then used Rapid Growth to keep a 5" area of woods between the Archers and the rest of my force at all times. I was able to take out the Sereph (before it could shot up my Woldwarden) and then the game bogged down a bit as our Warbeasts clumped up in the middle of the table and traded blows.

At one point I was actually a bit of a dick and didn't allow Shane to correct a mistake he made by activating Thagrosh but only using him to heal a Shredder and then go on to use the Shredder. In a friendly game I wouldn't have had a problem with him then activating Thagrosh but in a competitive environment I didn't really feel comfortable doing it. Not only because it would impact my points but potentially impact the points and standings of other gamers. Probably a bit of poor sportsmanship on my part but I think I made up for it by showing him how to position one of his charging Shredders to block a possible charge by my Warpwolf on Thagrosh which I am certain would have ended the game.

The table had a lot of woods on it and so I was able to pop Baldur from wood template to wood template without risking free strikes. Something that ultimately let me attack Thagrosh and kill him but only after Shane was unsuccessful with his attacks on Baldur. A very close game in the end.

Game Three
The final game was the Killing Fields scenario from Steamroller and I have to start out by saying that I think it is a really unbalanced scenario. The player who goes first really has a tremendous advantage and something as simple as changing the way the control points are placed would make the scenario much better to play. The last game was against Chad with his Everblight army which, IIRC, was the same as Shane's. I was hoping to play Jeff as I haven't had a chance to play a 500 pt Skorne force nor play against their troops but the matches only worked out in such a way that I played Chad.

Chad got the first turn and was consequently able to grab a three point advantage starting on the second turn that I was never able to overcome. The high point of the game was being able to knock Chad off of all three control points in my last turn. Something I didn't think was possible but I was able to do. Sadly it didn't matter since Chad was able to move back onto them as I didn't have enough troops to then claim them after I had cleared them. The scenario might also be better played at the 750pt level as well.

The final results for the tournament was a three way tie for first place between myself, Chad and Jeff. The determining factor was that I had the only fully painted force (pictures to follow later today or tomorrow) which goes to show that painting your army sometimes pays off :-)

All in all it was a good time and even the really poor balance of the last scenario didn't diminish the final results. Hopefully we can get some more people out for the next Hordes event.

Thagrosh v. Baldur

We had a small 500pt Hordes game tonight as part of my preparation for a Hordes tournament this weekend at The Comicshop. I've switched from my usual Trollblood force to Circle for this tournament and I am also taking Baldur instead of my usual choice of Kaya.

My main concern for this tournament is Thagrosh and the Seraph. Both are tough units that I have not had a lot of experience playing against either of them. Except one game in which the Seraph quickly wiped out my Warpbeast :-)

So this was a good game to test out some strategies against an Everblight force with them both. And it did remind me that Thagrosh can bring back any Warbeast he wants when he pops his feat which typically means that you'll be killing the Carnivean twice in a battle. As I had to do this game.

So while I haven't had as many test matches as I would have liked before the tournament I feel a little more confident with the 500pt force that I have selected.

Dreamblade

I had a chance to play quite a few games of the latest Wizards CMG Dreamblade. I'm in the process of doing a review of it for TGN but my first impressions of the game are very positive.

Its perhaps a bit overdone to say that it is a mix of chess and Magic but the game does a very good job of creating a CMG that adds positional aspects to the game (common to miniature games) but also easily adds the "combo" or synergy aspect that is quite common to Magic and other card games. In fact Dreamblade is more similar to Vs. from Upper Deck than it is to Magic in that each of the units in Dreamblade have a point cost and you need to create a warband in Dreamblade that has a nice even point cost distribution much as you would in Vs.

The gameplay can be very quick but there is actually quite a significant amount of tactical possibilities in the game and the limited actions you can do in each turn make it quite difficult for you to ever do everything that you want to do. Always the hallmark of a good game.

Now the game shares the same downside that all CMGs do in that the entry cost for the game can be rather expensive and the distribution of the random miniatures means that you often can't get the entire set without going on to eBay.

That said, I'm actually quite impressed by the game and looking forward to expanding the collection I have and getting in some more games.

White Dwarf

Perhaps these comments are limited only to the Canadian version of the magazine but in the last few months White Dwarf has become everything that its detractors have labelled it. The magazine is now almost entirely a glossy catalogue of GW games and miniatures that you happen to pay a fairly significant amount of money for.

The latest version of White Dwarf arrived in the mail the other day and the first 23 pages were utterly free from content. And this is actually a charitable comment since I am counting the contributors page filled with single paragraph comments from the magazine team as content. If you want to discount that it wasn't until page 30 that the actual content began.

And even that is a stretch. Page 30 is the start of an "article" that outlines what is in the new Legions of Middle Earth supplement.

You'd actually be hard-pressed to count anything in the magazine as original readable content with the exception of two very short battles reports and a very thin section of painting.

I'm not sure what has driven this change in the magazine other than a desire on GW's part to limit costs but cutting almost all the meat from the magazine but as it currently stands White Dwarf isn't any different than other glossy house magazines like Sony Style. Welll, except that GW wants you to pay for it.

Its really quite sad. Especially when you grab a magazine from three years ago (hell even from 8 months ago) and compare it to the latest issue.

It seems utterly self-destructive to follow this path and yet some management type at GW has seen this as a good idea; cutting costs at the expense of making the magazine unreadable.

As it stands GW owes an apology to anyone who pays for White Dwarf.

Did I also mention that we pay more per page for WD than anyone in the UK or US and that the magazine recently lost about 30 pages of content that doesn't seem likely to reappear?

Thanks for the minis but %$!@# you

This was originally going to be posted at the TMP messageboards but I thought that it would be pointless to do so. The topic is inflammatory by its very nature and its not going to result in any fruitful discussion.

The issue involves a few recent posts on TMP that I think are a bit questionable.

The site recently hosted a Workbench article that discussed painting two Necron Monoliths using colour shifting paint. From reading the article it seems clear that GW supplied these kits to Bill at TMP for the article or just as a promotion. These painted models are now being auctioned as a small fundraiser for TMP.

The next day Bill started a topic on the TMP messageboards that strikes me as problematic. The topic is a bit of a joke about what the discarded titles for the GW Battle for Skull Pass boxed set were. Innocent perhaps in itself but Bill must know his readership enough to know that this topic would, and has, turned into a small (for TMP) flame about GW.

The appearance is, to my eyes, that TMP will take GW goods but also disparage the company at the same time or open the company up for disparagement on their messageboard. Either way Bill appears to want to have his cake in the form of free goodies from GW but also generate messageboard traffic by starting up anti-GW topics.

This seems disingenuous if not hypocritical. If Bill doesn't like GW then why is he taking freebies from them? And if he isn't harbouring negative feelings toward the company then why is he starting a topic that he knows will result in people belittling GW and in a few cases belitting people who play GW games? Is this comment "Battle for their pocket money till their balls drop?" or ""Prattle for the Numbskulls' Cash"" really necessary? Is the historical crowd at TMP so immature that they need to resort to this sort of thing? And why would the editor of a site deliberatly fan these flames?

Its small wonder that GW appears to not send any PR info to TMP but what it makes me wonder is why Bill allows such negativity to be promoted on his messageboards. And starting it up is even more bewildering.

Painting

I am in the process of getting a Khador Bezerker ready for a local Warmachine tourney and I have to say, again, what a complete and utter difference it is to paint (especially blend) using Vallejo paint thinner and matte medium.

I am getting blends on this Warjack that I was totally incapable of doing a month ago and while I have been doing a lot more blending work I certainly haven't got that much better as a painter. The thinner and medium make it a lot easier to do blends as well as make it easier to blend over large surfaces.

I strongly suggest that any painter go out and get some and experiment with them.