WTC Practice event

Last weekend I was up in Dublin for some toys.

We had 5 teams in attendance, an odd number but it meant there was going to be 3 rounds and some games.

I ended up bringing Haley2 and a revised Caine2 I talked about previously:

(Haley 2) Major Victoria Haley

 - Avenger

 - Stormclad

 - Stormclad

 - Thorn

 - Squire

Captain Arlan Strangewayes

Storm Lances (max)

Ragman

(Caine 2) Captain Allister Caine

 - Defender

 - Hunter

 - Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator

Journeyman Warcaster

 - Firefly

Stormblade Infantry

 - Stormblade Infantry Storm Gunner x2

 - Stormblade Infantry Officer & Standard

Storm Lances (max)

Trencher Infantry (min)

Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord

Captain Maxwell Finn

Our team - Ireland Craic - consisted of:

(Me)Cygnar - Haley2 and Caine2

Circle - Wormwood and Kromac2

Trolls - Madrak2 and Doomy1

Legion - Rhyas and Thagrosh2

Menoth - Kreoss1 and Thyra

Round one we were paired up against the Merc team for this event they had:

Khador - Butcher3 and Sorscha1

Ret - Ossyan and Rahn

Trolls - Madrak2 and Calandra

Cygnar1 - Kara and Styker2

Cygnar2 - Caine2 and Maddox

We all wanted to avoid the Kara Matchup aside from Wormwood so we set out to engineer that.

(Me)Cygnar Vs Trolls

Circle Vs Cygnar1

Legion Vs Cygnar2

Trolls Vs Ret

Menoth Vs Khador

I am playing against Anton a French doctor and hipster aficionado.

He has Madrak2 and Calandra, he also knows that I have been working on my Haley2 list as a Madrak2 counter so he elects to drop Calandra.

I of course drop Haley2.

His Calandra list is as follows:

(Calandra 1) Calandra Truthsayer, Oracle of the Glimmerwood

 - Dire Troll Bomber

 - Rok

 - Troll Axer

 - Trollkin Runebearer

Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes (max)

 - Stone Scribe Elder

Sons of Bragg

Trollkin Warders (min)

Trollkin Champions (min)

 - Skaldi Bonehammer

Looking back on the list I think he might have had max Champs on the field as opposed to the min listed here, yep, after checking, he's a cheater!

So anyway, I won the roll to go first and elected to do so.

I did the usual TK and reaction drive up with the Jacks  running the Lances and putting Haley near my flag and the edge of the zone.

Anto puts bullet dodger on Rok and moves the rest of his stuff up at a run, casting Starcrossed but forgetting to put fury on the stone!

He also makes a positioning error of leaving a champion within distance enough of a Quake shot catching Rok.

I setup a turn to try and clear the zone and remove Rok then feat.

I am able to do so by TK'ing the Champion closest to Rok and putting him with his back to the Avenger. The Avenger then knocks him and Rok down and I send in both Stormclads to kill off Rok and the Champs in the Zone.

Haley feats.

Anto has to dump fury into the stone this turn and is able to Befuddle the closest clad into Melee with a Son of Bragg after doing great bomb rolls on it, this kills it. The Warders move forward to jam up in the zone along with the other Champs.

Calandra is on 1 fury in the trench with Starcrossed up.

I come up with loads of different plans to assassinate him and end up using thorn to TK her out of the Trench and turn her around, I then TA the Avenger and TK a Warder away, I also TK a Lance to make room for Ragman.

Ragman moves up and Death Fields to catch the Warders  then the Clad moves up and kills or toughs the two Warders in Shield Guard Range and then the Avenger moves up and shoots Calandra twice doing decent damage as well.

Then the Storm Lances assault in, one of them getting the full charge thanks to Impact attacks working on a knocked down Warder and I then shoot my assaults and I am able to finish her off without having to make the Melee swing.

Assassination WIN!

Thoughts:

A number of errors lead to Rok dying, although it is pretty hard to protect him against the avenger and TK.

Not putting fury on the stone meant no +2 ARM for Rok or even bullet dodger for Calandra.

Losing a clad under Haleys feat was bad but I did trade it well with Rok and I still had the Avenger in case of Emergencies.

Thorn is a boss, and amazing at enabling Haley to avoid the Star Crossed bubble.

The team is able to win a couple of other games and we win the round 3-2

(Me)Cygnar Vs Trolls - WIN

Circle Vs Cygnar1  - WIN

Legion Vs Cygnar2 - LOSS

Trolls Vs Ret - LOSS

Menoth Vs Khador  - WIN

The next Team is Brigands Prime playing:

Khador1 - Karchev and Sorscha1

Khador2 - Kozlov and Zerkova2

Skorne1 - Makeda3 and Hexeris1

Skorne2 - Xekaar and

Legion - Thagrosh2 and Abby1

Our menoth player wants to avoid Sorscha1 so we opt for that.

(Me)Cygnar Vs Skorne1

Circle Vs Khador1

Legion Vs Legion

Trolls Vs Skorne2

Menoth Vs Khador2

So I am playing Conor who has Makeda3 and Hexeris1, both heavy on the beasts so I opt for Haley2 again, he selects Makeda3:

(Makeda 3) Makeda & the Exalted Court

 - the Exalted Court

 - Molik Karn

 - Tiberion

 - Cyclops Brute

 - Cyclops Brute

 - Titan Gladiator

 - Cyclops Savage

Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor

Mortitheurge Willbreaker

Paingiver Beast Handlers (min)

Paingiver Beast Handlers (min)

I lose the roll and end up going second.

Conor deploys with Makeda centrally, Tibbers on my left, Molik on my right and the other Cyclops in the middle.

I unpack and create a 13.1" Molik bubble around my right hand zone with Thorn hanging out in the middle, I do forget to move Haley though.

Conor Moves Tibbers into the Left zone and with some Paingivers and a Sentry and Brute into the right with One Paingiver.

I charge Haley into the Zone, after casting a few spells and feating. One clad goes in after the Avenger Knocks down Molik and the Savage and Kills the Brute and Savage, a Storm Lance takes care of the Paingiver.

Thorn runs into the other zone and cowers behind a wall toeing the zone. I score 2 CPs

With almost all of his models under Haleys feat there isn’t much that can be done apart from to walk the Gladiator and 1 Brute into my zone along with a few Paingivers.

I use the Avenger to shoot one of Makdeas escorts, Knocking him and her down, killing Orin with blast damage.

I run Thorn across and then TK the Brute out of the zone and around so that Ragman can walk up to Death Field, A Stormclad walks round to Makdea and bops her on the head through 3 transfers.

Assassination WIN!

Thoughts:

Going second and being able to premeasure the predictable Threat Ranges was great, forcing the engagement and having Haleys feat to stop any retaliation was excellent, especially when the Skorne beasts are so slow.

I don't think Conor was that familiar with Haley2 and wasn't expecting the power of the feat.

The round ends 4-1 in our favour

(Me)Cygnar Vs Skorne1 - WIN

Circle Vs Khador1- WIN

Legion Vs Legion - WIN

Trolls Vs Skorne2 - LOSS

Menoth Vs Khador2 - WIN

Round Three is here and we are placed against the other Irish WTC Team in the final, Team Ceol

They have

Legion - Lylyth1 and Abby2

Cygnar - Haley2 and Caine2

Trolls - Madrak2 and Doomy2

Circle - Wormwood and Baldur2

Retribution - Ossyan and Kaelyssa

I want to try and arrange the Wormwood Mirror just to make them as miserable as possible but in the end we don't engineer that.

Pairings are:

(me)Cygnar Vs Cygnar

Legion Vs Trolls

Menoth Vs Legion

Circle Vs Ret

Trolls Vs Circle

I am paired against The robotic embodiment of Warmachine himself Mr Pat Dunford, Patbot.

We have a little discussion about the matchups we can expect and it turns out he is going to be laying a very similar list to me:

(Haley 2) Major Victoria Haley

 - Avenger

 - Stormclad

 - Stormclad

 - Thorn

 - Squire

Storm Lances (max)

Captain Maxwell Finn

Lanyssa Ryssyl, Nyss Sorceress

I win the roll to go first and choose to do so.

The game involves a lot of posturing but I mess up and run 3 Lances too far forward into perfect Finn formation and Pat shanks them.

He camps 3 and hides behind two Clads.

I go for an assassination at this point as I'm now 3 Lances down for nothing.

I Dominate one of his Clads, Walk behind Haley and hit with the sword and Boxcars the Damage roll, good start.

This leaves her on 3 Boxes and with 2 focus. I am able to get one Lance Electro Leaps onto her forcing the focus to be spent but unfortunately I am unable to get more hits, the Clads go and I get one more hit but I could have potentially power boosted the hit roll and got her!

She Survives!

Pat then feats on me and kills all my toys aside from Haley and the Avenger so I go for the long Shot Dominate on his Avenger needing an unboosted 11 for it to hit followed by a 10, I get the 11 but roll a 6.

Then I get assassinated.

Assassination LOSS!

Thoughts:

I goofed on my first turn and it cost me big, I could have been safe by being more conscious of it.

It's a pretty weird mirror matchup and getting Pat down to 3 HP was nice, if lucky, and perhaps had I not tunnelled too hard I might have been able to get a boost and maybe finish Haley.

Three other games of the round are over relatively quickly and it turns out we are 2-2 so it's down to the final game.

You can read a report of it here:

http://arturoswarmachine.blogspot.ie/2016/07/wtc-practice-event-july-2016-round-3.html?m=1

So we lose the round 3-2 unfortunately:

(me)Cygnar Vs Cygnar - LOSS

Legion Vs Trolls - LOSS

Menoth Vs Legion - LOSS

Circle Vs Ret - WIN

Trolls Vs Circle - WIN

Overall it was  a good event with lots of skilled players and it’s a shame we lost out to our sister team.

The next day before heading home I got in another Calandra game , still points up but slightly different:

(Calandra 1) Calandra Truthsayer, Oracle of the Glimmerwood

 - Rok

 - Troll Bouncer

 - Dire Troll Bomber

 - Trollkin Runebearer

 - Troll Axer

Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes (max)

 - Stone Scribe Elder

Sons of Bragg

Trollkin Champions (min)

 - Skaldi Bonehammer

I decide I might as well take Caine out for a spin in this game as he's been on the tray all day yesterday.

I lose the roll and pick the side with the trench I can hide in.

I deploy the Blades and Lances opposite the beasts and Caine and the Trenchers go right with the Jacks in the middle.

Anto Runs up turn one remembering to put fury on the stone.

The Blades and Lances run up, Blades minifeating and getting Arcane Shield. I move up and use the defender to snipe out the Spray Son of Bragg, make my could wall and sit tight.

The Bomber Kills two Lances and Starcrossed goes up, the Bomber has bullet dodger.

I put a couple of blades and a Lance into the Bomber but my dice combined with Starcrossed mean I don't really get much done, Caine moves up into the trench and takes shots at Champs, killing half.

The Rok and the Axer clear out the Blades around the Bomber who then kills my objective with a couple of champs assisting.

Calandra moves into the Zone and Anto scores 3 CPs.

I am really on the back foot so Caine feats to clear out a load of Trolls and hits the bomber a few times, landing grievous and leaving it on 3 Boxes.

The Blades charge in getting a 4 man CMA at MAT 12, not double 1s, 1,1,3 under Starcrossed......

I put some more models into the zone but Shoot the defender instead of moving it in.

Calandra moves up, feats and starts to befuddle models out of the zone and kill a few more with her dagger, Rok and the Bomber do plenty of work as the Bomber has a box in each aspect left.

With his last attack he kills Finn and a Stormblade to clear the zone and go to 5 CPs.

Scenario LOSS!

Thoughts:

Having a couple of extra champs on the board is pretty good! Cheats always beat!

I probably should have counter deployed to kill his infantry with the Lances and left the Blades to go and swing at things.

Caine can’t leverage himself as much in this matchup in terms of killing power, he can apply grievous but Starcrossed is really bad for a list with no hit buffs.

I should have been more focused on the zone and stopping Scoring, the Jacks can advance and still boos hits.

I'd like to play the matchup again, I think I understand it better.

Overall I had a great weekend, four excellent games a lots of practice.

I also had donuts, they were delicious.

There’s a tournament Saturday and I'm probably bringing the Toilet Man himself, Darius. Will see how that goes, I might just switch to Haley2 at the last minute.

WTC is drawing near.

The WTC planning is in full swing, last week the flights and hotel were booked for the Thursday night in Amsterdam.

If you are travelling for the WTC and want to hang out with the majority of Team Ireland on the Thursday, let me know so we can do that!

  

I played a couple of games recently, I was hoping to get in one more on Saturday but I helped run a Battlebox game instead, who knew they took 3 hours.

  

My full 75pt game I got was against Legion, I wanted to try out a Siege list:

(Brisbane 1) Major Markus "Siege" Brisbane

 - Defender

 - Charger

 - Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator

Journeyman Warcaster

 - Charger

Storm Lances (max)

Tempest Blazers (max)

Rangers

Gun Mage Captain Adept

Captain Maxwell Finn

Pete was plying Lylyth1:

(Lylyth 1) Lylyth, Herald of Everblight

 - Naga Nightlurker

 - Nephilim Bolt Thrower

 - Ravagore

Blighted Nyss Raptors (max)

Grotesque Assassin

Grotesque Assassin

Strider Deathstalker

Strider Deathstalker

Grotesque Banshees (max)

Blackfrost Shard

Swamp Gobbers Bellows Crew

Annyssa Ryvaal

Blighted Nyss Shepherd

I ended up going second, choosing the side with a hill and trench.

Pete Ran everything up

I moved up and got in a foxhole, using a couple of Rangers to help shoot two Raptors with Siege and the Defender.

Pete took some shots and killed all but two of the rangers and was able to clear out 3 of the Lances with a combination of shots. He also jammed his Raptors into my Siege bunker

I attempted to use Finn to clear out the two Raptors that were near Siege and the two Chargers but he couldn't hit anything. I had to use a Storm Lance and Jr to clear them out.

I moved forward, dropping the foxhole and feated, able to take some good shots into his beasts but I missed the first ground pounder on the Ravagore meaning that I had to use my reload shot on it.

I managed to Kill the Bolt thrower and put some serious hurt onto the Ravagore with my Charger shots.

The Ranger leader also failed to hit the Raptor engaging the Defender and Neither Jr or the Gun Mage Captain Adept could remove it, then the Defender missed its boosted attack roll as well.

Pete then feated and was able to parasite Siege and his remaining army killed him.

Assassination Loss

Thoughts:

I probably shouldn’t have got so greedy with the feat or just held it and shot normally, it probably would have been okay once the Raptors were dead.

Being unable to clear out the Raptors jamming was annoying and I ended up having to use a lot of resources to do so.

Gunfighter Grotesques that are SPD 7 are pretty good, Stealth and Force Barrier really helps them.

I'd like to try this list a few more times and see how it goes.

A couple of days later I'd arranged another game against a fellow Dan who was playing Khador.

I dropped Caine2:

(Caine 2) Captain Allister Caine

 - Defender

 - Hunter

 - Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator

Storm Lances (max)

Stormblade Infantry

 - Stormblade Infantry Officer & Standard

Lady Aiyana & Master Holt

 - Captain Jonas Murdoch

 Journeyman Warcaster

 - Charger

Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios

Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord

And he selected Sorscha1:

(Sorscha 1) Kommander Sorscha

 - Behemoth

 - Juggernaut

 - Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator

Winter Guard Mortar Crew

Winter Guard Rifle Corps (max)

 - Winter Guard Rocketeer (3)

Widowmaker Scouts

Kovnik Jozef Grigorovich

Widowmaker Marksman

Lady Aiyana & Master Holt

 - Koldun Kapitan Valachev

Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios

Kell Bailoch

Dan opted to go first so I selected the side with a hill.

Turn 1 he rolled a hard 11 on a widowmaker and managed to cripple the Hunters gun arm.

The rest of his force pushed up.

I moved Eyriss up to Disrupt behemoth, tried to get the hunter to shoot the mortar from the hill but he missed with his crippled arm.

The Lances ran up as did the Blades who got Arcane shield. Caine hid in a little objective/defender/charger bunker with Heightened Reflexes on.

Dan took some Widowmaker shots, removing two Lances. He then went for a freezing grip on them with Sorscha but missed and then wind rushed back.

Kell killed two Blades and the Riflemen did a couple of CRAs to kill one more and tough another (I just realised Iron Zeal stops Knockdown). The rockets all try and Blast Damage Eyriss, fail to do that but Kill another Storm Lance.

Looking at the board I can see Sorscha is within 4" of both Dan's objective and Behemoth and both are within Caines walk/shoot range.

I concoct a plan to Kiss Behemoth with Aiyana and then feat with Caine and bounce shots onto Sorscha as well.

I move up with Aiyana and 1,1 the Kiss roll so I change plans and go all in on Sorscha.

Caine gets reloaded, moves up and doesn’t feat.

He shoots the objective and trick shots onto Sorscha, does this 7 times and after that she is dead with 2 shots let.

Assassination Win

Thoughts:

Heightened Reflexes sort of protects Caine from being casually assassinated but it’s not great having to keep it on him.

I think Sorschas list is pretty advantaged into my poor squishy Storm blades as he has 8 Sniper shots a turn and the Rockets are great at killing Storm Lances, especially with the Joe boost.

The Caine list probably wants clouds, and I'm very tempted to drop the bloaty support (Eiryss and Aiyana and Holt and Jonas) to bring in some trenchers for the clouds.

(Caine 2) Captain Allister Caine

 - Defender

 - Hunter

 - Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator

Journeyman Warcaster

 - Firefly

Stormblade Infantry

 - Stormblade Infantry Storm Gunner x2

 - Stormblade Infantry Officer & Standard

Storm Lances (max)

Trencher Infantry (min)

Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord

Captain Maxwell Finn

I need to get my hands on a Firefly, I'm waiting on the Battlebox to be available to me.

Finn is flexible, he could be a couple of Rifle Grenades and 1 more Storm Gunner but he's pretty good and I'm willing to give him another chance.

He could even be the max Trenchers, this is all a bit flexible and just needs testing.

This weekend we are having an Irish WTC Team practice up in Dublin, I think I'm going to bring the above Caine2 and Haley2.

Caine doesn't end up doing as much heavy lifting but he is hopefully more survivable and his army should make it into combat without getting completely shot to pieces.

Haley is there for the Madrak2, Butcher3 and other bricks.

I'll see how that goes.

Mk3 Games 1&2

I played two games on Saturday, my very first Mk3 Games.

Overall the rules are pretty similar, it plays the same but I think Premeasuring is going to solve a lot of things on the table.

Especially arguments about ranges etc, I was playing 40k when they allowed premeasuring and it did make the games much smoother.

I didn't play on the clock for either game but it’s going to be essential in any tournaments otherwise there will be mountains of proxy bases all over the battlefield as people try and engineer these elaborate plans before moving a model.

I must admit I was guilty of this in my games, checking angles and distances etc before even allocating focus, it was nice knowing what I could pull off an not having a plan hinge on a distance guesstimate.

The list I played was one I talked about before, using 4 Warjacks and 9 other models, including the caster.

Here’s the list:

Haley 2

- Thorn

- Stormclad

- Stormclad

- Stormclad

- Squire

Storm Lances (Max)

Cpt Arlan Strangeways

Ragman

Game 1 was against my fellow Irish WTC Captain Pete playing Legion on the new Line Breaker Scenario.

Lylyth2

- Ravagore

- Ravagore

- Bolt Thrower

- Naga Nightlurker

- Succubus

Strider Deathstalker

Strider Deathstalker

Raptors

Annyssa Ryvaal

Forsaken

Forsaken

I won the roll and opted to go first; my army is small enough to not have to worry about too much terrain.

I TK'd all three Stormclads, reaction drive'd with Thorn and then ran everything forward.

In doing this I had measured the Ravagores threat ranges and then just proceeded to place Thorn nicely within them, no idea what I was doing.

I used the Lances to make a wall behind Thorn and in front of Haley to keep her safe in case Lylyth got notions to try and shoot her.

Pete advanced up both Ravagores and Shot Thorn twice, Boosting Damage on him and the two Storm Lances behind. Killing both Lances and taking out Thorns Cortex and Node.

The Bolt thrower moved up and Knocked down one clad and pushed it back an inch.

The rest of his force did nothing much apart from position.

I moved thorn backwards and had Arlan repair him.

I then assaulted the objective with a Lance and a couple of the Stormclads making some e-leaps into Lylyth but the Objective died quickly and lylyth didn’t take much damage.

I then feated and charged Haley forward at a Ravagore, camping 9.

At this point Pete reckoned that he could possibly assassinate Haley so we proxy and diced it, Haley ends up living on about 4 Boxes thanks to two Ravagore shots missing and deviating away.

So instead he goes for the attrition, Pincushions and feats, killing one Stormclad outright and damaging the other two, due to the angle he’s able to get charges in with the Raptors who do well.

Lylyth retreats as far back as possible.

So I'm left with a Stormclad with its Sword and Cortex, another who I believe to be fully intact and Thorn who is basically back in my deployment zone.

I try to engineer a manoeuvre that will allow me to position Ragman for death field and get a fully loaded Stormclad into both Ravagores hopefully doing enough damage to turn the attrition tide in my favour.

I use the Lances to make some assaults and then the crippled Clad to hit the other Raptors jamming, use Thorn to arc the spells in and then realise that the Clad I'm trying to do all this with has crippled movement.

So he dutifully waddles over to the bolt thrower and puts him a Raptor and the Strider Deathstalker in the dirt.

Lylyth then kills Haley who is camping none.

ASSASSINATION LOSS

Games Played: 1

The mistake on the movement probably comes from using the War Room for the first time to play a game and it would have been a really neat manoeuvre if I’d pulled it off and Haley might have lived without the two Ravagores to shoot at her.

On Average Dice a 3 Focus assaulting Stormclad with Death field and Temporal Acceleration does 49 Damage to a Ravagore assuming it hits all swings/shots.

5s to hit with the Assault and 4s on the swings. There’s also a potential 5 extra damage from e-leaps at POW 12.

Ravagores have 30 boxes so killing both is very unlikely, but killing one and crippling the other is pretty good.

Game two is against the infamous Rob Read, another Team Ireland member.

He's playing Durst and his flying V of Jacks. We're using "The Pit" Scenario

Durst

- Reckoner

- Reckoner

- Templar

- Templar

- Vigilant

Choir (min)

Knights Exemplar

Knights Exemplar

Knights Exemplar

I win the roll to go first again and unpack with TKs on the Clads and push everything up to the edges of the Zone.

Rob advances, casts Bulwark and feats and sets up at the edge of the zone.

I then spend about 20 minutes placing proxies to engineer an elaborate plan to disrupt the two 

Reckoners with Thorn and then charge each of them with Stormclads and have Ragman granting Death field.

It starts off okay but Thorn misses his charge attack so I have to boost with future sight so I can only get into one Reckoner, he makes up for it by doing 6,6,5 on the damage roll.

Haley Ta's the Clad and feats, Ragman gets TK'd up and then death fields.

So a Stormclad goes in and wrecks the Reckoner, the rest of my army just durdles about.

Rob can't do much so he retreats Durst and takes one Reckoner swing at Thorn which does a little damage but doesn’t cripple anything.

He walks some Knights Exemplar in to jam up what of the Jacks he can.

I am able to manoeuvre Thorn into a position where he can See Durst, I then clear out the infantry in the way of my right most clad and setup death field with Ragman.

Haley TA's the Clad and TKs Durst around and into walk and hit range.

The Clad strolls over and applies his sword to Durst who is only camping 3 and is able to overkill him with 1 focus left.

ASSASSINATION WIN

Games Played: 2

First impressions of Mk3 are good, I love Power Up and that’s probably due to the list I was playing which is understandable.

There are some things that have been cleared up and we did try and use a decent quantity of terrain but I'm not sure if it was all that relevant at this point.

The Scenarios on the other had seem strange, Line Breaker being one that really favours any sort of Gunline, with no real penalty for giving up ground, unless you give up a huge amount of it, means that you can just shoot and walk backwards until the opponent has nothing left.

Even with the 14" threat on the Stormclads I felt that it was an uphill battle from the start as my stuff was just going to die all the way in, having no option to start scoring pressure as well meant that there was no reason for Pete to close.

The Pit seems to swing in the other direction, heavily favouring a brick style list that can get into the zone and threaten both flags very easily due to the close proximity of them to it. It worked out well for me, allowing me to get up fast and apply scoring and threat pressure early on.

I guess the way that the Meta shapes up will decide the power of the scenarios.

I'm running a tournament on the 2nd of July so I'll definitely include one if not both of these to see how they go down with the players.

On the modelling front I haven't really done anything more with my toys recently, I was more interested in playing games than painting but I hope to get Clad #3 complete this week and then start work on other toys that are outstanding.

Mk3, Swanning around.

It’s been a while.

Last time I made a post I was all aboard the Cryx train, playing games in preparation for the WTC 2016.

Then Life got in the way, my last post was November, in December I was made redundant then I had to go look for a new job.

Before that, Christmas.

Fast forward a while and Mk3 is announced, zip forward again and there are some spoilers and leaks that come out of PP and I'm drawn back into the lightning shrouded fold.

That’s right, back with the Swans again after my brief hiatus, one glance at the Caine2 card was all it took and I was sucked straight back in.

So then we end up with now.

The core rules came out on Sunday and are free for everyone:

http://files.privateerpress.com/allnewwar/Prime.pdf

And there is a useful thread on the forums for all the changes:

http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?252717-A-Guide-to-Rules-Changes-from-Mk-II-to-Mk-III

And finally there is a web based list builder that’s pretty awesome:

http://conflictchamber.com/

With the new edition comes a new War Room (War Room 2) and all the cards. It seems that the spoilers that were floating around the internet a couple of weeks prior to the official release at Lock & Load were legitimate and the War Room has verified this.

So I have downloaded the new War Room and started to build Cygnar lists again.

One of the reasons I picked Cygnar initially over the other factions was robots, now I'm going to tell you a little story about it.

I was playing a lot of 40k at the time and two of my friends just took voluntary redundancy from their jobs and they picked up the 2 player Battlebox.

So we had a Menoth and Khador, I went into the local shop and had a look what was on offer, the then girlfriend selected Cryx, so I was left with Apple Inc looking Robots or Cygnar.

So Cygnar it was (I wasn’t aware of Hordes at this time or I just looked at them and decided to blank them from my mind)I guess there was simply something about the robots that called to me.

So back onto the stompy robots, with Mk3, you are actively encouraged to take more robots, Battlegroups have got larger (due to an increase in Warjack Points).

The point values have doubled over most of the game, with a few minor changes meaning more granularity. And the ‘standard’ size is now 75pts.

One of the biggest things to encourage the use of Warjacks is the new Power Up Rule. When a Warjack is in the Casters Control Range during the Control Phase it automatically gains a focus. This means you are no longer so strapped for resources and jacks can at least contribute when you can't afford to allocate anything.

Saturday coming will be the first few games of Mk3, with the full rules, that I will be able to play and I am excited to use my Robots.

I'm very excited about a list that involves 3 Stormclads, now I already have an old metal one that I took to the WTC last year and has been a staple in some lists. I also picked up the new Reliant/Stormclad hard plastic kit when that came out and I have finished painting it.

Stormclad

Reliant

Deciding that 2 wasn't enough I set about turning another Ironclad Chassis that I had lying around into a 3rd Stormclad, most of the credit should go to Pat Dunford (Yay Pat) who donated the chassis when he left to England (Boo Pat). He'd already added a few extra bits of armour plating so I kept them. I figured that the Stormclad has 3 defining features, Banner, Buckler and Sword so I set about making these. The banner was easy, stolen from a box of Tactical Marines. The Buckler was a Lancer shield cut up and rounded off with some sandpaper. The Sword was the hardest part, I took a spare Stormblade Captain sword and added on two blades from Grey Knight Halberds and used the shaft from a Lancers spear, the pommel came from the Reliant Kit, intended for the top of the banner. I then tried a bit of Green stuff to round off the ends of the blades into the hilt and it was done!

I'm going to try and paint this one as a really old Proto-Clad that has been repaired and fixed up with different parts whilst being out fighting on the front.

Comparison

 So its off to play Mk3 on Saturday and hopefully I’ll have the reports and some pictures up for you to look at.

I'll try to keep the blog updated in the build up to the WTC as well as showing off some modelling projects etc, if I have time.

Get HYPED!

An update, finally.

So the last time I posted WTC was a week away, now it is 5 and a bit weeks in the past.

The WTC in Progress

It was an incredible time, the team didn’t do as well as I‘d hoped and I personally didn’t do very well.

But who cares about that? WTC 2016 hype is go already and I will be captaining one of the Irish teams next year.

My results

In the end I managed to get in 61 games from when the team was announced and the event starting, not quite the intended 100 but close enough.

So what has happened? I moved into a new house, I bought into a new faction and played 1 tournament of Mercs.

So as I helped my Bro with his legion toys and painted a bunch of them for him he bought me an Earthbreaker and Ossrum and Thor, so I bussed then out with Gastonne and Galleon. 

Vayl2

Thagrosh2

I managed to live the dream and get the top of 2 assassination, the best thing was that it was against Calandra and EE, 64 APs! Other than that I went 1-2.

Earthbreaker

So I bought into Cryx, I managed to get a great deal on basically every Cryx model you’d likely want to play barring a few here and there so this next year, up to and including the WTC is year of the Cryx!

Cryx Toys

More

More!

Kraken

I’ve played 14 games so far and only managed to win 5 but each game is a learning experience.

So I’m going to chronicle my Cryx journeys on the blog from now on, currently I’ve only played a bunch of Lich2 and this is the list I played most recently:

Lich Lord Asphyxious

* Helldiver

* Nightwretch

Bane Thralls (Min)

* Bane Thrall Officer & Standard

Bane Knights (Max)

Bane Knights (Max)

Bile Thralls (Min)

* Skarlock Commander
Bane Lord Tartarus

Satyxis Blood witches (Min)

* Satyxis Blood Hag

Darragh Wrathe

Machine Wraith

It’s got all the good Cryx bits in it and some of the better ones that might be moved out when I decide on my 2 list pair, I’m thinking Denny1 but I need the Devil Shadows and Rockbottom so I’m waiting for Christmas.

Post WTC Battles

Stay tuned for more things in the, hopefully regular, future!